Shalloween

In case you missed the news flash accompanied by a large explosion from the general direction of the Midwestern United States, I have a date this week.

No, really.

Seriously.

I have a date. With a guy and everything!

Unfortunately, it’s been a long time since I had a real date, so I started thinking about my standards and expectations, whether or not they’ve changed¹, whether or not they’re realistic², and whether or not they could be applied to cars, shoes, or television programming as easily as they could be applied to men³.

At the risk of seeming apathetic, there aren’t that many things I expect out of someone I hardly know. I mean, I don’t have the strict requirements a lot of my female friends do when it comes to the men they date, and yet I have gotten busy with far fewer men than most of them have. So I started thinking that maybe I should develop some weird, discriminatory standards, and since I have very little experience of my own, I decided to pick and choose from the things I know about my girly-friends and give them a test-drive.

So I decided that, from now on, I would only date men with long, rock star hair. Chicks dig long, rock star hair; that’s half the reason many male rock stars have long hair. The other reason is, of course, that they’re all rebellious rebels who engage in various kinds of rebellious behavior meant to stick it to the oft-invoked and rebel-hating Man.

But then I started thinking, What if they’re not rebels? What if they’re just lazy? If you’re too lazy to let somebody else cut your hair, that’s pretty damn lazy. And, frankly, I don’t need someone else’s laziness encouraging my own. If I’m going to give up my precious, single-person freedom, I need a man of action, a guy who’s going to get shit done, not someone who can’t even muster the energy to drive all the way to Cost Cutters to let somebody else spend fifteen whole minutes cutting their hair.

So, while some guys can rock long hair like it ain’t no thang, I can’t discriminate against guys with short hair who may very well be both rebellious and totally not lazy.

So then I thought I’d only date men who make good money. This is probably the quality that most of my friends search for but will never admit to coveting. No one wants to admit that they give a shit about the future, after all. That might make them seem shallow! But how many times have you been talking to a nice, good-looking guy only to realize that he’s really not all that nice or good-looking after learning that he’s a register-jockey at Burger King? You younglings need not answer, I’m talking to the 20-somethings and up. We’re conditioned to seek the best mate possible, and in this society, best equals (among other things) long in the pockets.

So, again, I thought I’d give the whole rich-dude thing a try. Then I realized something: If he’s in my dateable age range and wealthy enough to own a fabulous house, a great car and lots and lots of other stuff, he probably works 80 hours a week. Is it really possible to date somebody who works 80 hours a week? I’ve worked 80 hours in one week before, and I could barely feed myself let alone participate in a functional relationship.

So zeroing in on young moguls with whom to mate and have lots of prenup-breaking kids is out.

So then I thought about looking for an older guy, someone with twenty to thirty years on me, a distinguished gentleman who’s already gotten the wicked urges of youth out of his system, someone who could treat me with the utmost respect and affection.

Then I realized that I could no more get naked with someone old enough to be my father than I could get naked in space and not die instantly. Then, of course, I thought about the possibility of actually developing feelings for someone old enough to be my father and the grief I would experience when he undoubtedly died within a few years of my father. Young people die every day, too, but there’s a definite expectation that older people will die sooner than younger people will, and to lose two loved ones (three, if you count my mother) within a few years… When any one of my beloved family members dies, I think it’s reasonable to expect my partner, whoever that may be, to be there to support me through many years of painful anniversaries, barring the freak accidents of life that take perfectly healthy people every now and then.

So searching for much older men–and only much older men–is out.

It’s been over a year since I last had sex, and I’ve gotten to the point where sex with another person has dropped out of the equation. What I need, I get myself, but were I fresh off the nookie wagon and still mulling over memories of trysts past, any one of the above options might seem more palatable. Those friends of mine who have multi-page lists of weird, neurotic, Sex and the City-esque standards always seem to be the first to complain about all the men they’ve ever dated, even the ones who had long hair, lots of money or a social security check.

It’s true in commerce and sex, apparently, that those who have more want more. Let’s just hope that those who have less eventually get it.

¹They have.
²They are.
³Bacon?