MARTIN AND GINA FOREVER

I sat in my apartment last weekend wondering what it is I'm looking for in a relationship. Things are going well with the Colombian, but while she's back home visiting her family, I've had some time to reflect. What do I want from a woman? Is it companionship, good conversation, someone who'll laugh at my jokes, a hand job on the sofa while watching Family Guy reruns together? Well, yes. I want all those things, but what else? There has to be something more. Otherwise, why bother dating? I could be perfectly happy sitting on my sofa alone, laughing at my own jokes and watching cartoons. And when it comes to hand jobs, no woman has ever given me one as good as the ones I've given myself.

While I struggled with my dilemma, fate, assisted by a packed subway car, forced me to sit next to a man whose wisdom pointed me in the right direction. He told me that his girlfriend is currently doing time for shooting her best friend in the stomach, and I figured who better to offer advice about love than a man with such impeccable taste. "The problem today," he theorized, "is that don't nobody want what Martin and Gina had. Ain't no mo' faithfulness and shit in the world."

I wondered to myself who Martin and Gina were. Perhaps they were tragic lovers in a Shakespearean play I hadn't read, or in an opera by Verdi I hadn't seen. I feared seeming ignorant when I asked, "Martin and Gina?" But the relationship expert I had the fortune of sitting next to looked at me without the slightest hint of judgment and said, "Yeah, you know Martin and Gina. They was perfect together." And then it hit me. Of course! How could I have overlooked one of the great couples of our time? I was looking for examples of the perfect relationship in literature and art, and in my own head, when all I needed to do was turn on BET.

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I've Got Mail

Whenever I get a message from someone at one of the various dating sites, I experience a tinge of excitement. Unsolicited emails are usually disappointing, but I'm always hopeful that I'll be pleasantly surprised. Often these unsolicited messages are from women in other countries whose profiles are incoherent, are from women with no pictures, or from women that might be better off with no pictures. This particular email, however, was from a very attractive woman with an interesting profile. In fact, I'd viewed her many times before, but never contacted her. I always thought that she must get dozens of emails a day, and I didn't want to be just another message in her inbox that she'd probably ignore. I would still view her profile on occasion, but more out of boredom than anything else. There tend to be so few new profiles on these sites that you wind up clicking on the same profiles over and over. Sometimes the pickings at any given time are so slim that you view a pretty face you've seen already just to see a pretty face.

Anyway, here was this attractive woman emailing me of her own volition. I figured she must be so tired of being inundated with lame pick up lines that she's taking the initiative to email a nice guy whose profile she likes. Good for her, I thought. Here's a woman who knows what she wants and goes for it.

I was already picking out a place for us to go on our first date when I read her email: "Stop viewing me. U R creeping me out."

She could have at least said, "PLEASE stop viewing me. U R creeping me out."

I'LL GLADLY PAY YOU FRIDAY FOR $200 TODAY

Last night I spoke to a woman who wanted to borrow money. This wasn't a friend, relative, or even an acquaintance. It was a woman I'd met online only hours earlier. Surely this was some sort of confidence scheme originating from West Africa or Russia, you might be thinking. Perhaps this person wanted me to send her a cashier's check, or wire the money to some untraceable account in Nigeria? Nope. This woman is from the Upper West Side...and she wanted her money NOW. In cash. She assured me she'd pay me back on Friday, if I could meet her on 76th and Broadway with $200. I don't know what irritated me more. The audacity of asking a total stranger for money, or the fact that she expected me to trek clear across town at 10 o'clock at night. What kind of a scam artist doesn't even have the courtesy to come to your building? What's with people these days?

When I asked why she needed the money so urgently, she said it was "personal." I tried to press her for more details since there was nothing good on TV, and I needed to be entertained. She wouldn't tell me why she needed the cash, but she said if I came immediately with the money that we could go for coffee after.

"REALLY?," I replied giddily, "We could go for coffee?"

"Sure, why not?," she said, "You seem cool."

"I'm jumping in a cab right now," I told her.

"Okay. If you could bring the money in twenties that would be great," she said as I hung up.

By 10:30, I saw her online again. I don't understand this woman. She couldn't wait for me? We were supposed to have coffee.

