I am, admittedly, not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to understanding the dating game. Give me a blank piece of paper I’m a creative powerhouse. I can come up with an ad campaign; no problem. But sometimes I think I don’t have a clue how to find the perfect mate, or understand the clues dropping around me. But I am not alone.
In the back pages of our local weekly paper they have a personals section. Women are seeking women, and men are seeking men. Couples are seeking candidates for threesomes. It’s total bacchanalia. The paper has cleaned up a bit in the past two years. They used to have ads for escort services.
I avoid this section normally, but occasionally you see some pretty creative copywriting. The general impression I come away with is that people are terribly lonely. Now multiply that by six billion and you’ll have some idea of the enormity of the problem.
I have never placed an ad there, nor am I ever likely to. But admittedly, from time to time, when I have a nice conversation with some woman, say, in the grocery by the broccoli, or while looking at vintage clothes, I wonder if they felt attracted to me too, and whether they’ve placed an ad to me in the ‘I Saw You’ section.
Three years ago, on a visit to Virginia, I met a young woman who I felt attracted to. It came to nothing but polite conversation on a sultry night in Charlottesville. When I got home I placed an ad in the local weekly there. To my surprise, the woman responded. We spoke on the phone. Now it was my move. All I had to do was say I was building a second home there and ask if she would like to rent from me, or that I was sailing my yacht to the Virgin Islands and would she like me to swing by and pick her up. I didn’t, so that was the end of it. Most women are more practical than men; they don’t want a long distance relationship. Money is the easiest way to bridge physical distance, though ultimately, it can’t bridge the emotional distance between men and women. Experts say our brains are different. We are hemispheres apart.
But still, money has power over most women. Why? As much as the world has changed technologically, women are still constrained by time. They only have a certain window to decide to have a child or two, (unless of course they decide to adopt.) Often they sacrifice their careers to have children. They desire a stable financial situation to have a child. And who can blame them? Childbirth is expensive, sending a child through college even more so. If I had a child growing inside me, I’d be worried about money too, particularly in this economy. This is why women are attracted to financially successful men. Men, on the other hand, can father a child when they are ninety. We don’t have small windows of fertility; we can impregnate any day of the week. The typical man, if offered sex by a reasonably attractive woman, (a sliding scale based on the perspective of the man), will rarely turn it down. This is why I think women are smarter than men, like cats are smarter than dogs. Women are hardwired in their DNA to want children and to rear them in safety and financial security, for the propagation of the species. Men, on the other hand, let their smaller heads, the ones in their pants, rule their larger ones. It was God’s idea, not ours, ladies, we can’t fight our nature.
All this obvious stuff has become acutely clear in my five years of bachelorhood. I can’t pursue young women, because most want children. I’ve already had two children, and I’m done. A number of the older women I’ve met are bitter from past relationships. It’s hard to find that one in a million gal with a sunny disposition and no axe to grind. Most of the best ones are married, and some are even happily married. But people are still lonely, and this is why we behave the way we do. This is why personal ads are the rage. This is why online dating sites are chock full of photos posted by people that show themselves five years younger than they are. People regularly lie about their ages. The older you get the more desperate you get. When you are trying to attract a mate the last thing most want to do is to show their cellulite, wrinkles, sagging boobs, fallen arches, bald spots, or moles. We all want to be flaming peacocks. Honesty is the last thing desperate people attempt. But ultimately, you want someone who, as the father in the film, Juno, said: “... thinks the sun shines out your ass, and loves you for who you are.”
Sex makes a person’s head spin, but money, like the song goes, ‘makes the world go ‘round. With money, you can look like a walking cadaver and have a blonde on each arm, but you might not have love. Something’s gotta give, and love often does. I am remembering Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer. Believing that money is what turns a girl’s head, he goes to get a job at a bank because that’s where the money is. Drew Barrymore makes him realize that money, in the long run, doesn’t matter as much as love and commitment. Oh if only it were that simple.
