My muscles ache, sweat drips from my brow, and my fingers twitch. Am I crazy? Do I have PTSD? Why does every minute tick by, in fear, as I stare at my phone, terrified of what comes next? I’m living a Pavlovian nightmare, every time I hear it buzz my heart skips a beat.

If you want to blame the demise of traditional relationships on something, stop looking at gay marriage and start looking into Facebook and cell phones. I can guarantee that a sext message at 2 a.m. from some freaky girl you dated three years ago will put a raging halt to your relationship a lot faster than that lesbian couple down the street.

What is it about a woman that imbues her with an almost mystical sense of bad timing? Ever since I had pledged my eternal love to Sunshine they came crawling out of the woodwork, marching like ants, blowing up my phone at every inopportune moment. Ex-girlfriends, ex-lovers, one-night-stands, it didn’t matter. They all received the universal message that I was no longer available and in some spasm of self-deprecation they came hurtling across the universe to try and lodge me from my lofty perch. Even Hot Yoga Girl, MIA for eight months, was calling me on a weekly basis, leaving random and meaningless messages in the wee hours of the morning.

Why does this happen? And more importantly, what should a man do about it?

Sunshine had the answer. It was written in the furrow on her brow. It was written in the droopy lines of her pretty smile that vanished so prominently every time my phone went off. She wanted them gone. Forever. Hacked out. But was that the best answer? Some of them were people I cared about. I wasn’t about to cut somebody out of my life just because she felt threatened.

It was perfectly fine for her to have screaming arguments with her husband on the phone in the middle of our dinner. The sword upon which she threw herself was decidedly single-edged. I had to endure beneath the dour strain of a bitter divorce, but one text message to me from an old girlfriend would send her into a fit of paranoid suspicion. If her sword was single-edged, her standards were most definitely not.

Here’s the problem with all those ex-girlfriends: some of them genuinely deserve your attention, as friends, and as human beings. But some of them were crappy people and you need to let go. Just because she sent you a pic of herself in a thong at 3 a.m. doesn’t mean she’s worth hanging on to. In fact, it means she really isn’t.

Two things permit a man to keep those old girlfriends floating around: vanity and reality. Vanity; because we like to think that we’ve ruined her for all other men (we haven’t). Reality; because, how long is this current relationship really going to last? If it doesn’t, maybe that hot, crazy woman you used to date has suddenly become sane (she hasn’t).

Like smoking, getting rid of the ex-girlfriend habit was harder than it seemed. I ignored the desperate pleas for attention. I deleted them from my contacts. But they only tried harder. They were determined to sabotage my happiness. It was a conspiracy.

And let’s not overlook the fact that I was happy – I was in love with a gorgeous, brilliant woman who made me feel like I could do anything. I wanted no part of these old flames who were far too selfish or narcissistic to make me feel like Sunshine did.

But there it was, the pale LCD light shining on the nightstand. Buzz buzz. “I miss you…” (No she doesn’t). Buzz buzz. “I love you…” (Doubtful). It’s just a woman looking for attention from somebody that isn’t giving it to her.

Sunshine was there, next to me in bed, with her wicked, suspicious eyes. I’d done no wrong. I’d committed no sin. But it didn’t matter. I was on trial, and the jury was her deep-seated insecurity that was neither rational nor under any judicial instructions to weigh the merits of the case on actual fact. There is no way to reconcile lack of trust. Like a cult, it’s a belief system completely separate from reality.

I couldn’t eradicate my romantic past any faster than she could erase her marriage. It was piling up, like a snowball rolling down a mountain.

And like an avalanche, it requires only the tiniest of triggers to send a thousand pounds of snow crashing down on your head.

Who would have imagined that one little vibration from a phone could collapse an entire relationship?

Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.

In the Supreme Court case Jacobellis vs. Ohio, 1964, Justice Potter Stewart was pressed to define pornography. He answered that he could never intelligibly do so, but, he said, “I know it when I see it.”

Love is a lot like that. You can’t define it, but you know it when you feel it.  The problem with love and relationships is that it’s dangerous. Good sex and companionship can be pretty pleasant. Why bother with all that love crap if the other options are less difficult?

