By Jessica Meyer

I barely knew this woman, but I liked her, she was brash and witchy, so when she pulled me into the bathroom at a party I was too old for, brandished a compact full of dope, and asked me who I was fucking, I wanted to tell her something scintillating and mysterious, but the boring truth was this: I was freshly raw over the end of a serious relationship and hadn’t had any action in months. I tell her how long it’s been, how much I just want to rub up on these sexy young men with swaggering egos and tight pants, they are writhing so close and smirking through the beer, and I’ve been dancing, and here, I admit, I get a little breathless, going on while she cuts up lines and nods, solemn and intent.

She meets eyes with me in the mirror, checks her nose for residue, and tells me, with conviction, “I know someone.” I follow her out, amused, protesting a little—”I’m not really that kind of girl!”—but then I get swept up by the DJ, he’s playing Prince, and everyone is going nuts and it’s fun, even if I’m older than everyone here, I’m having a good time, and I really am that kind of girl, who am I kidding.

I’m only 27, my heart is broken, but my desire to fuck attractive men is not.

I see my wild new friend through the crowd, she’s talking to someone and soon enough a boy with sweaty hands and a pretty smile is sidling my way and grabbing my hips. He says he loves my hair, does this endearing move with his face in my neck, and my weak resolve is thoroughly ruined. Yes, I say, I will go home with you.

We are both only vague friends with our matchmaker, and have, in fact, met before, but briefly, and without the maelstrom of desire that seemed to engage every person at the party we had just left. He drives us to his house, furious kissing at all red lights, and by the time we get there, I am so ready I have already unbuckled my belt, removed my coat, unbuttoned a layer.

There is something cinematic about struggling up flights of stairs while trying to sustain a passionate embrace with someone; eventually, though, this feels ridiculous and it’s a relief to get in the door and out of my clothes. Read the rest of this entry »

By Pete Bailey

She pukes.

All over the car door, the passenger door, my car’s passenger door, as we sail north up Damen Avenue, New Year’s Eve. We’re only two drinks into the evening—I’m driving, after all, and we’re heading to a place we can crash for the night—and she vomits a great awfulness all over her side of the car. Two friends are in the backseat, a couple, Jane and Fred. Amy, my date, looks mortified in embarrassment. She’s got puke on her pink shirt.

“I puked.”

“I know.”

I turn, pull over, stop in front of Nick’s Beer Garden, and Jane takes Amy inside to help her clean up in the tavern’s bathroom. Fred and I sit in the car; I’m furiously wiping away the two-drink upchuck on the interior. Fred repeats “Dude” over and over again, each utter more and more dramatic, until the women return. Read the rest of this entry »

By Lisa Buscani

When we started, I was thin. My face was a diamond, all clean walls. I was weightless but I had control, like astronauts after they learn to swim properly in space.

Our conversations used to overlap and dovetail and interweave and occasionally we’d stop to breathe. When we made love, we knew how to forget ourselves. That, I’m convinced, is passion; to kiss him so hard and hold him so hard that the act itself is forgotten and all that is remembered is skin and hair and warmth, that’s a gift. That’s something that we kept for a long, long time. Read the rest of this entry »

The time-honored tradition of The Fourth Annual “No Pants Party” makes Lincoln Park’s Skybar transform into a girls-for-girls paradise. From the sidewalk looking up to the second-floor window, two very scantily clad young ladies—with no more than pink lingerie and white fluffy boots—shake what their mammas gave them and hope their fathers aren’t aware of it.

A skinny, mustachioed hipster in maroon boxer shorts and suspenders dances to the muffled beats from inside the bar next to the uncomfortable valet attendants. Sunday at Skybar is designated Gay Night, and tonight is no different. Chicago’s strong and vibrant lesbian community is out in full force making the best of their last few hours of the weekend before returning to the Monday morning grind. The place looks like a normal party with loud house music and strobe lights until the adorable—and unfortunately unattainable—waitress, wearing American Apparel briefs, strolls over. She’s holding trays of fluorescent shooters, claiming they have the elixir for a time you’re sure to forget in the morning, only to remember as your head falls below the rim of the toilet upon crawling out of bed. Of course she didn’t actually say that, but we all know the result of glow-in-the-dark booze.           Read the rest of this entry »

During the site’s highly advertised “free weekend,” six Newcity writers decided to sign up for online dating service Chemistry.com, sister site to Match.com, and each write about our experiences. Launched in 2006 and featuring the famed scientific personality test created by Dr. Helen Fisher, the Web site has more than five million members and helps set up more than 15,000 dates a week. We liked our chances.

