Now is the time on Chaotic Not Random when we deal with the most difficult part of breaking up: the re-creation of the Match.com profile.

Sit down at computer with glass of milk and 1/3 cup of barbecue Corn Nuts. Go to Match.com. (Yeah, it's in my Favorites.) Ignore dreary pall of defeat and failure that has just settled in the room. Enter credit card number. Select 1-month subscription because I know that when I threaten to cancel my subscription at the end of the month, Match will offer me three more months for the price of one. Acknowledge obvious fact that it's pretty sad when you know all the tricks to getting your money's worth out of Match.com. Start filling out profile.

It's easy at first. Height, body type, age. I am looking for a WOMAN between the ages of (MY AGE - 10) and (MY AGE + 10) within 50 MILES of DENVER, COLORADO. Zodiac sign -- ignore impulse to select I DON'T BELIEVE IN ASTROLOGY. Select SCORPIO. I'm not a Scorpio, but Scorpios are supposed to be good in the sack. Eye color, hair color, favorite NBA team. Favorite NBA team? That's new. Select DENVER NUGGETS. Entertain brief fantasy of The Big-Nosed And Small-Breasted Girl Who Is Everything I Ever Wanted In A Woman sitting at her computer across town, wearing a Sacramento Kings T-shirt and running a search to exclude Nuggets fans, upon whom she has sworn vengeance ever since her mother and father were mercilessly gunned down by a mugger wearing an Alex English throwback jersey. Change selection to NO ANSWER. I'm not that much of a Nuggets fan.

It's all pretty easy until it comes to the Dating Intro. Two thousand characters with which to craft an attention-grabbing opening, a middle section that balances cleverness and wit with honesty and sensitivity, and an intriguing conclusion. This takes two hours, minimum, plus a refill of milk and another 1/3 cup of barbecue Corn Nuts. Spend another half hour failing to come up with a clever title to headline my profile; settle for I'm not as pathetic as I look. Upload photos.

The hell with you if you think online dating is lame. Online dating has been a boon for guys like me, by which I mean guys who are Not Confident. I've made all kinds of excuses for my near-total failure in real-world romance -- I don't make enough money, my car looks like hell, I'm not good-looking enough, I'm not a hip dresser, I don't have the right kind of job or the right kind of friends to meet the sort of women I want to date. Et cetera. But the sad fact is that if you stole Mick Jagger's personality and attitude and stuffed it into my body, the new Mick Jagger/Kilgore Trout composite person would have to install a turnstile and a NOW SERVING sign outside my bedroom.

Ask any woman what kind of man she likes, and she will say many things. She will likely say she is attracted to men with a sense of humor, a man who is smart and kind and sensitive, a man who listens and appreciates her as a person and performs cunnilingus without having to be asked ten times. She will also say that she wants a man who is confident, and this is probably the only item on the list that is not nonsense, (in the sense that, given a choice between All Of The Above Except Confidence and None Of The Above But Really Confident, most women will choose the confident guy every time.) I'm not saying that this makes women bad or wrong or shallow. I am saying that women's desire for alpha-male confidence creates a strategic disadvantage for a beta-(maybe gamma)-male like me. Meeting women in bars and clubs? Out of the question. Women immediately detect and are turned off by my lack of confidence, which radiates off me like a bad odor.

Right now you are saying, "Well, Kilgore, if you know that women are attracted to confidence, then why don't you just become more confident?" Yes. And while I'm at it, I think I'll become Most Valuable Player of the National Football League, or maybe the Pope.

I think I started writing this post about online dating. Whatever.

+posted by Lawrence @ 1/16/2004 10:31:00 PM