But love doesn’t like to play by those rules. You can create relationships. You can work on a relationship. Love is an occurrence. Love just happens. You don’t get to choose when or who.

Love happened to me at approximately Nov. 24, 8:30 p.m., at The Mondrian Hotel in Miami, Fla. The walls were dark granite and the showerhead was a waterfall nozzle that was built into the ceiling. There was a beautiful view of Miami Bay from behind the swimming pool, dotted with topless supermodels and twenty-dollar cocktails. The only thing that was missing was her.

Despite the plethora of actual sunshine, my Sunshine was not there. We had planned to go together to visit a relative for Thanksgiving, but she had to cancel the trip due to her divorce, which was getting uglier and uglier by the moment. When you find yourself in a beautiful place without the person want to be with, you suddenly realize how much you want to be with them. I was talking to her on the phone, and then it just happened.

“I’m in love with you.” I said it.

There was no hesitation, no concern, no butterflies in my stomach and – most importantly – no fear. It was simply a matter of fact. Love had arrived. And like Lady Gaga walking into a hair salon with a dress made out of meat, you just couldn’t deny its presence. Love had arrived and I felt the need to say it. I wasn’t looking for an answer. I wasn’t looking for her to love me back. I just needed her to know it.

There was a silence across the phone line. A fraction of a second after I realized I had actually said those words I came upon a second, far more startling realization that I had never said them to anyone before. Just a fraction of a second after that I was led to the even more shocking conclusion that I had never really been in love with anyone before.

I’d been infatuated, enamored, enthralled, engaged, engorged and enthused, but I had never been in love.

Of course I’d had many girlfriends, and one ex-wife. I’d said I loved them – after numerous arguments and mock break-ups, and the constant driving force of their supposed love for me made me say it out of deference, out of fear, out of a deep-seated need to end the relationship discussion immediately and forever. But I don’t think I had ever really meant it. It had simply been rote. I had merely said it because I was supposed to.

“I love you, too.” Her words, like her smile, poured across the phone line as bright as her moniker. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might not have loved me back. It hadn’t mattered, because the event of love was not something that demanded it back.

But where did we go from there?

The answer was not simple. We were already in a relationship. But it was a secret relationship. We couldn’t openly show our affection at work. We couldn’t move in together. We couldn’t get married. We could only stand there, across the thousand miles of distance and wonder exactly where things could go.

William Burroughs once compared love to heroin because it makes you feel really, really good at first, but then it makes you feel really, really bad. He preferred heroin to love, however, because, as he so blithely pointed out, “there’s an endless supply of heroin.”

Is there a limited supply of love? Is there an endless supply of love, but a limited supply of people who will love you? Or is the feeling of love, much like the feeling of heroin, brief and fleeting? What the hell is love, anyway? Will anyone ever know the answer?

But, just like Justice Potter, I don’t think any of those questions are going to lead to an intelligible definition. Rational semantics are not going to lead you to an understanding of what is beyond understanding.

Don’t ask so many questions. You’ll know it when you feel it.

Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.

By R. CHASE

In the final chapter of psychedelic guru Carlos Castenada’s fourth book, he is confronted with a cliff, beyond which spans an abyss. His Yaqui Indian teacher, Don Juan Matus, instructs him to leap off the edge, with no assurance of survival or outcome.

Embarking on a committed relationship with someone you barely know is a lot like Carlos Castenada’s leap. You have no idea where it’s going, no idea what will happen and no idea if you’ll survive. It requires a degree of faith.

But Faith erodes. You start with a mountain, but eventually the geological forces of human behavior will wear it down to a pathetic little nubbin. One failed marriage and a dozen bad relationships had left me numb to the idea of “love.” Good sex and companionship were about all I hoped to find (if even that).

Faith is not a commodity amongst the young. When you are in your 20s you’re full of delusions about relationships, which will shortly be crushed by reality. In your 30s, you are full of illusions, which gradually evaporate as the years grind on. By the time you’re 40, all you’re left with is hope.

Hope, however, was good enough for me. I could lean on it while I peered over that abyss and decided to leap. In fact, I had asked Sunshine to be my girlfriend without even peeking over the edge. And even had I looked over that precipice, my intention would’ve been the same.

