I had found the Holy Grail of sex. I was about to join a select group of crusaders who had conquered the noblest aspiration of Man: two women. But this was not the guilt-tainted pleasure of an adolescent, basement wank. It was the real thing, freely offered. And not by some girl whose face would turn your penis to parsley. My girlfriend (let's call her Stacy) was a stripper -- a beautiful stripper who worked one of Los Angeles' most upscale clubs. She had bronzed skin, a smattering of Middle Eastern genes, muscular arms that could throw you onto the bed and effortlessly pin you down while she did all the work and the best breasts money could buy. They weren't the spine-bending, gargantuan tumors featured in the pages of low-end skin mags, but the well-crafted art of a modern-day Rodin who could use his scalpel to reify the divine. They were the kind of tits you want to stick your head in between and shake it from side to side while saying "Brrrrruuuummpppkys!"

And I could be assured that whoever she brought home would be similarly astounding. When I met Stacy I had been in Los Angeles for six months, a 30-year-old English professor overwhelmed by the city's generous bounty of beautiful babes. As those months went by, I began to see that L.A. really does deliver on its clichés: 1) In Los Angeles, if you're old, short, balding and look like you're suffering from a flesh-eating virus but drive a Mercedes convertible, you're sexy; 2) if you're a tall, young, good-looking professor with a full head of hair but you drive a Honda Civic, forget it.

After kissing a doorman's ass for half an hour to win the privilege of bribing him to let you then pay again to actually get into the hip bar of the week, I would suddenly feel like a pimply 15-year-old nerd in a room crowded with nubile young cheerleaders. These girls' handbags cost more than I made in a month. I felt like they could smell my negative net worth.

It seemed to be a world I could never be a part of. So what's a guy to do when he's new to a big city and having trouble meeting girls? I tried the personals. One woman was real cute -- until she smiled and I saw her teeth were so yellow they looked gangrenous. Another spent the entire night complaining about her alcoholic ex-husband who still dropped by every now and then to sleep off his load on her couch.

I tried online dating. Don't trust the photos. One of my dates had looked reasonably attractive in her digitized picture, but when I met her she turned out to be shaped like a mango from the neck down. We passed away a couple of hours at the bar. She babbled interminably about crap in her life. She spent half the time telling me about her goal to become a real estate agent. She seemed to believe that this "ambition" was as noteworthy as if she were making a run for president. I tried a couple of times to interject a comment or anecdote of my own. She didn't even register the fact that I had said anything. As soon as I'd finish, she would pick up where she had left off: "Anyway, as soon as I get my real estate license I'm going to ..."

I giggled softly to myself as I sucked down my drink a bit faster.

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