The Last of Lana

by Nicholas Allen — June 19, 2007

I'm not the kind of guy who has a long list of turn-offs when it comes to women. In terms of physical preferences, I do tend to go for the dark-and-busty type. I've encountered the occasional disappointment of being out with a curvaceous woman only to discover that she's nothing more than silicone and padding once I've gotten her home and undressed. But, unlike my Seinfeld-ian counterparts, I've never declined a second or third date with a woman because she holds her fork the wrong way, blinks too often or not enough, wears shoes that make her a couple of inches taller than I am, has a CD collection composed exclusively of '80s one-hit wonders, or beats me at chess. Hell, I like it when a woman beats me at chess. It shows she's paying attention.

It's the women who aren't paying attention that vex me. Maybe a better way of putting it is women who don't listen. I don't mean that in a boorish, What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing you haven't already told her twice, way. I mean the kind of woman whose sole and favorite topic of conversation is herself. When sitting across from a date at a dinner table, I love asking questions that get her to open up about herself. After all, I'm there to get to know her better. But there's a certain kind of woman who is also there for you to get to know her better, and seems palpably uninterested in getting to know you. There doesn't have to be a strict one-to-one ratio on questions asked and answered, but a woman who answers every question you ask without asking a single question in return is a woman who's looking for an audience, not a relationship. In this same category are women who will listen to you tell a story and immediately respond with something like, "Yeah, well, this one time, I knew a guy who..." blah blah blah. I'm happy to listen to her stories--in fact, I want to hear them--but a reaction to the one I just finished telling seems only polite. Even if the reaction is: "Wow, that was the single most boring story I ever heard."

As you may have guessed from this mini tirade, I went out with Lana again over the weekend and was treated to a monologue the length and duration of which one usually has to shell out at least $100 to see on a New York stage. What started out as an explanation as to why she'd passed out cold the other night when we went back to her place turned into a three-hour colloquium about How Work Is So Exhausting These Days, How Comfortable My New Couch Is, How My Girlfriends Keep Telling Me to Watch What I Drink, and--my personal favorite--How My Last Boyfriend Hated It When I Drank. Women, take note: when I want to know about your last boyfriend, I'll ask. I swear I will. And I probably will want to hear those stories eventually, just not on a fourth date.

Fourth and last, in this case. I believe the only words I spoke all evening were, "Yes, we have a reservation under the name Nicholas Allen," and "Check, please." I was tempted to interject at some point that she might really want to consider the possibility that she's drinking a bit too much (what with the seeming Greek chorus of concerned friends and former lovers). But I was exhausted at that point, and I didn't want to become the target of yet another monologue on the subject.

Perhaps the only upside of the evening was that she didn't engage in my other dating pet peeve, which is when women don't eat. There's nothing more heartbreaking than a woman who's beautiful, intelligent, comfortable eating in front of a man, but totally self-absorbed. It was this close to a match made in heaven.

Nicholas Allen is a writer and columnist in New York City. To read all of his blogs, click here.