A Chat With the Bachelor Next Door

Since you asked, I would clean your bathroom up,
and take those magazines off the back of the toilet.
Get rid of them forever.
Do not mention that your dog sleeps in your bed.

Frankly, if you must run two butter knives cross-wise
until you've cut your spaghetti into a one-by-one-inch grid,
you are doomed, and should only dine with your mother.
If not, you could still improve your table manners. Quit

slurping, biting your fork, picking your teeth at the table.
Sweet Neanderthal, didn't anybody ever tell you to sit up straight?
There is no reason to put your face in your plate. Bring your
plate to your face if you must, but above all don't hunch. Stop

during dinner -- what would happen if you looked
up from your food? What would happen if you slowed
everything down? If you watched each of her sentences
like you attend to your television?

Here is something: After dinner, you could offer to brush her hair.
No long-haired woman can resist this. Sit behind her and start gently,
very gently; at first brushing the very ends and working your way
up through the length of it, teasing out the catches. Avoid pulling

those tiny hairs on her neck. Once the brush runs smoothly through
from top to bottom, don't think you are finished. This is when
she may decide if she can love you. Take the brush and begin
at the scalp above her forehead and make long, slow strokes,

taking the hair back with the brush over the crown of her head,
scratching hard on her scalp, pulling the skin of her face up
and across her cheekbones, stretching a smile into her lips
that will likely remain. Begin again and again at each temple

until she gives in and her head tips back and her eyes close.
When she is in this place, do not distract her with
conversation. I'm sorry. This, I think, is advice enough
for one lifetime.

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