Counterparts and Collusion (how to find a date without a shoe fetish - part 3)

How To Find A Date Without A Shoe Fetish - Part 3

This is the third installment in the series ‘How To Find A Date Without A Shoe Fetish.” If this is your first foray into this hub you may wish to start with the original title.” 

 

“So - there’s something we’ve been meaning to tell you,” my friend Jody dropped casually. She had just uncorked another bottle and was filling our glasses with more of the exquisite Pinot Noir we had been sipping for a better part of the evening, and I was feeling good. Too good to suspect any subterfuge. Until I looked up and saw it. That look. The one that hinted that that she was up to ‘no good’- the one that made me slightly queasy. I knew it all too well. Trouble was in the air. I quickly glanced over at Ilene, who was sporting her best poker face, the one she had taken to an art form, generally reserved only for the toughest boardroom meetings, but while she nonchalantly took a bite out of another cracker with Brie, my antennae were doing the Merengue, the soundtrack in my head reverberating “dah nah, dah nah” to the rhythm of Jaws. Something was definitely up.                                                                                                                         “What?” I asked, curious but wary. We were seated poolside at Jody’s hillside home on a fabulous southern California night, all the rough edges lubricated away by an unsavory amount of alcohol, when Ilene unceremoniously reached down and pulled out her laptop. She set it on the cedar table in front of us. “OK, so don’t be mad,” Jody prefaced carefully. The panic slowly crept in. “About what?” I urged. 

“Well –“ 

“We created a profile for you,” Ilene interjected abruptly like she was pulling off a band-aid. There was a pause as I squinted momentarily with confusion. They were both looking at me like Wiley Coyote seeking cover after he had just pressed down on the detonator and was waiting for the dynamite to go off, only the event had failed to occur. 

“A profile?” I questioned, shaking my head slowly with incomprehension.  What were they talking about? And what was I supposed to be mad about?

“On Counterparts,” Ilene added, both of them cringing once more as they waited with apprehension.  I looked at Jody and she briefly nodded at me, hesitantly, as if prompting the inevitable response. 

“You–did–WHAT?” I suddenly bellowed, hit by the full force of what they had just revealed.  “Shit.  SHIT!  I was up on my feet now, pacing in horror, suddenly squealing and shaking my wrists with dreadfulness like I had just been slimed by a creepy-crawler. 

“No, this is a good thing,” Jody tried. “Really.  Then turning to Ilene, “She cussed. She cussed. She never cusses.” 

“I know,” Ilene responded in wonderment. 

“Well this seems like a darn good occasion to start!” I bellowed once more. “What were you thinking?” 

“You’re going to thank us once you get over the initial shock,” Ilene quickly recovered and perked up with authority. 

“She will, won’t she? “ Jody agreed as they nodded at one another in unison.

“Definitely.” 

I was staring at them dumbfounded.  It had finally happened. It was true. The world had truly gone mad.  The apocalypse had arrived.

“Wait until you see it,” Ilene declared proudly, now eagerly opening the laptop. “We did a great job. It’s magazine worthy. We didn’t even have to Photoshop it.”

“Totally fabulous,” Jody agreed.

My jaw was still hanging open.  They had posted my picture… On the Internet. This was it. I now had a profile. I was now officially ‘posted.’  On a bulletin board, hunting for dates!  Lure! That’s what I was. Mutton, bait, meat - subject matter for leering, lascivious eyes - number 44092 – my mug all over cyberspace. A criminal record was now more appealing. “Oh God,” I moaned painfully, sinking back to the chaise in dismay. ”Why didn’t you just write my name and number on the bathroom wall? It would have been more discreet.”

Don’t you even wanna know what you said?” Ilene prompted excitedly, completely unfazed by my cataclysmic take.

“Just shoot me now. Put me out of my misery,” I murmured in a daze.

“Oh, you’re gonna love it,” it was Jody’s turn to spew enthusiasm. “You’re gonna be the hottest thing since sliced bread.  You should see how many responses you already have.”

