Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men (7 page)

Men like sports; can you afford
not
to?

If you play anything yourself, you’re bound to be where the men are! You don’t actually have to be very good or play championship anything. You may play
at
it with girl friends as amateurish as you, but
doing
it allows you to be down at the courts, out on the links, up on the ski trails … like we said, where the men are!

Take skiing for example. The slopes are littered with men and not all of them are married. Even the ones on litters will be back again as soon as the broken bones have knitted.

I’d almost guarantee it. On a ski weekend you’ll talk to at least a dozen nice strangers. A double chair lift finds you paired off with a new man every time you go topside. Likewise the T-bar lift. Nobody will pick you up when you fall. That would be patronizing you. But even if you ski by yourself (I know several girls who do) you’re apt to have a pretty decent time. Incidentally, those who ski even a little bit say it’s so exhilarating you tend to shelve all your weighty problems. The first time you stay upright all the way down a slope with trees flying past like telephone poles on the highway, you feel a thrill like the sweet part of danger.

Ice skating is a dandy way to rub shoulders with boys even if you occasionally rub derrières with ice! If you skate alone, boys will come by to skate with you—innocent as being tagged at a dance! And if they don’t, there’s that compensatory thrill again … skimming over the ice like a snowbird … grrreat!

Tennis is terrific fun and a man mecca too. Even if you’re on the courts with your fifteen-year-old cousin, there’s a chance you’ll meet the boys playing in the next court.

The watering places are laced with men. If you water-ski or surf, you’re sure to be caught in a male-strom.

Sailing is male. Very male. But you can’t just draw a bead on a seventy-foot ketch with lots of promising crew members spilling out of the fo’c’sle and climb aboard. You’ve got to be invited. The way to be invited is to know who owns the boat, of course. But there aren’t enough boat owners to go around … not of the kind of boat we’re talking about. There are even fewer of them than single men on cruises.

A friend of mine crewed with the late Humphrey Bogart for several years, but he never brought a girl along … figured
he
was lucky to be there.

I suppose by kind of hanging around in the general area of boats you might eventually be tapped for a sail. I heard of a girl who got herself asked to the barnacle scraping of small craft, it being understood barnacle scrapers are eventually rewarded by being allowed to crew on the scraped craft. It seems like an awfully fingernail-corroding way to get an invitation.

You could get a small boat of your own, of course, and put-put around. A secondhand dinghy with an outboard motor costs roughly $99.50, and a canoe with a couple of paddles is even cheaper. Or you can rent something. But all this presupposes you know how to handle a boat.
Do
you? The men in boat yards look just marvelous but you can see I’m little or no help in suggesting how to meet them.

Anyway, archery, ping-pong, badminton, roller skating, bowling, golf (hunting and shooting are expensive so we’ll skip them) are all sports men dig. If you do too, a man who might not otherwise may dig you.

There’s another plus to athletics. After a workout, your muscles feel so taut and singing (once past the painful beginning) you get to liking your body with that feel and won’t tolerate it any other way. Don’t forget, too, how smashing girls look in ski clothes, skating skirts and tennis whites.

If you’re a real hothouse flower, you can still participate in sports. (I know you hoped you couldn’t, but you
can
!)

A thin-ankled fashion plate I know plays touch football with her husband and some friends occasionally on a vacant lot. Her specialty is halfbacking the Statue of Liberty play. Margaret usually lasts about three minutes but claims it’s been a marvelous help in getting the feel of the game so she can understand her husband’s passion for it.

To be actively sporty, sometimes all you need to do is lie down. Your red-blood count may be thirty, but you can still take your grass mat, your suntan oil and a good book to the beach, and park where the men are. Don’t always move in a safe, sane little band of girls.

One girl alone on a beach towel is a man attractor. (And if no one comes near, she hasn’t done anything to cry into her pillow about.) Four girls together are a stop signal to flirtation. Eight girls together murder it unless a roving volleyball team comes along looking for a game.

