Yes. A whole week from tonight.

To clear up any confusion: no. No man is taking me out tonight.

(Unless, of course, you are a man and are reading this and would like to take me out. My current schedule for tonight involves a) an elliptical machine; b) pulling some big thistles out of my landscaping. Both of these tasks can be postponed.)

No, my date with the CFO is next Wednesday. As in seven days from now. As in he is still in California. But he did write an e-mail on Monday, telling me he was looking forward to next Wednesday.

So I hope he's got something good planned.

The Great Awake....seems to work....

I'm coming to enjoy that the best purloined wireless in my apartment is on the patio. To be computer-bound, but at the same time to smell the ocean breeze....to hear the hum of air conditioners all around but not have to live with conditioned air....to make better friends with my overgrown basil plant. (Want some, anyone?)

Speaking of, the same great outdoors called me out today over the noon hour. The Boston Public Library not only gets to have the Bates Hall reading room (which no one should die before reading in) but a marbled, fountained interior courtyard that allows you to a) be in the city; b) feel the sun on your shoulders; and c) not have to hear automobile traffic.

I went to the courtyard today, laptop in hand, over the lunch hour as part of an experiment: to do my date-hunting in the daylight hours. See.....it is well past 11:30 p.m. now and I am writing a blog entry. I am tired and this is a stretch of energy.....but I can write these entries because you love me and will read them even if they ramble. This is not the ideal time or state to be wooing men on match.com....who tend to be less forgiving.

So last night I scoped for candidates. Today at 1:30 p.m., when fully mentally engaged, I wrote: to a guy in his early 40s, avid reader of the Wall Street Journal and former hedge fund manager, who has been viewing my profile multiple times. He wrote back a few hours later, responding to my note of the markedly opposite political views held by the WSJ and the New York Times (my paper of choice): he claims he doesn't read the editorials. He also expressed mock horror at the thought of making it into this blog.

I must say....if he didn't want to be a part of this blog, he shouldn't have told me his current job is working for a foreign (his words) government. Now I'm going to have to refer to him as The Spy, because I wrote back to ask what country he's spying for.

So that's a one-for-one on the match.com sprint to the finish. Tomorrow I'm going to use my noon hour to write to the finance guy who has a degree in cello peformance....and if I'm bold and awake enough, to ask about the size of his hands.

Oh yeah.

Aimless...(?)

So what to do.

It's Sunday night. I'm among the puddles on the patio, where the wireless connection is the strongest. Quite lucid, but on the tipsy edge, still digesting a couple caiphirinas from a friend's birthday outing....winding down for bed before facing another workweek where the stock market rides the roller coaster and makes both my co-workers and our clients nauseous.

The dating week is currently empty....although two items of note:

a) my match.com subscription expires on Thursday; and

b) the CFO is vacationing in California with his teenage sons. He wrote yesterday to say hi, that they're biking and getting a lot of sun, and that they saw a free Blue Öyster Cult concert on the beach. (Oh my, yes.) We have a date for next Wednesday.

While only 10 days from now, August 6 seems half a summer away of waiting. So I'm thinking an assault on match.com might be in order....go out in some proverbial blaze of glory. Write 5 guys a night. Answer anyone who has ever winked, even the dude from Portland, Oregon who wondered if I'd move cross-country for the right person. Scope, scope, scope.

This might be a challenge. With the drama of the promising CFO date and additional drama from a dangerous (and out of necessity, unpursued) flirtation at work, online dating has slid into ambivalence for me lately. Of course these are real people I'd be writing to. But these last days I'm craving the human, rather than the written connection.....maybe it's just the summer weather. The eyes meeting. The smile from seeing a man glance over, and hold it.

But in a week with no outings planned, to get to the humans I've got to make the written connection. Blah.

Nonetheless.....this is no time for a weak stomach. Four days left. I'm telling you here....blaze of glory!

Starting tomorrow. After yoga.