Don’t ever forget that both parties are jumping together. There’s no way for one to go without the other. If you commit to somebody who doesn’t commit to you, both of you are eventually going to be miserable.

The problem with all of these delightful metaphors is that none of them contain any dose of actual reality. If I were to literally jump off a cliff, I’d be smashed to pieces on some really nasty craggy rocks below (and anyone who’s been through a nasty divorce or breakup can make that metaphorical connection themselves).

But what does being “in a relationship” really mean? It’s not just a Facebook status or some feminine hygiene products in the bottom drawer of your bathroom. It’s a shared contract between two people.

The problem is that most couples don’t really discuss the details of that contract before leaping. In every relationship I’ve ever been in, there has been a serious discrepancy between what each individual believes the “rules” are. Some of them, like fidelity, can be reasonably assumed, but there are so many shades of grey in the other areas that you can be sure somebody is going to break a rule they didn’t even know existed.

Sunshine and I never actually set down any definitive rules for the relationship. I never considered that there needed to be any. I hadn’t really thought this whole thing through. But once again, there’s that leap. The leap is romantic, and romance is always accompanied by tragedy.

Romeo and Juliet had to die young. Can you imagine a balding, sweaty, Romeo in his wife-beater, pounding on the door and screaming at Juliet (now in mom jeans with obligatory arm flab) to get out of the bathroom so he can use the toilet?

That’s the nature of romance. It’s fleeting. Nobody wants to imagine the flower of love sitting on a toilet and reading a magazine whilst taking a deuce.

But love is an essential part of the human experience. If it is genuine, you must succumb to it, even if it ends in tragedy.

In Carlos Castenada’s fifth book, he described his experience of leaping into the abyss as a complete transcendence of the self, where awareness and consequence were erased and only existence remained. I’d like to think of love as that same experience, where the self gets diffused a little, and you stop thinking about everything in terms of its direct effect on you, the individual, and start thinking of somebody else instead.

So Sunshine and I held hands, and leapt into the abyss. Doesn’t that sound romantic?

Nobody really thought about all those branches on the way down…

C’est la vie.

Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.

There is something inherently tragic about a man with good taste and bad discretion. His life, while seemingly interesting, is lonely and trite.

But at least some people will pay him to write about his bad decisions.

When you have been on a quest for a long time, it’s possible to cease expecting a result without actually ceasing the search. You don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for, but you’re unable to stop looking.

If you stop looking, you stop moving. And we all know what happens to a shark when it
stops swimming.

I had started out this quest looking for a girlfriend. And while a regular, old, run-of-the-mill girlfriend seemed pretty easy to find for a lot of guys, I had run out of fish tank. Was it bad luck? Did I have some kind of undetectable body odor? Did I have little fish bones stuck in my teeth? Had the act of searching superseded the original intention? Any quest without a goal has lost its meaning. I was only going through the motions.

But we all know that you don’t find what you’re searching for until you stop searching.

When I was at soccer camp in the fifth grade, the campers would play a trick on any kid who wasn’t paying attention. Being the consummate daydreamer, I had the bad luck of being the victim of this nasty prank on more than one occasion.

One of the little bastards would yell out your name from behind you, while the other would launch the soccer ball at your head as hard as he could.

If they timed it right, you’d turn your head in the direction you heard your name, and then see the ball hurtling toward your face right before it clobbered the crap out of you. It was particularly cruel because for a brief instant you could see what was about to happen without being able to stop it; you had to watch the instrument of your destruction with no hope
of escape.

That’s what it felt like when Sunshine came into my life. I never really saw it coming until I looked into her eyes.

And then it was too late.

When you’re a bachelor for too long, you start to approach women with your ego instead of your heart. It only makes sense. The ego is the more developed muscle. It can take a bruising. But it’s delicate. The ego is far too dependent on external stimuli. Very few people can prop up their own ego; hence the need for constant upkeep.

The heart is less fragile, but its tendrils go deeper. It often lies dormant in the male persona, sometimes for years, before that figurative soccer ball comes flying through the air and knocks him into another world.