A working knowledge of sports can serve you well. If you know who’s batting what in which league and a few famous plays of the Baltimore Colts, you’re considered a brilliant conversationalist. If you don’t know a double-header from a yacht with two johns (and can’t
learn
), I’ve found that it helps hypo your interest to have a small bet on one of the teams. Or to know somebody’s brother or cousin you can root for. One football season I “adopted” Jon Arnett of the U.S.C. Trojans. I pretended I was his mother and felt how she would feel watching the game. (Actually she probably had cold compresses on her head with somebody staked out at the TV set to tell her when it was over.) Then because of some N.C.A.A. ruling (I never understood
that
either) Jon was benched for a semester and I lost heart. Now on Rose Bowl day and during the World Series I simply chloroform myself.

One more thought on man-jammed sports arenas. Race tracks are. Save your lunch money, bet the favorites to show and you’ll be fraternizing with fellows at the cashier windows after every race. Well, it
could
happen.

I think you could skip boxing arenas. Nobody will pay any attention to you anyway.

As for indoor brain games like chess and bridge, I know of no places where men gather officially to play them except at tournaments—where you will be flogged if you so much as snap open your purse to look for a bobby pin. If you know these games, though, bully for you. Another of your special pluses with men.

Bars

Even men who don’t hunt, golf, ski, skate, swim, shoot or sail
do
lift a glass now and then, and they often lift it in bars. On gazing the length of an average bar, a girl would think this must be the place! There they are—men in flocks … just ready to be swept from their bar stools and made off with! Isn’t it a shame there’s a catch to the men you meet in bars?

Ginger says they’re like the steaks you get in Mexico. They
seem
like regular steaks and have regular steak names on the menu, but when you order a Chateaubriand for only $2.95, it tastes more like chateau plaster. It wasn’t cured properly or something.

Men in bars look like men all right, but maybe
they
weren’t cured properly or something. Anyway, they act funny! If you’re in a bar alone or with another girl, they treat you as though you were somebody you’re not. They figure you’re a little bit lonely (now isn’t that silly of them!) and possibly an itsy witsy bit frantic or else why would you be here? Therefore you must be distress merchandise which can be had more cheaply than regular goods. These bar belters don’t seem to realize it’s little old fun-loving but moral-fibered
you
underneath.

Now certain bars have been adopted by companies in the neighborhood and have a “safe,” home-folksy atmosphere. No question of mistaken identity there. Your cohorts know it’s you all right … the real you. But if you’re in that bar too often, even drinking with pals who love you, it means you ain’t got no place else to go, and you’re still distress merchandise.

I have a feeling many girls will not buy my prissy attitude about bars for one moment. It’s true that I get drunk easily and may be asleep in a chair before the real fun starts. Some of my best girl friends spend a minimum of six hours a week in their company bar, and, since they are pretty and popular, are always surrounded by fellows who fight to buy their drinks. But I must stick by my stand. Working out at the bar isn’t getting them any good take-home men. Better they should be home doing their double-chin exercises!

Some bars in big cities are famous get-acquainted meccas. When the bar closes at 2
A.M.
, everybody goes home with
somebody,
and very warm friendships are undoubtedly formed—at least from 2
A.M.
to 9. Can you afford to pass
them
up? I’d say yes! If that’s such a great way to meet men, how come those same girls are back the next night forming new friendships?

If you are a shy violet like me, if you’re not a raving beauty like I’m not, you feel more shy and less beautiful on the prowl in a bar than almost any other place on earth.

Going to a bar with a date is different. Respectable as being in church. You may even do a little flirting with the man on the next bar stool while your date goes to check the dinner reservations. Then you aren’t distress merchandise. Men you meet with another man are
cured
!

Also, at vacation spots I would say it’s okay to let down the bar to bars. I don’t know why it’s different there but it is!

Parties

Like bars, parties are touted as classically good sources of men. Men
go
to them and in a convivial, girl-meeting mood. Ought to be a simple trick to pick off a large enough collection to last up to and maybe through the crucial Christmas season.

