Pleased To Meet You; I Want You.

Despite all our planning, thinking, wishing and dreaming, the reason we're attracted to one individual is a mystery. It just happens.

I found myself with that feeling of mysterious attraction recently, in an ordinary day-to-day circumstance. The woman and I made a small business transaction, but from the moment I came close to her, that magical, unexplainable interest filled me. The animal...thing, whatever it is, lives outside of logic in a special compartment to which only a few special people have a key. It's wild. Untameable.

Civility requires that whomever feels this way about someone keep it to themselves. Professing instant desire about a stranger falls well outside normal behaviour. Explaining an unexplainable visceral attraction to someone might even be illegal: who knows thesedays? Which means that the only course of action is to flirt a little, try to figure out if she's feeling the same way and attempt to communicate by thought rays what's going on inside your head.

Yeah, that never works.

Which is unnerving, because in the moment, desperation is the binding emotion. It's essential that this thermonuclear emotion be validated somehow...and of course, it cannot, unless you have the chutzpah to ask her out. That is a long shot, but as long as you're prepared to jeopardize whatever reason you met the person in the first place, is about the best you can do. When you leap the creek into romance with zero back-story, you will most likely end up with wet pants. Be so advised.

So I took my own counsel, and did nothing but indulge in a little mild chit-chat and departed. The large, frustrating residue of one of these encounters is that you'll never know if she felt the same way. Maybe she was hot for me in equal proportion, or perhaps she was wondering why this guy was hanging about with googly eyes making dopey small-talk.

Analysis in the light of day doesn't help. I've turned this thing - as with all previous instances - upside down and around about in my head, and come no closer to finding a common thread or even a strategy to deal with them. It's an all or nothing deal; either invite them out on a date then and there, or walk away.



Bottoms Up, Instant Desirables.

Online Dating Profiles: A Different View

Which would you prefer: pay twenty dollars for a new book that looks okay, or go on a date with a person who looks okay?

Online dating profiles share much in common with the novels in your favourite bookstore. There's no knowing what's actually behind the glossy dust-jacket, other than the blurb on the back or a few dubious online reviews. [Talking about books here :-) ]The author might hit your magic intellectual spot, or maybe not. Familiarity is the reason we return to books by the same writer once we know they're to our taste. (And as I think of it, this applies to people we date too.)

If you want to know whether the book by an unknown writer is to your taste, you're obliged to buy the damned thing. And so it is with dating. To discover what lies beyond the dopey profile of that spunky online hottie, you have to step out in public with the individual. At least once. Email, phone calls and IM work to a point, but everyone behaves like their own PR firm for as long as they can. Spinning ourselves in a favourable fashion is what we do.

Dispiriting, no? The twenty (or more) you pay to buy the book is down the drain if it turns out to be a snooze. At least if you go on the date you have a story to tell. But just how many first dates can one person take before they become more jaded than Chinese costume jewelry?

Which is why I propose a different approach to online profiles. Instead of all the argle-bargle generalizations and boilerplate, try to focus as closely as possible on one aspect of your life. Describe your ideal Sunday morning, for instance. Relate a little story about the way you like your coffee. Or outline the best hour of vacation you've ever had - yes, hour. The whole idea is to escape the realm of the big-picture BS and wind the lens down to find the smallest objects in our lives.

My thesis is that we communicate more by describing how we feel about ONE footstep on the beach than all the hot air about walking on the beach in general. Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain are optional.



Bottoms Up, Caribbean Lovers.

Menage a Snooze

A certain animus towards Hugh Hefner wafts around the place, which is appropriate because he smells like stinky old person. He smells like old person because he is old person, wearing that funky fragrance like it's Old Spice.

The problem with Playboy's playboy-in-chief is his lost relevance. The niche he fills is that of the delusional male baby-boomer, an admittedly large demographic but one with vanishingly small future attraction. The days of women needing media-savvy pimps and a nude portfolio to kick-start their careers are over, although a distressingly large number of babes have yet to get the news. Hello internet, hello digital photography, hello do-it-yourself pimping.

I have a small sneaking admiration for Hugh. His redeeming quality is the ability to raise the ire of the Permanently Outraged. That gormless smile and the ridiculous three-girlfriends-at-a-time lifestyle are a parody of what he used to be - a fact that escapes only those who take it seriously.

And given what I've seen of his taste in chicks, Hugh and regular guys really have nothing in common. Those dopey blonde bimbos Hef likes are so far removed from the kind of sexy captivating non-perfect women I like as to be out of sight. Hugh's a fossil, and that's his only value.



Bottoms Up, Bikini-ed Babes!





Pic of Heidi from Playboy.

Getting Lucky

Flatteringly, I've been linked (and Cut and Pasted) by Lucky Girl, for which I must invite myself to New York and buy her dinner.

God, wouldn't that be a fine thing, going to New York? Yeah, and not likely for the next little while (even if Lucky Girl actually allowed me to squire her around for a couple of hours.)

Which nicely leads me to the thought of dating in the Great Recession. Unemployed people date too, don't they? Underemployed people date as well, I assume, but with a much reduced budget. Noticeable in my cruising the bars is that while there are fewer people out dining, folks are still out drinking. But I'm in Florida, which no longer has any work apart from changing adult diapers.

Maybe dating with fewer dollars in your sky-rocket is easier. If there's less in the way of fluff between meeting and bonking, the decision is made earlier, and on more realistic grounds. I have gone overboard too early on a date. Big dinners, bottles of champagne, elaborate plans are NOT appropriate for the first TEN dates at least. That lesson cost me MUCHO money, I can tell you. And while flashing the cash can push a chick over the edge if she's wavering, it won't undress her if she can't imagine herself with you.

It's so often about how she thinks about you, whether she imagines herself in whatever romanto/domestic sitch she dreams about.


Bottoms Up, Job Seekers!




Pic of fast daters from here [link]

Men, facades and talking

The fact is that men can be divided into two groups: the men who talk, and the men who mask.

The men who mask form the majority. They are facadists, suppressing the real person behind by creating a false front which the public sees. I know these men exist because they are pretty much impossible for me to talk to, and they contrast so completely with non-facadist men. They could almost be another species.

If you don't like the word 'facade', we can use the word 'cloaked'. Cloaked men hide beneath bulky filler-type stereotype male junk that passes for manliness. That means sports, talking down their intellect, and almost always expressing themselves in cliches.

Not making waves appears to be their only goal.

Men not shackled by the need to stay below the radar - the non-facadists - stand out like the proverbial dogs' balls. I have known a few such gentlemen, and with the perspective of time, wonder why we aren't all like them.

Their defining characteristic is an ability to be themselves, and men, and communicators. They talk, and they listen, and they can synthesize abstracts. These skills almost guarantee success in life.

Just why is it that the majority of guys so easily fall into the role of 'guy' and not 'communicator'?