Crying at the gym (a.k.a. thanks a lot, Jack)

A typical single-girl's Friday evening: on the elliptical machine at the gym.

A typical single-girl's movie to watch while on the elliptical machine: "The Bucket List".

Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson in a "preposterous, putatively heartwarming buddy comedy about two men diagnosed with terminal cancer living it up in their final months"? Enthusiastic thumbs-down from Roger Ebert, the Times (see quote above), and just about everyone else for being "maudlin" and "unrealistic"?

'Tis true. Especially odd when this is Healthworks, an all-women's establishment. (Where, in as clichéd a fashion as you might imagine, typical movie fare trends to the romantic. In this venue I've seen the rain-drenched-in-a-lake kissing scene from "The Notebook" well over a dozen times.)

Nonetheless. I got into "The Bucket List," as one can only do when chained to a repetitive-motion machine for 45 minutes. I got way too into it. When Freeman's character dies while in surgery (sorry for spoiling), we don't see it.....we just see the surgeon telling the deceased's wife the news.....and the wife's face crumpling as her son comes running to support her.

By this time I was on the floor, stretching into a yoga warrior pose....and my own face crumpled, followed by a gasping sob. It took me the rest of the pose to recover.

Granted, tears and death in cinema is emotional. I quickly assessed, however, why that moment made me cry. Because that was a wife crying, quite rightly, at the loss of her husband. And in that moment I felt lonely....wanting a spouse who would grieve if I died before him....having a child come and put an arm around me if I were to lose a lover or a spouse.... Two seconds of jealousy for the woman who had known a great love.

Maudlin indeed, for a typical single-girl's night at the gym.

Would Jane admire my patience?

Those of you have have listened to me whine over the years are well aware that I have never had a boyfriend.

(Is this a shock to the rest of you? In any Jane Austen novel this admission would qualify me as a triple spinster. )

There have been many occasions where I thought I did. Or was well on my way to. We met. We flirted for a day or for three months. We held hands on the Chapel Choir tour bus. We watched thunderstorms by candlelight and drew patterns on each other's forearms. We went to Wally's before walking along the Charles at 2 a.m. He picked me up at the airport. He remembered that I didn't like the hops in IPA and ordered me something else. Or that I take my coffee dark with cream and Equal, and ordered that without asking.

Then date 4, 5 or 6 would come...and there would be a grand silence that all the e-mails in the world wouldn't penetrate...or an admission that he had met a 19-year-old and thought he was in love....or a suggestion that the "spark" between us had never sparked.

It was always date 4, 5 or 6. And I'd always be thrashed....far more emotionally invested than 4, 5 or 6 dates justified. (Not exactly picking out bridesmaids' dresses. But happy. Excited. Hopeful enough that I had probably mentioned him to my mother, thus having to rescind the name in every subsequent conversation when she asked after him.) And I'd be thrashed for a good long 4, 5 or 6 months. Crying on the T. Crying when his favorite song came on the radio.

Tonight while crossing the Financial District on foot, I encountered a favorite ex-roommate. He's a gossip and a clothes horse and, like me, a single serial dater with 100 stories of loves-lost....who always wants to talk about it. I once did the favorite-song crying-thing on his shoulder.

But that was 2 years ago, so we had to play catch-up. We immediately set to discussing recent adventures: he with a next-door neighbor (random lust over the weekend) and me with the CFO. We also hit on the less successful outings: him coming across an ex-boyfriend on Craigslist....me surprised by a recent--and most dangerous--flirtation with an extremely unavailable man. It seemed that for every story I had, he had one to relate with similar temptations or fall-offs.

"We must have been born under the same star," I said.

Which in hindsight is prescient, because his birthday is the day after mine. (We're both Aries!) But what made me include Tim in this tale tonight is a tale he told: His life has been rife with funshort relationships. But unfailingly, at the point he realizes that it might become anything more (as in BLAM! I really like this guy!), it all changes. He gets dumped. Or loses interest.