This is possibly a true appraisal for the pretty, busty girl who has only to stand still, draw in her breath to draw a crowd. But if you’re like me (leave bust measurements out of this) and you have to sink
in
before love blossoms, you may find the men have come and gone from the fray without you
or
your phone number.

A few years ago I met a yummy chap at a bon-voyage party. (My boss’s wife was going to China.) We chatted long enough for me to learn that he managed the basement section of a large department store and was working his way upstairs. A few weeks later I just happened to be shopping in his store (like Japanese planes just
happened
to be over Pearl Harbor) and stopped to ask him if he had had lunch. That was a pretty brassy move for me because I die when turned down. He hadn’t. We went up to the tearoom, had a very nice talk, and made a date. He kept saying, rather overingenuously I thought, that he had no idea I was so pleasant and hadn’t thought me attractive at all at the party. Hmmmmm!

I’d better back down right now and admit that some relatively plain girls do just fine at parties. I’m just not one of them.

There are parties and parties of course. Cocktail parties are the ones I hate most but I can’t ever remember missing one! You owe it to yourself to go to everything from company picnics to embassy balls on the chance that
he’ll
be there.

Parties are also a reason to look your prettiest, to wear a new dress and your most razzle-dazzle smile and kind of generally hone your personality against new and old friends. The best parties I know for sinking into men are small dinner parties.

Get-Acquainted Clubs

I imagine the risks of blind dates are paltry compared to what you might encounter at a lonely hearts club (one advertised in the paper). They’re probably on the level or the police would pounce, but they do seem like a last—or even later than that—resort.

A well-sponsored Los Angeles group gives cocktail parties for “singles” at the Interlude on the Sunset Strip about once a month. Admission is usually three dollars for girls, five dollars for men. The one I went to was pleasant enough, very chic and respectable but sterile. I tell you, a party without a single married man in it is kind of spooky … and dull!

Political Clubs

Pretty swinging usually. The fellows are there to get a candidate elected and you’re there to pick one out for
you
! These partisan groups can be a lot of fun—even if they are over-distaffed—especially in a big election year. Don’t wait for that, however. Call the Republican or Democratic headquarters (both if you have no scruples) in your city and ask what organized group you might join.

Alcoholics Anonymous

I don’t know her personally but a friend tells me a friend of
hers
plucked herself a steady beau and subsequent husband from A.A. She was about forty-three, had no drinking problem of her own, but since outsiders are permitted to attend A.A. meetings (presumably to do research or because they have a problem person at home), she wandered into the Beverly Hills Chapter meeting, sat next to a famous writer, and bagged him within the year. Seems almost ghoulish, doesn’t it? I suppose a man
would
be very susceptible to a woman he met under these circumstances … one who understood and accepted his most serious problem.

If you are going to try this approach to men, I suggest you pick a wealthy chapter of A.A. Might as well start with a
solvent
problem child, like say someone with liquid assets.

Vacations

Vacations can produce marvelous men or be as fruitless as mud. The best rule seems to be not to plan to meet men, and then you may.

Louise and Paula gathered up their sultriest clothes and flew to Las Vegas not long ago, having heard that’s where half the men in the world were. They were there all right, but the only ones who engaged them in conversation were the Western Airlines ticket agent and Dunes Hotel clerk. The others had brought their own girl or wife or something and showed more interest in how the poker chips were stacked than anything else.

Angie went to a dude ranch in Arizona the same weekend with no expectations whatever. She never even got to peek at her new Harpo Marx autobiography. The place was swarming with men.

Carol considers her trip to Europe something of a classic success in meeting men. With no more money than most people take trout fishing, Carol spent six glamorous, man-packed weeks in Europe.

She didn’t know anyone there when she left home, but she had a system: she went armed with names and addresses of friends of friends of cousins of friends—all she could lay hands on and not necessarily men. (People are wonderful about sharing their European contacts; so will your friends be.)