Boner of a lonely heart

My female friend R. recently came to me with a dilemma: “Where are the real men in this town?” She asked me this one afternoon in one of Mile-End’s crowded cafés. I looked around. The place was populated by skinny scruffy youngsters with bad facial hair in worn out shirts advertising bands nobody heard/cares about. “Hmm,” I replied, “you have a point.”

Of course I’m always up for a game of matchmaker, but knowing that one woman’s Jude Law is another’s Ernest Borgnine, I figured I needed more details. After all, in a town where hot girls outnumber hot guys 63,421–1, this is a common complaint.

“What’s a real man?” I asked.

“You know, career-minded. They work hard, but also have good fashion sense, like they actually care what they look like before leaving the house. A professional,” she explained.

“So basically you want to date a gay man?”

R. frowned.

“Okay, I get it. You want a provider. Well, hate to break it to you honey, but we’re in the Mile-End. The epicentre of deadbeat artists who have perfected the art of lazing about. The only professionals here are married with kids. Besides, why do you want to date a yuppie?”

The more I thought about it, however, the more it made sense. Sure, when things were prosperous, it was okay to date a waiter/silk screener/poet/keyboardist in a noise band, but now everyone is looking for someone they can rely on in tough times. It’s as if girls are saying, “Sorry sensitive art nerds, you’re extensive knowledge of obscure music blogs is not going to put food on the table.” When disaster comes, wouldn’t you rather be paired with someone who can chop down a tree and make a fire? Or at least someone who could pay someone to do it?

“Okay, I’ll help you.” We made a date, and decided to become yuppies.

The first key to being a young professional was the look. This was especially a challenge for me, since my closet looks like a drunken Greek fisherman bequeathed his clothing to me in the ’70s. R. managed to find a grey suit I picked up from Value Village. But instead of a button-up dress shirt, I was instructed to wear a v-neck tee, since “Yuppies like to throw a stylistic wrench into traditional clothing ’cause it’s ‘edgy’”. I was also told to snazz it up with some jewellery, so I put on a silver chain that I found on the street outside my apartment last summer.

“You look great” R. said.

“Really? I look like a Czech pimp.”

Once we were all dressed up, we had a startling realisation: we had nowhere to go. “What do yuppies do?” I suggested we go for brunch.

“Everybody eats brunch,” she smirked.

“Yeah, but professionals do a special kind of brunch. I heard they go to places where they pump dance music in the morning and there’s an inordinate amount of avocado on the menu.”

“No, it’s too late in the day for that. I have a better idea, let’s do a 5à7!” This idea was genius, since only people with jobs like to go out after work and celebrate TGIF style.

My only professional friend, D., who works at a respected architecture firm, told me of a place on Parc which I knew about only because it was next to Le Petit Idée Fixe, an awesome dive bar that has big bottles of 50 and buy-10-get-one-free frequent customer cards like you get at coffee shops, except for people with drinking problems and missing teeth. Oh, and they also have a free jukebox on which I like to program Yes on repeat if no one else is around.

The place next door was the opposite of that. Instead of classic rock, they had soulless wallpaper electronic beats. We sat there nursing our ciders (that’s what professionals drink, right?), and tried to get into it. We looked around and the only interesting person in the sea of Moby look-alikes was the bus girl. Sure, she looked like Scarlett Johansson, but she was hardly a professional. We then realized, even if we did meet someone, what would we talk about?

Eventually, after sitting in awkwardness for half an hour, we gave up and went next door for cheap 50s and Yes’s “Owner of a Lonely Heart” on repeat. Perhaps even with the impending financial meltdown, we were meant to find romance with people we were actually attracted to. Perhaps we were fated to be cold, poor, hungry and desperate, but in love. Or maybe we should have tried another bar.

RIFF-RAFF@SYMPATICO.CA