“Why do people always say that?” my words drifted out in a stupor – “I don’t want to be bread.”  I suddenly stopped, her last words penetrating my daze. “Responses? Shit!”

She’s doing it again,” Jody said.

“I know,” Ilene shook her head in amazement.

“Well maybe you should add that to my profile! Curses like a drunken sailor! And ‘responses?’ What responses? How long exactly have I been out there?”

They looked at one another, considering the matter. “What is it, four days or so?” Jody offered.  “Yeah, that sounds that’s about right,” Ilene agreed.

I was officially homicidal.

To be continued…     © Copyright 2008.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Best Sex Is All In Your Head Anyway (how to find a date without a shoe fetish - part 2)

                                           How to Find A Date Without A Shoe Fetish’ - Part 2

This is the second installment in the series ‘How To Find A Date Without A Shoe Fetish.’ If this is your first foray into this blog, you may wish to read the original title first.

“I’m a member,” my friend Ilene offered matter-of-factly, barely pausing long enough to look up from her plate as she continued to eat her salad with relish. “Mmm. This is so good,” she raved,” as if the bomb she had just dropped meant nothing. “Are these dried cranberries or cherries?” she inquired, clearly oblivious to my bewilderment.

Taken aback momentarily, I promptly shook myself out of my fleeting stupor. For a second she almost had me going. “No you’re not”, I countered.
“I am,” she insisted. “I’m a veteran.” I choked on my drink, spraying a mouthful of berry smoothie all over the table. “Are you alright?” she asked. She filled my glass with more chilled lemon-water from the glass carafe on our table, and then eagerly went back to her organic salad. I sipped from it, and was just about to take the bait, when I stopped myself. No way. I wasn’t falling for this. 
“Right,” I said, joining in on the gag.
“Aren’t you?” she asked. Something about her expression made me pause. Surely she wasn’t serious? “The sex is fantastic,” she stated simply. 

Ilene was the editor-in-chief of a trendy, home-design magazine, and she had just flown into L.A. from NY for an important photo shoot for the next issue’s cover. They were doing a spread on a real-estate-obsessed, Hollywood celebrity’s latest home renovation - the most recent purchase in a series of compulsive home-hopping, but surely not their last. We were lunching in a bustling café on N. Robertson, chowing down on typical oh-so-healthy, California organic fare, catching up, when searching for commaraderie, I told her about Jody’s new online-dating venture. The last thing I expected was a casual declaration that she too was a proud card-carrying member of an online-dating site.

“Get outta here,” I said. This chic fashonista, a powerhouse of a woman, well known in the publishing and design worlds, on Find-Me-A-Soulmate? I could just see it now - “Prominent, divorced, forty-something, NY hottie, looking for Mr. McDreamy to share candlelit dinners, sunsets, and walks on the beach with. Oh, and no roommates please (that includes parents) …”

OK, I’ll bite, I thought. “So what picture did you use for your profile,” I asked, playing along.                                                                                                                
“Well at first I was a little skittish about the whole thing, you know how it is - so I didn’t use any. But then you quickly learn that no one responds unless they know what you look like, so I used the one from my editor’s page - you know, the headshot?” I stopped dead in my tracks, just inches away from the next bite out of my pita sandwich. “Well don’t look at me that way!” she said rather defensively. “You have to sell yourself you know. Hey, I’m competing with photo-shopped versions out there! It’s tough.”

Unable to contain it any longer, I finally burst out laughing. The idea of her shopping for men this way was just too preposterous. “It’s not so bad,” she said. “Look, I’ll show you.” I realized just in time she that was only talking about the picture. Without batting an eye, she quickly pulled out her Blackberry and logged onto the webpage. There she was in full color - airbrushed to perfection. “I have a profile on My Space too,” she added. “All this Web 2.0 stuff is just so fabulous you know - the social networking - so many opportunities.”

