THE PERSONALS

A Short Story by Jane Piirto

            Emilia Laungtree pushed in past the Lotto players, found this week’s regional weekly magazine, thrust herself to the counter in the small and crowded magazine shop that said Smoke, and Candy, on the outside, and paid her money to the handsome young clerk from one of the lands in the Middle East.  As she walked down the crowded street, horns beeping and people rushing beside and around her, she impatiently flipped to the back pages, where her Personals Ad was due to appear.  There it was.

            How it had arrived there was a story that remains to be told, for Emilia Laungtree was not just any Personals Ad placer; she was the Personals Ad placer.  It had all begun seven months ago.

            One lonely Saturday night, one in a string of such nights — for Emilia had given up singles bars and one-night stands in exchange for Love Boat and Fantasy Island — after three glasses of her favorite German Mosel wine, a wine not in fashion in those days when everyone liked those astringent Italian whites that left the tongue as dry as if one had eaten choke cherries, Emilia had answered one of the ads in the glossy regional magazine.

            This regional weekly contained many suggestions on how to spend your money and how to spend your time in their great city.  Cute little delis; pasta shops in out-of-the-way neighborhoods; restaurants where you could take your children for status birthday parties at the ages of 4 and 5; the in-nightclubs; articles on celebrities, politicians, and other interesting local folks; profiles of real estate magnates and summaries of their deals: these and other glossy diversions you could divert yourself to, if you had the money and the time.

            Its Personals Ad section was becoming ever more popular, and many Singles placed their ads there.  When Emilia would read the ads, she would think they did not refer to her, for many of the ad placers were Jewish and were looking for Jewish mates, and she did not fit that category, though she liked Jewish men, herself.  Many seemed very affluent, and Emilia did not fit that category either.  All were pretty, handsome, beautiful, slim, sophisticated, talented, and solvent; they seemed glittery and trendy, and they all had country houses, or they liked to take walks in the woods and kick leaves, or they loved candlelight and wine in crystal goblets, and they all had season tickets to the opera and the theatre.  They were fit, and tennis seemed to be their favorite sport, though many of them liked sailing, and they jogged in the large park in the center of the central borough, around a large, fake lake.

            Emilia thought she should get with it, and she began by answering one of the ads that seemed to have some reference to her not insubstantial assets.  She had heard on the radio on a talk show, that people who placed these ads in the slick and glossy regional magazine, often received over one hundred responses, especially those who fit into the desirable age groups and categories.  Desirable females were 18 to 30, and were models or former models, or slim-as-models, who were financially independent, childless, and who loved to sail and kick leaves.  Desirable males were over 30, successful entrepreneurs or corporate executives, divorced, who had left the wife in the suburbs for the fast life in the city, and who longed for a slim, beautiful, young accessory to adorn them on the left arm, so they could show off to their age mates trapped with lawns to mow.  These two desirable categories often advertised for each other.  Few men advertised for a woman over 35, and few women advertised for a man under 35.

            This left women over 35 Out In The Cold, for even men in their 50’s and 60’s seldom advertised for anyone over 40.  This was the way it was in those days, and women like Emilia Laungtree had hard times finding men their own age.

            But, there it was, a rare ad:  it didn’t exclude her.  It read, Political Activist, 42, aging hippie now college professor, seeks female counterpart decently smart and fit, to 50, for sharing, conversation, and whatever ensues.  Send well-written letter that tells the truth.  Box 3790.

            Emilia was ecstatic with anticipation.  She turned off Fantasy Island, put on some old jazz, and began to write:  Dear Political Activist 42:  I am also an aging hippie now a college professor, and I am answering your ad in last week’s regional magazine.  My hair used to be long and lank, and I went through my Earth Mother period ten years ago, where I baked and canned and wore long print skirts and sandals and no bra.  I used to carry signs at rallies and smoke pot, but now I just grade freshman papers that get disgustingly more illiterate year after year.

            My eyes are beginning to get bags beneath them, though my skin is still clear and healthy.  I think if I win the lottery I will not give all the money to Amnesty International to help prisoners of conscience in foreign lands, but will keep some of it out to get my eyes fixed and my chin lifted.  My hair is short now, and my chin has incipient dew laps, even though I am quite an avid racquetball player and bicyclist.

            I am 45 years old, and my only daughter has just completed her freshman year in college.  She attends one of the large state universities because of my miserable salary as a college professor who grades many freshman papers, and because she is not a good enough student to win scholarships to private schools.

            So I live alone now, and I’m not quite ready to join the sewing circle at the church down the street in this outer borough where I must live, because I can’t afford an apartment in the central borough of our region, because of my miserable salary as a college professor.  Besides, my eyes are getting too bad to do fine stitching, and the sewing circle meets in the mornings, when I must teach expository writing to students who don’t have much that’s interesting to expose.    

            My apartment is clean and large and I am surrounded by good books and good, but cheap, art.  I have a double bed in my bedroom and in the past I had the habit of having sex quite regularly, as I was married for quite a few years, and although our personal relationship deteriorated, our sex life did not.  This is to say that I’m not a cold, unattractive person.

            If you would like to meet at a mutually convenient public place, perhaps we can make arrangements to share and to have conversation.  And if we like each other, to continue the conversation.  And she signed it with her first name only, and her phone number.

