Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

by Simone Westfall — April 7, 2007

A few dropped out when the photos arrived….or didn’t arrive. And I should know by now that men who are reluctant to send a picture are either toads or have a seriously low opinion of themselves. What I was looking for was a match between visuals and words. The serious contenders (and, oh boy, did I feel like some super-princessy judge on a reality show, Heidi Klum with spider veins: “I’m sorry, Kevin, but you will have to leave…”) were

• An art dealer with a chubby but sweet face who specialized in 19 th-century prints (with him, I figured there would be some common ground, as I write about art from time to time and know the territory).
• A financial analyst from India, who refused to send a photo, saying, “I’d much rather get to know you in words,” but who charmed me with his emails and with whom I discovered a mutual love of opera.
• A corporate lawyer who directed me to a website with a fuzzy shot of him giving a power-point presentation; again, the literacy appealed: He described himself as having a “John Cheever-like life,” commuting between New York and Greenwich. Cheever was, years ago, one of my very favorite writers, and I can still recite passages verbatim.
• A breathtakingly cute jazz musician (yes, women my age still use the word “cute” to describe guys), who dropped out when I sent my photo (not cute enough for him).
• A straight-shooting Midwestern banker, or so I judged him from his descriptions of his St. Louis roots and unadorned prose. His photo showed a lanky man with vivid blue eyes, but I quickly back-burnered him because I thought I knew the type—overly earnest and dull as dishwater. “Stuffy as a banker” was not invented for nothing.

It seemed a good list for starters; all were about my age or a little younger or older (I simply didn’t want a tadpole—I’ve gone out with a few; it doesn’t work; you can see them mentally counting the rings around your neck). It was damned exhausting, though revealing, to keep up all these communications, and I realize in retrospect that I should have been maintaining some kind of flow chart, or set up a graph with distinguishing characteristics.

Some were forthcoming about their marital lives: The Indian financial analyst said his wife traveled half the year, and they kept domiciles in both the suburbs and the city; the corporate lawyer loved his wife and two teenagers but had not been “intimate” (cringe…such a stupid Dear Abby word) with his spouse in years; the banker had a college-age daughter in Boston and a wife in St. Louis, whose bipolar disorder kept her there much of the time. (If I had to commute between Gotham and St. Louis, I’d be bipolar too.)

What came through the lines, though, was a terrible sense of yearning, not just for physical closeness, I sensed, but for something more. “I have a deep and abiding respect for my wife,” wrote Daniel, the lawyer, “but she’s just not a sexual person and we seem to be living separate but parallel lives.” “I think my wife may have other men,” said the childless financial analyst. “Our policy is, Don’t ask, don’t tell. I love her, but the spark is gone.” (I was still annoyed by the lack of a photo, or even the stingiest physical description, and wanted him to know upfront that I’m very tall. “That doesn’t concern me,” he wrote, “I’ve often gone out with fashion-model types.” Well, sheesh, honey bun, what are you doing trolling Craigslist?) But enough with the words. It was time to connect via phone and make a few dates. I sent my number to the most likely prospects.

Simone Westfall is the pen name of a writer and novelist in New York City.