Why Is She Single?

Wombat: So who is the brunette hottie in the pic you sent?

Friend-Girl: Oh, that's Chantelle.

Wombat: Would I like her?

Friend-Girl: Hmmmm, maybe. She's a little spiritual for you. But I think she's dirty - she's always talking about her thigh-high boots and lingerie. I'm sure you'd like that about her.

Wombat: So why is she single?

Friend-Girl: You can't ask that question.

Wombat: Sorry?

Friend-Girl: That question is off-limits. Everyone asks cute single girls why they don't have a man, like that's the only thing that matters. So I rule the question invalid.

Wombat: Oh. I can't even ask the question?

Friend-Girl: Nope.

Pause. 

Wombat: This is about you, isn't it? You don't want to talk about this because you're sans-a-man, right?

Friend-Girl: Bastard.

Click.






Bottoms Up, Freedom of Speechers.

Single Effort - Book Review

The first rule of 'how to' books is: Know your audience.

In the case of "Single Effort: How to Live Smarter, Date Better, and Be Awesomely Happy" Joe Keller succeeds, mostly because he writes for himself. That's a good thing, because there are many guys like him looking for help, even if they don't know it.

Keller is a divorced father, a demographic (sadly) on the increase. His book isn't a narrative about the changes divorce wrought in his life, but it could be. What he's done is to catalogue the bridges he crossed and the hills he climbed after his split, and provide nicely succinct solutions to a lot of the problems he found.

For instance, creating a home. Many guys probably left home decoration to their wives. Now they're on their own, they need to think about how to set up a household that works for them and their children. Guys tend not to think in specifics in this area. A bed, a couch, a television and somewhere to put their car keys will often be the extent of their exploration. But we like a stylish place as much as women - it's just that we don't know where to start. A few clear-cut pointers go a long way, and Keller does so without condescension. Again, he knows his likely readership, because he is his readership.

That's the heart of this book. Keller shines his word-processing flashlight into the areas most guys tend to overlook; how to set up a kitchen, how to cook a few basic dishes, how to clean (a favourite of mine) and not least, how to date. Some of the information is as basic as it comes...how to choose cleaning products, or how to choose wine, for example. Some guys will already know much of this. But revising the fundamentals of life in this way is refreshing to see, and good for we men in the sense that we know we have the important stuff covered.

Naturally, Keller also dives into how to date as a new singleton. His philosophy partially aligns with mine, in that he's a real-world dating advocate. Joining volunteer groups or a fitness club, taking classes or simply being in the community are all suggestions as to how to meet women. Frankly, I'm not certain that a divorced man with minor children should be out there dating. The kids already have enough chaos in their lives. However, people will fall to their urges, and at least the advice here is practical.

There is one chapter about online dating - I guess no book like this would be complete without such a thing.

Clearly, this book is a winner on two levels. Firstly, the author's tone is pitch-perfect. He neither talks down to his reader, nor does he patronize them. Secondly, he doesn't overlook the mundane; that alone sets him apart, because the guy who buys and uses the right cleaning products in his water closet is the guy who gets the girl.


Bottoms Up, Detail Oriented Daters.

Friday Fluffer - Catch a Flight, Catch a Date

Even the most unlikely venues are stalking grounds for single hunters looking. In airports now we can find someone new, and they (the airports) come complete with an utterly plausible early exit strategy.

"I'm sorry darling, my flight's leaving."

It's hard to say "Don't leave me now!" when that's the reason you collided in the first place.

This article explains the best places to meet and canoodle a fellow-traveler. SFW



Bottoms Up, Jetsetters.

Being In The Moment, Until the End.

Morgane Slemp pic credit.

Is dating an extended job interview or an end unto itself? If it's an interview, what is the job? And if dating's the thing, why is it so fraught?

~/\~

In my experience, whenever people talk about their dating lives, there's a whisper of unfulfillment in the air. They drift off into an unspoken wistfulness, eg:


Oh, we're dating. Nothing serious... or

Yep, been dating a year or so now....

It's never (apart from initially)

OMG! I love it! We're dating!*

~/\~

Mismatched intentions doom many budding romances. It's the question everyone loathes, viz:

Where are we going with this?

If either dater feels the need to ask this question, it's over. If he or she doesn't communicate clearly some kind of goal that's vaguely related to yours, without prompting, asking the question merely emphasizes likely relationship termination.

~/\~

It's possible that I, like many others, am brainwashed into thinking that dating is only ever a road to somewhere else. Dating as its own reward can work, but requires the kind of communication rarely seen when people first meet and want to make matters more formal.

