HEAVEN: Or wherever agnostics go when they die

While there may be naysayers who claim it is best to meet your true love face-to-face, it gets kind of hard when you are looking for a sarcastic female atheist autopsy specialist in her early thirties. Luckily for me I found one online who was looking for a humorous male amblyopic agnostic writer in his early forties. To top it all off, she already had a great kid and I wanted children but didn't want to reproduce.

Both of us used well-crafted ads that were specifically designed to repel 99.9999 percent of all prospective suitors. While lively debate is entertaining, who wants to explain that evolution is not a theory for the millionth time?

After two years of binge drinking and generally bemoaning the lack of skeptical thought in this country, we got married. Our second wedding anniversary is coming up this May and the only way we could be happier is if they removed the words "In God We Trust" from the coinage.

I'd thank a God which may or may not exist for online dating services, but my wife would hit me on the back of the head for saying it. Some things never change.

-- Matthew Smith

Hell: At least my day was better than his

"Peter" responded to my ad about two months after I'd last updated it, but the fish hadn't been biting lately, and intrigued enough after a couple of quick e-mail exchanges, I decided to set aside a Sunday afternoon for a brunch date.

I met him at his cavernous apartment next to the park on a crisp bright day. We sat down and started chatting.

My being unemployed didn't faze him, a failing movie producer. He had an interesting story about a film he shot in Morocco. He was candid enough to let me know that bad things happened to him in threes. In the last few months, he had a bomb of a movie, broken up with his boyfriend, and dealt with his father's death.

Cheery, I said "Well, it will be a while until your next bad thing then!"

We were comfortable enough to move on to brunch, so we went to the parking garage, and he put the top down on his new Volvo. We zoomed down Sixth Avenue, toward the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel. Zoomed so much we rear-ended a poor guy in a rental car.

Angry at the victim's suggestion of handing over his license and registration, he asked me, "Do you see any damage?!" I shrugged my shoulders.

We got back into the car. He apologized profusely and admitted he was a little nervous. "No problem," I said. "I hope this isn't your first bad thing!" We sped through the tunnel at 60, headed toward his friend's Italian bistro in the East Village, and dined on some fantastic scrambled eggs with tomato and basil, a few cigarettes and another mimosa (which he wouldn't let me pay for, saying airily that he'd put it on his "account").

Then we decided to go for a walk in the neighborhood and found ourselves at one of my favorite record stores. He immediately began searching for the records I'd mentioned listening to and the ones I'd wanted to get. Unbeknownst to me, he bought me a copy of a record I'd been saving up for. He said he'd enjoy spending the rest of the afternoon at his apartment reading the paper and getting high. I hadn't smoked in a while, and hadn't finished reading the paper, and was still vaguely interested in him, so thought it'd be a nice way to end the date. At his place, we took a few hits off his joint, talked some more about its paranoiac effect, and leafed through the Times.

Suddenly, a smoke alarm went off and he jumped up to see where it was coming from. He raced to his bedroom and screamed -- a fire next to his bed was blazing and blowing bits of soot and smoke through the air!

I threw him some wet towels. He said he'd have it under control, and asked me to go back to the other room while he cleaned up.

Moments later, the front buzzer buzzed. Eight burly firemen, responding to the alarm, trudged through the huge loft, checked the room out, and looked around the rest of the place. He told them he'd handle it from there, sighed, apologized, and made sure I was OK. We both gulped down some water.

"I just don't want to be around for the third one," I joked.

That's when his cellphone rang.

"Whoa, this is heavy," he said, looking at the number.

"Who is it?"

"My ex."

Clearly, it was time for me to go. But I'd had a fun ride in a convertible, a delicious free brunch, an "A Certain Ratio compilation CD Id had my eye on, and some pot. Plus I saw a fabulous apartment and I got to finish the paper. Not bad for a Sunday, actually. Especially compared to his Sunday.

-- Name withheld

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