The perfect man

Design-your-own boyfriends lack that certain something. Until they don't. A short story.

Lauren McLaughlin

Read more: Technology & Business, Dating, Artificial Intelligence

May 30, 2006 | Martin was a mouth breather. Jim lacked ambition. Rennie's head was too big. Craig licked my face like a dog.

But Pritchard. Pritchard is everything I want. And I'm not going to apologize about the way I met him. Especially not to my friends still slugging it out on LovePlanet.com. I did LovePlanet. Seventy-four dates with sixty-two men. You know what I learned? People lie. Sylvester was fifty-five, not thirty-five. Jacob was an unemployed bartender with halitosis, not a financial planner with a beach house. I admit I lied about my weight. All women lie about their weight.

But I can laugh at all of this now because I am off the roster. I am no longer "out there," as they say. And I didn't have to lower my standards or search outside my geographic region either. What I had to do was stop searching and start designing. That's right. I designed my boyfriend. I'm a busy woman. I don't have time for the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys the world keeps throwing at me.

Enter AI4U, top-of-the-line virtual-companion designers. No, they're not cheap, but get real, they're custom-designing your boyfriend. If it's cheap I'm not interested. Granted, he's a Web-based AI, not a flesh-and-blood man. So what? This isn't about sex and anyway, the physical part of a relationship always fades eventually.

The design process is easy. First step: Pick a physical template. A youth squandered on Monty Python reruns left me with a full-blown kink for English guys, so I chose a template called "Nigel" -- think Michael Palin crossed with Laurence Olivier. Then, to assure he didn't look overdesigned, I clicked the "random factor" option to introduce "lifelike imperfections."

As for Mr. Dreamboat's personality, I had two options: I could allow AI4U to mine my Web habits, construct a psychological profile, and design my boyfriend's personality to match. Or I could tell them in one hundred words or less exactly what I wanted. I chose the latter. I'm no privacy freak, but I didn't want someone spying on my subconscious. Plus, when it comes to men, I know what I want. I don't need some faceless software shrink hypothesizing about it.

I began with a firm list of no-nos culled from the rogues' gallery of losers I'd dated over the years. Anyone bossy, intolerant, macho, repetitive, nosy, bookish, vain, foppish, anal, whiny, bipolar, fickle, sexist, nihilistic, or judgmental need not apply.

But I didn't want Mr. Dreamboat to be defined by negatives, so I dredged the muck of my romantic archives for desirable traits. They were scant. There was Peter's reliability. He said eight-fifteen, he meant eight-fifteen. James, despite the love handles and a wife in Greenwich, had initiative up the wazoo. Then there was Billy Sebert, who made me a papier-mâché model of his heart in sixth grade. That was sweet.

So on the plus side I had reliable, initiative-taking, and good with papier- mâché. That felt slim, so I added quick-witted, fun-loving, and emotionally balanced. For good measure I threw in the ability to rhyme at will, a passion for Shakespeare and an inexplicable love of the color orange. Why not, right? When I hit Send, a pop-up told me I'd hear from Mr. Dreamboat in forty-eight hours.

Exactly forty-eight hours later, I got the following e-mail:

Dear Lucy:

I hope you are well. If you're free Thursday night, I'd love to show you around my neighborhood. Just goggle in to the following link -- Pritchard_Booker.ai4u.com.

Cheers,

Pritchard

Reliable: check.

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