Writing Personals

Wanted: One man of average height, well-muscled but not ironclad, neither overly or underly handsome, with more body hair than a baby's behind but less than a gorilla, hefty penis, good mind, good sense of humor and humoring, joyful spirit, charge not too easily discharged, for a relationship of indeterminate time with a recently divorced woman who misses it.

Meet a world of offbeat characters in pursuit of love. Writing Personals is a funny, intellectual, raunchy, and sweet novel that takes aim at contemporary mating practices but also at middle-class values, and marriage for love as the glue of society. This is a quirky book in the vein of Tristram Shandy.

Sylvia Weisler is under contract with a small publisher to write a non-fiction book about personals advertising. She focuses on the middle-aged and older group who utilize newspapers rather than on the "too vast territory" of twenty-somethings and the Internet. Interviews with a variety of people who place and respond to ads appear throughout the book. Some of these characters remain interviewees---material for Sylvia's book; others, however, enter the author's private life and become enmeshed in the plot. This is held together by the major narrative thread---Sylvia's own search for love.

There is a chance that this book may actually prove something.-Gladwell Alcox

Surprisingly, the seventh ad brought the first response. Turn-around time was amazingly fast---the very day the ad appeared in the Globe and Mail---and I was caught off guard.

When the phone rang and a man said something about the ad, I thought it was someone from Classified.

"Is there a problem with the ad?" I ask. This catches the caller off guard and he hesitates ... "I ... I don't think so. Is ... is this the person who is writing the book?"

"Oh, the book" I stupidly say. "Are you calling about the book?"

"Well, yes," he says. "Well, not about the book, exactly."

"Look," I say. "Is this a crank call?" "No. Not at all," he says. "Can I speak to the person who is writing the book?" "Yes," I say. "I am that person. What is it you want?"

"It is not about what I want," he says. "It is about what you want. Didn't you want to talk to people about their experience with Personals ads?"

By now I had collected myself and felt like the moron I am. I had to terminate this conversation and start over with him.

"I'm sorry for the confusion," I say. "I'm right in the middle of something. May I call you back in just a few minutes?" "No," he says, "I will call you back."

I tended the phone for the rest of the day and evening, like a lovesick kid waiting for a call from her boyfriend. He didn't call back for many days.--- Excerpt from Chapter Six