Ever notice how on “Sex and the City,” Carrie, Miranda and Samantha are constantly meeting men? They walk into a Starbucks, new man. They walk into a bar, new man. Their TV breaks, their kitchen catches fire, their pictures need hanging, new man, new man, new man.
In real life, women have to work a lot harder to meet men . . .
Linda: “I had been meeting and dating successfully via my Internet personal ad, so I encouraged my girlfriend, Rose, to place an ad. I showed her my ad, along with some responses and photos I had gotten, to help her get started.
“One Friday evening I was meeting a new man, Bruce, at a sports bar. We had been there about an hour when my cell phone rang. It was Rose. She was thrilled because she had just received some responses to her personal ad. One response in particular, she said, caught her eye because the picture the fellow sent looked familiar and she could have sworn that she saw the picture at my house on my Internet dating service. And who was it? None other than Bruce, my date for the evening! I smiled at him across the table and handed him the phone, saying, `My friend Rose wants to say hello! You sent her your picture!’
“He was a good sport about it and I told him to invite her to join us. She got there a half an hour later and we all had a good laugh. I thought Rose and Bruce had more in common than Bruce and me, so I was happy that as the evening ended, he told her he would call. (The reason I had the cell phone turned on in the first place was because I realized Bruce and I weren’t compatible, and I was hoping my office would call and I might have an excuse to cut the date short.)”
Sharon: “I don’t go to bars or clubs, so I joined a social club for people with the same hobby. Did I end up going out with the nice guys? No. I ended up with one guy who didn’t have a job for the past three years but said that if we got married, I could support him until he found the kind of job he wanted. One guy was too cheap to take me to dinner after I bought tickets for a downtown play. (He reeked all night of the fast-food hamburger and fries he had eaten prior to picking me up.) Or the best one, the guy who told me he met Jesus in the canned food section of the grocery store, then stalked me because I didn’t want to marry him.
“I figured it was time to find another avenue of dating. I joined a dating service. Big mistake. First they set me up with a man who had bowel problems and felt the need to give me daily updates. Then there was the guy who forgot to mention his drug problem. (He didn’t think it was important since he never did drugs in front of me.) Then came the alcoholic. Then the guy who was married. Best of all was the guy who had five mannequins in his dining room, all dressed in Nazi uniforms.
“Then I joined an Internet group that caters to my religious beliefs. Who did I meet? A guy who lives with his mother and doesn’t have a job. All of them wanted to marry me and told me so after only four or five dates.
“Because of all my experience, my goofball radar has gotten as sharp as military equipment. It only takes me one or two dates now to figure them out.”
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Women, where do you go to meet men? Men, where do you go to meet women? Send your tale, along with your relationship problems, to Cheryl Lavin, Tales from the front, Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611, or e-mail to Cheryl Lavin at Clavin@Tribune.com. All names are changed. Letters cannot be considered without name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be used in whole or in part for any purpose and become the property of the column. Read Tales from the front every Sunday in Arts and Entertainment and Tuesday and Thursday in Tempo.
