THE LOOK ON HER FACE SAID IT ALL

So there's this bar-and-grill restaurant in my neighborhood that's a terrific place to hang out. Upscale modern decor, great friendly staff. A little on the pricey side, but happy hour is great, especially on Fridays. Lately I've been visiting a couple of times a month to hang out at the bar for a couple of hours, and munch on a $7 quesadilla, or a $12 burger if I'm really hungry. And I've definitely become all too fond of those $5 Friday Happy Hour Maitais, which are actually better than most of the ones I've had in Las Vegas.

The crowd is always lively and friendly and I usually end up having an interesting conversation with somebody. The other night was a particularly interesting case in point.

Now, I have to preface this story with a couple of points of digression. The lead bartender at "The Grill" is a guy who used to work in HR at a large company in California, and he has so much familiarity with the software I'm currently working with that it's downright scary. So of course he's naturally become a sounding board for my tales of horror and woe.

In addition, the bar is set up in the middle of the restaurant, with two counters facing toward each other, and with the well, where the bartenders work, in the middle. The counter on one side has high chairs, and the floor level at the counter on the other side is a couple of steps higher, so it has these two-seater settees that are clearly designed for couples. I always pull up to a spot on the "chair" side, usually right in the middle, where I get to see the flat panel TV and watch the bartenders mixing their custom cocktails.

On this particular evening, it was hard to not notice the couple sitting directly across from me. The guy was about my age, and except for the fact that he had hair, he wasn't really any better looking than I was, in fact he had what appeared to be acne scars. He wasn't exactly ugly, but definitely not handsome.

The woman with him seemed really beautiful, at least at first. I was trying not to look real hard because it would have been rude. But as I was flipping through my newspaper it became hard to not notice how hot she was, since they were sitting directly across from me.

I didn't even really have that good a view of her, since she was turned to her side facing the guy most of the time. And it wasn't until she looked away from him for a moment to get something in her purse that I realized that she wasn't actually that beautiful at all. She was really just an average looking 40-year-old woman. Not fat or ugly by any means, but not exactly TV Weather Girl material either.

Now it was right about this time that another 40-ish woman came in and took the chair right next to me. She appeared to be a little on the weighty side, but she was definitely well-groomed and looked like she had just gotten off work. So she orders a glass of wine and asks the bartender when the USC game is going to be on, and, as I'm usually wont to do when I'm hanging out at The Grill, I strike up a conversation with her. CBS was right in the middle of March Madness, so of course I had to ask Gary (our bartender dude), if UNLV was still in it and when they would be on, and this eventually launched my bar neighbor and I into a discussion about the remaining teams in the tournament, about which I actually knew or cared nothing. It was really just a vehicle for striking up a friendly conversation.

Turns out she went to USC, and our bartender Gary went to UCLA, so they were both keeping tabs on how well their teams were doing. Turned out she actually knew more about basketball and the NCAA than lots of guys I know. And of course she was really rooting for USC to win and UCLA to lose. As I began to converse with her, I got the clear impression that she was actually more masculine in temperament than a lot of guys I know.

But what really stood out about her was the expression on her face when she looked at me. Regardless of whether she or I was the person speaking, she consistently had this furrowed-brow, unsmiling, "who-the-hell-are-you-you-little-worm" expression which pretty much told the whole story of what was really going on with her.

And it wasn't like I was being rude or boorish either. In fact, I had my most open, friendly, engaging attitude, on full display, the entire time. But it was almost as if I had put her off by having the audacity to speak to her at all in the first place. She was literally looking at me as though I was an errant employee who had been called into her office for some kind of disciplinary action.

Which kind of brings us, in a roundabout way, back to the woman that was sitting across from us. Because it was at some point during the discussion with my neighbor that I began to realize what it was that was making that woman across from me appear so attractive: it was the unmistakable and conspicuously sexy way she was looking at the guy.

So there wasn't anything about her natural physical appearance that made her so attractive. It was that my-god-I-can't-wait-to-rip-your-clothes-off-and-suck-your-cock expression on her face that made her appear so hot that I literally couldn't take my eyes off her. And the contrast between that expression, and the expression my neighbor had on her face, could not have been more striking.

Now at a younger age, I might have taken an experience like this really personally and really hard. But the wisdom of advancing years has taught me that in this particular instance, the problem wasn't on my side. And it wasn't as if I was expecting her to look at me the way that other woman was looking at that other guy. After all, we had just met and I we didn't even know each other's names. But it certainly wouldn't have broken her face to crack a smile.

