"Dating?!" Brooke's eyes open wide, examining me as if I speak a strange dialect of Outer Mongolian. "Girlfriend, dating' is what you do when you need to fill your otherwise empty planner. Dating' is what you do when the cable's out and you've grown weary of your own company. Face it, girl," Brooke levels her lawyer-eyes in mine, "at our age, it's more like a full-on nationwide manhunt."
"Don't you think that's just a little extreme?" Heather gently inquires, sipping her caf au lait. "I mean, at our age, men are still works in progress, and I think we must help them, guide them as they find their visions, voices, and hearts." Heather teaches seventh grade English at Abraham Lincoln Middle School; can you tell?
"I think it's more like screening and selection," Amanda looks up from her laptop. "I do a little recruiting, and then I set-up the tryouts. I apply my standards and criteria as I put the candidates through their paces. High score gets the position," she smiles. You'd never guess Amanda is the VP for Human Relations at a major American retailer, would you?
Then, as if I pushed auto-focus, the picture immediately becomes crystal clear.
Our professions match our personalities: Brooke, fiery and tough as a cheap steak, defends "the oppressed" in criminal court; Heather, compassionate mother of all living things, champions the cause of awkward adolescents; and Amanda-strategic, analytic, and statistical-finds people to work in The Big Box Store. "Professional women," we are our jobs. And we want our men to match us as perfectly as our careers. But (and, if you'll pardon the expression, this is a big "but") the men are supposed to supply all the joy and satisfaction our jobs cannot.
Because she battles the boys' club all day long, Brooke goes for men who make her feel feminine. Brooke's last suitor, Travis, owned a chain of clothing stores; "a haberdasher," he insisted, "not a clothing salesman." Incredibly pretty, Travis fit his body to his clothes, spending hours in the gym, more hours at the salon. "C'mon," we said, "any guy that pretty has gotta be gay," but Brooke had all the affidavits and dossiers to prove Travis's properly manly credentials, even if his legs usually were smoother and darker tanned than ours. Travis had only one little defect: Afraid he might get dirt beneath his nails, wrinkle his trousers, or mess-up his coiffure, he never wanted to DO anything.
Because she nurtures "emerging adults," helping them live up to their potential, Heather finds men who are a little rough around the edges but show lots of promise. Ed, Heather's current "project," not surprisingly owns a ginormous construction company. Ed no more can conjugate a verb, find a nuance, or select the proper fork than he can flap his arms and fly; but that man can plan, pipe, circuit, and finish like some kind of hammer-totin' demigod. "He's very good with his hands," Heather giggles. When she asked him about the last book he read, Ed stared at Heather kinda blankly, guessing, "Uh, 'Green Eggs and Ham'maybe?" Ed can demystify a blueprint, but he kinda struggles with decoding declarative sentences. "He can learn," Heather insists. "Give him time. He can learn."
And Amanda adores her business boysthe more dynamic, the better. Brent, Amanda's current three-piece suit, keeps his powerful fingers so tight on the pulse of American enterprise, making a fortune even in a down market, he whimpers when she tries to part him from his blackberry. But knowing Amanda's profits rise and fall according to the fate of our beloved Cubbies, Brent took her to Wrigley the night Carlos Zambrano pitched his no-hitter. Poor Brent, however, remained so dialed into his tickers and forecasts, as our Northsiders went to the top of the ninth ready to close the deal, he turned his bleary eyes toward Amanda and asked, "Babe, when're we up to bat?"
If only we could choose our men as wisely as we chose our professions.
"Aw, girls, gettin' a man ain't no rocket science," Brooke's mother brings us right back down to earth as she refills our coffees. "Y'all jus' hike up yer skirt, hang-out the Fer Rent sign, and watch 'em ol' boys line right up."