Single in the Cities

Those who know me know that I co-write a weekly relationship/dating column for a local Baltimore newspaper. The column is called SINGLE IN THE CITY and I crank this puppy out each week in "he said, she said" style with my friend, Joan Allen, also known as L. Joan Allen, M.A. when we are referring to her authorship of the book, CELEBRATING SINGLE AND GETTING LOVE RIGHT: FROM STALEMATE TO SOULMATE (Capital Books, Virginia, buy a copy, buy two, buy them TODAY!). I've been single in Baltimore and in assorted towns in Colorado's Front Range as I once lived at the foot of the famed Rocky Mountains. I have no degree in social psychology, haven't written a singles book like my pal, Joanie, I just have many decades of suffering at the hands of women that I gave WAY too much power and too much credit...to. Never put a woman up on a pedastel, two reasons why not. One, they've typically already put themselves on a pedastel, so the action is redundant. Secondly, you can never win the respect of anyone who is constantly looking DOWN on you. I make many points in my assorted columns, but the one I keep coming back to is this: men and women are exactly alike, it's just that women get a lot better press than men do. Women can cheat, lie, manipulate, use, and do all those things that men do to women adnauseum on the LIFETIME channel, with equal skill and passion. What rankles me about women sometimes is this sense of ENTITLEMENT, that merely by virtue of their sex and their appearance, they can get away with treating men rather horribly. Of course, you could fill the Atlantic with all the things men have done horribly to women, and I've never denied that. What upsets me, as I say, is the fact that women are rarely called to accounts the way men are. What's the one movie that turns the tables? FATAL ATTRACTION. That's the only one people remember...and you have to admit, Michael Douglas sort of deserved his bad treatment because he was, afterall, cheating on a really lovely and devoted wife...and he had a kid too! But what else? Then again, there are TONS of movies, books, stories, Enquirer articles about men, famed and not so famed, doing women wrong. Men, we have GOT To start getting some better PR! Well, that's it on this rant. Sometimes people say I'm bitter, and I smile knowingly, and acceptingly, because YES, god****t, I AM bitter and I've EARNED my RIGHT to be bitter given all the crap I've been put through. And when the girl's MOTHER comes out on my side and says I never did a damn thing wrong except to care about a woman who didn't give a crap, ultimately, about me, well, that says it all. I've made my mistakes, but my mistakes were always because I didn't know any better. For that, I apologize. Well, that's life in the big city...where I am still single...and coming to appreciate that all the more. Well, it's my birthday and I really need to get back to the party, but decided I'd give out just a little rant to all my male friends out there who feel they're getting the short end of the stick...or no stick at all. There's a very bad joke in there somewhere...