So what if the woman we met at Ani DiFranco spent the whole evening stalking her ex-girlfriend?

So what if the guy who asked us out at the health club arrived at the restaurant with a tape measure and a checklist? The fact that we emptied a bowl of lobster bisque into his lap and called him a fascist only enhances our story for posterity.

Nothing takes the sting out of any truly bad date like detachment and humor. G.o.ddess knows these are often the first things to get lost in all the clouds of expectation and antiperspirant beforehand.

3. We feel your pain. Besides, little else makes women feel as empowered as shared humiliation and misery. (Why do you think we watch all those talk shows?) Especially when it comes to dating. Sure, we're occasionally heartened by stories of women who give up trying to meet someone, then meet their One True Love at the Laundromat.

But when we've just arrived home from an evening where our date spent the whole time making racist jokes and touching his crotch, we really don't want to hear about other people's happiness. We derive far more comfort listening to a friend of ours who just went on a date with someone who got lost on the way to her house, arrived three hours late, and then had the cajones to hit her up for gas money.

We're far more comforted by hearing that our girl Inez went out with someone who got so drunk playing beer-pong with his old frat buddies, he had to get his stomach pumped.

Or that Barbara got set up with someone who turned out to be her demented third cousin-the one who's twenty-three and still busy with his Pokemon collection.

We've all gone out with some hottie, hoping that maybe this person will finally be The One, only to arrive home feeling disappointed, or rejected, or duped. We discover that a person whom we fantasized about actually doesn't believe in teaching evolution. Or is recovering from electroshock therapy. Or is thirty-eight and still living with his parents. Or that it's his life's ambition to move to Minnesota and run for political office. Or that she has "s.e.xuality issues."

Somebody who tells us that she went on one date and "just knew this was the person I'd spend the rest of my life with" is an idiot. Sure, it may have happened to her, but how does this help us, thank you?

Next time you have a s.h.i.tty date-or suspect that you will-remember that you're going on it not for yourself but for the good of all womankind. Your misery is our comfort.

4. f.u.c.k decorum and false advertising. So many of us-especially straight gals-are taught to be "a lady," and to act "like a creature unlike any other" on a date. And because of this, we put up with far more c.r.a.p than we ought to.

We say yes to a second date because we don't want to "be mean"-even if the guy is about as interesting as a dial tone and his most redeeming quality is that he can breathe una.s.sisted by a respirator.

We get into our date's Jeep Cherokee-even though he's just had fourteen Jell-O shots-because we don't want to "offend him."

We misrepresent our needs and desires in the hope that it will make us more likeable. Oh, that's okay, we say, I don't mind that you went ahead and ordered for me; really, I love fried clams and cheese fries. And, yeah, I'm a huge Raiders fan, too.

Hey, there are manners, and then there is false advertising.

Lead him to think we like football and chances are we'll wind up sitting through the whole f.u.c.king season with somebody who's painted his chest black and silver with grease paint.

If we don't tell a guy we're not interested in him, because we don't want to "hurt his feelings," how is he supposed to know to get lost? Instead, we'll just let him call and call, until he's angry and feels like an a.s.shole-while we complain to our friends that he's bugging us. (I mean, if we think saying no is going to hurt a guy's feelings, imagine what a restraining order will do.) So let's be honest. Not brutally honest. Just clear. It's a matter of treating both ourselves and our dates with respect.

Case in point: About seven years ago, I met this really cute guy at a bar. I'll call him "Sam" because that's what his name was. We stayed up all night talking, dancing, smooching. As much as anyone can tell from a single chance encounter a.s.sisted by a couple of frozen margaritas (okay, four), Sam and I were amazing together. At the end of the date, he gave me his number (I was in the process of moving) and urged me to call once I had a phone. Yet when I telephoned a week later, he sounded decidedly less enthused.

