They have all been either cute and smart but not funny, cute and funny but not smart, or funny and smart but not cute. Or cute and smart and funny but not attracted to me. Those are the ones I hate the most. My unfavorite quote from an e-mail: “i should admit that my attraction to you is purely platonic, but that needn’t hinder us from pursuing a friendship, if that is not outside your agenda.” Outside my agenda, indeed. I hate you and will laugh and laugh when you arrive in the special circle of hell reserved for people who don’t capitalize the first-person singular pronoun. Ha, ha, ha. That’s me laughing. —The Search for Love in Manhattan, 8:07 a.m., February 10, 2002*1 One day shortly after Tom and I broke up, my friend Rob and I were eating lunch at Café 82, discussing my apparently doomed search for my soul mate, and I realized that a handsome man sitting alone at a nearby table was staring at us. Except that Rob was facing away from him, so it was very possible that he was staring at me.
