LOVE IN AISLE 13? Check Please.

Single in Sandpoint: love loss in Wally World, choir boy shirts and roughing off the information highway

     I went on a date with the guy who asked me out at Wal-Mart, in fact, I went on a few of them. I would describe these dates as pleasant. I mean, what can I say; there was a point when things were going so well I thought that the budding relationship might be detrimental to my writing career.

     Nothing spells romance like two lonely souls shopping in bulk on a Saturday night – it’s how Brad and Angelina met, right? Angelina was stocking up on economy-sized boxes of diapers for Maddox and Zahara and Brad was buying tampons for his wife. Before you knew it, there was an uncontrollable desire to mate there in the sanitary napkin aisle.

     Call it what you will: romance, true love, taking a hit off consumer ecstasy; it’s the beginning of a modern-day “Gone With the Wind.”

     Back to the Wal-Mart guy. He is nice, he is cute and he calls me a lot. He has no major red-flag issues to point out.

     You’re waiting for the “but,” right? A “but” so big that J-lo would want to tear my eyes out with jealousy.

     Here it comes, the “but:” the Wal-Mart guy has decided to start calling me at 6 o’clock a.m., just to say “good morning.”

     During the most recent, chipper, wake up call I felt a sensation that I haven’t felt too many times before. It felt as though I was wearing a six-year old choir boy’s button up shirt. I started sweating and trying to peel away at the offending (imaginary) article of clothing. I put down the phone.

     What the…?

     I walked to the mirror and there were actual beads of sweat on my forehead. I hadn’t even stepped into the shower yet and my hair was already damp.

     Was I sick, did I have the bird flu? No. I was experiencing a relapse of commitment- phobia. He wanted one. I knew it.

     Never mind that we had been dating for about a week, never mind that I don’t even like committing to an outfit without proper research and, an even more irritating “never mind” – one that I’d already stated several times, never mind that I wasn’t interested in a serious relationship.

     For the love of Pete I was so freaking honest I deserved a damn award. Instead, I have a mild case of the hives and an empty bottle of Xanax.

      I will admit that my aversion to commitment is somewhat legendary. I made the ultimate sacrifice (I mean, I committed to a man who made Diego Rivera look like Ward Cleaver) and after pissing away some of the best years of my life I finally divorced his unemployed ass.

     So shoot me if I’m not picking out China with the Wal-Mart guy.

     I like to shop around, make sure I am getting the best deal – so to speak. The dating scene in Sandpoint is bleak at best, I’ll admit it; and, if I had problems making a commitment in a city with an inventory about 10 times larger than Sandpoint, chances are I won’t be waving to you from behind a picket fence any time soon.

      Dating is a multi-million dollar business. From online dating services, to singles vacations, to “night clubs,” there are so many layers to the dating onion it’s no wonder so many of us are left with our eyes watering.

     If you take dating seriously, let’s say take it up as a second job – then there are ways to meet people, and go on many dates even in Sandpoint. If you took it as seriously as your reality TV habit then you could have a full dating schedule.

     In fact, I have a friend who literally meets men on the Internet, invites them to her lair and then gets all “black widow” like and either devours them or makes up a reason why the date needs to end ASAP. 

     She has a “date” at least every weekend – sometimes more often. All this despite the fact that I seriously wouldn’t set my coffee cup down in her house let alone use the bathroom.

     The girl’s not bored, or out of double-A batteries. Something to think about while you watch “Law and Order SVU” on a Friday night.

     Personally, I tried to sign up for one of those dating website things. Let me tell you how this went down. I put “north Idaho singles” in the search engine and I got about 20 + websites that I could subscribe to.

     I clicked on the first one. I completed a psychological profile: “Do you like coffee, music, and movies? Do you brush your hair 100 times before you go to sleep at night? Did your parents give you a pony for your 6th birthday?”

     After the psych evaluation I was allowed to “shop” around.

    I looked at pictures and profiles of men, who were supposedly in my demographic, and went from there.

     Then I woke up the next day, and had about 90 embarrassing emails in my inbox. These will never stop. Think Lucy and the Chocolate factory. Word to the wise: do not use your work email account.

     I decided to open one such email. When I clicked on the message, and then had to actually log into the website to read it, I became seriously freaked out.

     What if the guy who wrote this email was wearing a chiffon moo-moo and standing in front of a mirror right now? What if he was saying, “It puts the lotion on the skin or it gets the hose again?”

     Oh yeah, I’ve seen “Silence of the Lambs,” and read the book, and hell no I am not going to rub the lotion on the skin. Delete. Delete.

     For now I will take my chances, the old-fashioned ways: going to a bar, getting drunk and passing out my phone number; being set up by friends; being seduced by the fireman who saved my cat from the sinister snow-covered elm. All the while I will do this waiting for the grand uni-sexed Deity of Dating to take pity on my soul.

     While I wait I will indulge in a rich fantasy life in which the operator for the phone company looks like “The Rock,” secretly has Donald Trump’s job and has a sexy bad boy Colin Farrell-esque side.

     “I need a new jack, can you come install it for me?” I’ll say. Colin Rock-Trump will answer: “Sure, I’ll be right over.”

Yours every other week, unless it starts feeling like a commitment,

Scarlette Quille