Don’t let me sound maudlin. The woman was gorgeous, with delicate features and soft, robin-shell eyes. Her legs were long and muscular and her smile could brighten up a sweatshop in Sri Lanka. She was
hot stuff.

I met her at work, or at least she was associated with my job (which is as much as I can say without giving away my profession). Any association with her on a non-professional level would be seriously detrimental to my career. She was also going through a messy divorce with two children. I should have been running away, screaming.

But it didn’t matter.

I found myself, on perhaps our third date proper, in the smoke-filled patio at the Z-bar Halloween party, blurting out the words “would you be my girlfriend?” with the utmost conviction. The very thing I couldn’t bring myself to commit to with somebody else just months before now seemed to be the only conclusion I could pursue with this woman. Those weren’t just words. I actually meant it.

I was not even afraid to ask. The only doubts were about her answer.

But she accepted.

The transition from bachelor to boyfriend is a big step. The transformation would not be instantaneous. While the decisive moment was akin to entropy, the process was a metamorphosis.

The ego, and all of its necessary trappings, would have to be shed. The heart, atrophied and weak, would need to be developed.

Was I up to the task? Had it been too long?

There is always room in this life to try. Failure may not be an option, but it sure as hell is a possibility. But I could look at Sunshine and know that I’d rather fail in a relationship with her than succeed with anyone else.

Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.

I’m glad they didn’t stick around long enough for somebody to put that photo on Zoosk, drop a stupid catch-phrase underneath and then post it for every idiot within 30 miles to give it a thumbs-down on their iPhone while waiting in line at Qdoba.

They might have changed their mind.

A picture may say a thousand words, but why be so verbose? You could justify your entire existence in four, with a badly lit profile pic you took after six cocktails and a burrito as big as your head.

I’ve always thought online dating was vulgar. I hail from the pre-Propecia days when fat, acne-ridden troglodytes made up 95 percent of the Internet community. But online dating has made a tremendous resurgence.

I’m an outdoor cat. I like to hunt. Successful bachelors don’t hunch over little glowing screens flipping through pictures of cute girls they wish they were dating. They are in demand and ready for action. Like Bruce Wayne (without the abs).

But the thing that was really on the Wayne was my dating life. Had everybody moved online? Perhaps the tables turned. Maybe the people out at the bars and clubs have now become the desperate losers, unable to evolve their dating habits to keep pace with the Digital Age.

Was this Dating Darwinism?

So where did I find love? Zoosk? Plenty O’ Fish? Craig’s List casual encounters? There were so many options.

I chose Zoosk. It was pretty easy to create a profile and throw up some basic information.

The biggest challenge was next: deciding which pictures to use.

I tried to look cool. I tried not to look drunk. I tried to look like I had an amazingly active social life by choosing the best pictures from the last decade of my life.

Now all I had to do was sit back and let the girls come to me. This online dating thing, I thought, was pretty sweet.

No girls came to me.

Just like in the real world, I was going to have to get pro-active. This was starting to seem like a lot of work. At least it was work I could do in my underwear while watching Police Academy 5. I surveyed the prospects.

Psychologists have found that when the individual is given no choices, it leads to depression (like monogamy). When the individual is given too many choices (like Brad Pitt) it leads to severe anxiety. No wonder so many celebrities are overdosing on Xanax. How do you narrow down the field?

I decided that my best bet was to scroll through the cutest girls and send them a form letter. It would save time pretending to actually be interested in what they wanted.

“Hi (whatever your name is)! I think you are really (adaptive compliment), and I love the fact that you are interested in (whatever that may be), I’m totally into that too! I’d really like to meet you (if you haven’t gained thirty pounds since taking that picture).”

I got few bites. But isn’t this the way things happen in the real world? How intimate and personal can you get from a few pictures and a life you’ve invented just to get dates online? Is there anything genuine about it?

My friend said I had it all wrong.

“E-Harmony, dude. It’ll match you with your real potential mates. You have to be totally honest when you fill out your info.”

Honesty? It sounded crazy. I liked it. I started an account and filled out my information. I held nothing back. No pretense. I was exactly who I was in real life. I got a match back within 24 hours.

I was finally going to meet my soul mate.

