Debbie sits across a round table from her eight-minute date, tap-tapping a pen against an index card that carries a checklist of conversation starters.
She is 27, she is pretty much done with the bar scene (which this eight-minute arranged date at a restaurant, with less than a minute to go, is not).
She wants to establish her career before she gets married. She plans someday to move to sunny southern California. And you may now know more about her than the guy on her most recent date, which has just ended with a handshake.
Debbie and her date scribble notes about each other on those index cards.
This is the latest example of how we are juggling our sped-up lives and our intimate needs. This is the new twist on the ancient game of heart yearning and wish fulfillment, where first impressions matter and no one says otherwise, and old-school courting is ratcheted up as a pass-or-fail event. This is the speed date.
On a recent Tuesday in Providence, at Fire & Ice restaurant, 40 single professionals paid a Boston company -- 8minuteDating.com -- to arrange eight dates -- each lasting eight minutes -- with strangers.
They are single women and men -- nametags gave first names only -- seeking a date that will/maybe/won't lead to their new best friend, their life partner, then marriage, their first house, the baby shower, graduation, the empty nest, grandkids and happily ever after.
Here is the process: Singles "date" across a table, eight minutes of back-forth chitchat brought to a close by a ringing clock, like a timekeeper's bell at a prize fight. They shuffle on to another table and do it seven more times.
When the night is through, and they're at home in slippers and pajamas, they log on to a computer with a personal password and indicate who they want to meet again for "business," "friendship" or "dating." Then they wait.
Within 48 hours, the event organizers e-mail the personal info of others who matched the daters' preferences for business, friendship or dating. The rest is, you know, their private business.
But first, there's the cocktail prelim, time blocked out for schmoozing for this crowd that's come from work, a couple of men suited up and others wearing business casual clothes.
Beyond the bar scene
The singles here are everyday folks, a bit awkward even (aren't we all on that first date?) in that high-school, boys-versus-girls dance way. Each side retreats to its corner. Men nod and chat with each other. Women who came with other women make small circles and talk. It is the anti-bar.
"At the bar scene, there are people that just turned 21 getting sickly drunk, Debbie said a couple of days after her dates. "Those days are totally over."
Why?
She sighs. She means: "I'm growing up."
"The kind of people we hear from are the people very much past the MTV, hand-stamped shenanigans," says Amy Gray, an event organizer from Woonsocket.
"They don't want to go to a traditional bar, fight the noise and the crowd. It's a civilized way to date."
The singles, who have paid about $30 each for the express blind dates, have about 10 minutes before the get-together. They snack on a bruschetta, wings and eggroll buffet. A few hold fruity mixed drinks, trendier than a draft beer -- not to get a buzz on, but just to shake away nerves and (they hope) signal that cool first impression: I'm me, fun.
"It's a happy hour when you are forced to talk to everyone," says Ellen Dumouchel, 31, the marketing manager of Match Events Inc., the Boston company that runs 8minuteDating.com.
Dating in public
Speed dating is just one of popular culture's newest explorations of the public blind date. At least two TV shows trail couples on blind dates. MTV's Taildaters follows a couple on a date as their friends, watching behind the scenes, dish on the date-in-progress.
And arranged dates are a booming business in the region, from Table for Eight's dinner parties in Boston to this night's speed dating.
8minuteDating.com held its first speed dates last February in Boston. Friends told friends. The database of Boston-area singles now tops 5,000 hopefuls, organizers say. Dates are arranged in 15 cities, from clubby Manhattan to Austin, Texas, with its indie bands and southwestern cool.
In some regions (not yet in Providence) there is speed dating geared to Asians, African Americans, gay and lesbian couples, Christians and single parents.
Providence, meanwhile, is a party spot for the college crowd. But Forbes magazine recently ranked it just 36th out of 40 best cities for singles. Daters say it's tough hunting once you're out of school. (8minuteDating.com groups its promotions by age, and the most popular events in Providence, judging by early sign-ups, are for singles age 35 to 50.)
A few hours spent watching a speed-dating event yields certain observations about the dating life:
1. Dating is always more than just the date. It is the first impression, the wait, then the introduction; the wait, the response, the personal stories swapped, the wait.
