A 300-Point Checklist

Well, maybe not 300. Maybe 100. Maybe 50. Maybe 20. Yeah, 20 sounds about right.

My last year-and-a-half in college I lived in a studio apartment attached to a two-story house. The house had 11 girls in it, and I got to know all of them quite well. It was an eye-opening experience.

Two of the girls were sort of interested in me. One I shall call Barb and the other Marsha.

During the entire year and a half, Barb had one date. Later she told me he had called, but she didn't want to see him again, and she told me he said in an angry voice, "So you're blowing me off, huh?" She seemed to think it was sort of funny.

Now Barb was a fairly good-looking young woman, about 20, and I knew why she was interested in me. Mostly because I was funny, but there were other things.

I wasn't interested in her, because I considered her a callow, shallow college girl of moderate intelligence. She had nothing to offer me that I would have been interested in. I remember thinking, "What can she bring to a relationship?" I thought: "Nothing."

Later, Barb began to dislike me, and I knew the reason why: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

I have no idea what happened to Barb, but I suspect she never got married or had children.

I've always wondered why she blew off a guy who was in her league. Thought he wasn't good enough for her, I guess. It never occurred to her I was out of her league.

Marsha was a completely different story. She was below-average in looks, with a chunky body.

She, too, was interested in me, and she, too, ended up disliking me because I wasn't interested in her.

In that year and a half, I never saw any guy ask her out. One guy did spend the night with her. This I know because there was only a wall in-between my room and hers, so of course I heard some noises coming from her. (One time I heard the same noises from the trailer in the drive-way next door, coming from a trailer - and those woke me up - so I got it in stereo.)

The next morning I was up early and I heard the front door next door open. When I looked out I saw some tall blond guy leaving. I knew he was the one who had spent the night with Marsha. I never saw him again, and I'm sure neither did Marsha.

I always found it interesting that these two girls, who were interested in me, pretty much began to hate me because I wasn't interested in them. It happened even after I left college, and a friend of mine was fired by a female boss because he wasn't interested in her.

He had been accused by one of sexual harassment, as I have been. Both were false claims.

All these woman had checklists in their heads, although I'm sure they were unconscious ones. I'm sure, though, there are women out there who have written them down.

If a man meets a woman's checklist, then she "sees" him. If it doesn't meet it, then he's usually invisible and sometimes creepy. You know - "Be handsome, be attractive, don't be unattractive."

I've occasionally asked women, "What do you think you can bring to a relationship?" and most of them have acted offended. Some, on the other hand, were thoughtful.

I've sometimes wondered what it would be like to be really handsome, say, Brad Pitt good-looking. Now imagine you have a female boss. What are the chances some might hit on you, and if you don't show any interest, what might happen?

My experience, my friends' experience, and such thought experiments, have lead to the conclusion that I will never work for a women again, and that women shouldn't be the bosses of men - because there are a lot of them you just can't trust.