"Look," he told me, "this is awkward, especially since I only had one date with you. But since I met you, my ex-girlfriend has come back into my life. I'm not sure what's going to happen, but I don't feel comfortable starting something with you right now. I thought about just not telling you, or stringing you along, or blowing you off. But I don't want to do that. I like you, and I don't want to treat you disrespectfully."

Zowie. Now let me tell you, Girlfriends. When he told me that he didn't want to see me, for a moment I felt a quick little stab to the heart. But then I felt relief and grat.i.tude-because at least I knew where I stood and was allowed to keep my dignity. Had his ex-girlfriend really come back into his life? Who the h.e.l.l knows. But he said no clearly and respectfully, in a way that didn't make me feel personally diminished.

The fact that I still remember this little encounter is a sign of how rare such behavior is-and how much I appreciated it.

There was no bitterness on my part, or any feelings of self-blame, self-doubt, or self-flagellation. Since then I've tried to treat the guys I've said no to the same way. It ain't easy, but it's less stressful-and certainly less costly than Caller ID.

5. An ounce of closure is worth a pound of pride. It's generally a.s.sumed that if someone is blowing us off, the best course of action is to accept it and move on. If a guy says he's going to call and then two weeks go by, write him off. Don't call him. Don't give him the satisfaction of hearing your neediness, desire, and disappointment. Just walk away, Renee. Hold your head high. Don't cry out loud. "Rules girls" know when to walk. Blah blah blah . . .

Yeah, well: You know how many friends I have who are actually capable of such self-restraint and discipline?

Exactly one.

My friend Gwynne, G.o.ddess bless her, can actually say: f.u.c.k him. That's it. If that b.a.s.t.a.r.d thinks I'm going to call him, he can die a long cold death in h.e.l.l.

The rest of us snivelers? We enter what my friend Bari calls The Demented Zone.

We may know in our hearts that it's over, but d.a.m.ned if our heads don't keep stoking the eternal flame of hope. No excuse is too implausible, no loophole too small. Our thinking gets so creative, we could be awarded a grant from the NEA for conceptual art: Well, maybe he was sent to Kenya on business and he went on a safari and a puma ate his cell phone, we say. Maybe there was a death in his family and he's too convulsed with grief to move his jaw or his index finger. Maybe his car overturned on the way to the dentist's and he's been lying in a ditch for three days with a fractured neck.

Whatever it is, we will come up with a seemingly valid reason to justify calling him. And ninety-nine percent of the time, whenever we do finally reach the guy, we hear what we suspected all along: the temperature at the other end of the line plunging into the single digits. A lot of hemming and hawing. Poor excuses from a poor excuse. And then we feel like idiots.

I never should have called, we say. I should have preserved my pride.

Yeah, well: f.u.c.k pride. We can all live without pride for a day. But closure? There's a reason that families whose loved ones were declared missing in action in Vietnam thirty years ago are still lobbying Congress to find the bodies. On some level, we humans cannot let go of someone until we actually see the corpse.

The same holds true for dating. If we've invested even an iota of hope in someone, we often have to confirm that the hookup has been permanently disconnected-that the promise is completely dead and buried-before we can move on. And if this means demeaning ourselves a little, and calling when we shouldn't, and telling the guy that he's behaved like an a.s.shole, and flogging the thing to death, so be it. A little short-term humiliation can be empowering in the long run.

After all, in the end it just brings us closer to Joe.

Chapter 10.

Fish Who Need Bicycles.

(A Thinking Girl's Guide to Love).

Cinderella lied to us. There should be a Betty Ford Center where they de-program you by putting you in an

electric chair, play "Some Day My

Prince Will Come," and hit you and go

"n.o.body's coming ... n.o.body's coming ... n.o.body's coming."

-JUDY CARTER.

Ah, a rare harmonic convergence has occurred! Every single one of my girlfriends has fallen in love with someone! Every single gal-pal of mine is in the throes of a True Romance! Which means of course that, as of now, we are all clinically insane.

We're not getting valentines every day but heart palpitations. We're not breathless but hyperventilating. With panic. And expectation. And the unsettling feeling that what we've dreamed about and what we're actually living are two completely alternative universes.