2. Dating is the fantasies you make: you seek the stud, the doctor, the model and the schoolteacher. But on this night the speed-dating crowd more resembles the King of Queens set than Sex & the City. It is everyday us.
Organizers slated this night for singles "25 to 35," though singles pushing 45 show up. They come with a range of incomes, looks, styles, attitudes and intentions.
Bringing us to point 3. Loneliness is loneliness, and all the baggage that comes with that, and this is the speed date's muse.
Dating aspires to fulfill the oldest urge you know: companionship. The question is, who gets it, when, where and how?
"I don't do meeting people well," says Bruce, sipping a draft beer before his second round of speed dating, which he learned about through a friend. (His first time was at an event in Quincy, Mass.) Bruce is here for companionship, for friendship -- "It's good to have somebody to just say, 'Hey, let's go out and get something to eat,' " he says -- and also for fun.
And back to Debbie, who learned about the event from a friend in Boston who organizes it there, and wanted to sign up in Providence. "Then, I was like, 'I don't know it. It's not my thing,' " she said. "But then I was like, 'You know what, I'm down for something different.' "
On Tuesday Debbie left work a little early -- she's an admissions officer for Johnson & Wales's college of culinary arts. She went home, chilled -- "I needed a glass of wine," she says. She arrived with a friend.
"Up until the second I walked in I was having second thoughts," she says. She thought: "Have I got to the point where I've gotta do these type of events?' But once we were greeted by Amy, I was like, 'All right, this is kind of cool.' "
Round one
On to date one:
Singles clutch their conversation starter cards. And conversations, daters say, go something like this:
What are you from? What do you do for a living? (How much do you make, at least one dater thought, but did not ask.) What do you do for fun? And so on.
The alarm rings. End of date one. Daft Punk's One More Time bumps repetitive, Euro-pop through the restaurant speakers. No one is dancing, though a couple of people are shoulder grooving, getting warmed up, finding their next table.
And now, date two: A TV news crew from Channel 6, a Journal photographer and I with my notebook are making a few of the daters (okay, most of the daters) nervous. Public dating, for its new-found thrill of the unexpected, apparently has not shaken its long-held air of desperation. These daters like their anonymity, and refused to be photographed.
"People have a stereotype that people are like losers if they go to dating services," says Kelly Gray of Woonsocket, producing the Providence event with Andrew, her husband, and Amy, her sister-in-law. "None of the people I see here look like losers."
There goes the alarm. Date three:
Daters say arranged dating is empowering in a way that the bar scene is not. "I don't like to go in and figure out some suave way to come interrupt people engaged in a conversation," Bruce says. "I've never been comfortable with it -- and never will be."
Here, daters don't have to exchange personal info, which participants say makes these dates feel safe.
Plus, you don't have to reject anyone or, tending to our brittle egos, be rejected face to face. The alarm rings.
As this night goes, there aren't a lot of blank faces. The place takes on a friendly club vibe, with a few you're-hot smiles and I'm-bored-but-polite smiles.
Macy Gray is singing My Nutmeg Phantasy through the speakers, that ballad that says even on bad days relationships are all good. "Baby I know . . . you are so mad at me. It don't mean we have to mope around."
A woman says "Thank you" across a table as another date ends. Her date says it back. At another table the pair stand up, glance past each other, no thank you's and no handshakes.
"Even if you're not compatible with somebody, it looks like everyone is having fun," says Kelly Gray, who knows something about blind dates: She met her husband on one.
Of the 40 daters on this Tuesday, 70 percent got a match for dating or friendship. Six said they didn't meet anyone they'd want to see again.
"There was definitely no love match, but I think it was a great night out," Debbie says. "Once the event kicked off, there was no pressure."
About 48 hours later she learned she made one match for dating and one for friendship, and she's hung out a couple of times with the friendship match.
And hey, if you get a second date and that's a bust, there's this upside, Bruce says. "If you meet a gal, and she is not for you but you can just enjoy each other's time together, she may say, 'I know there is not a love connection between us, but I know these two or three other gals.'
"No harm, no foul."
The next 8minutedating event is tonight at Fire & Ice, for single professionals 25 to 40; and tomorrow at Napa Valley Grill, for single professionals 30 to 45.
