After six years in an on-again, off-again relationship, author Frances Kuffel, 53 and never married, was sick of the merry-go-round. Determined to find a more reliable partner who would commit to her, she turned to nearly every dating Web site available.
In her new memoir, “Love Sick: A Memoir of Searching for Mr. Good Enough,” she shares her two-year dating journey through a spate of dating sites — ranging from Craigslist to Ashley Madison to HowAboutWe (which she claims is “definitely the best”) and OkCupid (“the most dangerous, because it’s completely free and scammers are rife”). Although she’s still single, Kuffel did come to the realization that “being a good date was mostly a matter of behaving like a good date to myself.” Ahead of the book’s June 2 release, she recounts a few of her worst dates for The Post:
1. Danny.
Danny sounded perfect in his Ashley Madison profile — he had the right education, he was a Johns Hopkins graduate, was interested in travel, had a job as an interior designer and [had] a multimillion dollar contract in Benin, a country in West Africa.
The Benin part gave me pause. I didn’t need further proof he was a scammer — and I was proven correct. He asked me for money he claimed he needed to clear taxes owed on his government project. When I wouldn’t give it to him, he used someone else’s credit card to send items he couldn’t get in Benin to me — with instructions to forward the goods to him. I returned everything to the companies. At least I learned I can spot a scammer from the subject line of an e-mail.
2. Edward.
His profile read, “Only connect!” E.M. Forster! I was smitten. Our sensibilities were similar yet different: He wrote about Joey Ramone; I wrote with the Pretenders in the background.
We had phone sex and agreed to meet on a Sunday, but he never called to tell me where or at what time. After I forced the issue, we arranged for lunch, and I joke-chided him for standing me up.
I returned to an e-mail saying, “You’re harsh.” (I beg to differ but, like a nice girl, I apologized.) He wouldn’t accept my apology — even though he was in the wrong! Turns out phone sex rarely leads to anything more than that.
3. Paul.
It is odd for a gentile woman to have a fedora’d man, tzitzit swinging, heading toward her in a kosher restaurant in Brooklyn. But what he said was odder still: “Arrrrr you Frances” — asked without a question mark. His voice was a flute-y pirate tenor/EKG gone flat.
I was trapped.
Paul wanted to converse, but instead of English, he spoke of life as if it were a series of “Far Side” cartoons. I told him about my writing. He responded with, “Two orrrrrrangutans arrrr in a tree . . .” I squirmed — and decided I should aim for a relationship with someone who has Friday nights and Saturdays free.
4. Patrick.
Twinkies should not be deep-fried. I told Patrick that, but he’d already ordered enough food at the barbecue restaurant to feed Bulgaria. Each time he requested more, he told me I was beautiful. I, on the other hand, felt like a toxic dump of grease and fat.
“Why do we have to eat?” I wondered. There were movies I wanted to see, Caravaggios to contemplate.
By e-mail, Patrick described what he wanted to see. Me. Eating. Getting fatter.
I should have stuck up for what I wanted, which was not to eat so much unhealthy food. I decided to see other men.