Because NBC rules all of our social lives like the media slaves we are, this popular choice of storyline got me to thinking about my own wedding some day... and it made me wonder about that unknown someone - preferably Sandra Bullock - who I will one day pledge my love to in front of a couple hundred friends and family members - none of whom watched the season finale of The Single Guy.
Most single men will agree - when there's no one in your life you can even imagine being married to, your mind does a funny thing. It wanders. A lot. Like every time you see a woman not wearing an engagement ring. And oftentimes even when she is... Once it's found a female in its sight, the mind then begins moving in fast forward.
What would it be like to marry that woman who smiles at me in the bagel shop every morning? Or how about that hairstylist who gives the great shampoo? How would she be waking up to every morning for the rest of your life? Would she shampoo my hair at home? Then there's that cute lifeguard at the nearby beach. Hey, no fear of me drowning ever again. That's a plus. And what about any of the women in those cigarette magazine ads? The ones who look so happy just smoking and knocking off baseball caps from the heads of happy guys - who are also smoking and who are so happy they've neglected to realize they're all standing in front of a lime green neon background? Wouldn't these ladies rather knock the hat off their HUSBAND, instead? Heck, I have a baseball cap. Of course, maybe the fact they're single is why they're so happy. It sure couldn't be those cigarettes, could it? Smoking's not cool. Now, if they were all holding pints of beer! Well, there's always the St. Pauli's girl...
Such thinking can drive you batty. It's just not healthy. And so single men take drastic measures to deal with such hopeless behavior. Flipping through mail order bride catalogs, is one example. Writing humor columns is another.
You see, for the male bachelor, it can get to the point where, in the one-and-a-half seconds it takes for a woman to smile and say hi to you, you've pictured the two of you:
A) naked
B) with three kids and a mortgage.
This is not the case with young fellows in high school and in college. High school guys sometimes have trouble even accurately imagining A). While college men can't get past it. But then these young guys enter the mid-twentysomething range and a type of desperation begins to creep inside the mind. It grows larger when good friends' begin getting married off in droves. Suddenly, B) factors into the picture, and the mental mind games within one's self begins.
All this leads up to what can only be described as "those moments of pure hallucination," when an everyday Joe sees a beautiful woman on TV, on the street, in a cigarette ad, at work or dating an ugly magician who looks like Neil Diamond, and he briefly thinks all of life's problems will be over if he could only meet her. That's because he's convinced after she gets to know him, she'll realize what a great guy he is and will never want to date those rich, handsome, powerful men again. Why normal guys think this to be true is a question women have asked themselves for centuries. They have yet to come up with an answer, however, because they're always laughing so hard at the time, it takes all their mental energy to not pee in their pants.
In what can only be thought of as great coincidence, I was walking through the mammoth wooded area of New York City known as Central Park last Saturday when my good buddy, Al - himself getting married in July - bumped into me. We were both looking for a place to sit and read when our paths crossed. We quickly fell into talking. The topic of finding a nice German bar and drinking nice liters of German beer soon came up, and so we began making our way across the Park towards the upper East Side of Manhattan.
Let me take time out now to say that Al and his fiancee, Katie, are a perfect couple - they look as good together as two non-blood related people can look without being obligated by law to appear in K-Mart picture frames.
So, I'm thinking about how nice Al and Katie look together when Al and I stumble across a major ESPN beach volleyball 4-on-4 tournament smack dab in the middle of Central Park. Turns out, it's featuring top players from across the country, and on the women's side the main attraction is the amazing Gabrielle Reese. Gabby, as I call her in my dreams, is over six feet tall, has no body fat that anyone's been able to discover, and is absolutely gorgeous. She's also one of the top players in the world, appears to have a good head on her shoulders, and to her credit, has no naked pictures of herself on the Internet. Or so I choose to believe. If you find any, please inform the proper authorities, one of whom is me. (For those unfamiliar with her, you may have seen Ms. Reese in Coppertone commercials, ESPN interviews and on the cover of various magazines.)
As Al and I took a seat high among the bleachers to watch one of the guys' games, we both noticed an attractive couple making their way up towards our section of seats. The guy was about as large as Sylvestor Stallone thinks he is, and much more tan - a nice golden McDonald's french fry brown. The woman was also tan, tall... and as Al and I will attest to, looked remarkably similar to Gabrielle Reese.
Come to find out, that's just who she was -- and no one in the bleachers but Al and I recognized her.
Now, despite the fact a year and a half of living in NYC has taught me not to fear superstars and celebrities, the thought of being pummeled into a small dung-ball by this particular superstar's boyfriend quickly erased any thoughts I had of asking Gabby for her autograph. The two lovebirds sat in a loving embrace on the bleachers - he sitting on a higher bleacher row, she sitting on the row below, leaning back against his chest and using his legs as arm rests. Both of them held hands and looked, well, really good. To be honest, they looked great.
And then it happened.
An odd thought suddenly crept into my head... I began to wonder what Gabby and I would look like, together.
(Hey, look, I know it wouldn't happen, even if the scenario included aliens, no other living human beings, malt liquor and hot pokers, ok? I'm just trying to explain how normal guys like myself get these fantasies that we could win over such women as Gabby, and on a good day, Lady Diana driving a Bentley. So eat a nice s'more and read on, skippy. Ladies, stop laughing so hard, you might learn something here.)
In fantasy mode, I took Gabby back to my 10th year high school reunion. Which isn't for another three years, but I was giving her time to drop this guy she was presently cradling and search me out after stumbling across this article on the Internet. Did I mention this was a fantasy?
So in I walk to the reunion, standing tall and proud with Gabrielle on my arm. But even in fantasy mode I was still at least two inches shorter than she, and I looked like I was walking in on HER arm. Still, this was Gabrielle Reese and I was, well, me. So who cares if her large, thin fingers could palm a basketball while I have trouble palming pine tar?
Former classmates from the Franklin Academy Class of '89 looked on with baffled glances and curious stares. The men were all approaching me and saying, "You've done well for yourself!" Then they'd disappear quickly, whispering, "What the hell does she see in HIM?" The women were just plain ignoring me completely and saying, "Doesn't he look silly next to her?" By the end of the reunion, my nickname had become "Short Stuff," while Gabby was referred to as, "obviously drunk."
Meanwhile, back in Central Park, the volleyball game at hand had paused momentarily. And this is when I glanced down at the real Gabrielle, less than two feet away, just as she looked back at her boyfriend.
In a moment I will relive forever in my mind, Gabrielle Reese caught my stare. Unfortunately, her expression didn't change as she continued moving her eyes past mine to meet those of her boyfriend. It was as if I - and the drool running down the side of my mouth - weren't even there. I was a nobody. Invisible. Which made me realize that this entire thing with guys like me wanting women like her is just asinine.
Besides, even if normal guys like me had a shot at wonder women like Gabby, it would be a living hell! Who thinks David Copperfield deserves Claudia Shiffer? Not even Copperfield does! And he can make cars vanish, for gosh sakes! All I do is make fish n' chips disappear. And then there was Lady Di and Prince Charles for all those years. Those two looked as good together as hot fudge and patio bricks. I don't want anyone thinking about that with me and my gal. No way. Never.
And it won't. Hey, I think Sandra Bullock and I would look quite nice together.
Patrick Holland is probably enjoying a nice canole right now. He also writes for Stet Magazine - The Finest In Cutting Edge Fluff.
