In L.A., Dating Is No Game

Cherry Norris never got a chance to date online but insists she would have. The native Tennessean suffered through eight nearly date-free years in Los Angeles prior to the advent of the Web. The Internet, she figures, might have spared her from The Question.

“People would say, ‘You’re smart. You’re pretty. . .’ “--at this point, Norris knew what was coming next--” ’Why aren’t you dating?’ I couldn’t answer,” says the dark-blond filmmaker, now 40 and in a committed relationship. “People couldn’t believe it.” Neither could Norris. So mystified was she by the perils of the dateless in Los Angeles that she made a film about the subject.

In “Duty Dating,” shot at 28 locations around the city, an aggressive career woman makes a mess of her love life by pursuing men as if she were one herself. She mends her ways with the help of a “love doctor” who coaches her in the awkward art of dating several men simultaneously and becoming, well, more womanly.

The premiere of Norris’ independent film attracted some 500 singletons--many of them members of the online dating services Match.com, Matchmaker.com or JDate.com--who paid $25 each to attend a screening followed by a party at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica on Wednesday night. The evening itself was a duty date for many of the trolling singletons who practiced flirting and making eyes at each other, according to guidelines set out by locally famous “love doctor” Pat Allen. Allen, a therapist with offices in Brentwood and Newport Beach, inspired the film and has been working with singles in Los Angeles for the last 37 years and who, not coincidentally, coached filmmaker Norris into her current relationship.

Before the film, Allen, a diminutive 66-year-old in a drab-green suit, troops to the front of the theater and grabs a microphone with her signature take-no-prisoners manner. She squints across a theater about two-thirds filled with women and a third with men.

“Duty dating is when you date three people. One is overfocus. Two is either-or. Three is diversification,” Allen booms like a domineering grandmother. “Duty dating is when you go out with people who you hope die on the way to the bathroom. I don’t care if they’re not eligible for the gene pool you’re creating--you will duty date!” Murmurs one woman in the audience, “I feel like I’m in a movie.”

As Allen speaks, 33-year-old Stephanie Cordova Harvey waves her over and introduces her husband of three weeks, Geoff “Bud” Harvey, 30. “A win here,” Allen announces to the crowd. “A new husband!”

The crowd that trails down toward the empty Santa Monica Place mall for the private party after the film largely consisted of 30- and 40-somethings, lots of the men in black leather and the women wearing sparkling earrings or bracelets. “I am having lousy luck at this party,” says Leland Haywood of West Hollywood, who scans the perimeter. Men, in ones and twos, work the borders of the room. Spreads of food lie on tables both upstairs and downstairs in the mall, allowing people plenty of room to circulate, in full view of one another via two escalators. The mood is upbeat, and eager--rather more eager than a typical social gathering.

Out in the real world, Pat Allen says, women must make eye contact with a man for an agonizingly long five seconds in order to signal her interest and hopefully prompt him to start a conversation. The average time required Wednesday--with everyone hip to the ground rules--is approximately one nanosecond.

For all the exuberance, though, the collective take on dating in this city is grim.

“It’s very hard to meet women here,” complains Andrew Glenn, a Match.com member from Los Angeles. “Women are powerful. Men are options. They’re not necessities anymore.”

Lisa, 43, a costumer for films who lives in Beverly Hills and asked that her last name not be used, says, “There is always someone younger and prettier, and guys don’t have to commit.”

At least, in both their cases, online dating has kept them in the game. Glenn says he has been on 12 dates since December. Lisa, who uses Matchmaker.com, claims the Web has given her new options in her now 25-year-old dating career: “Now I don’t date guys in the film industry.”

Trolling through online profiles, it does seem possible that online dating is providing a respite from the geographical hurdles here. One imagines satellite engineers in the South Bay meeting for coffee with dog walkers in Hollywood, and animators in Burbank hiking with stockbrokers in Malibu, none of whom were likely to have met while passing each other on the 405.

If this is true, maybe the Web really is improving Los Angeles’ lackluster dating scene. Match.com, which co-sponsored the film premiere and is by far the largest online dating site, boasts more than 2 million members worldwide, an increase of 100% since December alone. People pay $24.95 a month for the chance to meet fellow members, more than 82,000 of whom hail from greater Los Angeles. The combined effects of an economic downturn, with its side benefit of free time, and the onset of spring seem to have fueled the jump.

Allen believes there is something else at work. “Online dating is becoming an ‘in’ thing for the intelligentsia,” she believes. “It serves the same function as a plaza did in a small town.

“It closes the statistics,” she deadpans, “so that people have a running shot at meeting someone before they’re dead.”

“It’s no cure, but it helps increase your chances of meeting somebody,” says Mark Bestow, of West Hollywood. So does coming out from behind the computer screen for a mixer. “Online you don’t get to see a person’s charisma. You don’t get to see how a person moves or acts.”

Bestow stands off by himself surveying the crowd in a conservative blue suit while sipping a drink. He’s spent six months on Match.com and has been on five dates since the start of the year. He signed up after a friend at work married a woman he met online. “They’re doing great,” Bestow says. “They just had a baby. I think as time goes on, [online dating] will be more and more accepted. It’s more efficient. You get people who are more honest.”

Richard Fencel, a Match.com member who made the hour-plus drive up from Irvine for the movie and party, agrees. If the L.A. dating scene is bad, Orange County is much worse, he claims. Tall and hawk-eyed, Fencel spends the evening scanning the scene for an “L.A.D.,” his shorthand for a woman worth making the drive to Los Angeles. “Online dating makes it easier. There are more options--and less gas,” Fencel says. “At two bucks a gallon, you need it.”

Cindy Hennessey, Match.com’s Dallas-based president, is no stranger to the strangely impersonal dating scene here. Now 42 and married, she also “spent two long years as a singleton in Los Angeles.”

Match.com has documented 1,100 marriages among its members, but Hennessey believes the actual number of “successes” may be substantially higher because not all members report their marriages or long-term partnerships. Hennessey hasn’t broken out her statistics to determine how Angelenos account for the “successes.”

She does say that “success couples” share a number of online behaviors. She says daters should: 1) be “incredibly honest” about who they are and what they are looking for; 2) actively e-mail people who interest them; and 3) “prolifically reject” people who don’t meet their criteria. “When you go out to look for love,” Hennessey says, “you have to go after it with the same skills you bring to job hunting.”

At 11 p.m. on a work night, the crowd in the mall hasn’t thinned much. Pat Allen is still answering questions, which echo in the cavernous space. Hennessey would approve. “You have to be in it,” she says, “to win it.”