Dear E-Harmony User:

We’ve found you a match! Their name is:

Charlie Sheen.

Maybe not. But I’m sure it would’ve been a good relationship. Halfway through the survey I got bored and checked out videos of skateboarding squirrels. My attention span was a reflection of how useful I found online dating. It’s not my thing.

Call me a dinosaur. I may be extinct soon, but I’m going to have some fun while I’m still a viable member of the species for reproduction.

I grabbed my coat and headed to the Bristol, where a cute girl with a dark bob and ruby red lipstick was sitting alone at the bar. It looks like this dinosaur still had some fertile mating grounds to graze, despite rumors of his impending extinction.

I can confidently attest to the Yao tribe that taking a photograph won’t steal your soul. Putting it online and waiting around for somebody to find you, however, will.

You’ll find me at the bar.

Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.

I was sitting at a table at the Grape Leaf, having a mini-reunion with two women from my graduating class. One of them looked good. She was a JAG attorney with wickedly long legs, framed by tight shorts and a pair of peep-toe sandals. Her friend, Frumpy Jane, looked just like she did in 1988 (albeit with a better haircut).

I remember Sexy Lawyer Lady as a rebellious teen with a Motley Crue haircut in tight pink spandex, defiantly puffing a Marlboro on the smoking patio with the outcasts. I thought she was hot, in an acid-washed denim kind of way, but I was an awkward pudgy teen desperately clinging to the coattails of the “popular” crowd.

There are two groups of people from high school. Those that were popular – and all the rest.

The people that were attractive were popular. The ones who weren’t, weren’t.  Let’s face it; high school isn’t exactly a high-level social structure. Looks are all you have to go on. You haven’t had time to accomplish anything else.

Twenty years later, all of the ugly, fat, or awkward people in high school have filled out, slimmed down, and learned how to complement their features from watching Makeover Reality shows and Dr. Phil.

Thankfully, most of the popular people from high school are now fat, bald or disgusting. They still see themselves as that same attractive person, no matter how gross they’ve become, because they hit their high note in those formative years. The rest of us still look in the mirror with disgust because we can hear Jerry Cronwald mocking our fat rolls in the locker room. Thanks to that ruthless motivation I’ve been able to keep slim since college. Jerry, on the other hand, looks like he’s been living on doughnuts and bourbon since 1998. C’est la vie.

Sexy Lawyer Lady had connected with me on Facebook and asked me out to the Grape Leaf for dinner with herself and Frumpy Jane, as a kind of “pre-reunion” reunion.  The actual event was two weeks away.

We caught up on classmates and gossip. Moving back to Louisville after being gone for 14 years left a pretty big gap in my social life – most people I once knew had completely different lives.

The ladies suggested we take the party somewhere more exciting. We headed down to Glassworks to see a show up on the top of the city, looking out at the city lights and watching the moon rising over the Humana Building. The bands were terrible, so we quickly zoomed off to the Z-Bar.

As we packed in the dance floor Sexy Lawyer Lady got close and personal, using her long legs to her advantage. I was a little giddy – somebody who had never paid me a nanosecond of attention in high school was now making up for it in a very direct way.

I’ve never gotten used to Louisville’s 4 a.m. closing time – it took four more Tanqueray and Red Bulls to keep my stamina up until the wee hours of the night, when the three of us took a cab back to her house.

Just like in high school, the unattractive girl passed out on the couch as the other couple stumbled up the stairs into bed. Not even drunken exhaustion could keep me from channeling that adolescent angst as I consummated a twenty-year old crush.

But in the aftermath of nostalgia, was there anything left?

Not really.

You can’t forge a relationship based on vindication of the ego. It doesn’t serve anyone. We never had a second date. She didn’t even show up to the actual reunion.

There was no real connection – more time has passed between 1991 and now than I had been alive when I graduated. Those awkward teenagers have been replaced by adults, with an entirely different set of needs and desires.

We should create relationships based on mutual interest or romance, and not who sat next to us in homeroom twenty years ago. There is a temptation, as we get older, to search for the familiar.

But in our search for the comfort of familiarity, we may find that it was never very familiar in the first place.

High school is over. You have to leave it behind at some point.