First you take the personality quiz, which asks you an abundant amount of questions pertaining to personal preference and background. You’re assigned two of the four possible personality types: explorer, builder, negotiator, director.

You write a description of yourself for your public profile and include a headline, comparable to an outgoing message on Facebook or a headline on MySpace. Once everything is submitted—including a photo of yourself—you receive “matches” from the service, from which you indicate the ones in which you’re interested. (You archive your various rejections.) Meanwhile, your profile is being sent out to members, and they indicate if they’re interested in you. If you’re both interested, you take additional steps—which include comparing “relationship essentials,” like if it’s important to you that your partner loves pets, and an additional “Short Answers” portion—until finally there’s an email exchange, and from there you go. Needless to say, the testing and screening process is rather intensive.

We chose Chemistry.com because we imagined its free weekend would inspire some fresh, new profiles, maybe even people who were first-timers to something like this. Also because the commercial advertising the event was constantly on MSNBC while we were trying to watch our Rachel Maddow.

When I discussed the idea with my girlfriend Sarah, we agreed it would be an interesting exercise to both sign up on the site, compare our test results, inspect our matches together and, finally, see if we are actually matched up through the service.

Why we thought this was a good idea, I’ll never know.

I’m not as hard on online dating services as others; everyone knows it’s difficult in the singles sphere anyway, even if you do have the time to frequent events and bars. We’re all getting older, and the more time passes, the more difficult it feels to meet people. Plus, I have some friends who’ve had great success with sites just like Chemistry.com, and hey, they seem really happy and have met some great people, so whatever works. Read the rest of this entry »

The topic came up a few weeks ago, when a friend mentioned he met his last wife and current, very foxy girlfriend via online personals. I was stunned that the flirtatious, compelling, mischievous fellow who befriended me on the Metra platform would need or choose to sift through profile pages for a date. At any rate, the pump was primed, the process legitimized and the assignment timely. Sure, what the hell? I’ll give it a shot.

I logged in, agonized over a photo and headline (odd, considering this was just for kicks) and jotted a few notes on the personality test administered by the site. What struck me most was how clinical the whole process was; after determining my personality type—incidentally, a more accurate measure than my astrological sign or the free online Briggs-Meyers tests I was hooked on two years ago—I indicated the desirability of certain traits and habits on grids and slide rules. This was scientifically calibrated navel-gazing—even the color scheme of the site was institutional white. Read the rest of this entry »

When my girlfriend came home almost an hour late from work one day last week, I greeted her by saying, “Don’t worry, I’m just signing up for a dating site.” She gave me a look of shock/confusion, like she couldn’t believe I was calling it quits—it was only the first time she was late and it wasn’t even her fault. But I explained it was for an experiment.

I’d never used a dating site before, unless you count making a fake Gay.com profile to trick my friend Kevin in college into thinking he had a stalker or helping my straight friend Sarah find a non-douchey “meat and potatoes” kind of guy in Bloomington-Normal (no luck).

Signing up for Chemistry.com was as excruciating as an actual chemistry test. It was high school all over again, but instead of multiple choice and equations, it was: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly agree.

Instead of straightforward questions, there were statements such as, “You enjoy the company of others.” I was stumped on whether to agree or strongly agree. Or maybe I should disagree? I mean, does it make me co-dependent if I like being around people? But I don’t want to be considered anti-social. I’m just selective. Read the rest of this entry »

The assignment intrigued me. Hang out on a new dating site called Chemistry.com, create a profile, and write about my experience. In other words, waste a good chunk of time and try to make sense out of nothingness. Like “Seinfeld” and Sartre rolled into one. Cool!

So I signed up, took the personality test, and voila! I was live in the online flesh market, ready to be sold like a bag of clams to some lucky fish. Like Jodie Foster in a floppy hat and short shorts, I was thrust before the ogling eyes of potential male buyers. Only in place of Harvey Keitel, I was my own pimp—boosting my selling points of European breeding, international education, blah and blah.

According to the personality test, I’m a Negotiator/Builder. Like Bob the Builder. Perhaps I should buy a tool belt? Read the rest of this entry »

I really dig taking online personality tests. You know, like the ones you can find on Facebook: “What kind of tree would you be?” or “What ‘Sex and the City’ character are you?” or “If you were a fascist leader, who would you be?” Because, well, they’re a joke with questions and answers that never really pertain to me.

So when Chemistry.com told me I was going to answer a few questions that would lead to my Prince Charming, well, I was ready to test it. Would I be paired with the athletic jocks because of my passion for kickball? Would I be joined with the intellectuals because of my infinite interest in “Star Trek”? Could my soul mate be just a generic answer away? Read the rest of this entry »