That is precisely how I feel. And have felt so many times that, recently, I sat down and wrote out how many times I hadn't made it past date 4 and realized there is no way to remember them all.

And then I remembered (yes, seriously, and not just for the purposes of this blog entry) something I had read from Uncle Ben Stein yesterday:

"Long-term investment pays off. The impatient day player will fare poorly without inside information or market-controlling power. He or she will have a few good days but years of agony in the world of love. To coin a phrase: Fall in love in haste, repent at leisure."

Perhaps I am lacking in patience. Wanting so much to be in love that I'm willing to overlook faults to assume that I am there long before it is true. Not really knowing the person well enough. Feeling hacked to death when my man's better nature reveals itself in the form of a louse, a recalcitrant, or a person who just doesn't find me interesting. Jumping so far ahead of myself I jump right into that man's fears....and spending months regretting my rashness.

I'm enjoying this revelation. Because perhaps I might apply it to future dates: go with the flow for way longer than I think I should.

Ah Jane, I'm going to be patient. Don't judge my spinsterdom.

Dating advice from Uncle Ben

Greetings, readers.

Just returned from Las Vegas for the weekend where I a) lost $6.75 playing slots; b) lost my hearing while staying up until 6 a.m. at a bar that featured my friend's thrash-metal band; c) had only brief, dial-up access to the internet.

Which means I also lost some blogging momentum.

Fear not, Uncle Ben Stein is here -- Yale Law Review, Nixon speechwriter, respected economist, tv personality and the droning teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Considering the stock market's recent trip to and extended stay in the toilet--and since I work in finance and live this "plunge" daily while navigating the Boston Singles scene--it is appropo to alert you to last week's New York Times column by Mr. Stein, Esq:

Lessons in Love, by Way of Economics

It speaks for itself, even if it doesn't win you the $5000 Ben seems to promise. Please read, digest, and I'll ask you for a written report in the morning.

Date #3a: It's all good

To ease the minds of all who might need easing, I survived my first Craigslist date and am not, yet, a casualty.

My 54-year-old correspondent turns out to be the Chief Financial Officer for a non-profit in Newton. Tan, bald, white beard, really did bike 40 miles in the White Mountains over the weekend, happy to see me. We met Tuesday night at a bar in Cambridgeport I've always wanted to visit.....River Gods on River Street (vegan options, wacky decor, DJs spinning turntables from a perch on the wall) .... and talked for three hours with the help of Côtes du Rhône, sushi rolls and a brie/garlic plate. We made a pact to always be frank with one another. Then he gave me a ride home and a satisfying goodnight kiss.

What's not to like? I believe we will go out again.

This is a personal milestone. If you had asked me even a couple weeks ago whether I would enjoy a romantic evening with a man 20 years older....

Hmmm.

The best way to couch it, I guess, is that there is something said for a man who knows what he wants, has already gone after it, and continues to go after it. In this case, the "it" being me. And he is going after me with style and the wisdom of his experience.

Stay tuned.

Stigma (or just practicality) in the freezer aisle

I just enjoyed a typical lunch for this girl: the Healthy Choice Chicken Margherita Cafe Steamer from your frozen food aisle.

OK, the chicken filets had that processed edge. But the basil and red pepper sauce on the linguine went down easy. And my workplace has a mean air-conditioning temp of 65 degrees. After a morning of deskwork while shivering, a hot entree--purchased from my supermarket freezer for $2.50--is a treat and a bargain rolled into one. It is lunch of choice 4 of 5 days a week.

I do most of my grocery shopping 5 blocks down at the South Boston Stop-n-Shop on Broadway, since I can easily walk there and not lose my parking spot. This is old-school shopping at its finest. Narrow aisles and limited selection. Rusty carts that often stick in the "stop" position. Teenage stockers flirting with co-workers in the soda aisle, blocking the way. A former Southie neighbor once referred to it as "skeevy." I wouldn't say that much and find it to be tolerable.....especially since it carries all the essentials like Kashi GoLean (organic, yes!), Dannon yogurt, Giant Frozen Fudge Bars (only one point on Weight Watchers), and Goya black beans.

