Do you wanna hear a wacky thing I did this weekend? Well, not sure if wacky is the right word for anything accomplished while wearing pajama pants, but worry not – semantics will not stop this story from being told. Like the perennial New York female either in or out of appropriate bottoms – as made clear by the slew of ads for blizzard boyfriends on Craigslist – I am struggling with this whole dating thing. So, like a scene in a yet-to-be-aired episode of GIRLS I signed up for Lumbermatch.com: "where beardies meet beauties."
It was a friend at work, knowing the woodsy, liberal arts college sludge I crawled out of, who casually recommended Lumbermatch to me. I am still mildly upset by this fact. In case you lay people couldn't tell from the catchy title, this is a dating site designed for umbersexuals, a term so in vogue even my mother knows about it, and those who want to bang them. Or in the words of explanation offered by the site itself, "Men all over the world are growing their beards, getting tattoos and styling their hair. There are people all over the world who love guys like us. Until now there has been no place to find each other." Kind of cocky and unbelievably facetious, no?
And does anyone else find something about that "us" deeply troubling? Why are we teetering on first person here guys?
Lumbermatch had me at hello with this slightly prickish introduction, but our romance was short lived. After I set up my profile, I went to the search bar and typed in Brooklyn, NY. A very obvious choice, I thought, until a whopping total of three members popped up. And two didn't have pictures. To have a dating site based around supplying the ravenous public with a buffet of the sought after man product, you have to, you know, supply. I guess this is hard when you are just one hyperconfident but socially uncomfortable, moderately hairy guy - which is my current theory about both the site and the movement at large.
Sadly Lumbermatch's bark (get it, trees have bark) is a lot more impressive than its bite (get it, sometimes hot guys bite you).
We were talking about the veritable urban breeding ground of the lumbersexual, where men walk out of artisanal cheese shops looking like they just chopped down a forest and used the wood to build a roadside farm stand. The whole flannel shirt, myriad tattoos – geometric fox heads, feathers, a line from Prufrock, an etching of the Battle at Gettysburg… – facial hair, Hitler youth haircut, mason jar tied to his jeans with a bandana package. Arguably my best hope for finding my very own, walking sometimes talking, tumblr man candy. I pinned him, so I thought it might one day be something I possessed, like a couch from West Elm.
BUT NADA.
Both are still but dreams.
This is the problem with the "us". I figured it out and I don't know about you, but I feel validated. Or maybe that's just my blizzard boyfriend?
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