Why let four years of your life define the next forty?

Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.

What’s really concerning me is the guy looking back at me from the mirror, mocking my every movement with abject humiliation.

The culprit: one (almost) 40-year-old man in a pair of “skinny” jeans.

Oh skinny jeans, have you no mercy? Have you no shame? Have you have no conscience? Is your only purpose to make adult men look like water balloons stuffed into Otter Pop sleeves? Is it your goal to lower my self-esteem until I grow a beard and start hitting on girls at the Nach Bar, where I’ll be forcibly removed for being a creepy old man? No, the Laws of the Fashion Universe will not bend. You cannot traverse the generation gap unscathed. You must always pay a price.

Fashion, like all superficial elements of the ancient mating ritual, is of primary importance. Your choice of haircut, pants, watch and shirt will be heavily scrutinized by a woman, just like the female spiny-tailed Iguana chooses her mate based on the color and size of his head-crest. It’s deep inside the reptilian brain. There’s no getting around it.

And like that Iguana, you’ll have to show your prospective woman all the goods up front. If you just met her at the cash register in Forever 21 last week, her judgment of your character may be a little sparse. You’ll have to show her some style.

As an adult member of the free dating pool, you’re going to have to abide by a lot of rules in order to survive the first ocular pat-down. My advice? Never, ever wear skinny jeans. Ever.

There is nothing more depressing than a grown man trying to look hip by stuffing his fat butt into pair of tapered jeans and getting a faux-hawk to impress the college girls. There are far better ways to get through that mid-life crisis. Buy a sports car. It has better resale value, and you’ll still have some feeling left in your legs when you sit down.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a man. I’d love to show up for a date drunk and shirtless with a pizza and a 6-pack, but unless she’s been in a coma since the third century (B.C.) things are going to get awkward really fast.

Women know every brand-name in existence and possess a mental catalog of equivalent pricing, so if you show up in cheap, slovenly clothes you’ll look like a cheap slob. On the other hand, if you show up overdressed with an expensive Rolex and non-essential gold chains, you’ll risk looking materialistic and pretentious. It’s a balancing act.

I don’t have all the answers to what women want, but based on some outright traumatic experiences I know a lot of things women don’t want. Adult women don’t want you to be a slob, an idiot or a “gangsta” (and you don’t qualify as such even if your college roommate tattooed it on the back of your hand after chugging a fifth of Bacardi at the frat house).

It doesn’t hurt to hold yourself to a higher standard, if just for a night. Nobody ever got upset with you for exceeding their expectations. Convince your woman that she should be there for a reason. Looking good in public is a potent aphrodisiac.

So I put the offending jeans back in the closet (although my sister swore they looked good on me). I’ll leave youthful fashion for tweens and aging rock stars. I’m quickly approaching 40, and I’m not ashamed of it. I picked up my date, and as we walked into the restaurant I couldn’t help paying her a compliment.

“You look really great in those skinny jeans.”

And she did. She really did.

Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.

Three weeks without a prospect had left me shamelessly destitute. I began a flirtation with a local woman whom I knew to be loopy, mentally unstable, and disliked by several people in the community.

It was a bad idea. But so is eating your own shoe. These were desperate times.

I’d met The Rejectionist months before at a bourbon tasting, and although she was attractive I immediately knew that she wasn’t the best prospect. I knew it the way I know hugging a porcupine is a bad idea. Call it instinct.

But tough times make strange bedfellows. It started out as a “friend” date to the Lebowski Festival. I figured it would provide me some distraction from my previous failed relationship and be some fun. I’m a huge fan of the film, and Louisville is the progenitor of the event.

The first night we enjoyed music and White Russians. During the outdoor screening of the movie, I put my arm around her, and she responded by resting her head on my shoulder like some 1950s drive-in cliché. This non-date was getting “datey” very fast, and I’d been the one to cross the line. I had no one to blame but myself.

At her doorstep my mouth was met with a warm embrace while my hand was simultaneously slapped away from the inside of her thigh – followed by a brusque goodbye and a door slammed in my face.

I’d actually thought I’d be invited up for a nightcap.

We’d made plans to go back to the festival, but when I texted her to ask what time she wanted me to pick her up, I received the answer:

“No, thank you.”