Because besides diets and relatives, nothing really causes us gals more angst than love-romantic love, with the O shaped like a heart and a lot of insipid bluebirds flying around it. Never mind that intimacy in all forms can feel as treacherous as it can feel exhilarating. From the time we're old enough to sit in a high chair, girls are spoon-fed a slew of s.a.d.i.s.tic little fairy tales about romance, all supposedly in the name of "entertainment."

Along with our strained carrots, we're given tales to swallow about women who were comatose until men rescued them. About women who were consigned to spend their lives dust-busting for their evil stepmothers until men rescued them. About women who were locked in towers until their hair grew long enough for men to shimmy up like a flagpole in order to rescue them. About women who traded their voice for a fabulous pair of legs so that men would love them (now what's the message in that?). About women whose beauty was so great, they transformed men's hearts and minds faster than a near-death experience on the Santa Monica Freeway or a midlife crisis.

Yep, a few years in a playpen with Walt Disney and the Brothers Grimm and, as far as I'm concerned, we sisters are finished in the romance department. From then on, ninety-nine percent of what we hear and believe about love is just plain wrong. Pabulum. Horsepucky. c.o.c.kamamie. Whackness. Merde. Choose your vernacular-anyway you slice it, it comes out peanuts.

As we get older, it gets no better. Between talk shows, romance novels, movies, soap operas, and magazines, more misleading information is imparted to women about love than about cigarettes.

Compounding this, of course, are the messages we get telling us that powerful women don't need romance, that strong women are unlovable, and that single women over the age of thirty-five have a better chance of getting hit by a stray torpedo than of landing a husband.

Sweet Venus, love is difficult enough without all the false advertising! How can enlightened and powerful G.o.ddesses sort through the mixed messages and emerge truly ready for romance? I say, for starters, let's pull the wings off some fairy tales.

FAIRY TALE NUMBER 1.

If you're a strong woman, everyone will think you're

a man-hating lesbian and no one will love you.

Oh pul-leze. That is, like, so twenty minutes ago. As if Oprah, Madonna, Courtney Love, Whoopi Goldberg, Sandra Day O'Connor, Margaret Thatcher, Roseanne, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Aretha Franklin, Cher, Candice Bergen, and Diane Sawyer, to name a few, have never been loved?

Besides, it's not the lesbians who are usually the big man-haters. The most vitriol I've heard spewed against people with XY chromosomes has actually come from us straight chicks. We're far more likely to be disappointed, hurt, and enraged by men than lesbians are. After all, what does a d.y.k.e care if some guy belches during a moment of silence at a funeral? She doesn't have to cuddle with him afterward in the parking lot. For d.y.k.es, men are sort of like watching elephants fart at the zoo: The guys are funny and disgusting, and then, after the entertainment is over, the lesbians can go home and leave the mess behind. It's us straight girls who are stuck there in the cage as the cleanup crew.

FAIRY TALE NUMBER 2.

If you're a strong woman, you don't need a lover.

Yeah, yeah. We've all heard the saying: "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." Well, some of us fishes want a brand-new red Schwinn with hybrid tires and a gel seat-and it doesn't mean we're misguided or weak. Gay or straight, male or female, some of us just long for romantic companionship. Ain't no shame in that. Life is hard and lonely; it's only natural to want someone to share the misery with.

FAIRY TALE NUMBER 3.

All single women are miserable.

An article appeared in the Washington Post once around Valentine's Day with the headline, "One Is the Loveliest Number: Two Single Washington Women, Singularly Happy." Apparently, the fact that women can actually be happy by ourselves is news! I mean, stop the presses! Had the reporter really done his homework, however, I suspect that he could've found more than two women. Why, there may even be five or six.

