He Thought It Was a Date. It Was an Audition

Online dating has created the largest romantic casting call in history, and ladies, just look at the applicants.

One man is leaning against a sailboat, another is standing on a mountain he may or may not have climbed, and several have borrowed dogs whose emotional range is already testing extremely well with women.

You scroll through the applicants, somebody looks promising, a few messages are exchanged, and eventually one candidate is invited for coffee at seven.

He thinks he is going on a date.

He is, technically.

But from your side of the table, he has also wandered straight into an audition and does not yet know it.

He now has about seventy minutes to be attractive in motion, funny without trying too hard, confident without becoming exhausting, interested without appearing desperate, intelligent without delivering a lecture, and somehow produce that mysterious little something women call chemistry before either of you has properly examined the menu.

No pressure.

Some Men Were Born for the Audition Room

Certain men are fabulous at first dates because the whole setup happens to reward exactly what they do best.

They arrive completely at ease, conversation glides, stories land, eye contact appears beautifully on cue, and within half an hour you are thinking, Well, somebody finally sent in a professional.

He gets the callback before you have reached the car.

Then another man appears and gives what can only be described as a deeply unfortunate performance. His photographs promised personality, but the personality itself seems to have been left somewhere near the parking meter.

He is pleasant, certainly, but oddly formal; his best joke arrives with the energy of a utility bill, and the relaxed man his friends presumably know has been replaced by someone who seems to be applying for permission to remain seated.

You go home thinking, Nice enough. Next.

And online dating makes next exceptionally easy because the waiting room is already packed. The moment you look again, another applicant is smiling from your phone beside a vineyard, next to him is a dentist who skis, and below him is the Labrador.

The Labrador continues to outperform several of the men.

A man who needs a little time is competing with an entire waiting room of men who have already selected their best photograph, which is not an ideal environment for delayed charm.

Then Somebody Gets an Unexpected Callback

Every so often, however, the merely pleasant man gets another date anyway—perhaps curiosity survived, perhaps nothing was actually wrong with him, or perhaps the vineyard man opened with “Hey gorgeous” and accidentally improved the previous candidate’s prospects.

And this is where things become inconvenient, because on date two the original man begins behaving like an actual person.

He relaxes, his sentences stop arriving for inspection, and a little humor escapes; instead of politely agreeing that yes, absolutely, everything is wonderful, he disagrees with you about something and suddenly becomes much more interesting.

By date three he has almost forgotten he is being evaluated, which appears to have been the missing ingredient all along.

The man you originally described as fine says something so funny you are still thinking about it the next morning. His opinions acquire edges, his face changes when he is amused, and the personality that missed the first audition entirely has now turned up carrying several bags.

Well.

This was not in the casting notes.

Meanwhile, the dazzling man from round one may be having difficulties of his own.

He got the part immediately, but once the initial excitement settles down, he becomes strangely less enthusiastic about showing up. The man who produced magnificent chemistry over cocktails seems considerably less gifted when the role involves consistency, consideration and ordinary life without an audience.

Apparently his specialty was auditions.

A very specific talent, but undeniably polished.

Eventually the Casting Desk Starts to Disappear

If things continue, something rather nice happens: both people stop performing quite so hard.

The polished stories run out, the charming first-date versions loosen around the edges, and peculiar humor, moods, opinions and habits begin wandering in without waiting for permission.

The imaginary stack of headshots matters less because somewhere along the way you stop asking whether the candidate is impressive and begin discovering whether you actually like the man.

And that is where online dating’s wonderful efficiency becomes slightly ridiculous. It has made meeting people incredibly fast, then quietly encouraged us to expect the rest of the process to speed up as well.

Some men are dazzling immediately, although occasionally the dazzling audition turns out to have been the best part; others barely make it through the first round and become considerably more compelling the moment they stop trying to perform.

And every so often, the man who nearly got sent home after one coffee turns out not to have been wrong for the part at all; he was simply terrible at auditions, which is rather inconvenient in a system that gives strangers seventy minutes to become fascinating.

Sometimes he was simply a man who needed a callback.