What?

Although a woman breaking plans is not unheard of, there’s usually a reason. I was suspicious.

Twenty minutes later I received: “Aren’t you going to send me a pic of your costume? What should I wear?” I was confused. I sent her a picture of my costume and received a text back:

“What time are you picking me up?”

What?

I dismissed the weirdness and got ready for the party – you could hardly say no to the Lebowski Fest, Day Two! I lent her my bathrobe and she went as Maude.

Sometime during the middle of the costume contest, she walked past without looking at me at all. I thought that maybe with the sunglasses on she couldn’t see, but I got a text from her afterwards:

“I’m going to get a ride and go home. You apparently don’t want to be here with me.”

Wait, what?

I called her to find out what happened, but she found me instead and shoved me into a corner while kissing me, hard. Then she slapped me and walked away. Was I supposed to follow? I was confused.

After the bowling lanes closed, we had a nightcap at (the now defunct) Recovery Room on Frankfort Avenue, which was a few blocks from her apartment.

This time I was invited in.

I must have passed some kind of test, because things got hot and heavy in the kitchen. The bathrobe came off after a few minutes and we headed to the bedroom.

I chose to leave in the wee hours of the morning. I don’t know why. I’m not usually one to flee the scene, but I was in the mood to sleep in my own bed. Perhaps her rejectionist tactics had worn off on me.

My abrupt departure that night was not a term of endearment.

Our next date was brusquely ended at the sidewalk. The next after that was right after dinner. It was clearly her design to continue rejecting me at every advance until I looked like a complete imbecile, or got down on my knees and professed my undying love. I chose to move on.

Using rejection as a tactic is cute for teens, but in the adult world it’s simply juvenile. I didn’t want games. I wanted a girlfriend. Just like those starving citizens of Leningrad in 1944, I’d let my desperation make an unpalatable item appear appetizing.

But no matter how hungry you are, at some point you’ll realize that you’re eating your own shoe. And that’s just gross.

Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.

A Dry Spell builds upon itself like a snowball, picking up all those bits and pieces of your self-esteem and then unceremoniously dumping them at your doorstep. As your personal stock goes down, so does the attention from women. I have never been able to figure this out; it’s as if women have a collective subconscious that immediately notifies them that you’ve been recently rejected. The Loser Alert kicks into high gear and even that pudgy girl who used to put her Yoga mat next to yours gives you a dirty look when you ask for her number.

A seasoned bachelor knows it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

I had been fortunate. I dated two super-hot, sexy women in a row without down time, and I’d gotten used to it. But Corporate Kitten was long gone, and Hot Yoga Girl had disappeared like smoke in the wind. A few non-answered texts had dissolved the fledgling relationship before it went anywhere. I was on my own again.

When I started getting drunk at the Bristol and hitting on the hostess, I knew I was in trouble. There were only two directions to go – and one of them was very, very, depressing. I decided to adjust my attitude.

I compiled these “Rules for Digging Out of a Slump”:

1. Don’t get drunk and hit on the hostess at the Bristol. Ever.
2. Every girl is a prospect: Even if you don’t find her attractive, chances are she has at least two hot friends you’d like to meet.
3. Don’t go to the dark side: Complaining about how much you hate women to women does not score any points. People want to be around happy people. Don’t be a downer.
4. Hang out with guy friends: Women don’t trust a guy who doesn’t have guy friends. It looks shady.
5. Don’t hang out at bars alone: This looks desperate. Women can smell desperation a mile away. If you must hang out at a place alone, pick a spot and make it your hangout. Don’t hit on the staff, however, it will only make you look more desperate.
6. Take attractive female friends out: Women are attracted to men who are with attractive women. Even if they’re just your friends, the other women at the bar, restaurant, theater or charity event don’t know that. All they see is you, with a beautiful woman.
7. Don’t look for dates at a bar: The chance that girls you meet at a bar are alcoholics is about 70 percent. Girls are always on their guard at bars, plus there are 15 other guys with the same idea swarming around like piranha. The more options a girl has, the less likely you are to get her attention. Try a Yoga class. The girls will be healthier and friendlier, and there are always twice as many females as males. Another good idea is volunteering at an animal shelter – you’ll immediately appear to be less shady and more sympathetic. There are always cute girls working at animal shelters (and you’ll be helping your community).
8. Never lower your standards: If you choose “available” over “desirable” you’ll only be hurting yourself, and it will negatively affect your attitude. And remember, it’s what YOU find desirable, not society – your self-esteem will plummet just as badly from a beautiful woman you aren’t attracted to, even if everyone else is.

