Salon | Unzipped

U N Z I P P E D +|+ C O U R T N E Y+W E A V E R

Sorry, Hamlet,
I have to wash my hair

INDECISIVE MEN LITTER THE DATING LANDSCAPE,
PISSING OFF WOMEN ACROSS AMERICA.

"what did I do?" Kevin asked me. "How come she won't call me back?" He had warily returned to the shark-infested dating waters, a month after his inamorata, Ms. Trouble, had dumped him, having found larger, more limitless checkbook balances to plunder. Kevin was trying -- "really trying!" -- to find a Meaningful Relationship. "It's time," he said to me. "Don't let anyone tell you that men don't have a biological clock."
"Is that right." I sprayed some more Easy-Off on a crusty mass embedded in the slots in the broiler. He was the perfect person to talk to while cleaning, since he never really listened to what I said and I only half heard what he said. We were comfortable with this arrangement.
"Tell me again the series of events," I said. "She was with Harriet, you ran into her again at the computer center, she'd given you change for the copy machine, you asked her out, you went out and now she doesn't return your call. Right?"
"Yes," he said, "I don't get it. We had a good time. I thought we did."
"Where did you go? What did you do?"
"Uh, some Mexican place. And then, I thought we were going to go to a movie. But then she said she had plans after dinner, so she left."
"Bad," I commented, "very bad. My advice to you is just forget it." I examined an unidentifiable crusty black ball that looked like a charred cherry, imagining this failed date. There this girl sat under the blinking colored lights, looking like a poor man's Christy Turlington (all Kevin's dates looked the same -- thin, brown hair, garbed in J. Crew, generically pretty), surrounded by serapes and mariachis, sipping a watered-down margarita as her eyes darted around the room. The eyes: that's how she'd give herself away, the glances at other tables, the close examination of the salt on the rim of her glass. All the signs were there if Kevin knew where to look.
Knowing Kevin, I had a feeling I knew what went wrong, but instead, I said, "I could ask Harriet, if you want to know what the deal is."

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