Nerd love

Going undercover at a Dating for Nerds event: the green edition

By Paul M. Banks

“Dating for Nerds” is a new organization built around bringing smart people together. It is very different from speed dating or online dating sites, even though they share similar aims. “Nerd” events focus on playing interactive board games while embracing (and sometimes even flaunting) one’s knowledge of science and useless trivia. I’m happy to brag about all the prizes I won. Some outings are general. Others are defined by a niché; this one was for those trying to save the planet.

6:32 p.m. — I enter Guthrie’s Tavern on Addison with the same frame of mind (“I’m ready for anything”) as Luke Skywalker entering the rough cantina in Moss Eisley. Writing about a Dating for Nerds event mandates a “Star Wars” reference. Some people fear the dating-industrial complex. But when your last girlfriend tells you: “I don’t see any reason why it can’t work out with us, and that scares me,” you have a lot less fear. Enduring with inverted and perverted logic like that inoculates you against the fears of the dating jungle.

6:41 p.m. — Arriving early, I interview the alluring Julia Borchard, one of the founders, about the green theme. “This isn’t about bringing people to educate and inform them,” she says. “We’re not pretending to be green gurus, but it gives people a common interest in ecology as a conversation starting point. It’s a fun place to get together and play some board games, meet new people.” Indeed, this is a better and more relaxed atmosphere then the high-pressure sales of speed dating.

8:23 p.m. — “Fact or Fiction” is a board game in which each contestant must answer whether a statement is true or false, and the most correct answers wins. For example: Chinese Checkers was actually invented in England. My card reads that Richard Nixon once said, “I would have made a great pope.” It shocks the table when I tell them it is indeed true. So I add, “Sure, if what makes a great pope consists of being anti-Semitic, racist, Fascist, paranoid and committing genocide in Cambodia.” This statement elicits no reaction. I better nerdify what I just said. “Futurama” was a nerdy TV program, and on many episodes Nixon’s head in a jar was the villain. I also mention how Al Gore’s daughter, Kristin, was a writer for Futurama, and that’s how a cartoon appeared in “An Inconvenient Truth.” What says “nerd” and “environmentalist” better than Al Gore?

9:19 p.m. — Everybody seems to be winning prizes tonight. By the end of the night, almost everyone comes away with something. And when you walk in, you automatically win a free drink. At the regular Dating for Nerds night I attend a few nights later, prizes are won by Canadian, Indian and other foreign women, putting the “Ladies of the World” song in my head. Only one person at the table gets my allusion to the geek-chic comedy band “Flight of the Conchords,” available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFjrbmj0CUc if you want a laugh.

10:42 p.m. — I’ve actually win something! Two free tickets to “Wicked,” the highest-grossing play of all time. For an unorthodox review, go back to check out http://www.therealchicago.org/0106writers.htm in the magazine’s archives.
I entered the raffle under a similar sounding pseudonym: “Paul Blake — Arm of the Armadillos,” but no one recognized it. It takes a real sports film nerd to recall the name of a quarterback played by Scott Bakula in 1991’s “Necessary Roughness,” a classic movie that also starred Sinbad, Robert Loggia and Kathy Ireland. At the general event, I dominate “Scattergories” and overall trivia. In pop culture knowledge, I own these nerds. My only peers are ESPN.com’s “Sports Guy” Bill Simmons and author Chuck Klosterman. Period.

11:17 p.m. — Frank is a programmer with a very non-dork physical appearance. He looks like a combination of James Hetfield from Metallica and Sawyer from “Lost.” Frank seems to fit the Will Smith/Natalie Portman model of an un-nerdy nerd. He’s been described as a “debauched nerd who is very talented and accomplished, but also likes his vices.” I discuss the personality contradiction model with sultry co-founder Bathsheba Berman.
“That’s what a ‘Nerd at heart’ is,” she says. “We’ve had some undercover nerds, people who are charismatic and attractive, not the stereotypical ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ types. We’ve also had some smoking-hot nerds come out.”
She’s not kidding. There is a just-out-of-college hottie at the larger event I attend four days later. A table is doing shots: more frat boy behavior than nerd-like. You can find many people here who cross the line from geek to geek-chic. “We’ve seen a lot of numbers exchanged here,” Berman says. “Many couples have met here and often come back.”

11:52 p.m. — The ratio is lopsided, so there isn’t a whole lot of hooking up going on. The general event I go to a couple days later at Sheffield’s has many more people and a much better ratio. It also had a lot less boozing. Then comes the inevitable discussion on past relationship experiences, which almost always leads to a sharing of horror stories. I hear about a guy whose girlfriend broke up with him while cuddling, and another who’s ex-girlfriend dumped him 10 minutes after buying three-months-in-advance Cubs tickets for them. (Who could see that one coming?) Even worse was the ex-girlfriend who kept a blog about her abortion. Wow! There really are some sick weirdos out there. However, I refrain from telling my story, which could maybe trump them all. About a year ago, I was at a grad school party where a female friend told me, “If we made love, it would be magical and earth-shattering. … I would be the best sex you ever had. … My sexual stamina is so strong that I would rock your world. … I think about you every time I walk by the lake. … If we had children, they would have the strongest legs possible.” You get the point. But when I asked her out, she actually said no.
I’ve never been one for sharing these stories because they’re a party buzzkill, and all it would do is verify what I already learned: She took the term “mixed signals” to a psychotically anti-social level. After that experience, I no longer fear the socially awkward; everybody seems stable and consistent by comparison, even the so-called “nerds.”

1:11 a.m. — I learn there is a mack daddy or nerd pimp of these events who is so adept at romancing the females that he also comes to the “queer” events, just to try and work the lesbians. Also, many journalists and writers attend, sometimes in disguise, like I did. I was hoping to find one also working undercover and have a secret verbal exchange like that staircase scene in “Casino Royale,” where the American CIA agent reveals himself to James Bond. At the end of the night, Berman informs me how some writers came to do a story on the group and “never left.” And I can see why, as these events are a great time.
“Many writers and journalists are nerds themselves,” she says.
Despite the fact that I got a zero percent on the nerd quiz opening ice breaker, I don’t disagree with that statement at all.

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