I am in my last semester of college and this particular evening, a snow-sodden January in Maryland, my roommate Cora and I are drinking hot chocolate with extra mini-marshmallows. Our TV is tuned to a rerun of George Cukor’s 1939 film The Women. Cora and I both love this film in which, for all that men are chattered about ad nauseam and fretted over and pined for, not a single man is given a single moment of screen time.

“Sort of like life,” I say. “Even when they’re not in the room, they’re in the room.”

Cora has been regaling me with tales of the AOL dating account her parents have given her for Christmas. The Facebook phenomenon is more than a decade away; cell phones and email are not yet ubiquitous. So I ask, “What is AOL dating?”

“A blind date site on the World Wide Web,” Cora says. “Like putting an ad in a newspaper.” I scrunch up my nose.

“What?” says Cora.

“Back home such ads are associated with desperation.”

Cora starts to laugh (most of my sentences tend to start with “Back home in Pakistan...” or “In my country...”) but I can’t shake off my discomfort. How do I explain to her the dubious associations I’ve grown up with about matrimonial ads, as if something is wrong with girls for whom proposals do not arrive in the traditional way — through family, friends, and neighbors. And what sort of parents post matrimonial advertisements? Parents of plain-looking daughters, bosom-less daughters, daughters without a cousin to rescue them from impending spinsterhood.

“I’m not desperate,” I mumble, my face going hot.

“Don’t be stupid. AOL dating is all the rage!” Cora says. In mere weeks since posting her ad, she’s already compiled a list of promising paramours and been on a few outings which, while nothing serious, were still fun.

“Fun!” I say. “No way!”

Why am I so reluctant? It's not the idea of dating itself. In these four years at college I have dated enough to arrive at the sad conclusion that all guys are pretty much the same: Patriarchy runs in their bones to varying degrees, with some making a career of either putting a damsel in her place or constantly telling her what her place should be. Since coming to the sad conclusion that guys are guys, I’ve realized I simply need to look for a decent human being.