Although I did notice that her expression seemed to brighten considerably when was speaking to Gary, our bartender, with whom she seemed to have already established a general rapport, but who wasn't particularly better looking than I was, even though he was younger than both of us, and who was also conspicuously married, and who was, after all, not exactly a corporate manager, or a lawyer...or a database programmer...or anything like that...

But I eventually realized that there was probably another explanation for this woman's demeanor, which had almost nothing to do with me, and almost everything to do with her. She clearly wasn't married, in fact she probably didn't have a man in her life at all. After all, if she was attached, she certainly would have made a point of mentioning it in some way, as other women I've talked to at bars have done (and which I actually appreciate; in fact, some of the husbands and boyfriends I've met have turned out to be pretty decent people too...just one more reason why The Grill is such a great place to hang out).

And she obviously wasn't the single working mom type either, because single working moms aren't spending Happy Hour hanging out at the The Grill at 6:30 on a Friday night. And I don't think she was a lesbian either: her girlfriend never showed up, and her cell phone didn't ring once during the entire two hours, so she never called. And besides, if this lady was gay, she wouldn't have been hanging out at The Grill, she would have been across town at The Flame.

No, the most likely explanation was that this woman was the end product of 30 years of post-modern feminism, convinced that she really didn't need a man in her life to be successful and happy. She had the demeanor of a woman who'd never met a man who was quite good enough for her. It's the only theory that explains a 40-ish woman showing up by herself at a bar on a Friday, having just come from the office, with a disposition and temperament that was more masculine than lots of guys I know, and looking at a perfectly decent looking man, in her age range, sitting right next to her and talking to her in a friendly outgoing manner, as though he were something she had just stepped in.

If I'd ever met a woman who could have used a real good hard fucking, she was it. And if she'd given the slightest indication that she was interested in that at all, it could have been hers for the asking. I guess Mr. Perfect never came along to sweep her off her feet. Evidently she didn't get the memo that Prince Charming was gay. Too bad, her loss.

Hope she's happy with her cat collection.

And PS, USC lost and UCLA won. Probably spoiled her whole weekend.

INTRODUCTION

Today I'm observing a major milestone. And this is the one of the two times in the year (the other being New Year's), that I like to take stock of where I am in life.

There are two things that most people probably think a man should have at this point in his life. One is his own home, and the other is a wife and kids. But right now I don't have either. And I can honestly say that I don't feel particularly bad about not having the former, and I don't at all regret not having the latter.

In terms of my career, I have the best job I've ever had in my life. If anyone had told me 10 or 20 years ago that I'd be doing what I do for a living today, I'd have been thrilled. And I have a level of security in my job that most people in my line of work would be glad to have. But I had to work my ass off going to night school to get where I am, and I had to make a couple of pretty radical and income-wrenching career changes along the way, changes that almost certainly would not have been available to me if I'd had the kind of mortgage and family obligations that lots of guys my age are stuck with.

I have to admit that the only real regret I have in my life is that I haven't saved more money. But I'm not exactly broke either, and I have no debts (not even a car payment), so I am in fact saving some money. And I certainly don't regret the fact that I didn't wait until I was 65 or older to start having some fun in life.

Right now I'm priced out of the housing market. Even if I were to put $100K down, I still don't have a high enough income on my own to qualify for a loan on anything that doesn't suck. But that prospect doesn't particularly worry me right now, because this is the worst possible time to try to get into the housing market anyway.

The insane run up in housing prices over the last five years has been fueled largely by people who were taking out option-ARM-type loans, so they could buy a preposterously overpriced house with 3 or 5 percent down, and no principle payments for the first five years or so, and where the loan was based on "self-reported" income, meaning that they could just report whatever monthly gross they wanted on their loan application. So of course, many of them probably lied.

And that doesn't even take into account the credit card debt that so many of these people have racked up.

People who bought $800,000 houses built 70 years ago, with next to no money down, and without really having the income to qualify for the loan, were gambling that the market was going to continue appreciating 25% every year, and that they'd be able to flip the property before the teaser period on the loan ran out and the principle payments started coming due.

But the insane housing inflation of the previous five or seven years is coming to an end. And now, those chickens are coming home to roost. In the fourth quarter of 2006, Notices of Default were up 146% over the same quarter in the previous year. And it looks to be just as high or higher in upcoming quarters. My guess is that in the next three or four years, a lot of the people who bought houses recently are going to be losing them.

So currently I'm living in a great little rental unit that's in a much nicer neighborhood than anything I'd ever be able to afford on my own in this market. But it's obviously imperative for me to start getting a lot more serious about saving money than I've been in the last few years, so that when the time comes, I'm ready.