I am not the world’s most savvy person about sex. I like sex of course; but since my divorce, it’s not happening for me. But, being a man, I am excited by the word or prospects of understanding the word. Thus, when I saw a Craig’s list ad for a client here in town that makes ‘love oil,’ I decided I had to meet them. I had no idea what I was in for.
I arrived early for my meeting. I had time to kill, so I began to notice the details of the foyer of the house I was sitting in. I noticed, like in the British film, Death at a funeral, the overtly sexual images on the walls. I found myself staring at a little table in front of me that had a display of the client’s product line. I got up and looked at the literature and the bottles. On the table by the bottles was a long black box with no markings. Curious, I opened the lid. The last thing I expected to find was a twelve-inch long dildo, a very realistic one mind you, lying inside. If I had been Columbo I would have remarked, ‘uh, there’s just one more thing,’ because that was quite a murder weapon. I shut the lid quickly and felt horrified. Then I laughed at my reaction; I guess my Catholic upbringing made me shy. My parents never talked about sex, but they produced seven children, so they knew something. But the thing in the box freaked me out. I had shut its lid quicker than you could say ‘holy mole!’ Then I backed away from the table and, feeling unclean, did a Barney Fife type head jerk to see if the perky secretary had seen me. She hadn’t. I had had my own personal Pleasantville moment. I wiped a bead of sweat from my brow.
Just then the client rushed in the front door. She was a tall woman with dyed jet-black hair, in her early sixties, and jittery with caffeine. With barely a hello, she told me to come into her little office. I was still recuperating from what I’d seen. I had my large black portfolio box with me. It rested in my lap, my knees scrunched by her huge desk. Before I could begin, she began a nonstop spiel about her products being nonsexual, and how they were designed for arousal challenged women to help them enjoy good clean sex. I didn’t know much about sex but I sure knew it wasn’t clean. But when I tried to speak, she hushed me. I wanted to mention her décor in the foyer and the rather large thing in the box, but she was telling me she wanted someone, probably not me, to redesign the packaging to be more ergonomic, curving the bottle inwards like a woman’s waistline. She had not seen any of my work yet. After ten minutes I felt compelled to interrupt her. I brought out a jewelry brochure. She snatched it from my hands and said, ‘you’ve never done a personal care product design, have you? Hmm? I mean for a woman.” I shook my head to say no. I hadn’t, and I was certain I wasn’t about to either. Clearly, I was in the company of a man hater.
My elder brother had warned me of women like this when I moved to this strange town that I’ve called home for too long. He said, ‘there are a lot of angry women here.’ I didn’t know what he meant for over ten years. I was sheltered; I was married, what did I know about angry women? I thought all wives were angry; were there others? I had only met a few gay people in San Francisco; they seemed pretty normal except for their peculiar attractions. Gay-ness had a long history. I had some knowledge of the Ancient Greeks. I should have remembered the Greek story of the women of the island of Lesbos.
I have become more urbane in these years of singleness. I know not all lesbians are angry. I am sure many are really quite happy with their lifestyle. ‘Not,’ as Jerry Seinfeld once said, ‘that there’s anything wrong with it.’ I say, live and let live. But my lack of experience has gotten me into embarrassing situations.
In Eugene, Oregon, where I lived for too long, they have a monthly event that happened on the First Friday of every month. One time I was at a local wine/coffee bar in downtown First Friday. I had already done the tour of the art galleries and had wine, cheese, and crackers. I was mellow and seated was at this coffee/wine bar to see a local group play, and perhaps see a few tango dancers. I took a seat in the back near two attractive ladies. The shorter one was very flirty with me and we had a nice little chat about a variety of things as we sipped our wines. Her companion, the taller, sullen one, was polite but reserved. I learned they were killing time before going to a concert. Then I made my faux pas. I said, “gee, it’s too bad your spouses couldn’t join you to see the concert.” I said this because I’d noted that both women wore wedding bands. The flirty one laughed, pointed to her tall companion, and exclaimed jubilantly, ‘she’s my spouse!’
Do these things happen to everyone, or am I God’s jester?
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