The Guinea Pig Diaries (4 page)

The next night, a second date with the rocker, at a Thai restaurant. I wait for the call. It comes too early, just ninety minutes after the date.

“He’s nice, but there’s no chemistry, I think.”

I’m crushed. I thought there was a chance. I can help her write the notes, I can pick the guys, but I can’t control that damn chemistry.

Maybe she’ll find some chemistry with Ted from Long Island, the one with eight siblings. He’s scheduled for next week. And so is “
Loveable Hal
.”

I know she’ll find it with someone. Not just because the e-mails from interested men keep flooding in, unabated. But because of the men themselves. The only thing more surprising than the quantity and deviousness of the creeps is the emotional honesty and fragility of the noncreeps. It’s a side of men that other men just don’t get to see.

It’s enough to bring out the nurturer in anybody. Which is why I log on to the dating service and do a search for “
depressed
” and another one for “
lonely
.” I find this:

ummmm, I just turned 28. Sorry to say I still live at home with my mother. Shes getting old and I help her out. I have NO LIFE. Go to work and come home, and play video games
.

The next day, Michelle and I write him a note: “
I just wanted to say that I think it’s great that you take care of your mom. There aren’t enough nice guys in this world. I don’t think we’re right for each other (I don’t believe in long-distance relationships), but I think you’ll be a catch for some lucky girl
.”

Well, it’s something. To paraphrase another guy with a double identity, with great beauty comes great responsibility.

CODA

A few weeks later, Michelle dumped me. She let me down easy— “I think maybe I need a break from Internet dating,” she said. But I knew what that meant. I was getting the boot. I was no longer her Cyrano.

I tried to convince her to give it another shot. But when we logged on and saw a note from screen name “
Violentbunny
,” that was it. She was finished for good. (
Violentbunny
: you,
sexy-gentleman
, and
Topnotchlover
need to have a good brainstorming session.)

Michelle said she’d just wait and hope that love came to her. Which I thought was a terrible idea. But it actually did. Six months later, she started dating an old friend she knew from when she worked at a Washington, D.C., hotel. They’re still together.

I wish I’d been the one to find her love. But Michelle told me that I helped. I got her back into the dating mind-set, back to thinking about relationships. Without her great Internet Dating Adventure, she says, she’d still be single and lonely. I hope she’s telling the truth.

Regardless, my dating career is over for now. I’ve got mixed feelings. Being a beautiful woman had its perks. The nonstop positive attention comes to mind. But it was also an emotionally draining experience. The amount of rejecting I had to do was mind-boggling. Every day it was “no, no, nope, no thanks, no.” And not just to the sleazy guys. Sometimes to kind, vulnerable men. Type the wrong thing and you’ll send these fellows into a tailspin. I never before thought of the built-in guilt that comes with having a pretty face.

It was draining, too, trying to suss out the schemers. There were a huge number of people out there pretending to be what
they aren’t. Including me, of course. (Incidentally, a colleague of mine goes into Internet poker rooms and pretends to be a woman, because he says his opponents assume women are worse at poker. I can’t decide whether taking advantage of sexist stereotypes is ethically acceptable.) There’s a lot of deceit, boasting, and creepiness that you’ll find in Internet dating.

But the semi-anonymity of the Internet also makes it an honesty amplifier. Men will open themselves right up, laying bare their fears, insecurities, and hopes. My months of e-dating convinced me there are plenty of mensches out there. Or maybe they’re just sleazy guys who had their sensitive sisters write notes for them.

A key member of my outsourcing team, Honey K. Balani.

Another indispensable outsourcer, Asha Sarella.

I really shouldn’t have to write this piece myself. I mean, why am I the one stuck in front of a computer terminal? All this tedious pecking out of words on my laptop. Nouns, verbs, adjectives,
prepositions.
Sheesh. What a pain in my butt. Can’t someone else do it? Can’t I delegate this to one of my new assistants and spend my day kicking back on a chaise longue, Sam Adams in hand, admiring Evangeline Lilly’s navel on my TV? What about having Asha write it? Or Sunder, Vivek, or Mr. Naveen? Or best of all, my sweet, sweet Honey? Pretty much anyone on my overseas staff will do. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s one of the lessons of these jarring and curiously enlightening four weeks. Dammit. I guess I’ll have to write about the
lessons,
too. Okay, on with it. Here you go. As my team might say, thanking you in advance for reading this story.

It began a month ago. I was midway through
The World Is Flat,
the best seller by Tom Friedman. I like Friedman, despite his puzzling decision to wear a mustache. His book is all about how outsourcing to India and China is not just for tech support and carmakers but is poised to transform every industry in America, from law to banking to accounting. CEOs are chopping up projects and sending the lower-end tasks to strangers in
cubicles ten time zones away. And it’s only going to snowball; America has not yet begun to outsource.

