When I was first asked to participate in paper bag speed dating (yes, speed dating with a paper bag on your head), I thought it sounded funny and weird, and I'm usually game for anything, so I figured why not. I did not think it through.
With the rising popularity of dating sites like Tinder, most of the online dating platforms are based around "Would I sleep with you?" and not much else. Loveflutter started paper bag dating to focus on personality and interpersonal chemistry before deciding whether or not you would make out with someone's face, and that's actually super cool. Because as most of you know, I am not the world's biggestTinder fan.
I got to the weird science building in a part of town that looked like only ghosts lived there and was directed toward the open bar and instructed to "Drink more. Keep drinking." While I'm not a big drinker of things that make you drunk, I did consume over six sparkling waters, which technically counts. But if I had been a big drinker, I would've absolutely understood why alcohol would make the process less detestable.
After drinking my weight in water with bubbles in it, I was escorted to the paper bag decorating room, which was like an arts and crafts room for people trying to get laid. I didn't really understand why we were designing the bags, since I thought the point was to be a faceless weirdo and let your personality speak for itself. But once I started the actual speed dating, I realized that having a way to express yourself on your paper bag, even in the simplest way possible, really gave us something to talk about right away, as opposed to just asking each other questions about work and similarly pointless garbage that's good to know, but doesn't give you a real sense of the person.
They gave you a half an hour to make your bag, but since I was pretty sure the love of my life was not in attendance — and even if they were, they would like my bag no matter what I put on it because that's how soul mates work — I drew some weird cat ears, question marks for eyebrows, and pizza cheeks and got out of that room as quickly as possible.
We were told we'd be going on 30 dates in 60 minutes, averaging a new date every two minutes. We were encouraged to take notes of the person's first name, date number, and their quirky fact. Wait, what?
"You have to put your quirky fact on your bag!" one of the organizers told me. And even though it was hard to improve on perfection, I followed the rules and wrote "'I died in a war" because it was the first thing that came to me and if they got that weirdo joke on literally any level, we'd be aces.
We all put the paper bags on our heads and sat down at a table while the male suitors walked around the room to talk to us. I was psyched because any time I'm told I don't have to move my body if I don't want to, I'm happy.
And with that, ready or not, I was paper bag speed dating.
My first date brought a dog and kept talking about how this dog was "his girl" and I was already ready for the next date. I hate when dudes talk about their female dogs like they're human women. These are the types of guys who name their cars after their exes. I can't handle it. Still, he'd drawn a Spiderman mask on his bag, and it was actually really detailed and good, and he was a nice enough dude to talk to, even if I wasn't attracted to him in any way. I was already making the most of it and he wasn't openly horrible, so I felt OK about meeting the next twenty-nine guys.
I was really proud of myself for being so game to do this. Instead of sitting through each date bored and disinterested, I was actively engaged with every person I met. I wanted to know about their weirdo stuff. I wanted to see what they'd drawn on their bags. I wanted to hear how they'd ended up at paper bag dating (the most predominant response being "a friend told me about it").
Surprisingly, I was actually able to not focus on what they actually looked like under the bag. You could get glimmers of things. You could see their eyes, their posture, the way they moved, the way they spoke, if they could banter with me, all the important things (especially the last one). Plus, a lot of the time, the bags wouldn't really stay on your head so it would show you more of their face, or it would kind of slip off and you'd see a different quadrant of it. I could see one guy's face pretty clearly because his bag kept moving and I noticed that it looked like he'd drawn his actual face on his paper bag. When I asked him if he'd done that, he just said, "I have nothing to hide," and I became terrified because that's something you say only if you absolutely have something to hide.
Sure, there were other weirdos and awkward moments, like when one guy just talked about his love of women's clothing for the whole two minutes, which I didn't mind in an "Oh, it's not OK to wear women's clothing," since almost every guy I've ever dated borrowed my jeans, but more in a "Wait, why are you talking about this? We only have two minutes" kind of way. I imagine it was just nerves, and the fact that we only had two minutes and no clear view of their actual faces, making you actually want more than two minutes if you really liked someone because all you have to go on is their personality.
I have to say I kind of loved dating with a paper bag on my head. For one thing, I'd come straight from work and was wearing no makeup at all because who cares? I'd have a paper bag on my head the whole time. It'd be great to be on a date and not have to worry if my foundation was looking weird or if my eye makeup was smeared or if my lipstick was fading. Granted, even with the paper bag you could still see my eyes and my mouth. But somehow it still felt like hiding in kind of a cool way. I felt sort of faceless, like I could just be myself and they could go off that. Don't get me wrong, I think I'm cute as hell, but like every living person, I don't feel that way 24/7. My personality, however, is something I have confidence in round the clock.
And believe it or not, I actually wrote down a couple names of guys I liked.
Not because I thought they were my soul mate, because that paper bag could come off and they could have serial killer eyebrows or satanic symbols carved into their heads, but because they were people I wanted to talk to for longer than two minutes.
Here is the story I'll tell our children: "Yes, your father was wearing a paper bag on his head like a torture victim in the Middle East but at the end of our two minutes together, I had not written about any horrible personality traits I noticed. And then we had you."
Heartwarming stuff.