My friend Karen, who's solo by choice, says, "Every time I'm in a relationship, I feel like I'm a car with the air conditioning on all the time. Sure, I can go, but my engine just can't run as well." Studies show that there are more single women in America than ever before-and that more of us are single by choice-and that we're thriving. So if we're flying solo, we have plenty of company. Not having a mate doesn't mean we have "nothing." It may mean we have standards, though. And, oh yeah, a life.

FAIRYTALE NUMBER 4.

The cheese stands alone.

Speaking of s.a.d.i.s.tic things from childhood, remember the game the Farmer in the Dell? All the kids get in a circle and dance around while the farmer picks a wife, the wife picks a child, the child picks a cow, the cow picks a dog, and so forth, until n.o.body's left unpicked except for the cheese, who stands alone in the middle of the circle while everyone dances around "it," squealing, "The cheese stands alone! The cheese stands alone!"

For most of us, this is our mortal fear-that we will be the cheese. We get the idea that if we do not find a partner by, say, age thirty-five, we will stand alone and be mocked by everyone around us for the rest of eternity.

Well, it doesn't work out that way. Love blossoms for all different people at all different ages. Our culture won't tell us this, of course, because it wants to sell us lots of stuff like Retin-A anti-aging cream and liposuction. But my mother works at an old-age home, so she can attest to the fact that there are octogenarians running around goo-goo-eyed over each other. People magazine is another source of proof: The folks profiled in its glossy pages have inevitably met their loves at all different stages of their lives, in all different capacities.

Besides, as the French know, cheese gets better and more desirable with age. Better to be a fine wheel of brie than just another slab o' Velveeta.

FAIRY TALE NUMBER 5.

Prince Charmings want beautiful, young princesses.

Not according to the real fairy tales of the twentieth century. When Edward II, future king of England, abdicated the throne, it was for Wallis Simpson, an older divorcee. And although Princess Diana was young, gorgeous, and well-dressed, Prince Charles ultimately left her for a woman his own age with unspectacular looks.

Sure, there are always doofuses who want trophy wives, or Peter Pans who like women thirty years younger than them. But that's not the whole picture.

A lot of guys, when it comes right down to it, just want a woman they can fart in front of. Yeah, they wouldn't mind if we were cute, too, but the real bottom line is that they want someone they can be comfortable with, whom they can wake up beside feeling peaceful, whom they can talk to and laugh with. They may say they want Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, but if we sleep with them, let them "control" the remote, and don't cause them any pain, they can be ecstatic and grateful.

They're like us in that way. If they're grown-ups-and granted, that can be a big if-what guys really want in a lover is a best friend, albeit with b.o.o.bs.

FAIRY TALE NUMBER 6.

True love is instant. We'll know it

the minute we see the person.

Pudding is instant. Real love and intimacy take time. This is a pretty hard concept to grasp for all of us who've been raised watching Love Boat reruns and flirting on the Internet, but a healthy relationship does require more than sharing pia coladas on the Lido Deck or sending each other, ahem, hotmail. Trust, communication, and kindness-which we can't always gauge on the first date, much less the fourth-take time to unveil and build.

Besides, think about what made for an "instant"connection when we were fifteen: The fact that the guy looked like Lenny Kravitz, we smoked pot together listening to "Free Bird," and agreed that everybody else in our school was a jerk.

FAIRY TALE NUMBER 7.

Boys tease us because they like us.

No, boys tease us because they're a.s.sholes. Abuse is not an acceptable expression of love. If a guy mistreats us, it's not his own little quirky way of expressing love-it's an exercise of possessiveness, control, and ego. We gotta run, do not walk, to the nearest exit.

"Bad boys" may be s.e.xy during our rebellious years in high school, but we should outgrow them as quickly as a Ricky Martin lunchbox. We gotta put a stop to that "Beauty and the Beast" mentality where girls are taught that our love and devotion alone can transform a monster into a prince. A relationship is not a reformatory.

Besides, we gals are not a 7-Eleven: always open, always convenient, always there to serve and a.s.sist, with no needs of our own.

FAIRY TALE NUMBER 8.

If we don't have a date for Valentine's Day, we're unworthy and pathetic.