Page 503 - WhyAsInY

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spots a possibly suitable candidate. This she pulls out of the pile and holds up in the air at about eye level. She views the chicken from the front. She views the chicken from the back. She turns the chicken upside down. She spreads its wings. She spreads its legs. She holds its head and turns it left and right. Not satisfied but still interested, she repeats the entire process, this time running her hand over, squeezing, and smelling every conceivable part of the fowl. Finally, the aproned proprietor, exas- perated by this dance, can control himself no more. Slightly raising his cleaver, he turns to his customer and asks, rhetorically I’m sure, ‘Lady, could you pass that test?’”
That’s right. I couldn’t. So how do I come off (silently) insisting on a number of characteristics, some of which are undoubtedly superficial? Well, one answer might surprise you. Kresch told me that I was treating finding a woman in much the same way that I might treat buying stereo equipment. He thought that I had an apparently inexhaustible list of specifications that I used to disqualify, rather than to qualify, “candi- dates.” In the absence of any real person to whom I felt attracted, I had developed a picture of a model person who would never be found, and, in any event, if she existed, she certainly would want nothing to do with me. The lesson, naturally, is to let nature take its course. When you meet (as I did) the right person, you are not putting checkmarks on a list, you are drawn. So, shut up and enjoy it.
Anyway, that’s a great lesson in retrospect, but it takes us farther off the track. We were discussing the strategies that I employed to find that ideal woman. The first, as I said, was to accept “fix-ups.” The second was to pursue activities that I might like and that I thought would also be liked by women. This translated into a ski trip to Copper Mountain, where there was a Club Med, a number of bike trips, a return to the world of what I saw as seminars, and other activities, all with mixed results. The ski trip required me to ski to the level of a woman whom I met (very hard) and to pretend to sing the “Club Med Song,” complete with idiotic hand gestures (much harder). The “seminar” was a singles support group at the 92nd Street Y. That’s not actually the type of activ- ity that I was sure that I would enjoy, but, after all, the typical support
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