Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

The computer's screen saver switches over to an electronically generated image of an astronaut space walking outside the international space station while the earth whizzes by below. The radio is playing Talking Heads "And She Was" and the unintentional choreography of the two has me running back to the kitchen to dig the last bit of no doubt surreptitiously placed hash on the pre packaged brownie I just called dessert.

Nope. Not to be. The Little Debbie people make a fine product that is fit for the entire family (in moderation) and the happenstance is entirely mine. I should have remembered a similar incident some years back. I had just bought my first new car. A foreign job VW that I was buzzing down the back roads of Pennsylvania on while on vacation at a B and B. I had a now defunct classical music station on and all of a sudden I was in a car commercial. My girlfriend was decked out in Donna Karan, I was handsome and composed, we lacked for nothing. Then I hit the main road, got stuck in traffic, went into a nicotine fit and she got bitchy looking for a bathroom that we were still miles away from.

Thanks Dr. Reality, I needed that.

But I didn't start this to talk about coincidence. I tried on line dating this week and I gotta tell you, this takes the cake.

I tried a popular, nationally advertised site. One that hooks you into a personality survey so long and involved it took me two nights to finish. I am not slow. But I'm also so not involved with myself that I get bored talking about me. I'd rather talk about you. But you never call, do you? Much less write.

This bunch of E-Yentas pride themselves on compatability. They trot out couple after successful couple, hooked into each other's arms, smiling like silly fools and telling the world how wonderful the other person is.

In other words, single guy hell. If I want that, I'll go to any mall in America. Hell, even the guys sitting under the anemic ficus outside J. Jill holding a handbag that clearly doesn't match their shoes are one up on me.

So I finish the personality survey, click enter, hold my breath. Apparently, an instantaneous email to my local psychiatric ward requesting a bed check has not gone out so there is hope. But I'm a realist. I don't expect page upon page of numbers to call with pictures to match like some perverse Sears catalog. No. I really expect a list of charges for membership depending upon participation levels that will give me reasons seventeen and twenty one why my ass isn't in front of a funky tequila laden drink in Key West somewhere.

But being The Caustic Bunny, I don't even get that.

I get an apology.

Sorry.

Happens every now and again.

You don't fit.

You don't match.

You are compatible with exactly, no one.

What the fuck?

Ok, look, this was a last resort. I've been trying. I've lost friends soliciting the numbers of the last single women they know. I'm pushing troubled marriages over the edge hoping to pick up a survivor or two. Hell, I don't know what I'm buying at the grocery store. I'm not watching the shelves.

But turned down by an on line dating service?

That's like a hooker saying no to the stack of century notes you're waving.

I was crushed.

But as we all know, today's tragedy is tomorrow's comedic fodder. After much discussion and reflection with my friend Dave I came up with the idea that I'm truly unique.

Just like everyone else.

But seriously. Think of the woman in my life. Anyone who can put up with me, that is to say, feign compatablity for a year has to consider having herself tested for exceptional ability and intelligence.

Either that or willable catatonia.

I'll pick up the dinner tab in either case.

Bunny on.