Kate, I want to spend more time with you, to date you. However, at this point I have no interest nor plans beyond that. All good with you?

Or

Doug, just date me. That's all I want.

~/\~

* Granted, beyond a certain age, this might be the case.

Bottoms Up, Existentialists.

Tell Him He's Dreaming

 Zarah Pacheco pic credit.

I do it all the time - I get stuck in my head, thinking about meeting the perfect gal, how it would all be so neat and clean and happy ever after. Living like this courts trouble, especially when we're talking the sex and so on, because the mind doesn't own a watch. Time has no meaning in daydream fantasy land, so that when a real life prospect comes along in actual real life, time actually applies and I crash to earth.

Time's important because there's really no fast-forwarding through the getting-to-know-you period. We're not like automobiles; there's no plugging in a computer to check the status and history of all the machine's systems, as fun as it is to imagine doing that with a person.

Okay, Bud, whattawe got here? Alrighty, looks like her history's pretty clean. Body's straight. Transmission's been replaced, looks like it was a warranty job, so that's good. Fluids all clean and changed regularly. Tyres are getting close to the limit, but will do for now. She needs to go for a long ride, I'd say she only does short trips around town, so she needs a good blow-out. Apart from that, I'd say you've got a solid prospect here. 

Wouldn't it be neat to know precisely what you're in for when you meet someone? Of course, there'd be no discovery, but really, revelation's over-rated. History's chock-full of dead explorers.

But back to this planet. We're all PDG at masking stuff we think needs hiding - but not forever. Some kind of universal consensus hovers around the eighteen month mark as about the period required to uncover your sweetie's suitability. That's about the time Magellan took to get half-way around the world.

Just for the record, he died there.



Bottoms Up, Relationship Mechanics.

Buffing Your Lucky

Here's a recipe:

  ~ Find one ripe woman whose divorce finalized within the last week.

  ~ Add five of her sorority sisters in town for the weekend.

  ~  Wrap all six in sexy dresses and tasty heels.

  ~ Supply them with two cars and designated drivers for the night. 

  ~ Marinate the ladies in quality vodka and just enough bar snacks.

Serve to any lecherous man within five-inch heel walking distance.

After a couple of hours and three nightspots, the mission of the night became clear - to find the recently singlefied Sister a new man. In essence, her married Greeks chat up whatever blokes they found with complete deniability - it's not for them, they're finding a new dude for her.

They're buffing her lucky. (Peals of uninhibited laughter.)








Bottoms Up, Pledgers.

Feet of Clay

Helene Fischer photo credit.

Unformed thoughts are the clay surrounding the part-time writer's feet. There is one thought that's gradually making its way out of the earth, coagulating into something vaguely worthwhile, and it's this: the envelope. I think we daters and searchers for the one have an envelope problem.

Aviation types talk about the envelope quite a bit. The envelope is the closed line drawn on a piece of paper that defines the capabilities of an aeroplane - airplane for you North American types. Stay within the line, and you remain within the parameters of what the plane can do. It includes everything from the stresses of speed and g-force to the range on a given amount of fuel. The envelope corrals the machine. Importantly, every machine has its own defining characteristics creating a distinctive-looking envelope.

So the unformed thought is that every individual has a life envelope too. Some parts of life we all know - eating, drinking, breathing - but there are tons of specific experiences that define who we are. Lots of these, along with their combination, go a long way to telling others just who we are. And maybe, just maybe, we should look for someone with a similar envelope.

Perhaps finding someone with a similar envelope is a better way to find someone compatible. That's all.



Bottoms Up, Adventurers.

Are You In The Dating DMZ? How to Avoid Machine Guns and Barbed Wire.

Pic credit.

I define the Dating DMZ as the space between where you are and where you want to be. Sometimes the space is wide, and sometimes it's narrow, and oftentimes you'll never know which it is until you're in it. Which is why we need some guidance so as to avoid being killed in there.

The most famous DMZ lies between North and South Korea. I've been there, a couple of times, and it's a pretty darned scary place. The funny thing is that the name is devastatingly misleading. Yes, the space between the two sides is allegedly free of military activity, but the two borders defining the zone are as full of stuff that'll kill you as anywhere on earth. (Short of a Bangkok titty bar.) It's a sleight of hand trick actually designed to divert your attention from the real action, which is the hundreds of mean-eyed dudes with machine guns trained on your bod.

It's a no-man's land, desolate and dangerous, with a disingenuous name.