(OK, so this is starting to sound like product placement central. I can confirm that no one is paying me for that last paragraph.)

And the processed meals there, no matter the variety, are always on sale. Four lunches for $10! Or 2 for $6!

Sunday morning before church I was in the frozen foods aisle availing myself of the choices for this week: homestyle pot roast? butternut squash ravioli? glazed chicken? A petite woman of about 5'2" and 75 years, head covered in a multi-colored scarf, stood nearby, blocking one of the doors. For the 5 minutes I paced in front of the shelves, she leaned on the handle of her cart and watched a stock boy unload boxes of butter and margarine, then move onto the popsicles. I could feel her glance occasionally on me.

Finally, I chose (including the fabulous Margherita Chicken mentioned above). This required asking her to move back a few paces so I could open the door, which she did. She watched me take the meals down and fill my basket, before commenting:

"You really don't care for cooking much, do you?"

It was so like being in my North Dakota hometown at Bob's Super Valu that I nearly choked up. It must have been that emotion that kept me from lapsing into my predictable, defensive, single-girl guilt of dinners-for-one. Instead, I laid out my argument from paragraph 2 above without apology. Cheap. Hot. And tasty from the workplace kitchen microwave. And to my surprise, my Southie neighbor couldn't have agreed more.

"Great idea, dear. Sounds perfectly practical to me."

Contrary to previous observation, occasionally it is comforting to find a little small town in the big city.

Approaching: older man

So the recent Craigslist classifieds approach seems to have borne slightly more fruit than my ailing tomato plant.

Last week I posted a request on their personals board. I kept it as bare-bones as possible: looking someone to hang out with, as it was getting quiet in my life with just me and my cats. Thought perhaps the lack of specifics might encourage creativity and a wide pool of applicants.

As you might well guess (and if you frequent Craigslist, are totally not surprised), this tactic attracted two-dozen responses from all kinds. Many asking about my current state of dress or undress. Many on the tactlessly graphic side....in some cases photographs were attached.

However, standing at the end of the pack is a gentleman with whom I may very well have a drink with this week, at his request. He knows my age....it was a headline in my posting. I don't know his, but if his picture tells the correct story, I'd guess.........maybe 50?

You read it here.

Yes, changing the tune. But our correspondence has been worthwhile--somewhat scintillating without spilling over into crassness. He's run eight marathons, likes to go out for breakfast, and spent last weekend cycling 40 miles through Franconia Notch. His initial response to my ad was to ask

"what is it that you want? I'd be interested to know why you posted the way you did..."

Ah, the way to a woman's heart! Or so we shall see.

Small town?

Tonight I was biking from Brookline, returning home from dinner with friends. As I cruised through a well-lit business district, a couple walking towards me caught my attention. I looked just solidly enough to not be staring....but sure enough:

The man was someone I dated for a time in the not-too-distant past. A time that ended in spectacular awkwardness.

Oh, the intrusion into my personal space! How dare he walk down the street in this town. I should be grateful it was dark and I was speeding by, unfashionable in bike helmet, and didn't have to a) think of a social nicety I didn't mean or b) potentially deal with him pretending not to notice me if I had been on foot and, ergo, visible crossing his path.

I'm still taken aback in Boston to run into men I once knew in the Biblical sense. Granted, several I am now friends with, and am long past the point of recalling intimacies when we see each other. (We even try to see each other.) But part of the joy of not living in a small town is that you live in a town big enough to avoid seeing people you don't want to see. Boston, Brookline and Cambridge combined have about 13,000 different streets. Is it too much to ask that certain people don't walk down one of those streets when I'm doing the same?

