The scariest words I’ve uttered in the past few years over and over again, have been that I’m dating. Or at least, trying to date. As a man, there’s quite a few things easier than trying to date in NYC, jackhammering your own testicles while eating fried cheese; hurling yourself directly at spinning helicopter blades; walking into a biker bar and asking in a very loud voice, if anyone has a suggestion for a pink striped bike… many things easier.

I have gone on many dates. None of them have been successful. Some have, with varying degrees resulted in second dates, some, even in third, yet, by the time the crazy comes to the forefront, it’s in full open fire, Rambo full-on automatic with all the ammunition blazoned. What is it that makes this such a crazy place to meet women? Is it that by “our age” they’ve gone through the checklist:

• Overpriced, (sometimes, but often preferred) ivy league education (check)
• Career that would crush most people under the weight of how overblown it is (check)
• Apartment that is uniquely and overgrossly you, apportioned just so to show off everything that you’ve accomplished all on your own (check)
• So many activities and friends that breathing is only possible between the hours of hell no and what are you, high? (check)

Reaching (that age), as guys in NYC, we KNOW that means. The women are on a hunt. They’re on a complete search and deranged mission to get that last check box filled in. A MAN!!!. They are on a hunt as though they’d just heard there were free Italian shoes being given away at a designer’s loft in Soho. They smell it, their hormones are raging, their incredible sense of NEED is hankering for a MAN. They MUST have it to fulfill their primal ritualistic needs. The last check box MUST be obeyed. We all know what that check box is, CHILDREN.

However, it’s just one more project for them. Just all the other check boxes, they are methodical, like a puma tracking a gazelle, it’s something they set about doing with complete deliberation. They stalk their prey, they hunt for it, peppering the scenes of their conquests with scents to be remembered and also feared. They want us to be wide-eyed and recumbent in our inability to sense what is happening. We are after all not much more than donors. We’re the penis with the purpose. Other than that, we could be something that can be discarded once they have what they want. Oftentimes we are. After all, once we sire what they want, we don’t actually WANT to stick around do we? It’s been predetermined through the coffe-klatch of cohorts that men are only needed to fulfill the need for procreation, we’re to be discarded like the effluent from a bad memory. This is, of course, because it’s too expensive to go the IVF route as the prohibitive cost. After all, where else can you have dinner paid on numerous occasions and still get out with everything you want and discard the slimy sheath afterward?

Does all this sound calculating? Misogynistic? Hurtful? It’s not. How many stories have I heard of this occurring. How many of them have I met? This isn’t sour grapes at all. Truth be told, men want the same thing, they just want to know they are in on the plan. Give us a sign that this is for keeps. Let us know you want more than the little bit of affection you’d expect from the 5 minutes you’d show a Dove bar. We’re actually quite willing to participate happily, gleefully, joyfully. Everything about us also screams what is it that we want equally as well. Yet, we aren’t often given that opportunity to decide on our own fates. We’re sometimes surreptitiously banked away from the knowledge that would make us happy.

What to do in all this hoopla?

How about just talking more? How about playing fool’s poker and showing your hand to us as we are showing ours to you? How about MAD in the romantic sense so that neither one is left in the lurch? We want the same. How about we figure it out together?