Dating doesn't inevitably mean a transit of the DDMZ, but it's the rare bird who finds themselves in safe territory all the time. The nature of dating is that it involves risk, like all human activity. Finding and managing the amount of risk we can handle is an individual process; we're all up for challenges in different ways at different times of our lives. I'll give you an example:

I once was acquainted with a guy, back in Australia, who sized up his prospects for sex in an age-old way. He figured that if he asked enough women, he'd eventually get all the trim he wanted. His name was Alistair, and he asked pretty much every woman he met (socially, I hasten to add) if they'd be interested in getting together. He risked rejection in order to exercise his penis....a LOT of rejection.

Years after I first met Alistair, I ran into a friend who knew him better than me, and we discussed his case. Turns out that his success rate was much, much higher than we thought. Around one in ten women took him up on his offer. Maybe that doesn't surprise you - it does surprise me.

Alistair understood the DDMZ because he crossed and re-crossed it so many times. But he never lingered, because he was on his way to the other side, moving through increasingly familiar territory between the place he was prepared to risk being, and returning home. After a while, he became so familiar to sentries on either side, they both treated him like a 'friendly'. After all, everyone knew what he was up to, it wasn't like he kept anything secret. He would have made a great double agent.

The lesson of Alistair, the man who understood the DDMZ better than anyone I know, is to be on your way to the maximum point of risk, or on the way back. He never lingered when he was on a mission. He was either sprinting towards the target he'd chosen, or he was dancing around, changing direction. He decided what he wanted, then figured out a way to get there, and what he was prepared to do before retreating. Remember, too, that retreating is just attacking from a different direction. There is absolutely no harm in retreating, it's information about both your method of attack and your risk level.

Alistair's case is extreme, of course. He didn't use subtlety or finesse, but he knew what he knew about women and about himself. He was unembarrassable, and he knew that he was playing a numbers game. Voila, his DDMZ shrank to almost nothing.





Bottoms Up, Dating Warriors.

wombat@kissnblog.com

One Fine Day

Photo of Rosemary DeWitt from her website.

The downside to singledom is not knowing if you'll ever meet anyone. The upside is that you will. Or at least you might.

Aphorisms abound:


...you will find someone when the time is right...


...someone will pop into your life when you least expect...


...act like you don't care, and you'll find the person who will...


etcetera.

Trouble is that none of this advice helps with the actual meeting of new people, the lifeblood of we on-our-owners.

Given that finding people takes actual effort - as opposed to sitting on your duff and scrolling through yet another dating website - it helps to reframe the argument, viz:

Being single isn't about being without; it's a hike through interesting countryside, sometimes barren, sometimes lush, sometimes completely unremarkable. But one day the most wonderful vista will open up, and you'll want to stay.





Yeah, I know. Pathetic, eh?




Bottoms Up, Searchers.

Friday Fluffer - Been Single Too Long?

Minka Kelly photo credit.

You know you've been single too long when:

a.) You start criticising Minka Kelly's choice of shoes instead of contemplating her vagina.

b.) You imagine the check-out chick is your "date" and you are the John.

c.) Grilled cheese on toast and a pickle seems a reasonable first dinner date.

d.) Daydreams turn from sexy Bahamas weekends to Cops marathons.

e.) Smokers start to look (and smell) attractive.

f.) When someone says "stocking" you think of Christmas.

g.)You read the long-term care insurance pamphlets in doctors' waiting rooms.





Bottoms Up, Single Slices.

Man Wrangler

Picture Credit

Wine and company bend my mind towards unfeasible projects. The most recent of these - pursuant to Friday night's conversation - is the idea of a Man Wrangler.

Every single person complains of the lack of prospective partners at some point. It's natural. The older we are, the more human nature works against us. Not only do we tend to be more picky, but so does everyone else. (SO unfair if you ask me. OTHER people should be able to see through my faults, but I reserve MY right to discriminate immoderately.)

AND there is that semi-trailer of life baggage that keeps following us around. As soon as I think I dropped that thing at a parking depot somewhere, I turn around and DAMN! - there it is again. As much as we might want to be the tractor part ONLY of the tractor-trailer, that sneaky thing keeps finding us.

My complaint is that wherever I go, it's always a brodeo. (Noun credit: Mr Nights.) Like a man in a desert, all I see is sand in the form of dudes. However, opportunity is often found by turning adversity upside-down. (Invert, always invert.)

What I should be doing is creating my own database of men with whom I can hook up whatever single women I know. Use the law of supply and demand to my advantage, by making ME the go-to guy for single ladies around town, that's the plan.





Bottoms Up Matchmakers.

