HEAVEN: A dork's dream date

In some ways our story was like so many others'. Carrie had avoided emotional commitment by seeing guys who lived abroad, I by not going out with anyone. For our online dating portals, she, politically aware, used Salon; I, a recovering dork who rarely got laid, frequented Nerve.com.

Carrie decided to try the online scene as an antidote to the less-than-interesting, less-than-sincere guys she met frequently at bars or wherever it is pretty girls are approached by asshole guys. This was my second stab at meeting someone online after an unprofitable attempt a year earlier. Though my not-altogether-untrue excuse was that I didn't have time as a neurology resident to meet people outside of the hospital, it was my congenital inability to hit on anyone that was really the albatross around my neck when it came to dating.

Because of the volume of listings on the Nerve/Salon personals, I rarely checked out ads without pictures. One headline sans photo called to me, though: "I'm picking out a thermos for you." Successfully hooked by a line from "The Jerk," I clicked, eager for more. Fortunately, the profile rounded out the depiction of the funny, edgy, appealing woman hinted at by the title.

I replied. She e-mailed back, and we discovered that not only had we attended the same college (Columbia), where I had known her brother, but we had attended the same high school in Florida! Since she was four years younger, we had never actually been in the same place at the same time. Intrigued by the nexus of coincidences, we started a two-week e-mail correspondence that ended in my falling for her before we had even met.

It gnawed at me, though -- how could someone with such a devilish wit and sharp mind be even available, let alone be slumming for dates online? Hell, she was even attractive, at least if the one small e-mailed photo and the senior yearbook that I managed to bum from a pal were any indication. My friend's response: "Maybe she got fat!" Hmm.

By the time we finally went out, the expectations had gotten so high it seemed unlikely that she could possibly live up to my image of her. On the contrary, our first date was as picture-perfect as everything else had been: coffee and good conversation, "Pépé le Moko" at the Film Forum, dinner at Deborah, all culminating in the perfect kiss outside her building on Grove Street.

Like the best things, none of it was planned (the date or the relationship to follow), and it took us both by surprise. Eight months later, we're cohabitating in a beautiful high-rise apartment in the West Village and realizing how pale (but smart!) our kids will eventually be.

Doesn't it make you want to puke?

-- Dario M. Zagar, Manhattan

HELL: Sucker punch

A few years ago, I was finishing my degree in Texas, new in town and lonely. I should have known better, but I met a guy online who seemed to be everything I had been searching for. He told me he was a 32-year-old real estate agent in Tennessee. I'm also in my 30s and from Tennessee. I shared my poetry and he said I reminded him of Dylan Thomas. He told me about his business, his home, his fantasies and fears. We chatted online almost every night, sometimes a few minutes and sometimes for hours. We exchanged photos.

We did all the silly things people falling for each other do, even going so far as to go into online chat rooms and announce to everyone present that we were in love. People called us fools. We didn't care.

Several months passed and it was time for me to take a vacation back to Tennessee. We agreed to meet. I could hardly wait. He promised to call me at the friend's house I was staying at. He didn't call. Nor the next day. Finally, I got on my friend's computer, cornered him online and demanded an explanation. He was a 16-year-old high school student! People called me a fool. I cared.

-- Tom L. Jackson, Tennessee

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