I don't do bars, and I don't do church. What does that leave? Well, you can always run the risk of being hauled off by the poh-leece for harassment while trying to strike up a conversation with an unaccompanied woman in the fresh vegetables section (Fresh!), or the laundromat (I own my own washer-dryer. Don't you?). Then too, you could join a club or community involvement group in hopes it might have somebody who meets your requirements list and is looking to see if you're looking to see if they're looking to see. Your chances: both fat and slim. And of course, there are always your friends to rely on, to hook you up with their wives' cousins when they come to visit: 45 and never been married (why, exactly, is that?). Or you could frequent your local Barnes & Noble, wearing a yellow turtleneck under your brown jacket with the patches on the elbows, sipping cappuccino by the gallon and trying to look jaded and worldly-wise enough for a bookish young thing, recently enamored of the beat generation, to come up and ask what you think so far of the Jack Kerouac you're reading (carefully poised so the title/author is visible across the Starbucks area).
Personals ads relieve you of at least one problem: knowing whether the person is looking or not. If nothing else, at least you know going in that they want to hook up with somebody, whether or not it turns out to be you. If you restrict your interest to those with enough sense (or maybe, chutzpah) to put up a picture, then you further narrow the margin for error (although pictures can be misleading, especially if they're five or ten years old).
I do the majority of my dating from personals ads. I've met a number of nice ladies that way, including a live-in that lasted a couple of years.
I've also met some live ones, buddy. I mean, raw throbbing psychotics. And some that frequent the outer fringe (at least, it looked like an outer fringe to me), including a BDSM enthusiast who wanted me to flog her with her own personal $150 handmade flogger (she brought it so I could try it out).
New story unfolding even as we speak, with a unique difference. Watch for a new thread by me sometime in the next several days, on the subject of a burgeoning romance.
COMF
