Great Expectations.

“Before I turn 67 – next March – I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like.  

If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.”

~personal ad from The New York Review of Books

“Well-stewed blond seeks sophistiCad.  Must love kitchens, topiary, and dogs. Turn offs: processed food, dust, dirt, disarray OF ANY KIND!!! No davenport potatoes need apply. I’m a woman of many talents, from paint stripping to pole dancing. You won’t believe what I can do with a pine cone!”

I wrote that fake Martha Stewart online dating profile before I read the one she actually posted at match.com.  I’d skipped “antiquing” as not only too predictable but too vulnerable to mockery, given her age (Martha’s  a well-Photoshopped seventy-one)—but she went ahead and included the word herself.

Surely the still-bookable Martha only signed up with an online dating site because her nephew just wrote a book about . . . online dating. But then again, she actually admitted on national TV that she wanted to co-mingle with someone.  So maybe Martha’s sincerely gasping to get her groove back, although it’s hard to believe she ever had one, what with her don’t mess my hair persona. (Imagine watching Alfred Hitchcock watch her show.)

Now, I own a FREE MARTHA! T-shirt from her Atlas Shrugged-style prosecution for “insider trading,” & “I only followed my broker’s advice.” Oh, the folly.

Online dating still seems awfully faddish and desperate, even though almost everyone knows one couple who “met” that way. (That said, that often quoted one-in-five stat is merely marketing table magic.)

"How good it is to sit in the shade and talk of love." I (like to) forget how abysmal it can be, even to a hermetically sealed introvert like me.

You’ll do all kinds of pretend-fun things like take a cooking class together! (Can you imagine that date with Martha?) And then there’s the profile picture. Her vulnerability disarmed my sarcasm, seizing it right out of my cold, dead soul.  Even pressure cookers need someone to love.

 ‘Nuf said.