I'm back on JDate. It's not a matter of choice, but of circumstance. Though my previous JDate escapades were short-lived, they left an indelible impression on me, and it is a much desperate situation that brings me back to the mouth of hell I like to call internet dating.

Being a young Jewish female in the South leaves me at a derth for dating material. My options are drastically reduced by the fact that I'm looking for another MOT (Member of the Tribe, for the unlikely goyim reading this), and the good ones that fit in that category are few and far between. Granted, I could move to New York and be engaged in 8 months, but my fondness for the Dirty South, along with unemployment and the option of living in my childhood bedroom, are keeping me down here. Hooray.

I love men. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Flirting is like breathing for me. Yesterday I blew a kiss to some random guy in the car next to me, just because I could. Then he followed me down the road for six miles and I had to shake him by pulling an illegal U-turn. So occassionally flirting backfires. But on the whole, I love men. I'm open to a relationship, which is numero uno issue with finding a guy. What guy wants to settle down when he can go to a club and get strange ass four nights a week instead? I guess I'm the dumbass.

My past dating experience has been a total clusterfuck. Freshman year of college I had my first real relationship. It lasted a whopping six months and I was only 19-years-old (he was 23). So I guess in this case, I was the one who wanted to continue sowwing my oats a little longer, and he was the one wanting to settle down. Luckily he wasn't Jewish, so I have no regrets about letting that one get away. Since then, there have been a multitude of dates, some memorable, others less so.

I got on JDate the first time the Summer after my sophomore year at UGA. I was interning in New York and was honestly (I swear to God) bored out of my mind and got on it as a joke. Believe what you want, but I had only humorous intentions... at first. Yeah, I was a little young to be on JDate, but what's the harm in seeing what my options are? I started talking to guys almost immediately. I kept it to email and IMing, no phone calls yet. And the first guy I was interested in had potential.

Guy #1: I was 20. He was 28. I've always had a thing for older guys. We talked for weeks via email before I gave him my phone number. He seemed sweet, charming, moderately good-looking (take that, fucker). The night we were finally going to start talking, I had just started talking to another guy, who we will call "Douche Bag," although protecting the innocent doesn't really seem like an issue at this juncture. When Guy #1 called, we talked, and the conversation was effortless. We chatted about the weather, politics, and the global economy (just kidding, I have no recollection of the conversation, except for what comes next). Then he tells me that he was talking to his roommate earlier, and their conversation turned to JDate, which apparently brought to light that the roommate was talking to me also. Turns out, the roommate was Douche Bag, the ever lovable guy I was talking to just earlier that night. To make a long story just slightly shorter, I broke things off with Douche Bag, went on a date with Guy #1, then broke things off with him just days later because it turned out that he could act a fool with the best of 'em. To future guys I date, take this hint: Don't incessantly talk about your penis and expect a girl to swoon. Aaaanway, about three months later, my dad was telling me about a family friend who had experienced something similar on JDate--two guys who "coincidentally" turn out to be roommates talking to the same girl. Oh wait, they have the same names as the two douche bags I was talking to? Wait a minute... I think I know what's going on here. Well played gents, but the game is up.

Guy #2: Again with the big age difference, but who gives a shit. When I'm 40 and he's 46, no one will care or notice. He was actually quite wonderful, other than his taste in jeans. He was the assistant GM of a restaurant, I was a college junior. We were a match made in JDate heaven. Our biggest issue? We couldn't make our schedules work. How pathetic is that? He worked most every day, and his off nights were usually in the middle of the week. Mine were obviously the weekend, and it's kind of hard to plan dates when you can't get together on the same nights. So sadly, that one was short-lived.

Guy #3: Robbie Levin (no need to use a fake name with this one, kids). The doozie. The primary reason I removed myself from JDate the first time. I was 21, he was 28. A lawyer, a musician, had his own house, gorgeous blue eyes, and a Mercedes. Every little girl's dream. We finally went out after a couple weeks of talking, and everything seemed in order. We had dinner, drinks, he serenaded me at CJ's Landing (R.I.P.), what could be better? The next day I was heading back to Athens, but before I did, my wonderful father called me into his room. He sat me down, looked me straight in the eye, and told me that he had googled Robbie. At first I was mortified. I felt deceived and violated, and then he dropped the bomb. He had found Robbie's Georgia State Bar directory page (all lawyers have something like it). There it said where he had gone to undergrad and law school. I had known that he went to Indiana undergrad and UGA Law, but I definitely didn't know that he graduated from law school in 1996. Do the math kiddies--1996 law school grad made him a whopping 36, not his previously claimed 28. Holy balls, I went out with a pedophile.

Amazingly, the Guy #3 story gets even better. When I broke it off with him, I called him out for lying to me. His response: "I never told you I was 28. You must have assumed I was 28." Uh, can I call bullshit? I try to put this whole thing out of my head, but only a few months later, I am in Charleston for a wedding. While sitting at the rehearsal dinner, my older male cousin inquires about my recent dating habits, and I coyly respond that I just went out with a guy who told me he was 28 but was actually 36. And to my surprise, his response is: "Was his name Robbie Levin?" Whether the look on my face was shock, horror, or disgust, I do not know, but I almost threw up when my cousin told me how Robbie did the exact same thing to a friend of his. Lucky for me, we only went on one date. He dated that girl for three weeks. Ew.

If you're still reading, I applaud you. But if you feel the need for a break, now is the time to do it, because this story only gets better and you might need a few cleansing breaths before you read it. Ready? Here we go.

October 24, 2007. I have a Facebook message from my wonderful cousin from the wedding. The subject states: I was definitely right to tell you to stay away from this guy. A million thoughts run through my head. What the hell is he talking about? I click open the message and inside find a link, this link: http://www.11alive.com/news/article_news.aspx?storyid=105295. I click. I read. I laugh. More out of horror than anything. Robbie Levin, the guy that lied about his age and has a habit of doing so, has just been arrested for sexually soliciting a teenager (his coworker's daughter) online. Wow. Fuck you JDate for letting this pedophile into my life.

And THAT, my friends, is why I removed myself from JDate. Times must be pretty desperate if I'm getting back on there. So, to anyone reading this, if you know of a nice Jewish man, feel free to introduce us, because I would really love nothing more than to one day tell my children anything but "I met your daddy on JDate."