Meanwhile, there are a few guys I know who were working as clerks at Tower Records back in the 1980s, when I was working as a clerk at Tower Records, who were still working as clerks at Tower Records when the company went bankrupt and liquidated late last year. And so today, those guys are unskilled, uneducated, have no experience outside of retail clerking, and are now facing unemployment when they're pushing 50.

And while I'm on the subject:

By the time my dad was my age, he was divorced, broke, unemployed, and living with his mother. But he probably thought it was worth it to get free from my mom.

One of my best friends from high school married a woman who decided she loved crystal meth more than she loved her family. It took him years and cost him everything he had to get free from her and get custody of his kids, both of whom are pretty messed up because their mom was such a train wreck she made Britney Spears look rational and sane by comparison. And then he got laid off from the only real job he's had for the last 25 years. And on top of all that he never bothered to go to college.

And so today, my old high school buddy is divorced, broke, unemployed, uneducated, with two emotionally disturbed daughters on his hands, and living with his mother.

And one of my friends from college, who was married for ten years to his high school girlfriend, came home from work one day to have his wife sit him down and tell him, "Ken, I've been having an affair with Louise. I've found a woman who satisfies me in bed better than you do. So I want a divorce, and I want you to move out and leave our joint credit card open so I can rack up a bunch of debt on it and blow your credit rating to hell." Well, that's not exactly what she said, but that is the essence of what actually happened.

I, on the other hand, have managed to dodge a lot of bullets.

There was Karen, who was just looking for another guy to get her pregnant so she could have a second fatherless kid and another potential income source from this new sperm donor.

There was Jenny, who couldn't wait to go out with me so that she could spend the entire evening telling me all about how she missed her really rich, successful ex-boyfriend who had dumped her because she'd been diagnosed as a manic depressive and just couldn't seem to find the right medication.

And then there was Linda, who was over 30 and unmarried, but who really wanted a baby. So she decided that the next guy she could get her hands on who was handsome enough to knock her up was going to be the father, so she hooked up with some bartender, got what she wanted out of him, and then started shopping around for some other guy with a better job to support her for the rest of her life, which is when she started hitting on me. It took me a couple of dates to figure out what was really going on with her, and when I wouldn't go out with her any more after that, she started going around to some of my friends and co-workers and asking if I was gay.

So while it's true that there are a lot of guys my age who are a lot better off than me, it's also true that there are probably a lot of guys my age who wish they were me.

Physically, I'm in the best place I've ever been in my life. My career is going well. And I'm starting to discover that I'm actually pretty sociable.

So I've decided to try something adventurous.

First, I'm going to get a vasectomy to inoculate myself against women with baby rabies.

Then, I'm going to try dating again for the first time in about six years.

I imagine that a lot of people will think that what I'm about to do is insane. After all, if there really were some eligible women out there who were interested in meeting a guy like me, I'd be meeting them already.

But I'm going to go ahead and try my luck on e-Harmony and Match.com just to see what happens.

And I'm not going to be particularly picky either. I'll probably be willing to meet any woman who isn't fat or ugly, and who isn't a mental case, and who's life isn't a train wreck and who's willing to talk to me. Oh, wait, I forgot, that probably eliminates about 99.9% of single women in their 40s.

In fact, this blog is going to be a chronicle of those experiences. It will be the story of the ongoing battle between the two halves of my brain. The foolishly naïve optimist in me wants to believe that there should be lots of women in their 40s who would be delighted to meet a 50-year-old single guy who is physically fit, has a good steady job, hasn't fathered any illegitimate kids, hasn't been through any messy divorces, and isn't in hock up to his forehead in alimony and child support payments.

But then, the pragmatic realist takes over and remembers that women are so addicted to drama and turmoil and trouble that they actively seek it out, and that most middle-aged women are probably disappointed when they meet a single guy in their age range who doesn't have any of that baggage and whose life isn't at least as much of a train wreck as their own.

And the foolishly naïve optimist wants to believe that any single woman over 40 would be thrilled to have any man pay any kind of sexual attention to her at all. But then the pragmatic realist takes over again and remembers a recent survey which found that the average amount of time that women between the ages of 18 and 53 would be willing to go without sex in exchange for a whole new wardrobe, is 15 months.

So if all I end up learning from these experiences is that women in their 40s are just as self-centered and short sighted as they were in their 20s and 30s, except that now they've put on 30 or 40 pounds and have even more of an entitlement mentality, then I will simply have confirmed that staying single really was the right decision all along.

And I do have a history of having several false starts whenever I try something new in life, so I expect to have several of those before I see any sign of success.

So tune in to this blog from time to time, and read about all the false starts: the wack jobs, the cows, the nut bars, and the train wreck addicts.

The purpose of this blog will be to chronicle those stories.