My New Girl.

Man with no future seeks woman with no prior history. -singles ad.


There’s this Weather Network promo. It’s a shot of people walking down a street. One girl caught my eye. She’s a tall girl, with long straight hair, kept neat with a band at the back.

She’s wearing a long dark coat. She has glasses.

Whenever I see that commercial, I think, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a girlfriend?”

Really, it’s been a long time; and they are nice, and everything. Girlfriends are fun, right? So now I want a girlfriend. And strange as it may seem, I even want one with glasses. That way there’s a better chance for me. I am kind of an old gomer these days. Secondly, when she doesn’t have her glasses on, I’ll be better looking.

The only weight restrictions I would suggest would be to say, “At that weight, you’d better be pretty tall.”

When I take my glasses off, she’ll be better looking too. Right?

I wouldn’t mind having a joint bank account, if it means I can keep my own place.

My old man says, “There is no such thing as boyfriend-girlfriend these days, you have to shack up. Yeah, and them shacks cost five hundred grand.”

“I’ve got that all figured out,” I told him. “As soon as I tell her my crazy old man will be living in the back bedroom, I’m sure she’ll see it our way. Yeah, when I tell her you sat on Santa’s lap and asked for a life-size Cabbage-Patch Doll with Greek features, I guess that will be it for us.”

I’m looking for a woman who will love me and then leave me the heck alone. I just have to find a really hot-looking chick, one who has her own money, one who is stuck looking after her elderly mom or dad; because she’s not going to want two more mouths to feed, right? You don’t have to be forty or fifty years old to apply, younger prospects may apply as well. You just have to be a little bit desperate.

I hate cooking myself, but I had to learn. I plead self-defense. I learned to cook for my own safety, all right? I growl like a tiger when I cook. I just decided to start a little earlier. That makes things a lot easier. I have time to wake up and smell the coffee burning. The other day I came in the back door, and I smelled toast, burnt toast. For a minute there, I thought my old man was having a stroke, but then I saw he was just making a tomato sandwich. It was a pretty close call, though.

I think I’m going to write, ‘girlfriend’ into my retirement plan.

If I start saving now, I might be able to get myself a top-of-the-line Sony. We can cruise around in my hydrogen fuel-cell powered convertible. I might even get a hair transplant.

I’m not kidding. They got them now, these little robot girls, okay, they do still kind of walk funny and stuff like that. I imagine they’ll be kind of expensive at first, like the first video-tape decks. As time goes on the makers will upgrade them, and then they will quickly become obsolete. Then you’re stuck with one of the older models. It leaks fluids, takes a while to warm up in the morning and at some point the repairs get out of hand. There’s still a year and half left to go on the lease, and you’re already over on your mileage. All new technologies are like that. They quickly make themselves indispensible. And you can’t beat that new-car smell the first time you take her out for a spin.

If you’re looking for companionship, get a dog, right? But you have to feed a dog, a dog can get sick. A dog needs to be walked. You can’t switch a dog off and stuff it into the back of a closet. Women will want robots too, take my word for it. A lot of married men would love to buy the wife a robot: “Now let the God-damned machine help you paint the freakin’ dining room, Honey.”

I’ll bet there are a lot of other people whose primitive emotional needs could be quite adequately met by a robot. It’s no more infantile than an imaginary friend, a virtual avatar, or any kind of role-playing in online game-spaces. You could probably even program it to do a little housework once in a while. I mean seriously, it’s a robot. There’s no reason for feminists to be outraged, right?

Speaking from a purely technical point of view, a robot has no actual gender.

It’s true equality, state of the art, top of the line, cutting edge, right out of the box. What could be better than that? The thing might even be able to cook. What the machine really needs to have is a good onboard coffee-making system. (I like double cream in mine.)

Hey, I just thought of something, and this is truly brilliant, so you know it’s my idea: you could make the robots run on hydrogen fuel-cells. They’re, ‘green,’ and everything. And if it falls off the back when you’re cruising on your Electro-Harley, no one gets hurt. It’s just a freakin’ robot, right? If that happens, better for it to happen under warranty.

Just tell them she walked into a door.

Just put your arm around her, and tell them, “My new girl, she’s real clumsy. Right, Honey?”

Then squeeze her real hard, and give her a soft, slow, gentle, symbolic little punch in the cheek with your closed fist.

You have to admire the Japanese, though. I think it has something to do with the teachings of Kung-Fu-Tzu, or Confucius.

“If you see a need, fulfill it, and the world will beat a path to your door.”

Now that guy knew what he was talking about.