Yes, it actually exists. And at college campuses, no less. I headed over to Boston University's (BU) Hillel House — that shining marble beacon of free food, curly-haired Jewesses and gorgeously renovated lounges with a foosball table and coffee bar — to find love. (But seriously, Granoff family, you should see the colossus that Florence and Chafetz built for their yids.)
Ah yes, Boston, city of love. And to fall in love I was ready.
But before we delve into my disappointing heartbreak, let's first examine the facts: While I speak of my experience satirically, in all honesty, dating opportunities for college students are bleaker than one would imagine for one simple, scientific reason, which I will call the Hot S--- Conundrum.
Let's take Tufts as our case study. We live on a rather remote campus with rather lazy people. So, assuming there is some demographic of students who would like to practice romantic or sexual monogamy for at least small chunks of time, if a person exists who is awesome enough so as to be worth the sacrifice of the rest of their crazy, passionate sex lives, they're likely not going to go running out of zip code 02144-02155 to find them.
Because of this insulation, every student's potential to become someone else's awesome person increases. At the same time, however, given the widespread awareness of this favorable condition, every student's perception of their increased potential also far outweighs the factor by which their potential is actually increased. Thus, everyone is left thinking that their pheromones are nicer smelling than they really are and begin to look at what, normally, they would deem a great match as simply one of many within reach.
I mean, let's face it. If Hodel were cooed at by a thousand slavic Adonises waiting to sweep her off her feet every time a pogrom hit Anatevka, she probably wouldn't have run away with mediocre-looking Perchik with his awkward pants and Marxist politics. But she wasn't. She saw her chance, and she got the hell out of Russia.
But to get back to my point, perhaps dating 45 people doesn't exactly help the problem at hand, but dating — actually committing to sit down with another person and see what's in store instead of weighing them against all the other people you know — might.
So off I went to BU, to sit down on one side of a table with 100 other college girls (100!) and wait for the unholiest of rituals I've ever observed to ensue. The boys entered, chose seats on the opposite side of the table and, on cue, began to shoot out questions like spit — and sometimes actual spit! — until my savior, in the form of the lanky, overenthusiastic emcee, gave us the two-minute signal that marked the end of one date, the start of another and the descent into another layer of hell. If there were ever a case in which two minutes with a member of the opposite sex could stand in for a Rorschach inkblot test, this was it. Do I like vegetables? What's my favorite sex position? What's my favorite ORGAN? I mean, I couldn't entirely blame them; we did only have two minutes — why not go for the really deep stuff?
There were some pleasurable encounters too. But none so pleasurable as the nice young fellow, who, through peanut-butter-stained teeth, asked me what my major was. "English," I replied, though I had made up several other responses throughout the night, growing bored of hearing my brilliant contemporaries' theories about "The Great Gatsby." "Don't you already speak it?" he said back. DON'T I ALREADY SPEAK IT?! Generally without leftover food peeking out of my mouth! Generally.
No, even with yenta on my side, I ended up with no Perchik of my own, but instead returned eagerly to my insulated campus, feeling — even after having been applauded by strangers on the street for falling on black ice — like hot s---.