“But…Why…How-?” I stammered. I couldn’t get my head around it. Was I the only one who thought this online thing was just a tad outrageous? Had the whole world suddenly gone crazy - all my middle-aged friends falling prey to such lonesomeness they were suddenly driven to total cyber madness, or was I really that out of it? “But you go to so many parties, meet so many amazing people, have so much access,” I said. “What about your professional status, and safety? Aren’t you ever worried?” 
“Oh darling, where have you been? It’s a brave new world out there. Everybody’s online. Who do you think is responding? No one has time for live dates anymore. This is so much more efficient. And the sex? - it’s fabulously dirty. I have met more scrumptious men this way than I could ever hope to meet at any event or party. Of course, there is the occasional creep. And then there are the married ones… Oh, and then there is the occasional gay guy, you know, just experimenting. But one doesn’t really have to worry about any of that. This opens a whole new world of possibilities.”
“Sex?” I repeated.
“Well of course,” she said. “That is where all good dates lead eventually, isn’t it? Only you don’t have to deal with the snoring and morning breath, any awkward exchanges - worry about coffee in the morning if it didn’t work out, or change the sheets after. It’s all very tidy. And after all, the best sex is all in the head anyway, isn’t it?”

Was it? Was I really the only forty-something single person living in the dark ages? And was sex online - whatever that meant - really that fantastic? How did one even get there! My head was reeling. And what about intimacy, romance, love? Was there still such a thing? Two fallen friends in one week…. Was this where it was all leading - was I next, I wondered? To be continued… ©Copyright 2008

 

 

Looking For Work May Be The Hardest Job You Will Ever Have

If you are fresh out of college and embarking on your first serious job hunt, you may have already encountered that first major hurdle more experienced job-hunters know all too well - the frustrating but common catch-22: employers often require experience before they will hire you.

“But how do I get any if no one will take me on?” you ask. And that is a quandary that, unfortunately, many face more than once in the course of their professional lives. Because believe it or not, that challenge isn’t limited only to the novice. Making a career change later in life can often raise similar issues - but we’ll get to that in a moment.

When you are first starting out, perhaps the most important thing you can do is simply not get discouraged. Be utterly tenacious. Don’t take anything too personally. That’s not to say you shouldn’t learn from the process. Accept constructive criticism and heed good advice when you get it. But develop a thick skin too. Because there’s bound to be some unwarranted rejection. Keep pounding the sidewalks. Relentlessly if you must. Knock on doors unremittingly until someone finally takes a shining to you, because eventually they will. That’s a guarantee. Even if it takes longer than you expected or really hoped for.

In the beginning, sometimes it’s not as important to get the perfect job as it is just to ‘get in.’ Your first goal should be just to get your foot in the door. Then, once you’re there, you can knock their socks off - make them fall in love with you - get to know the right people, make new friends, and eventually get where you need to go.

When it comes to looking for work, tenacity is good advice no matter what stage of your career you are in. In fact, when you are older, sometimes the challenges become a lot tougher, because surprisingly and paradoxically, then rather than value your experience, HR people frequently start to hold it against you. Unfortunately recruiting professionals sometimes get hung up on industries or titles — use it as a reason to see you as someone who only fits one kind of position, and who cannot be shaped or molded into something different. They pigeon-hole you, typecast you based upon what you have already done, rather than appreciate how your skills might transfer to a new category. Suddenly your experience isn’t an asset, instead you are an ‘old dog who can’t learn new tricks’, which is ironic and frustrating.

If you are a marketing professional who came from the beverage industry, does that mean that you can’t market shoes, or even oil and gas - maybe work in the entertainment arena? If you are innovative, creative, and analytical - a person who had all the skills to make a go of it in one place, why wouldn’t that transfer to a new position? If you can write, you can write about anything. If you are a designer who understands space and aesthetics, but worked in the publishing industry, does that mean you can’t work in film, or develop legal presentations? Of course not. But you need to be prepared for the harsh reality that the employment world sometimes has an annoying need to typecast people for their own comfort - see you in way they can more easily understand, rather than as an amorphous abundance of creativity or experience that carries over and translates into another arena. And, if you have more than one kind of experience, watch out, because then they really don’t know what to do with you. Ironically, the more diverse your experience, sometimes the more challenging it can be. So keep in mind, it might be up to you to bring the pros around, shed light on your abilities, and lend coherence to the applicability of your skill set to a new position.

