Reality Check

Yeah, I watched Sex in the City. Not first run, ’cause I don’t have cable, but in reruns. One of the episodes that made an impression on me is when Carrie was hired to teach a Learning Annex class on where to meet men. Hundreds of women show up, and of course she has nothing new or insightful to tell them. I can relate to the women in that audience in a way that I never could to the 4 characters on the show. They represented the real single women of Manhattan. They didn’t have thousands of dollars to spend on designer clothes and shoes and bags and they didn’t get invited to trendy night club openings. But they were there, trying, willing to try anything, even willing to shell out a few bucks and humiliate themselves by showing up at a Learning Annex class because they were tired of being single. They didn’t see single-ness as a great adventure, to be chronicled in a weekly column or blogged about. They were lonely.

I’ve been pretty lucky as far as single women in New York go. I’m not freakishly shy (unless I have to walk into a party alone – that one still gets me every time) and I don’t have any weird hang-ups about online dating and so I date a lot. Less than I used to, sure, because I’ve passed the deadly age of 35 and I refuse to lie about my age and well, for a lot of guys I’ve passed my expiration date. But still, a lot. There are literally thousands of straight, smart, attractive single guys in New York. Of course, most of them either just want to get laid or can’t figure out what they want but are perfectly happy to jerk you around until they figure it out. I put the odds of meeting one of the few good ones, one of the ones worth trying to build a life with at somewhere around 1 in 50. A girl’s got to kiss a lot of frogs.

I’ve already kissed more than my fair share and then some.