Date This!     by Cheryl Cohen
	My dating life really went downhill when I got married. But before I took that fatal leap, I had a pretty manic social life. I met all kinds of people through my work as a business consultant, but it isn't a good idea to date your own clientele. More than anything, I wanted to find a man who shared my sense of humor, or at least could tolerate it.       Browsing the personals, I read one man after another wax poetic about moonlit walks on the beach, or candle-lit dinners in front of fireplaces with a wealthy, drug-free, non-smoking, leggy, pretty and petite playful paramour.       I decided right away that these ads were entirely too serious for such a ridiculous way of finding a date. It was clear that if I wanted to find someone to clown around with, I'd better weed them out with my own ad, rather than answer one. My friend, Sue, thought it might be fun to try a double-dating kind of ad. No problem, I said, and went about the task of baiting some fun guys:      "TWO SLIGHTLY NEUROTIC WOMEN, NO DISTINGUISHING SCARS, SUFFERING FROM BIPOLAR DEPRESSIVE DISORDERS AND WAVES OF PMS SYMPTOMS THAT MAKE STALIN LOOK LIKE MR. ROGERS, SEEKING DRUNKEN, EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE MISOGYNISTS FOR ABUSE, DAYTIME DATES AND TRAVEL. MUST NOT BE PUT OFF BY TWINS JOINED AT THE HEAD, DOUBLE ENTENDRE, OR DOUBLEMINT, DOUBLEMINT, DOUBLEMINT GUM. LET'S DO SOMETHING TOGETHER REAL SOON! DISCRETION NECESSARY, AS WE'RE ALREADY ATTACHED."      Sue promptly changed her mind about continuing her search for love through a shared effort and *the Reader* flat-out rejected the ad. Maybe I was asking too much from the world of personals.       I turned to a telephone personals service called "Meet by Phone" and blurted out a benign introduction. My message simply said that I was a 32 year-old business-owner in search of someone who was self-supporting and knew how to laugh.       The response was immediate and impressive. The calls, which in those days came directly to my own phone number, immediately filled the tape on my answering machine. I mean, filled.       It was like having a second job. For months, I had dates almost every night. It was becoming tedious. Get home. Answer calls. Dress up. Drive to restaurant. Meet dude. Go home. I soon learned the basics: always meet the date at a neutral location and never, ever commit to anything longer than a cup of coffee. There's like having to sit through an elegant dinner in Rancho Santa Fe with some excitable guy in fatigues going on about the smell of hot lead, or subtly licking a condom package while staring at you from across the table .       A date through the personals is a completely different animal than regular dating. You find yourselves rattling off your likes and dislikes over the telephone or at the initial meeting. There's no getting to know each other slowly through life experiences together. The qualifying process is almost immediate, but there's also a nagging feeling of obligation to at least meet some of those who made the effort to answer the ad, no matter how pathetic.       There were one-time dates with an anxious chef who had a serious gambling problem, a depressed pilot who got upset that I wouldn’t fly with him, a voyeur heir who kept asking me how I felt about home movies, a couple of ex-cops (why are they always EX-cops?), an attorney who cried a lot about his ex-wife, a naval officer who didn't want me to touch his Persian rugs dammit, and a ceramist who had too extensive a collection of Devine movies for my taste.       I did have a couple of short relationships out of the ad, and even fell in love once. We had a torrid thing going for about three months (the half-life of a sweaty-palmed romance), but one day he simply disappeared. Vanished, just like that.   I was crestfallen, and gave up on the personals ads for awhile. I discovered other ways to live a full life besides dating. You know, nail-biting and origami stapling. I took to writing classifieds  like: "LOSE WEIGHT BY EATING YOURSELF - ASK ME HOW!" in some local papers just to fill the void.       Since those days in the '80s, I graduated to the computer and the Internet. I've been married and divorced - but ever the eternal optimist, I've never, ever given up on love. Now and then, I even gather up some optimism and place another ad.       So, if you're a single man perusing the personals, and see one that starts with:  "HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO DATE A FUZZ-FACED ESKIMO DWARF-WOMAN? I KNOW I'VE GOT TO BE SOMEBODY'S FETISH BUT NOBODY'S COME FORWARD YET ..." Be forewarned. It just might be mine.