The Girlfriend Experience

I want to write something along the lines of:

The Girlfriend Experience is about the closeness of two people meshing at inter-dimensional levels for spiritual reasons.

But that doesn't ring true - the contradictory evidence in my life alone is overwhelming.

Maybe that's because the whole relationship-dating complex tends toward hard-bitten-ness as people age. We begin to appear as - or begin to look for - financial saviours or mental leaning-posts rather than specially connected individuals.

My golden age was from fifteen until twenty-one. Innocent of wordly motives, a girlfriend was just that - about having a girl as a friend. Girls are soft and smell great and feel different and look at shit differently. That's nice. I want one of them close to me, on my side.

Innocence. That's the key word, implying a voyage of discovery with someone. From innocence to knowledge. And then to BDSM, but only after a decent interval.



Girlfriend Experience illustration from here [link]

Hope Springs Eternal

As an underaged but regular drinker, Friday nights were everything. Sports, school, vacations: nothing came close to that specific nervous anticipation before meeting my buddies for (illegal) drinks on the last day of the week.

Naturally there's something about being a teenager. One has the sure knowledge that you have the world completely by the balls. As a male, my own balls told me everything I needed - that I could get away with the underage drinking gig; my parents would never know; that I would be irresistible to girls; that this time would last forever.

Wrong. On all four counts.

But the pain of such mistakes lead to refining the plan. Once I was a legal drinker, the focus shifted from the thrill of drinking in public to the women one might meet in the process. The Friday night anticipation - and associated excited nervousness - persisted, not for the booze, but for the broads. A little success in the romance department whilst drinking sealed the deal.

Alcohol reduces inhibition (duh) a fact I continually learn and sometimes regret, usually the morning after. So it's (again, duh) no surprise that drinking and dating go together like gin and tonic. More accurately drinking and pre-dating go together, because nothing puts one in mind of meeting the love of one's life than a glass or two of champagne, or 1.2 martinis, or a teaspoon of absinthe, or whatever gets you to the perfect drinking buzz.

Forgive me then if this love affair with drinking, friends, and the chance of meeting new lady friends mash up with Friday night anticipation, for this I know is true: If you walk into a bar and order a drink, you never know with whom you'll walk out.




Bottoms Up, Barflies!



Pic from Sports Illustrated (obv) and here [link]

Another Notch on my Bedpost.

Another weekend passed without scoring, another play period without a notch carved on my bedpost. At the moment I'm suffering from sweeheart deficiency disorder, for which I shall soon be obtaining treatment. It's gotta a be a syndrome of some sort; a chronic problem like this must be treatable with a really expensive drug.

And by the way, why do we surreptitiously keep score? What difference does the total number of people with whom we have conducted coitus make? If my instinct is correct there's a curve out there that looks something like the trajectory of a low-orbit rocket launch - after a certain number of partners, it's all just floating about in space.

I would like to create a large-scale experiment. Men on the hunt for pussy would split into two groups. The first group would, during the chat-up phase, say they'd had sex with only two women ever in their lives. The other half would explicitly make mention that they'd had sex with twenty women. What's your bet as to the outcome?

And what's with all that notches on bedposts carpentry b.s. anyway? It's SO two centuries ago. Surely there's an iPhone app for that now. Sheesh. I wish these metaphors would automatically update.




Bottoms Up.


Stud from here [link]

Edited for split infinitives.

Ferrets

Individualism's great, but what you call individualism I reserve the right to call strangeness. Strangeness can be fun and interesting too, but I probably don't want to date you if you're strange tipping to weird. That's the way I roll.

Pets are one area in which I have little tolerance for the non-mainstream. A certain one-upmanship taints pet ownership, especially amongst those whose non-human companions extend beyond cats and dogs.

Take ferrets, for example. A mate of mine from years ago dated (for a short time) a very attractive chick who came equipped with a ferret. Mostly the rat wrapped itself around the back of her neck, with its hideous face poking out from under her hair above her left shoulder. She went everywhere with that beast, talking to it like it understood. It reminded me of a ventriloquist and her dummy, constantly blathering back and forth.

Snakes and other reptiles skip the strange category and move straight to weird. Dating a woman with a diamond python or two in her living room is beyond me. Ditto lizards, spiders, grasshoppers and Madagascar hissing cockroaches. [link]

Even mainstream pets tell us a lot about the owner. Single women with miniature dogs have them as baby replacements; men with miniature dogs are homosexual; anyone with a pit-bull is a retard. Which leaves only cat-owners as sane people. So that's who I'll date.

Have pussy? Call me.