THE GEEK ZONE

Had lunch date yesterday with bachelorette number...well, who knows anymore. I've lost count. Anyway, the lunch was pleasant enough and she looked even better in person than she did in her picture so no complaints there. As the busboy was clearing our table, she mentioned that she was having computer issues, and that she's been unable to connect to the internet since Friday afternoon. I know a thing or two about computers so I tried to give her some tips on what she should do to resolve the issue. Since she's fairly computer illiterate, nothing I was saying made the least bit of sense to her, and she asked if I could come over to her apartment and take a look at her computer. Needless to say, when an attractive woman invites me to her apartment, I go.

We get to her apartment, and I solve the problem in a matter of seconds. Her modem simply needed to be powered off and on. She becomes ecstatic, and goes on and on telling me how I saved her life, how she can't thank me enough, etc. Now when I say this woman was ecstatic, I mean it. She was borderline orgasmic that I got her internet connection to work again. So I'm thinking I'm golden. Here's an attractive woman whose apartment I'm in, showering me with praise. It's a guy's dream, right?

Just when I think the drought may be over, she hits me with, "I can finally email back that cute Jdate guy. I hope he doesn't get annoyed that it took me so long to respond." At this point I began to have an out of body experience, during which I saw myself turning into The Incredible Hulk. My eyes started to bulge, and I could almost hear myself telling her not to get me angry, that she wouldn't like me when I'm angry. As I experienced this altered state, all I could think is "SHE HOPES THE JDATE GUY ISN'T ANNOYED?!"

But instead of turning green and busting out of my clothes, I took a deep breath, went to my happy place, and told her there was one last thing I needed to do to make sure her computer worked properly. I then right clicked on her internet connection icon, clicked on "disable," and told her she was all set. She thanked me again and asked if she could call me if she had any more issues. She then giggled and told me how great it is to have her own personal geek squad. Clever chick, huh?... Did this girl not know we were on a date? I'm not sure what she was confused by - the part where we met on a DATING site or the part where I paid for lunch? Either way, I was now officially in the "geek zone," a status even more pathetic than the "friend zone." I didn't really respond to her request for future tech support, and I just told her I had to go.

Meanwhile, guess who left me three voicemails already? I hope Jdate guy appreciates what I did for him.

MET FANS NEED NOT APPLY!

Yes, women actually write things like that in their profiles. Are the pickings so plentiful on dating sites that women can now afford to disqualify men because of the baseball teams they support? Personally, I've never dated a woman who knew the difference between a touchdown and a home run, but apparently there are die hard Yankee fans out there that won't date me simply because I like the Mets. If you're that obsessed with a sports team that you won't date an opposing team's fan, dating probably shouldn't be your first priority. Getting a refill for your Thorazine prescription should.

I suppose many of these women pretend to be sports fans because they think that's what guys want. It's not. I don't know of any guys who sit around wishing they could meet a woman who knows how to figure out a batter's slugging percentage.

Maybe they think they're being cute. They're not.

Regardless of the motivation, though, why potentially alienate a guy over something so arbitrary as his loyalty to a baseball team? Aren't there better things over which to disqualify a man? Like say...his name? I actually read the profile of a woman who refuses to date guys named Michael. She once had a bad experience with a guy named Michael, and she's now imposing a ban on all men with that name...and that's actually the least psychotic portion of her profile.

I think I have more respect for the woman who wrote, "I'm hot so don't contact me if you're ugly." There's at least some logic in that thinking. And, hey, if she doesn't respond to my email, at least I'll know it's not because I'm a Met fan.

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME

For the past couple of weeks I've been playing phone tag with a woman I'd gone out with recently. We had two decent, albeit very quick dates, and I was planning on asking her out for a third. The other day I finally got her on the phone and asked her out. As soon as I did, she started to hem and haw, and I knew right away there would be no date number three. I'm not the type of guy who needs an explanation about why a woman doesn't want to go out with me after only a date or two. The fact that she's not interested is more than enough for me, but this woman actually gave me the "It's not you, it's me" line. It was completely unsolicited, and I accepted it for what it was - a clichéd blow off line. I tried to politely extricate myself from the conversation, knowing I'd never see this woman ever again, but she kept going. What should have been a five minute phone call turned into a forty five minute therapy session, during which this woman completely redefined the term "over share."

During the course of the conversation, I learned that she tried to jump of a roof at the age of 14, that she enjoys being urinated on, if it’s with the right guy, and that she only gets periods four times a year.

All this in response to, "Wanna catch a movie?"

This chick is either so determined not to go out with me again that she’ll go to extreme lengths to convince me she’s insane, or she actually is insane. I vote for “all of the above.”

The upside is that either way you look at it, it really is her, not me!