Seriously.

I could describe this scene eloquently if I weren’t so exhausted, but here goes anyway:

So it’s Sarah and I, well past dark, sitting on the front porch of the gallery in downtown Tinyville. We’ve just finished attending this weekend’s opening, featuring a potter whose work I am writing about, and we’ve decided to finish the wine that’s left and enjoy the early Fall air.

The ultimate irony is this: Sarah’s decided to try online dating, with my help, and there’s a wireless internet connection at the gallery. That’s the real reason we’re sticking around. She’s brought her laptop and I’m guiding her through the 50,000 questions on the eHarmony survey and that’s when it hits me. We are sitting, quite literally, along the main street of Tinyville. Two blocks south there is a Texaco gas station with half a dozen 4×4’s and twice as many men eating soft serve ice cream from the market and sitting on their bumpers. This is what they do on Friday and Saturday nights. We just went to a gallery opening where the only person doing any hitting on anybody was a 50 year-old man who shook my hand twice, held onto it for too long, then pulled a Steno pad out of his breast pocket and said—while writing MY NAME down in his book—“I’ll count you among my closest friends.” He proceeded to bump into me the rest of the evening, stare at me blankly, and interrupt my conversations. He had flakes in his hair and his eyes were glossy and I think he was off his rocker. I told Sarah if he got near me one more time I was going to round kick him in the temple and she laughed. I didn’t laugh.

The point is this: People meet people on main streets. That’s where you do things and are seen and can be seen. The same thing with gallery openings. So we’re sitting on main street outside a gallery—a double whammy potential dating scene—and we’re looking for dates ONLINE. I mean, really? REALLY.