Seeing these men can still bring pain....usually because, sometimes years later, I have to whack my head at the memory of being seduced with an unfortunate result. To wit: One night, while boarding the Green Line at Park Street, I noticed the guitar and voice of a subway musician.... like Damien Rice doing acoustic "Cannonball".... and was drawn to see who was creating this trance-like beauty. Sure enough. It was one of my one-night-date men from several years before. Whom, in the midst of making out, turned on a porn video to instruct me, quite seriously, on how to better do what I was trying to do. A year later he is there on the T, sounding like Damien Rice, attracting throngs of female admirers.

D'oh!

The man I saw tonight, I knew slightly better and cared quite a lot more. He was in animated conversation with his female companion. My first thought was that he once shared my bed; now he walks down the street, and will walk down many streets in the future, like we never knew each other. Generally, this makes me glad. We did not end well.

Yet, for those seconds....

Damn small town.

New approaches

Ah, finally some summer weather to sink teeth into. 80 and sunny and no humidity....Singing Beach, finally!, you are my date for tomorrow....goodbye pasty-white legs.

So this reveals New Dating Approach #1: putting on a two-piece suit and going out in public.

New Dating Approach #2: Craigslist Personals.

Yes. I could not find a more less-measured or less-personal approach to finding someone than the free online classifieds. Simply say who I am (woman, 35, South Boston) and what I would like to do (watch the Red Sox game over a beer on a shaded patio, for example).

No profiles. No pictures. No need to state occupation or religion or what you last read. Say what's on your mind, wait about 10 minutes for it to be read, see who else wants to do the same, and choose. Remarkably efficient and no different than standing in a bar scoping the territory.

It's the center of July. This approach would well-suit a week in which I feel adventuresome. And when spending any prolonged time at my computer looking over profiles and composing witty answers seems a pasty-white way to be. Craigslist is quick. Random. More fleeting, perhaps, but an opportunity to practice on-the-spot flirtation skills......which would also serve me well for when I'm at the beach, trying to catch the eyes of the passerby.

I'm not suggesting the classifieds are an antidote to my singleness or even viable. However, while the Match.com men make up their minds instead of just looking and I make up my mind whether I'm too clever for most of them (or simply need to work harder at the game).....it is a temporary diversion.

Just mixing it up and, perhaps, stepping it up?

My knight in.....in.....in....

Occasionally, as you have read, I have my moments of cynicism regarding Match.com. The love-to-look/hate-when-emails-are-ignored hopelessness.

However, all advice suggests that no matter how you feel about online dating.....don't ever write in your profile how much it embarrasses you. Or how disappointed you are in yourself for succumbing to this inevitable method of last-resort. Etc.

Here's a 36-year-old from Cambridge who viewed my profile today. These 2 paragraphs were the sum of how he described himself. I'd think it was joke, or a dare, to see if it might get any hits.....if I hadn't seen 5 others just like it in the past. All evidently, fleetingly, interested in me.

With your permission, I dub him Sir Lame-Ass.


Sir L-A: "I'm sitting at work, not busy, and I start surfing around on the net. Wouldn't you know, I come across Match.com. After looking around, I figure I have nothing to lose, (and as you probably guessed), so much to gain. Probably like you, I never thought I would be doing this. Until, one day I realized most of my friends were married and even begining to have kids (how did we become so old?). As their lives become more centered around family, my own newtork of friends begin to decrease, so what the hell, I'll give this a shot.

To be honest, I don't plan on much to come of this, not because of me, of course, but because of the little effort I'm putting into this. And, yes, you may think you deserve better, because of the time and effort you have invested in this, but there is not much better out there than me. Well, maybe some...but not much."

Outwitting the witty...

So. Month three of match.com moves into high gear. And I wonder, yet again, if well-spoken male types get so inundated with hits that responding to an inquiry must be thought through for a minimum of five days.

Or do they just not enjoy being outwitted, so to speak?

You recall not long ago, late last week, my delight at Hallelujah Man winking my way. An executive type with a sense of humor and the devious intelligence of Mr. Big. And a writer, it seems. (Hallelujah, indeed!) His profile was/is so yummy I wanted to throw on a dollop of Cool Whip and gorge.

