Lost Angeles
A pretty hard place to get a date. Alexandra Jacobs interviews me for her Palmy Days column about Internet dating in Los Angeles in the New York Observer:
"L.A. forces you to do Internet dating, because everyoneís apart from everyone else," said Amy Alkon, 40, a redheaded syndicated columnist who moved to Venice after many years in New York and has tried both Match and Matchmaker.com. "People arenít as guarded in New York. In L.A., if you ask people what they do, they act as if you want to rob their house. Here, everybody acts like theyíre a movie star, like, ëWhy do you want to talk to me?í Like you want something from them. Itís a disease."Sheís currently going out with a man who does research for the author Elmore Leonard; she met the fellow at an Apple computer store, after a long and flamboyant search that included placing a $2,200 display ad in the L.A. Times. "L.A. men are less troubledóunless theyíre troubled New York Jews who have just moved to Los Angelesóand thatís in the uncomplimentary, uncomplicated sense," she said. "Theyíre not complicated because they havenít had a thought, other than whatís on TV, in 20 years."
Guys return the compliment, perhaps even more forcefully.
"I find that you can talk about more things outside of yourself with New York women," said a 35-year-old screenwriter who moved from the Upper West Side to the Miracle Mile. "You can talk about the newspaper. Here, it doesnít seem like anybody reads it. I was at a party one time and I made a comment about something Iíd read in the paper, and a woman turned to me and said, ëDid you just move out here?í And I said yes. And she said, ëYou wonít be reading the paper much longer.í That really shocked me.
That's not entirely true. But you are unlikely to be reading the paper, New York Times commercial-style, in bed with somebody else. That's why, as I wrote in a recent column, "Desperate is the new normal."
"Desperate is the new normal."
And that's not a good thing. I'm a 42-year-old single gay man -- which in Los Angeles means that I should've been shipped off to the glue factory a few years ago. Still, I've decided to stay optimistic about my romantic prospects, if only to save my desperation for more serious things in life, like aging and death. Another alternative to desperation, besides optimism, is numbness. We do that one particularly well in LA. Cocaine helps.
Lena at March 11, 2004 4:34 PM