Don’t be surprised if this is hard to accomplish. Sometimes no matter how good a job of this you do, not everyone will have the vision to see what you need them to. A friend of mine is a talented communications and marketing professional, but also an attorney. She has worked in both arenas and finds that the skills are actually very complementary. Many of the same writing, research, analytics, and creative abilities enter both worlds in parallel - whether one is designing a campaign or taking a case before a jury. But in a recent job search an HR person actually said to her: “Are you a lawyer or a marketing person? Make up your mind. You can’t be both.”

The HR sector clearly needs to broaden its horizons - break away a little from their very rigid laundry lists. So often a job description somewhat arbitrarily requires two years of one thing, and three of another - as if life were a perfect formula. And what’s more, employers demand this - rigidly adhere to the criteria in their search, often to the exclusion of very talented and qualified individuals who may actually contribute a new perspective and bring something fresh to the table - offer a whole new outlook.

Whatever your situation, whether you are just starting out, or are highly experienced and making a career change midlife, just remember - be creative in how you present yourself. If an HR person isn’t imaginative enough to see how your skills transfer - can’t immediately see how delivering pizzas in high-school might be relevant to a corporate customer-service position post college, lay it out for them. Show them the parallels, make them see how the two jobs relate. If you can’t do so in person, this is where crafting an amazing cover letter comes in to play. Take the time to do that much. It can be invaluable. They may not always read it, but then they may. And all it takes is one person. ©Copyright 2008

Executing The Job Interview:

The Interview Questions:

 Job Interview (humorous):

How To Find A Date Without A Shoe Fetish

“I’m quitting,” my freshly divorced friend ceremoniously announced. “That’s it! I’m going to pull out of this silly race while I still have a scintilla of self-esteem intact.”

“No you’re not,” I retorted. “Quitting is not permitted. You’re just having a bad day. You’re blood sugar’s low. You’re hormonal. Go have a double cappuccino or a gargantuan Coke-Slurpee” (my fix for everything lately.) “You have to be patient,” I then offered more gently -”not set these impossible deadlines for finding someone. It doesn’t work that way.”

Stylish, urbane, and youthful both in her appearance and demeanor, my friend Jody had just ended a twenty-seven-year marriage to a man, and decided to come out of the closet at the tender age of fifty. “It’s now or never,” she reasoned. And attractive, looking more like thirty-five than her true age, next she decided to take life by the horns and put herself out there for the first time since her early twenties. “I signed up for one of those Internet matching sites,” she suddenly declared one day. “You did what?” I asked, stunned. “Well how else does a clean-cut, honest, successful woman meet other single eligible women in a huge metropolis these days?” she demanded.

And how did they, I wondered. Was this really the only way? A new arrival in L.A. myself, and single, she suddenly gave me pause. I hadn’t really faced the dating issue yet. I was still too busy bemoaning the impossible traffic, and adjusting to the fact that my grocery bill had doubled. But she got me thinking, “How do people meet?” Gay, straight or otherwise, how does one find a date in a new city, especially when you’re no longer thirty-something? Was online dating really the only answer? It was hard for singles everywhere, I knew. But I considered my friend’s predicament. Slender, beautiful and exotic, she was the Lucy Liu of gay women. And still, for a successful, beautiful, gay woman - middle-aged- it had to be a hundred times harder. It’s not like she could join a church group, or hang out in the frozen-foods section at Whole Foods and flirt with a hunky guy on a Saturday morning - employ one of those pick-up strategies one reads about in Cosmo. And does that ever really ever work anyway? I mean who does that? Anyone?

