TCNJ Alum Plays “The Dating Game”

It’s a game of skill, but also a game of chance. It’s a fight to the death that could yield a first-place trophy of lifelong happiness or an honorable mention of hilarious and didactic anecdotes. We all play this game at some point in our lives—the dating game. Some are better at this game than others.

Ron Geraci ’92 is considered a dating expert and returned to the College on Feb. 20 to share how he became a successful columnist using his oddball dating experiences, which form his book, The Bachelor Chronicles.

With hundreds of dates under his belt, Geraci has been called a “dating expert” and a “male Carrie Bradshaw,” referring to Sarah Jessica Parker’s character in the TV show “Sex in the City.”

“I’ve had just about every typical bad date you could imagine,” Geraci said at the event called “The Dating Game: A Magazine Columnist’s Guide to Storytelling and Love,” hosted by the magazine club Ed@TCNJ.

Geraci started his column, “This Dating Life,” in 1995 while working at Men’s Health. In the late 1990s, he got into online dating, and actually worked with Match.com. His dating prowess landed him on The Today Show, “next to doctors,” which Geraci said was awkward considering the enormous difference between the two career paths.

But, according to Geraci, writing a column from experience is more difficult than it seems.

“Your ego does get stomped when you write a story and put yourself in it,” Geraci said. He said that it is especially damaging when an editor comments that “details are common sense” or parts of the story are just “not funny.”

Geraci said that anyone can become a columnist, but it takes writing hundreds of thousands of words to develop a unique “voice.” The main goal of a columnist is to introduce a different point of view to everyday experiences.

Clearly, Geraci has found his “voice,” and it has been sold in bookstores since last summer. Geraci said that his book, The Bachelor Chronicles, which follows his dating life and his rise from struggling writer to magazine columnist, can be found “under the biography section, next to Gandhi, because of the last name.”

Geraci contributes his love for writing and journalism to classes he took while at while at the College, with professors like Bob Cole, Kim Pearson, and Bernard Bearer.

“Dr. Cole taught me a lot of things, which I can’t repeat, of course,” Geraci said of the retired professor.

It was in one of Dr. Cole’s classes where Geraci realized his love for writing. Dr. Cole shared Geraci’s story about the sudden death of a friend to the class, and at the end, a classmate was crying.

Another piece of memorable advice Geraci shared came from a speaker who visited one of his classes with Professor Kim Pearson: “You came here [to college] not to prepare for your first job, but for the rest of your life.”

Lately, Geraci’s life has been occupied with insensitive reactions to dates with amputees and instinctual responses to girls with ex-boyfriends in need of restraining orders, all of which is detailed in The Bachelor Chronicles.

But, though he is called a dating expert—ladies—Geraci is still single.