The Eyes Have It

Eye Gazing Parties Newest Way To Meet Singles In New York

(CBS)  As I sat down to hear Ellsberg explain the rules, I got even more nervous. I have a live-in boyfriend, and was about to participate in what he has been calling "Flirt Fest 2005." Surely, the windows to my soul would be veiled in deception.

"The first 20 to 30 seconds you do this are going to be really weird," Ellsberg said to the gazers. "It's going to be one of the weirdest things you have ever done."

He said most people get uncomfortable when they think of staring because it's usually accompanied by an aggressive facial expression: someone staring on the subway, or a lusty leer at a bar. He suggested a neutral facial expression; don't make extra efforts at smiling; focus on one eye at a time to avoid going cross-eyed.

Ellsberg had us ease in at 10-second intervals. He was right – it was weird. First off, I was stone-cold sober, with inhibitions running on high. The room seemed to get about 20 degrees warmer and I became convinced that I had something hanging from my nose. I realized I wasn't alone when one woman burst out into laughter.

Women sat on one side of the tables, and the men moved from table to table as each song played, usually salsa or samba.

It got easier after the first few minutes, and with each new gazer. I could begin to focus on each person I was looking at. There are definitely good and bad gazers. Some were very relaxed and just looked in a calm, non-threatening way. Others fidgeted, or put their chin on their fist in a glamour shot pose. The worst was when someone leaned really far over the table — I'd invariably lean as far back in my chair as I could.

One of my partners, Ryan Parks, told me after that I was not very good at gazing.

"You were hard," he said. "I was asking but not getting any answers. Why are you so sad? I'm thinking maybe you're not now — because you're smiling, but I thought I saw a little bit of sadness."

Parks thought he was going to hate eye gazing, but was pleasantly surprised.

"When people ask us why we like someone we date we say, 'Oh, they have a cool job or they like to travel.' But you know what? The people we hate do that stuff too," he said. "There's some intangible quality, and maybe this is getting us closer to that, or closer to it sooner."

Pope thought eye gazing was a “building experience.” After looking at a woman, he thought he saw a cross out of the corner of his eye. Assuming she was a devout Catholic, he thought he’d never be compatible with her.

“It turns out she was a Middle Eastern Jew,” Pope said. “I realized how prejudiced I was. I thought, ‘What am I doing here? All these things I think I want, I don’t even know.’”

Ellsberg was pleased with the first party. And he was right — it did seem to break the ice. Afterwards, people were standing talking, some pairs sitting at tables deeply immersed in conversation.

“It was so satisfying to me,” said Ellsberg, who once planned to turn Eye Gazing Parties into a business. “In some ways, it was so special that I didn’t want to introduce a profit motive towards it because then people come with a different attitude — all the sudden it becomes a business transaction.”

He wants to throw different types of eye gazing parties for older singles, gay and lesbian singles and Jewish singles.

After the gazing, Minami said she could learn a lot about someone just by the way they presented themselves — that she could study character just through the face and body. She didn’t find anyone that she immediately wanted to date — but some people with possible potential.

While Minami thought it was an interesting night and definitely a conversation starter, she’s not sure she’d do it again.

“Well, I guess it’s better than staying home at night,” she said.

As for me? If I didn't have someone waiting for me to get back from "Flirt Fest 2005," I would have stuck around longer. The people at the party were adventurous enough to try staring at complete strangers and open enough to try to find in a gaze a flicker of romance. Try finding that at the hundreds of other bars in this city.