Back in my early teens, way before most households had hundreds of channels to choose from on cable television, my sister and I started watching daytime soap operas. In the summer, we’d ride our bikes to the local library to check out of campy, mildly risqué paperback romance novels in a series called Second Chance at Love. In hindsight, these probably weren’t the best activities for an impressionable adolescent girl with a vivid imagination.  I these kinds of activities may have largely contributed to my weakness for men who are buff, beautiful, or who give the impression of a life full of excitement, adventure and romance. It’s not that my own life is so terribly mundane; I’m frequently reminded by people I meet outside of the entertainment industry of the fun and unusual career path I’ve taken. It’s only natural that I would expect my romantic relationships to provide me with the same kind of stimulation.

Don’t get me wrong, you can save the serious drama for your mama. I’m not interested in getting involved with men who are addicted to drugs, alcohol or gambling, and I don’t want some woman calling me in the middle of the night because she found my number in his Blackberry. Adrenaline junkies don’t appeal to me either. I have no desire to go hiking through the Andes, sky-diving, rock-climbing or riding on a crotch rocket at 100mph like some kind of crazed contestant on The Amazing Race. However, the man who stands out from the masses, the risk-taker who rejects the mundane in search of the extraordinary, the independent thinker who crosses boundaries or breaks barriers, that’s the kind of guy I will fall for every time- and it’s unlikely this guy ever turns out to be marriage material.

Maybe it’s time for a reality-check from this ugly duck syndrome that’s followed me all my life. It’s the same kind of impulse that might make a woman show up at her high school reunion just to prove that she turned out to be thinner, prettier and more successful than the former prom queen or head cheerleader. Truthfully, I was relatively popular in school, but where I grew up, I was often the only black student in the accelerated classes and interracial dating between black girls and whites boys just was not done at this time of life when everyone was so concerned with fitting in. Some of the white girls dated out to piss off their parents, and for a few black boys dating a white girl was the ultimate sign of acceptance, but I was continually snubbed by the white boys that I pined for in my own social circles and was considered too uppity by the black boys in the circles where I didn’t fit in. But somehow instead of feeling defeated, I decided I’d be damned before I settled for the first available schmuck to come along, and if I could attract someone who seemed difficult or even impossible to get, even better.

I know it’s an unhealthy, self-defeating impulse, but imagine my satisfaction when I reached my late thirties and white guys started coming on to me! None of them were interested in more than discreet sexual encounters, but at the time I was so fed up with my attempts at long term relationships in the past that I didn’t even care. One of them was married, some of them were ten or more years younger than I was, and most of them were desired by other young women whom I knew personally, but because they were generally quick to dismiss the appeal of an older black woman, no one ever suspected a thing. For a while I felt desirable, undefeatable, and then of course, ultimately empty and unsatisfied.

I wish I could say that my impulse to obtain the unattainable to satisfy my fear of rejection was completely a thing of the past, but it still lingers in the shadows of my psyche. It’s what drew me in to Boy Wonder and what keeps the attachment in play. It’s why I pass by profile after profile of perfectly nice, average looking men with desk jobs who have nothing remarkable to say about themselves. It’s why I’m 41 and still wondering why I can never get the guy I want and never want the guy I can get.

It seems as though cupid’s arrow has misfired once again. Shaggy, the mixed race independent contractor, turned out to have quite the conundrum. We chatted on IM for several days, mostly about regular getting to know you stuff, and then he went offline for a few days after running into some trouble with a project he was working on in Dubai. Later he tried to explain that he needed to pay taxes for something or another in order to proceed with his project but he has no friends, no family nor business connections that could help him out. It sounded to me a lot like the oldest online con in the book and I can’t believe he would think anyone with a lick of intelligence would fall for it. I told him point blank that I wouldn’t send him any money and I know I should have deleted him from my contacts, but I still check in with him every once in a while just to see where he might take the story next. Once he said he was considering selling a kidney and I suggested he try prostitution instead.  It’s better than TV. Besides, there’s a one in a million chance he might actually be telling the truth.

If you missed my last posting because it went up during the time when many of us couldn’t log on to BB&W, you can read it here and I’d still love to hear about any of your magical moments. Summer is the off season for theater professionals and many of us take freelance assignments in remote locations where we live in uncomfortable accommodations and work for very little pay. I’ll be flying off to Colorado next week until August, so unless I happen to strike up a summer romance with someone there, I may be taking a short hiatus from my love quest. Quite frankly, I could use the break.

Love and Lipstick,

Leona