Of course, I would systematically break every single one of these rules in the following six months. Giving advice is easy. Taking advice … Well, you see where I’m going with this. Some day it’ll all be over. Right?

I was experiencing this – the restaurant around me was frozen, my salad fork hovering over my plate. The world disappeared into a tunnel and nothing existed but Hot Yoga Girl’s eyes, boring into my forehead while waiting for an answer to the question that is the anathema to every bachelor heart.

“Is this your girlfriend?”

You know it’s coming. We’ve all been there. There will always be a waiter cruel and heartless enough to roast you on that spit. Like a predator, they can smell fear.

I could try and avoid restaurants, but the only thing in my refrigerator was half a bottle of Chardonnay and some expired mustard. Dining out was a necessity.

I might cook, but why? Eating Salisbury Steak out of a plastic tray in my underwear is not exactly the image of the man-about-town I was hoping to promote.

It was our sixth date. We were firmly entrenched inside the nebulous area between “just-met” and “boyfriend-girlfriend.” Make no mistake, this is an important question. The wrong answer could halt all progress immediately.

Don’t expect any help from the woman. Thirty-nine years of intermittent bachelorhood has produced one solid piece of certainty concerning women: They will never, ever, help you with this question. They like to watch you squirm.

I looked her over. She was wearing a baby-doll shirt with Daisy Duke cut-offs and cowboy boots, which showcased her tan, sculpted thighs.

Was she claimable? From a purely superficial perspective, it seemed so.

She was completely Looney Tunes, but that’s never really been a problem for me.  She’d also been spending several evenings at my house, but no sanitary napkins or feminine hygiene products had mysteriously appeared in one of my bathroom drawers, so I surmised full co-habitation was a few weeks away.

But was she my girlfriend? What did that even mean? Did she want to be my girlfriend?  What if she wanted to be my girlfriend, but didn’t want me to know it? What if I didn’t want her to be my girlfriend but didn’t want her to know it?

It was too confusing. I started imagining incredibly creative ways to torture the waiter with my salad fork. That rotten bastard had cornered me. It was a precarious situation.

Leaving this question hanging would destroy the relationship before it began.

“Yes” would mean “Yes, I want to continue having sexual relations with you without actually making a commitment.”

“No” would mean “No, I don’t want to stop having sexual relations with you, but I’m not willing to make a commitment.”

The room started spinning around me like some kind of carnival ride. I was being crammed into one of two pegs, neither of which was appealing.

I had a flash of inspiration.

“We’re dating.”

It was certainly not definitive, but it was beyond reproach. We were on a date. You couldn’t argue with that!

The problem was that I didn’t know whether I really wanted to give up my bachelorhood. It’s difficult to invest that level of commitment into somebody you barely know.

Pursuing a woman as your girlfriend requires a certain level of desire and long-term attachment. Did I like her? Yes. Did I trust her? Hell no. But who can you really trust?

The look on her face was telling. This was not the preferred response. It was the beginning of the end.

I have no regrets. If I’d wanted to be her boyfriend, my answer would’ve been different. This wasn’t Junior High. We were adults. The stakes are higher. We all have more to lose.

We would quickly drift apart after that. Sometimes there’s no getting around it. If you’re not willing to make that leap in front of a waiter at Café Mimosa, you aren’t ready to have a girlfriend. No matter how sexy she is. There are times when every bachelor will measure his life by the women he didn’t end up with.

But by then, he’ll already be in a committed relationship. How’s that for irony?

You should never make a commitment unless you are 100 percent sure that’s what you want. If you do, it will only be that much more painful when you both realize it isn’t going to work.

It’s OK to be single, if that’s what you want. Be true to thyself, and all things will work out. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.