I’ve played a variation of e-mail tennis before… but in this variation, you actually never wind up meeting the person you’re e-mailing. This happens with online personal ads. Someone will respond to my ad, saying, “Liked your ad… here’s my profile… if you’re interested in finding out more, drop me a line!” I check out the profile and if I’m interested in finding out more, I write him. A few days later I get a response. This might happen once more. Maybe even twice. Then, usually, one of two things happens:

a) I forget to write back, because Yahoo! Mail has no way to flag the messages I want to respond to. The romance fizzles before the pot has been placed on the pilot light.

b) I write back, we somehow maneuver into having a phone conversation, we meet up for coffee. After talking for a long time, one of us says, “Well, give me a call, okay?” I can never figure out if “give me a call” really means “because I sure won’t be calling you” or “because I like you but I’m insecure and I don’t want to be the one who has to call.” And I don’t call the guy back, because:

1) I don’t want to give him the impression that I want to date him.

2) I like him but I’m insecure and I don’t want to be the one who has to call.

Okay, I know. That’s all very pithy, and the outline format is a nice touch, slightly David Foster Wallace-ish. Aren’t I witty? But the more complicated version is that when you’ve met someone through an online personal ad, there are expectations. I don’t mean expectations of sex, but expectations for something greater. And there’s some threshhold that has to be met in order for there to be a second date. But the threshhold is higher than it needs to be, for some reason. Because if you can decide after one date that you don’t want to see the guy further, that’s one thing. But if it takes two dates to decide it — then the reasons are usually more complicated. So in order for there to be a second date… I don’t know.

That’s why I don’t go on dates through personal ads anymore.

Or at least I don’t call them dates.

Anyway, I think I was talking about e-mail tennis.