Maybe I was too cocky. I know I have some capability with a clever phrase. His list-phobia and randomness was something I could match (pun intended). And I would match it.

For context, you must see what I saw. The heading above his picture read:

What do reddish roots, blue butterflies, purple plums, and open-mouthed orange fish have in common?

Then some wacky listing of nonsense that made me laugh. (Click link to enjoy.)

Then the declaration of intent.

IS THIS YOU (even a bit)?

Love to meet a smart, sexy, sometimes silly woman who enjoys laughter and life…a seriously sweet yet delightfully devilish person who doesn't always follow all the rules (or at least can look the other way when I bend a few)…an "on-occasion smart-ass" who appreciates the beauty of an out-of-the-box thinker with a not-found-everywhere personality (e.g., she can put up with me :) If you are creative or artistic or even just a bit quirky/eccentric/nerdy, odds are we'll get along smashingly well. Finally, I believe intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac...brainiacs...mmmm

Within minutes the following morning I was in the game. Occasional smart-ass and all.

K: Not to avoid answering your question at the top of the page....although I might wonder if one possible answer is "they are all colors in Crayola's new 382-count crayon box."

1) As a certified list writer, I enjoyed what was under the Monty Python reference, and have spent several minutes looking for a pattern in the chaos. So my question: is there? And question 2&3: why spelling bees? What have they ever done to you?

2) Do you think you could possibly be the first individual who has used "ginormous" in an online profile in a completely innocuous way?

3) Do you or do you not think nebulous is the coolest word ever?

4) Does it take more skill to nap or to fly a plane? Is this a silly question?

I've enjoyed hearing from you, or more accurately, seeing your profile come up in my inbox. Great smile, among other things. I am, possibly, a bit of your last paragraph...just saying.

So here we are, and where has this man gone? Has he exhausted his prose ability in the bravura effort of his profile? Do subsequent replies require simmering before serving?

Is he intimidated at the fact that I might have kicked his clever, devilish ass?

Should I just have winked (God help me) back instead?

Grrr.

Good advice

There are benefits and drawbacks to laying one's personal life so baldly in front of an audience.

Of the former, I have enjoyed most receiving advice from so many diverse sources. (Saves on the therapist fees!) My cousin in Denver has one angle and says it well....my married MIT engineer friend in Arlington, another....Michael, the ultimate intellectual pragmatist, an even different one. And I can always count on "A" for solid Bush-bashing back-up when the situation calls.

A surprising contributor has been The Good Pastor, who shows up in the comment section as "D". We've known each other since I moved to Boston almost 9 years ago, although he was here on temporary assignment and lives in western Michigan. When doing work at my church, he would call me the "piano lady" because of our musical collaboration in worship. I like to think of he and his wife (married 47 years) as an extra pair of parents....dispensers of wisdom and, like my own parents, they occasionally send me flowers.

In any case, let's revisit the parentheses: married 47 years. We should all listen when he talks.

The Good Pastor and I have for various reasons been e-mailing this week. He inquires if I have been looking in the pews around me for any good potential mates. (I tell him I've been-there done-that.) He wonders if I'm coming to MI anytime soon, because he's been brainstorming on single young Lutherans to introduce to me. (There are no plans, but it maybe his effort should be reciprocated with some effort from me.) He tells me the story of how 48 years ago, he was looking to meet someone to marry and he asked his campus pastor to fix him up....and one of these fixes worked out so well, the campus pastor presided at the resulting wedding.

Perhaps I'll never get to Michigan to meet one of The Good Pastor's choices for me, but I did like this nugget of wisdom from yesterday:

"Believe me... the best male ones slip though just like the best female ones (K) sometimes slip through. I almost slipped though but the PLAN worked.. It takes time and energy and prayer (you pray but God doesn't drop them off in your apartment... still have to work at it).

And work, and pray, I shall.

Hallelujah!