Bottoms up!





Photo of Woman with Ferret from here [link]

All Single NYC Girls...

...and everyone else must read Snaf's post today. It's brilliant. [Here.]

She reviews Julie Klausner's book, thereby kicking off the Blogger Critics Network in fine style. Just as you'd expect of a sassy NYC dater.

The idea is for we bloggers to review books of interest to us: In our case, it's books about dating, sex and relationships.

My original review is here. (I Don't Care About Your Band by Julie Klausner)[link]




Photo of typical NYC single girl from here. [link]

Ladies Night

Thursday last week at around nine pm I felt like a couple of coldies at my local boozer. Angie wasn't working, so I couldn't indulge myself in Pink Squirrel-type banter. And Miles, who shakes a very good classic martini and is unusually adept at jokes at other people's expense, was pre-occupied - pre-occupied with his own search for country pie by the looks. Tending bar must be a top-ten way to access bulk trim.


So I happily chatted with the guy next to me and enjoyed my drink. India Pale Ale, with its aromatic, honeyed nose and nifty back-of-the-throat kick perfectly hit the spot.

At the beer-apex, around two drinks, I swivelled around and noticed that the bar had turned into something God-awful. It looked like the trade show from hell, with unctuous males panting to make a sale, and cock-sure females knowing they were in the dickie seat. Yes, you guessed it. Thursday night is Ladies Night, and the exhibitors and prospects were pouring in the door.

The idea's simple. Females drink (tiny pours in plastic cups) for free. Males pay full-price-plus (and sip from a regular glass.) Honey-bees home to flowers; whales swim to breeding grounds; salesman promise the world. It's the same old game, with a little less smokescreen.

Quote of the night came from the token cougar in heat: Oh Lord, they're not much older than my son. I just hope he won't recognize mine in the morning.






Stiff drink picture from here [link]

Edited because I was too clever to check the spelling of 'unctuous'.

Mr Clean

With a couple of hours to spare around noon today, here's what I did.

1. Grabbed my caddy of environmentally friendly cleaning products (which, by the way, I keep close to me at all times.)

2. Collected, from my 'cleaning' drawer, micro-fibre squares, sponges and polishing cloths.

3. Entered the bathroom.

Working from the top down, I cleaned the tiles first, shower and tub. Then on to the vanity, which is probably the easiest part, although faucets can be tricky. Toilet next, making sure to get to all those idiotic curves at the base that those dumb toilet designers create specifically to confound us. Then on to the floor, where you would have found me on hands and knees with an old toothbrush cleaning the grout. Lastly, the mirror, door handles, towel rails and the shelves of the medicine cabinet.

I stood up after about thirty minutes and looked upon my work with pride.

A (woman) friend opined recently that, had it been her bathroom, I could have expected a blowjob at that point. Is this a common reaction, and should I start a high-end cleaning business?





No, that's not my bathroom pictured. [link]

Good Morning Kiss

Another reason (if you're single) to find a mate is to make certain you start each day right - with a morning smooch. People everywhere wake up and pucker up, a sensible ritual that might even aid your health.

I read about a study recently where 500 people, both couples and singles, kept a diary about their morning kissing schedule. The results were surprising only to the extent of the scale of the benefit to those who made a point of kissing their mate upon waking. On average, the men lived around 1 year and three months longer than their non-kissing peers, and women likewise lived around 1 year five months longer.

Actually, I totally made that up. There is no such study, although it would be fascinating to see. But I bet you had a positive reaction. It feels right to us that a morning kiss is good for you. And you know what? I'd put money on the fact that couples who deliberately have a kiss and a cuddle in the morning do in fact live longer. And those who have sex as soon as they wake live forever. Okay, I made that up too, but I got you thinking.

That's the wonder of relationships. I believe we can influence our happiness, and even our longevity, by being even the tiniest bit conscious of how we think and how we communicate, especially with our sig oth. Even if you get out bed on the proverbial wrong side, a thoughtful kiss might well mitigate your mood.






Pic from here.[link]

Resignation

Being single is okay, but that might be resignation talking.

Resignation has a habit of filling silence with verbal equivalents of shrugs and open hands raised in surrender. He (or she) is the kind of emotion who sits in a comfortable chair in a corner at parties, not saying much, but making it count when he (or she) does.

Not that Resignation is devastatingly funny or heart-breakingly pithy; it isn't. His (or her) trick is timing, knowing when competition is at a minimum. Resignation is what's left when there's not that much left.

Like I wrote, he (or she) lives to fill the gap.





Oil from here. [link]