Would I be posting my picture on the web next, I wondered - subjecting myself to God-knows-what-kind-of-freaks out there - someone sitting halfway across the world, pretending to be normal, and ogling my picture, while reading my profile without any underwear on? Maybe someone in prison! Would I soon be reduced to writing one of those canned descriptions, I thought - the kind where you try to sum up who you are in five pre-set categories - the sort that allocates space for only two-hundred-and fifty words or less each? I could just see it - Favorite TV shows…. C-SPAN and Charlie Rose of course. Diet… I keep it healthy. Vegetarian. No junk. Never mind that I gorge on Malomars in front of the TV while watching “The Bachelor.” Who’s gonna be impressed by that? And that is after all what it’s all about right - impressing? I mean, you only have one page in which to sell yourself. And the competition is stiff! “This is your sexual resume,” my friend said. “It’s no time to be modest! There’s no space!”

So what were these profiles like, I wondered. The ads on TV made it sound like these sites had it down to a science. Finding your soul mate’s just a matter of taking some personality tests, and then it’s happily-ever-after, they seemed to promise. So, I decided to investigate - take a look. I logged on and read a few samples….

“I am honest, sensitive - love long walks on the beach and candlelit dinners…” After the sixth one, ‘All of you, I wondered?’ So how come you’re not dating each other? After a while it was rather remarkable too, I thought, how none were alcoholics, or even smokers. They all exercised at least three times a week, drank only socially or never, which, unless they were all gay Mormons, kinda defied the odds, I reasoned, didn’t it? No one ate any junk food - everyone ate “healthily.” (That explains the rate of obesity in this country.) Oh, and none wanted you to have any emotional baggage either. “No drama please,” was the common phrase used, I believe. “I have had my share of that,” they stated. Dating and no drama? I pondered the likelihood. What alternate universe are they living in, I wondered.

“So what kind of responses are you getting,” I asked my friend. “I told you. I am quitting,” she said. “If one more flannel shirt, mullet-sporting, golfer, who lives five-hundred miles away contacts me, I swear, I’m gonna hit something! I mean there have to be some normal, attractive, successful, mainstream woman out there, who just happen to be gay, don’t there? They can’t all be attending Sapphic poetry readings, on the golf course, watching women’s basketball, or marching at gay rallies. Where do I find someone like me?” she lamented. “I miss being held. Like a Rhesus monkey.”

Was there an answer? Was this virtual realm really a step up from bars, I wondered? Did the breadth of the pool really outweigh the glaring disadvantages? Or, however flawed, was there still something to be said about at least being in the presence of a live, breathing person? “C’mon, give it a chance,” I tried to sound encouraging. “Surely there are some nice people out there.” Maybe it was a mistake to approach this with immediate expectations for romance, I considered. Maybe the process was far more valuable. “Be open for now - just get your feet wet. Maybe meet up casually, make some new friends.”

“I have been trying to approach this casually, but despite my most valiant efforts, I keep slamming into a brick wall,” she insisted. “All I wanted was to go out on a few dates. Not even anything terribly serious. Just something to help me forget ‘The Cracked One,’ she said, referring to her first very painful foray into the single’s world. “Is that too much to ask?” “The Cracked One” was her moniker for a closet obsessive-compulsive film-editor, who as it turned out, also happened to have a slight shoe fetish, and despite just a few short weeks together had left her picking up the pieces. Ironically, they had actually been introduced through a friend. “I offered my heart and she readily bypassed it for a new pair of Manolo Blahnik’s,” Jody sardonically recounted. She still hadn’t recovered.

“I have a healthy self-perception, but it ain’t getting me anywhere these days,” she stated. Clearly being traded in for a pair of high-heels, however fabulous, could make anyone feel dejected. So what was the answer, I wondered? Where did an eligible, single, gay woman, or any clean-cut, mature, single person, meet good people in a large city these days? Were there any options? I wondered… To be continued.

©Copyright 2008

Urban Shoe Myth:

 

Online Dating:

Herman’s Shoe Fetish: