The real life nice guys of OKCupid

They exist.

NYC isn’t usually a place where people get bored. And I’d hardly say that ‘bored’ was what I was feeling on the last few days of a week-long flying visit to attend a conference in the big (juicy) apple.

I was seeking something extra from the city on this, my third visit. This time I wasn’t here with a boyfriend. On both previous occasions I’d had fellas in tow. And on both occasions we’d had almighty rows, which were death knells for the respective relationships.

In the early hours of New Years Day 2007, I’d flung my engagement ring across the hotel room at my fiancé (don’t ask, it’s a whole other story) for reasons which made perfect sense in my schnickered brain at the time, but escape me now. In another alcohol blurred scene a few years ago in April, exploring wine bars in the East Village ended up with my boyfriend picking a fight with me at a bagel store at 2am, him passing out in the hotel and me checking his phone to discover the affair he was having.

This time, New York, things would be different. This time I was single. And sober.

Online dating isn’t something I’ve ever shied away from. My first profile was on Lava-Life in 2002 as Chintamani (meaning ‘wish-fulfilling jewel’ in Hinduism) was when I was in the middle of my Hare Krishna ‘phase’. At that stage, I enjoyed creating a profile, carefully projecting an identity (that straddled reality and safety) and chatting online more than I did actually meeting people.

After 3 of my closest friends announced pregnancies within 3 days of each other, I cried for 24 hours, lamenting my distance from motherhood and promptly joined RSVP as LadyEpona (Goddess of Horses). Within a week I’d met a bookishly sweet yet emotionally anxious fella who I dated for nearly 2 years. Next I channelled a Tori Amos lyric as LollipopGestapo and met the aforementioned angry bagel cheater who I lived with and took 2 overseas trips with inside of a year.

My most recent incarnation as ArcadiaQuartz on OK Cupid has been less productive in terms of netting long-term relationships quickly, but had been plenty more fun. Maybe the fact that OKC is free means it’s a bit more footloose and fancy free, there’s more spontaneous conversation and meet ups seem less pressured. By this stage I had worked out a pretty good system for sorting the Arsehats from the Douche Lords and the Nice Guys from those with real relationship potential. I was very comfortable meeting people, chattering away, garnering information and insight into their real selves (not just their projected online ones) and generally having a great time being myself.

I hadn’t used the ‘find locals’ button on OKC before, but that Friday morning on a hot June Day in Brooklyn I pressed it. Up popped a screen of profiles and using my intuition and a bunch of pluck, I messaged a handful of guys “I’ve got 24 hours left in your city, would you like to show me a snippet of it?”.

Incredibly within 30 minutes I had two dates lined up.

First up was Padraic, an Irish-American metal fabricator who worked for a gallery in Williamsburg. He’d previously been the in house photographer for a high-end fashion label and had turned his hand instead to more handy pursuits. He had a yacht and would be spending the afternoon sailing it. I was welcome to join him.

That sounded like an amazing opportunity. Mainly to be abducted and or murdered.

We messaged for a while, I pointed out how good a swimmer I was as well as my ninja martial arts skills, I got more details, information about him, checked in with the guy I was staying with about just how crazy the whole idea of going sailing with a complete stranger at twilight on a full moon actually was (not so crazy that I shouldn’t give it a go, but keeping in close phone contact was necessary).

Satisfied that I probably wasn’t going to die, but may very well end up sea-sick. I jumped on the subway to Sheepshead Bay, where a guy in an old Lexus who looked way too much like Steve Zissou’s best friend picked me up and took me to his 30 foot yacht. He was a quite shy guy, with a cool sense of humour that simultaneously made me feel safe, yet played along with the ‘Is this the part where you abduct me’ joke/not joke. We sailed out towards Coney Island, where the screams from the rides only added to the faint abduction soundtrack in my head.

The full moon lit up the water, the fireworks at Coney Island went off, then the anchor got stuck and we spent 20 minutes trying to get free, where suddenly I was at the helm, putting the engine into gear, giving it gas and steering, while Paddy reefed at the anchor and yelled inaudible instructions. OK Cupid, time to get back to shore.

The yacht club house was a quaint place that had only just weathered the effects of Cyclone Sandy, in which many of the local’s boats had been picked up and thrown ashore. Again, like a scene from the Life Aquatic, I was at the bar amidst a bevvy of caricatures who appeared fascinated by who I was, where I’d come from and why I was here with ‘Paddo’. Our ‘date’ was usurped by Shirley, the gay caretaker of the yacht club, who drunk and happy could hardly believe she was meeting an Australian and basically talked my ear off. At 1am, I got a lift back to the subway and made my way back to civilisation, alive.

The Brooklyn Flea Markets was the more innocuous setting for my second ‘local’ date. Marty is best described as a dishy cross between Edward Scissor Hands and Robert Pattison. He was a 31-year-old DJ slash writer slash music store employee who ticked almost every box on the hipster checklist. We wandered the stalls and I marvelled at how it all just mimicked the wares of every other artisan market ever.

We found some food and sat in the shade to share stories about life, love and the universe. After a stroll around the neighbourhood we lay in the park and candoodled for the rest of the afternoon. We played my game of ‘runner, not a runner’ (where you pick out people who are naturals from those who are slogging it) and swapped weird sex stories, but suddenly it was time for me to go and jump on a plane back to Sydney. We walked hand in hand back to the subway — which felt suddenly affectionate and demonstrative — and lamented the fact we didn’t have a longer to spend together. Que cera cera, it’d been a great addition to a final day in NYC and the wondering made it all that more alluring.

There are nice guys of OKC and then there are the truly and really nice guys of OKC. There was something powerful and liberating in meeting really lovely humans who you could walk (or in my case fly) away from and have no further expectations of or get carried away inventing fairy-tale futures with. They popped into my life for brief yet sparkling cameo appearances, contributed to my world, before fading into my Facebook friends list.