4/18/05 7:45 PM: Yes, children, it's story time. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I'll begin ...

ISOLATION: Let's say that the first story is about a guy named Michael. Michael met Kim on an online dating site, one that just provided names and cities. She even approached him first, which made his ego swell with pride, as she was super hot. Still, after some conversation, they fund they were interested and got together for a date.

The red flags started going up pretty quickly. Kim was nineteen and Michael was in his early thirties. Suffice it to say that any relationship with a nineteen year old has a pretty short expiration date. Nevertheless, they both had a lot in common -- a nearly fanatical love for The Simpsons for example, and both enjoying Mos Def. Plus, it turns out, Kim was financing her college education (business major, to boot) with a career in pornography. Realistically, what kind of hetero, happy-go-lucky single guy could turn away from a girl who does porn and can hold a half decent conversation?

So on their second date, she was at his house, nearly naked, as he was massaging her with lotion. Which was pretty all right. They're chatting in the dim illumination of candles he has hanging from a set of metal candelabras he snagged from his older sister when she moved out of her apartment (chicks dig candles, he'd always believed). So Kim, already an excitable type, starts to really get turned on by the combination of his sure hands rubbing every inch of her flesh, the soft music and the candles ... so she starts playing with herself.

Yeah. Michael was having a good day.

However, what Michael didn't know was about John. John had been offhandedly dating Kim since November, and even after a torrential night of romance, she was at John's house the next night, not ten blocks away. Funny coincidence that. Kim didn't know enough about the emotion to say that she was in love with him, but she was certainly hung up on him, which was great at first -- when he was attentive and spent every free moment with her. However, after a while, things changed.

Kim found out that John would rather play Halo than call her most of the time (she also worked a customer service job, really kind of getting her hustle on, but it had long periods of downtime). She found herself alone on weekend nights, and begging him to make some time for her. Even his interest in sex with her tapered off, which was a problem for her high sex drive and drove her into Michael's arms.

Michael, for his part, didn't care if she dated other people -- he'd been seeing Maybelline for more than six months, but she lived in Agoura Hills and didn't get down to see him more than twice a week. Michael liked Kim, though, and wanted to try to make it all work. Because, well, aside from being cool ... porn, man, sheesh! But after that second date, all she seemed to do was whine about how John didn't treat her right (which was also funny, because when she was with John she often talked about how cool she thought Michael was). But Kim still wanted to spend time with Michael ... she just didn't want to touch him. Kim still wanted to have sex with people ... just not Michael. She wanted somebody to feed her fire-sign ego and call her and compliment her, but Michael doing it just wasn't cutting the mustard, as they say.

So Michael, having limited patience, told her to bugger off and get her head together, all the while expecting that she wouldn't.

The moral of the story, children, is that people are miserable -- fundamentally -- because they want to be.

COMPROMISED: The next story is about a girl ... let's call her, oh, Diane. Diane (which, of course, is not her real name -- most names have been changed to protect the stupid) has a measure of fame -- as a former Playboy model, she's appeared on The Best Damned Sports Show Period, has her own website, is the featured stripper at a northside locale, et cetera. As you can see, Diane is breathtaking -- kind of like what Beyonce would look like if instead of singing, she used nakedness as her talent. Anyhoo, Diane was in her late twenties and dated a guy named, oh, let's say his name was Carl. Carl was 35, and claimed he didn't have a lot of energy. Carl and Diane would have sex maybe once every two weeks.

Now, again, I'd like you to look at the photo here. A woman like this, who wants sex, likes sex, enjoys sex ... only having it once every two weeks. Maybe. Oh, not that it should matter, but Carl's white and Diane is mixed (Black and white ... with a body that could stop traffic in Montevideo even if she's in Santa Monica).

It's probably pretty obvious that Carl doesn't attend Men's Union meetings, because such a transgression would surely have him called before his local chapter's Soul Review Board on charges (and yes, even deep in the Valley there are Soul Review Boards, they're just not as ... well, soulful). But wait, it gets worse.

Doing modeling and stripping, Diane makes somewhere in the neighborhood of $125,000 a year. She has a savings of exactly zero, and no retirement money set aside. But lots of things -- all the CDs she could ever listen to, tricked out Mini Coper, great stereo, fantastic wardrobe, and so on. Now Carl, after being with her for a year, says he wants her to give up the stripping and modeling. Carl, I dunno, is a retail manager or something piddling like that. Yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Which is not to say he doesn't have his advantages -- when she signed a very lucrative modeling deal that made her nervous, he left a series of notes in her bags saying things like "You can do it!" and "I believe in you," which helped her through a trying shoot (just because it's not work to you doesn't mean it's not work). He's endlessly loyal. He's just not very affectionate, and she's a glutton for affection (which, in part, she probably gets from her customers at the strip club).

The moral of this story, children, is that people suffer -- fundamentally -- because they want to.

ACTING: Our last story is about ... let's say his name is Dave. Dave met Theresa (pictured here, and no "Theresa" isn't her real name) on an all Black dating website. She saw his photo and expressed an interest, which he happily responded to. Dave is a reporter for the LA Weekly, and as such gets access to lots of cool things, so he takes Theresa out for coffee, then to a dinner and a play, then to another play. Theresa works as a "background" player on a popular TV show while doing secretary work at a property management company on the weekends. Her hours are a little unusual, which suited Dave's freelance stylings quite well. But of course, since you're being told this story, you know something went wrong.

On a date, there's normally a lot of signs and subtleties that let each party know where the other stands. Dave made a point to compliment Theresa's eyes and her smile, while trying not to focus on her backside and her curves. He left his body language neutral but open, so as not to seem threatening (as the security concerns of women are something he recognizes, having four sisters). Theresa, however, was a wall of inscrutability. Crossed arms and legs, leaned away from him most of the time. When she laughed, she would turn away from him, instead of leaning forward and maybe placing a hand on his arm. She'd never call him, he was forever calling her (but she'd promptoly return his calls, for reasons he never grasped). After dates two and three, when there's normally a pause for possible affection, she leapt into her RAV4 and sped off into the night. Dave never got the feeling Theresa was "into" him.

So, after a chaste hug at Roscoe's, following their third date, he decided to see what would happen if he just didn't call. A week passed. Then two. Then he forgot about it for a while, before he noticed that six weeks had gone by with nary a peep. He shrugged and went on with his life.

The moral of the story, children, is that everybody is out to get something, and few of them will tell you what it is.

STRAIGHT AND NARROW OR YOUR SOUL GETS CAST: One of the things I do, more than anything else, is I watch people. I try to learn as much as I can from observation -- especially of others' mistakes -- before risking my own damned fool neck.

I'd like to say I have a piss poor opinion of the female gender, but it's not like guys have any great claim to superior moral or intellectual ground. I mean, if we have two guys dating professional bodies and they still can't grope 'em on a regular basis, the Men's Union has a lot of explaining to do. That said, my mother often told me that men act boorishly because they can -- if women, as a group, rejected certain kinds of behavior, it just would not happen anymore.

The overall moral is one of personal responsibility. If you're unhappy, it's your own damned fault, so you have to fix it. If you're lonely, that is something inside of you, not something that can be fixed by the presence of some other jackass. If you're stupid or depressed or wasting time, don't you have a responsibility to yourself to find help or find a way out of it?

Another moral you could take from this is not to tell me about your sniveling, pathetic problems because -- properly motivated -- I'll tell the world. Cautionary tales indeed.