THE SEARCH FOR MR. ADEQUATE
Part Two
By Susan Silver


“Bad Vibrations”

As I discreetly hinted to you who were paying attention, (and following this I bet a whole bunch of you will scramble to pull up the last diary) my giant “Cadillac of vibrators” … that’s the way it’s advertised, I swear to God! … exploded on me … don’t ask … and I was told I could avoid embarrassment and sneering invitations to bondage, if I went to replace it to a safe sex store just for women, which is called Eve’s Garden. So I went. And yes, there was even a snake involved!

It is in a respectable office building on Fifty Seventh Street, so I’m unobtrusively trying to locate it on the directory when a helpful Guard asks what I’m looking for. I don’t want to tell him. I rush into the elevator and as the door closes, I see him smirk … he knows.

The hall is a little dingy and I hesitate but eventually open the door and peek in. It looks harmless enough, though sans garden greenery. Clean, a little too brightly lit to look at any of the really dirty stuff, racks of cards and books and rental videos, most with women to women themes and a large display of sexual toys against the back wall.

But I am the only customer and the grandmotherly looking woman behind the counter smiles and makes me feel safe. I am standing nervously in front of the assortment of rubber duckies … I mean things that are shaped like you-know-whats that come in pretty (if you’ll excuse the expression) soft colors when the door opens and the man who was the single worst date I have ever had in my life slithers in!

I drop to my knees … probably not the best position in this place … but hide behind a rack of spikey leather stuff. He doesn’t see me and is busy looking at the magazines. I THOUGHT MEN WEREN’T ALLOWED! This snake, who shall be nameless because I don’t want to be killed, is a zillionaire businessman, renown as a terrible social climber and a putz (that’s Jewish for the real thing in the pastel colors mentioned above) and let’s just call him Mr. Small. He walks to the back and I run out of the Garden.

We’ve all had bad dates, but on my list, he was numero uno.

“The Slithery One”

When I first moved to New York from Los Angeles, (a successful, but relatively unsophisticated gal ie. I brought a lot of yellow and light colored clothes) I met this creature and he invited me for a weekend to his vast manse in the Hamptons. It seemed like a good idea at the time, he being a sought after bachelor about town and I being a “left-coaster,” who’d never spent time there. I didn’t get to this time either. Suffice to say, even though I’d made it perfectly clear that I “of course expected my own room” … considering the fact that we had only met once for a drink, that seemed a foregone conclusion … the houseman was instructed to put my overnight bag in The Serpent’s room anyway!

Okay, okay. It wasn’t an overnight bag. I didn’t have a nice overnight bag, so I took a large Bloomies Big Brown Bag on the plane with us. From his glare, I gather that paper luggage was not acceptable.

Anyway, after he grilled me mercilessly about my New York “friends” and was not satisfied with their caliber, plus I again moved my bag to my own room, we had an excruciating dinner for two in which he spoke only to the help. And rudely. He then told me that this was clearly “not working out” and “one of us would have to go back to the city in the morning."

”Huh?”

He had already ordered the car to come and it would arrive around noon. Since I knew no one in the Hamptons and wouldn’t have had a really great time by myself stranded in a huge house on the beach even with servants, I said “well, I guess I’ll be the one to leave. But not at noon!”

I was going to take a nice long walk on the beach, then take the car into town and shop and have lunch and would be heading back to the city when I felt like it, buster! (She said to herself, rather shaken.)

The next morning, as I packed my slightly tearing shopping bag, he skulked in and tried to make up by pouting and putting his head on my shoulder and asking me to forgive him in a kind of annoying whiny voice. Yuck! Not only are you a total jackass, you want to be reassured you’re not? (She again said to herself, not shaken now, just pissed!!)

“Your behavior shows that money can buy you style … maybe, but certainly not class!”

She said outloud! Yeah!! I slammed the door ala old Bette Davis movies and flounced into the limo and proceeded to have a sort of nice day after all. Hey, a limo’s still a limo.

I need a drink and I don’t even drink! I schlep home and take a hot bath. Maybe I should review my humungous list of prior dates and drag out the list from the last ten years.

“Dates From Hell Would Be An Improvement”

There were some really good ones that I probably should revisit, that I let get away without giving a fair shot. But not Marvin, the second worst date!

A fixup from a friend of a friend who is clearly no one’s friend anymore! He picked me up outside my place. He was a tiny man inside a tiny car. This is not his fault, but I am not tiny. I’m five-eight and with heels, I can be anywhere up to six feet. I was wearing a fur coat I had bought myself for my new life in the freezing Big Apple.

The first words out of his tiny mouth were,” Well, you must have taken some poor slob to the cleaners.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your ex bought you the mink.”

“Did it ever occur to you that I might have bought it myself?”

“Oh swell,” he groaned. “That’s even worse! Successful, independent women are aggressive, especially in bed,”

I wanted to say “you have no worry on that account” but I didn’t want to be aggressive. So I bit my tongue, bit it hard! My bleeding tongue and I followed him into some horrible singles bar. No, I slouched in so as not to be noticed. I would have crawled on my knees, but I didn’t want to ruin my nylons.

He launched into a tirade on “today’s women”, while stuffing himself with free peanuts. Finally, finally, finally … I said, “You have a tiny problem.” (A pun was intended.) “What you consider to be ‘threatening’ women. Am I correct?”

He drew himself up to his full five feet. “Are you accusing me of being mako?”

“I don’t think so because I don’t know what mako is.”

He started to stamp his tiny feet and yell, “mako, mako” like some deranged parrot.

I finally realized, “Oh, you mean ‘macho’!”

He said, “See, aggressive women correct grammar!”

I said, “You mean ‘pronunciation,’” got up, drew myself up to full height, spilled the peanuts and left.

Then there was the beautiful young guy who in a romantic moment felt compelled to whisper that when he was five, he had set fire to his parents’ house, on purpose!

And then there was the handsome though over-coifed TV personality who lived with his mother and had a picture of a man impaled on a cross with arrows stabbing him and maggots feasting on him, hanging over his bed. Both of which gave a girl pause, to put it mildly. Actually they gave this girl full stop and exit! I could go on ... but, I feel ill already! And I haven’t even gotten to year two.

I take to bed again. But I am not alone. I turn on Hugh Jackman. Wait, that is not a declarative sentence. I wish! Rather it is describing how I put Boy From Oz on the CD player and drift into a lovely memory of the encounter I had with him ... to be continued.