Matt's 'cloak of darkness'
At the beginning of the movie, when the power goes out and Matt gets trapped in the elevator with his dream girl, he talks about how the dark seemed to conceal his "romantic retardation" and made him able to attract her.
I think that what a lot of people don't realize, is that maybe that "cloak of darkness" did the same thing for Patty too.
I posted a comment earlier that I think first impressions are overrated. As much as we try to "be ourselves" as most women say we should do when talking to them, we always carry those insecurities about how nervous we are in front of women, or peer pressure, or rumors about us, etc. Sometimes we try too hard to be ourselves and act different without knowing it. Because just like Matt said, we know what's at stake. We don't want to feel like we've crashed and burned.
Women also have insecurities just like we do. Patty was ashamed of her reputation of being considered a slut. And sometimes our reputations really do affect how others view us, just like Patty's reputation affected how Matt viewed her at first. I felt really bad for her when Matt didn't seem attracted to her, even though this was the same girl he fell in love with when they were in the elevator. I understood how hurt she was when he didn't figure out it was her all along, and that he didn't fall in love with the real her.
It's like that clichéd line, "we all wear masks." Sometimes the masks we wear are not the ones we wanted. But during that blackout, neither Matt nor Patty had to worry about that. They were both clean slates.
Maybe this is why so many people fantasize about being someone else, even though we think that anyone we meet won't really fall in love with the real us, just the disguise. But at the same time, sometimes that's the only way we can have any confidence, by not having to worry about how others view us, because they don't see us. By putting on that disguise, or that cloak of darkness, only then are we truly free to be ourselves.
"Fate takes all the fun out of free will."