Or, maybe, hallelujah with a small, cautionary "h."

There is a match.com man whom I came across while searching the pages last fall. Then I saw him again earlier this winter. And again this summer. I liked his picture (big smile), his physical type (6'2" and athletic), his attitude (super sunny), his age (same as me!), and the way he described himself. Read below for a partial verbatim

.... A few things I might do for fun

4. frolic about in indiscriminate patterns
6. play elephant polo
10. collect African Dung Beetles
2. enter motorcycle jousting events
5. snack on edible armoires
1. nap in inappropriate places
9. wrestle lemmings
7. crash spelling bees
3. volunteer to dig ginormous holes
8. analyze the geographic distribution pattern of EXIT signs

I've worked at Crayola, creating new toys and 3D TV cartoons; at Procter and Gamble; trying to make the world smell better one underarm at a time; and at McKinsey and Co., insulting CEOs. I love my current job, crafting strategy and creating documentary style TV ads. I am vying for the title of "Director of Pondering," but have yet to break through the resistance to such a nebulous moniker.

The reason I often looked but never wrote? Convinced I could never say anything witty enough to register even a half-point on his cool-o-meter. Sheerly intimidated by breadth and depth of his cv.

I know I have said that I hate "winks" on match. And I still do.

But hey. This guy winked at me last night. He winked at ME.

And I am totally psyched. Just keeping the small "h" until I see how he responds to me winking back.

Pot sitters

On my way to bed a short time ago, I remembered hadn't yet done my physical therapy stretches. This takes about 20 minutes and I'm tired. But I need the plantar fasciitis to go away. (Hey, I know. We all need it go away, so I might stop writing about my feet.)

Hmmm. I'm online trolling about, to occupy my brain during these ankle contortions and rolling of golf ball with heel. Midnight is a productive hour to be on Match.com....it's busy! After all, you wouldn't be on match if you had a significant other to either be awake or asleep with. Lots of viewings. And historically, many of the more creative messages (anyone remember MRothko35?) have popped up about this hour.

So who has reappeared, but the Guy from Hartford. Fairly smitten in his prose, but who hasn't gotten back since my last e-mail to him....on June 13. His silence thus far had persuaded me to give him--and the idea of anything long distance--the heave-ho.

And, Mr. 22 from North Carolina hovers on the perimeter. You must recall from mid-June....

Mr. 22: "You're a very sexy women (sic)...."

Now I must confess to some intrigue at his boldness. And the part of his profile that said "I am an energetic, socially active and liberal university student." Scruffy beard, talent for photography, obsession with BMWs. All eventually endearing enough; I wrote back a few days later, for the hell of it, to wit:

K: "What's with the venture out of age range, young man?"

Inviting him to interpret me as a) creepy, b) sassy, c) or the cynical 35-year-old he hoped I wasn't. Maybe he hasn't yet recovered from me actually replying. I wouldn't know, because he hasn't come back with anything more. Yet he checks me out....for the second time in the last three days.

These men have messages in their inboxes that they do not answer. But they keep looking from afar. They are 20 years apart in age but act like identical teenagers scouting at the homecoming dance.

It is not my turn to write.

When are they going to either use the pot or get off it?

The articulate, intelligent musician who is also a gourmet cook....

....naturally, as most single women in their 30s will swear, would not be so if he were not also gay. I thought I had found an exception.

Ah, Nico. :-(

I'm sure my favorite bohemian genius , Mr. Muhly the composer, has been out of the closet for some time. This is just the first I've seen it in print. Which makes it real. Oh well. He spends a lot of time in Iceland so it probably wouldn't have worked out anyway.

So now my job is to ensure that, someday, I travel to his apartment in New York's Chinatown and ensure he becomes a Friend who is a Boy, since he's so damn cool and cute and edits scores for Philip Glass.

And it probably means I should focus my lust elsewhere. But, evidently, not on articulate, intelligent musicians who are also gourmet cooks.....

Oh, help.