I don’t have a corporation; I don’t even have an up-to-date business card. I’m a writer and editor working from home, usually in my boxer shorts or, if I’m feeling formal, my penguin-themed pajama bottoms. Then again, I think, why should Fortune 500 firms have all the fun? Why can’t I join in on the biggest business trend of the new century? Why can’t I outsource my low-end tasks? Why can’t I outsource my life?

The next day I e-mail Brickwork, one of the companies Friedman mentions in his book. Brickwork—based in Bangalore, India—offers “remote executive assistants,” mostly to financial firms and health-care companies that want data processed. I explain that I’d like to hire someone to help with tasks related to my job at
Esquire
magazine—doing research, formatting memos, things like that. The company’s CEO, Vivek Kulkarni, responds: “
It would be a great pleasure to be talking to a person of your stature
.”

Already I’m liking this. I’ve never had stature before. In America, I barely command respect from a Bennigan’s maître d’, so it’s nice to know that in India I have stature.

A couple of days later, I get an e-mail from my new “remote executive assistant.”

Dear Jacobs
,

My name is Honey K. Balani. I would be assisting you in your editorial and personal job. . . . I would try to adapt myself as per your requirements that would lead to desired satisfaction
.

Desired satisfaction. This is great. Back when I worked at an office, I had assistants, but there was never any talk of desired
satisfaction. In fact, if anyone ever used the phrase “desired satisfaction,” we’d all end up in a solemn meeting with HR. And I won’t even comment on the name Honey except to say that, real or not, it sure carries Anaïs Nin undertones.

Oh, did I mention that Vivek sent me a JPEG of Honey? She’s wearing a white sleeveless shirt and has full lips, long hair, skin the color of her first name. She looks a bit like an Indian Eva Longoria. I can’t stop staring at her left eyebrow, which is ever so slightly cocked. Is she flirting with me?

I go out to dinner with my friend Misha, who grew up in India, founded a software firm, and subsequently became nause-atingly rich. I tell him about Operation Outsource. “You should call Your Man in India,” he says. Misha explains that this is a company for Indian businessmen who have moved overseas but who still have parents back in New Delhi or Mumbai. YMII is their overseas concierge service—it buys movie tickets and cell phones and other sundries for the abandoned moms.

Perfect. This could kick my outsourcing up to a new level. I can have a nice, clean division of labor: Honey will take care of my business affairs, and YMII can attend to my personal life— pay my bills, make vacation reservations, buy stuff online. Happily, YMII likes the idea, and just like that the support team at Jacobs Inc. has doubled. And so far, I’m not going broke: I’m paying $1,000 for a month of eight-hour days from Honey (Brickwork gave me a half-off deal) and $400 for a month of four-hour days from Your Man in India.

To pay for YMII, I send my MasterCard number in an e-mail. The company’s CEO, Sunder P., replies with a gentle but stern note: “
In your own interests, and for security purposes, we advise you not to send credit-card information through e-mail. Now that it has been sent, there is nothing much we can do about it and we confirm safe receipt
.”
Damn. I know what he’s thinking: How the hell did these idiots ever become a superpower?

Honey has completed her first project for me: research on the person
Esquire
has chosen as the
Sexiest Woman Alive
. I’ve been assigned to write a profile of this woman, and I really don’t want to have to slog through all the heavy-breathing fan websites about her. When I open Honey’s file, I have this reaction: America is screwed. There are charts. There are section headers. There is a well-organized breakdown of her pets, measurements, and favorite foods (e.g., swordfish). If all Bangalorians are like Honey, I pity Americans about to graduate college. They’re up against a hungry, polite, Excel-proficient Indian army. Put it this way: Honey ends her e-mails with “
Right time for right action, starts now
!” Your average American assistant believes the “
right time for right action
” starts after a Starbucks venti latte and a discussion of last night’s
Amazing Race 8.

Meanwhile, I get an introductory e-mail from my personal-life outsourcer. Her name is Asha. Even though the firm is called Your Man in India, I’ve been assigned another woman. Hmm. I suspect these outsourcers figure I’m a randy men’s magazine editor who enjoys bossing around the ladies. I e-mail Asha a list of books I want her to order online and a birthday gift I’d like her to buy my wife, Julie—a silicone pot holder. (Romantic, no?) Both go smoothly.

In fact, in the next few days,
I outsource a whole mess of online errands to Asha
: paying my bills, getting stuff from Drugstore.com, finding my son a Tickle Me Elmo. (Actually, the store was out of Tickle Me Elmos, so Asha bought a Chicken Dancer Elmo—good decision.) I had her call AT&T to ask
about my cell phone plan. I’m just guessing, but I bet her call was routed from Bangalore to New Jersey and then back to an AT&T employee in Bangalore, which makes me happy for some reason.

Every day Asha attaches an Excel chart listing the status of my many tasks. The system is working—not counting the hitch in the drugstore order: Instead of wax paper, we get wax-strip mustache removers for ladies. My wife is insulted.