Private by nature, the exposure such sites demand have asked more from me than I’m accustomed to relinquishing. Thankfully “Rex Merritt” has been honest.

    In real life, that is life where actual humans maintain face-to-face exchanges, it’s easier to tailor questions and gauge responses. Doesn’t web anonymity license deception and puffery?

    Frankly if one must indulge in social subterfuge shouldn’t a few drinks and a decent measure of calculated flattery form that foundation? Through web communications, the person with whom one corresponds really could be an Airedale instead of desirable.

    In all of my exchanges so far one question pervades. What sort of woman do I like? Until experimenting with online dating, I never wondered about this. Nor did it ever arise while chatting in person.

    The reason why probably has everything to do with genuine human contact. Facetime provides a great deal of conscious and subconscious information. The markers of who we are and what attracts, or detracts from, us aren’t easily concealed.

    Often on some levels I’ve been appraised and have in turn evaluated. Who among us hasn’t? But I doubt admirers or myself consulted a checklist during the process. Nonetheless today’s woman, or women who consider themselves riding the crest of feminine expansion, demand solid particulars for a matter comprised of inexplicables, intangibles and inexpressible formulations.

    They request my formula for attraction. What components from which columns produce my ideal.

    I imagine I come across as shifty by stating there isn’t any criteria. That somehow I conceal something by ascribing my end of the connection to “feeling.”

    Hunches are saved for trifectas at the Saratoga Springs racetrack.

    Are there are algorithms predicting success in finding that special someone? Instead isn’t just dumb luck involved when stumbling across someone initially compelling?

    Well, so much so that whatever compulsion pairs then cleaves us for some indeterminate period. Ideally, as long as Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. Or as eye-blinking as tabloid road-kill exhibited by the Robert Pattinson-Kristen Stewart splatter.

    Man! Talk about a most public clarion to up one’s game! Plenty of girlish women who’ve mistaken Pattinson’s onscreen personas for his true person wonder between astonishment and disgust what Stewart derived from her Rupert Sanders dalliance. Nineteen years her senior, the director is ancient to 20-somethings who regard 30 year olds as mature. As an “older man,” I could reveal the secret. But summoning facts might be considered bragging by the immature.

    Know this. In youth I never fully went the raging hormonal teen male route. Even those Quarropas High contemporaries struggling with their conflicted sexual proclivities couldn’t have dismissed our female cohorts’ bursting secondary sexual characteristics. Straight or on the way to gay, boys coursed our mid 1970s turgid high school hallways and classrooms with one continual … stimuli. A big one.

    Girls ogled then just weren’t maturing contemporaries filling out womanly forms. Although appreciating a jutting, gravity-defying bosom as much as the next panting, red-blooded male, this boy then knew those projectiles were merely boobs. Despite hetero hardwiring, big fun bags alone insufficiently raised my intrigue meter.

    Just skimming the adult’s past partners illustrate standards far more meaningful than bodacious busts. What did they all share? Other than me satisfying them better than any had ever been or could ever be again? I don’t know about theirs, but my roster was eclectic.

    “Women” in all their permutations the sole constant. Wasn’t that the theme of a Truffaut movie? I can almost hear the dubbed voiceover.

    Too few were stop-traffic, wolf-whistle beauties. Yet for brief times our reciprocating qualities complemented tremendous physical benefits.

    Again, though, these eventual connections arrived through interaction. One can “break ice” over the net. But depending on the web to determine suitability? A favorable comparable rate works for statistical reckoning. Should we use so bloodless a method for affairs of the heart?

    The game ought to be pursued in close quarters. The net does not lend itself to snuck glimpses, favorable or contrary tones of voice, slyness lurking through shyness, and hearing melody in laughter which emboldens. Video conferencing suffices for business. It blanches the subtleties of establishing bonds.

    Moreover, what innovation could replace the lure of listening to a woman insist one thing while her tics indicate something entirely different? Can science develop a device replicating the thrill received from an incidental that touch awakes sudden surprising heat? No hologram will replace an evasive flesh-and-blood woman twirling her hair.

    Nevertheless the basic query challenged me. What do I seek in a woman? (Shouldn’t that be “who”?) It never occurred to me to ask myself that when younger. So I wrestle with it now. By the way, is it my metrics or do Brooklyn women predominate on such sites?

    What follows only applies to real life. If Tyra Banks, Franceska Jaimes, Ovidie or Courtney Stodden were to leapfrog my imagination, I’d waive the requisite bathe then perfume them requirement before slipping any or all into my tent. 

    Otherwise surveying those with whom I’ve shared — or faked — bliss, I sifted for unfailing constants. Skipping the usual facile stuff, every woman who contended with me long enough to realize I was incorrigible, therefore ultimately irredeemable, was comfortable inhabiting her own skin. None of that agonizing over trivialities which so many women’s magazines and chick TV programs exploit.

    Nor did any bog themselves down in problems. That is dithering the manageable into something difficult.

    Finally, inside all their pretty heads they wedded wits with solid vision. We prefer or dislike subjects. We support or oppose positions. “Why” stretches between cogent response or muddled defensiveness. The worst fallback of all? The whiny “I don’t know.”

    How huge is the difference between being opinionated and substantiating an opinion? As clear as Sarah Palin/Hillary Clinton.

    The first doesn’t let sense or facts impede the blast of her voice. The second builds reasoned and nuanced arguments to support her points. This has nothing to do with erudition, and everything to do with rationale. Plausible rationale.

    I qualify that because a childhood of daytime TV full of Gracie Allen awarded me an appreciation of language’s plasticity and her mind’s ability to twist it.

    Scouring sites for potential partners only presents surface. Prettified and scrubbed for immediate selection. And how much more of that has been massaged and manipulated?

Ever wonder what happens inside a bag of snakes? Then read GREEN VENOM. It’s terrific! Available through Amazon Kindle.