            Emilia did not expect a response.  But lo and behold, about six weeks later, she received a call from Political Activist Professor.  She was quite surprised and excited, for he sounded sexy and masculine and aware over the telephone, and she made an appointment to meet him for drinks at a little restaurant in the village part of the central region.  They hit it off fine.

            But then he had to confess that he was married, but that his wife had cerebral palsy, or was it muscular dystrophy, and he was a fine and fit and randy man in the prime of life, and while he had no intentions of deserting his poor, sick, wife who had stood with him on many a civil rights march, he had his needs too, didn’t he?  And would she, Emilia, mind if he only saw her once a week, on Wednesdays, after the class he taught for the political science department of one of  the famous private universities in the borough?  Of course, Emilia was tempted, but she had stepped into that hole of falling for a married man before, and besides, what about that poor woman with cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy, or lord knows what dread disease?  How could she betray an ill sister?  So Emilia did the noble thing and said, No thanks, man, you make me sick.  One week later she received a thank you note from the political science professor on the stationery of the famous private university, with hopes that she’d think of him if she ever met a friend who’d be interested in taking care of his carnal needs.  Can you believe it?

            This experience ultimately turned out to be positive, though on first glance it seemed negative, for Emilia now began to think of placing her own ad in the slick and glossy magazine with all the wonderful things to covet and to spend one’s money on.  She carried this idea of placing an ad around with her for a couple of weeks, and an amazing thing began to happen.  She began to live an anticipatory life rather than a defeated life, once again.  It first began to show in her teaching.

            Her students noticed her lift in spirits, her dawn of anticipation, and they began to respond as they hadn’t, for years. They even began to learn the differences among Two, Too, and To, and to hit the right There, Their, and They’re seven out of ten times.  It’s and Its began to improve, also, and Its’ disappeared from their pages.  All the cajoling she had done with them for weeks hadn’t worked, but one mnemonic device did, a rhyme she made up about A Ghost Buster Says Boo, It Is, It’s True, With Two Too Many To Fool.  Since this had been her students’ favorite movie a few years, ago, they thought she was With It.

            She realized she had been feeling very depressed because of the Personals Ad column of the slick and glossy magazine.  She had been feeling depressed because she was never summarized in the ad writers’ fantasies for their Ideal Mate.  Though she was not bad-looking, and though she certainly was a bright and talented person who had quite a string of successful friendships with both men and women behind her, she, at 46, had begun to feel Out Of It, Unattractive, Undesirable, and On The Shelf.

            Her unfortuitous encounter with Political Activist 42 had sprung her out, somehow.  Now, her evenings were spent in beginning to compose her ad.  She began by listing adjectives that would describe her:  Healthy, Sane, Lively, Attractive, Pretty, Funny, Bright, Accomplished, Well-Read, Fetching, Droll, Sarcastic, Zany, Vibrant, Articulate, Dynamic, Warm, Witty, Irrepressible, Academic (which could be used either as a noun or as an adjective — which way did she want to use it?  Did she want to use it?  Boys Don’t Make Passes At Girls Who Wear Glasses Who Might Be Smarter Than The Boy Is).

            She listed activities and hobbies she had, had had, or wanted to have:  Reading, Writing, Thinking, Making Love, Racquetball, Bicycling, Walking, Kicking Leaves in Autumn, Running Barefoot Down Summer Seashore.  In looking these over, she vetoed Racquetball, for she and her ex-husband had played racquetball together and he had totally dominated her, humiliated her, and had made a fool of her, in the way of men who play doubles with their mates.  And then, if she was better at racquetball than the man who answered, his ego would suffer, and never let it be said that Emilia would be an ego destroyer for an eligible man.

            She became an adjective seeker.  Distinguished?  No, too masculine.  The word evoked aged professors and white-haired affluent men.  Caring.  Secure.  Elegant?  No, she owned no bejewelled long dresses, and such long dresses were what she visualized when she used the word Elegant.  Some of the women in the ads in the magazine described themselves as having Bette Davis Eyes and Sophia Loren chins, or as Audrey Hepburn look-alikes.  These gave the reader some famous touchstones, so the reader could form a positive picture before requesting a photo.

            She began to ask her friends what famous person she reminded them of.  Her best and oldest friend, Mary Margaret, who had written quite a few short stories about growing up catholic in another borough, told Emilia she looked like Greer Garson.  Greer Garson?  Emilia replied.  She could barely remember what Greer Garson looked like, and feared that touchstone would attract only old geezers, so she dismissed Mary Margaret’s look-alike suggestion.  Her second best and nicest friend, Susanna, told her she looked like Penelope Smolens, the famous critic in women’s studies, which was Susanna’s research interest.  Well, Emilia told Susanna, Penelope Smolens is not quite famous enough.  Penelope Smolens Look-alike just doesn’t quite play.  If I’m going to look like a famous feminist, how about Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, or Shirley MacLaine, for they know how to attract men.

            Susanna shrugged, and then went off into a tirade about how demeaning this whole idea was, putting an ad in a slick and glossy magazine all to meet a suitable man!  She would never do such a thing.  It was beneath the dignity of a feminist.

            A lonely feminist, Emilia said.  Besides, it’ll be an Adventure.  Maybe I should use the adjective, Feminist, to describe myself?  Put Feminist on my list of possible adjectives?

            Susanna, before thinking, said, No, of course not.  You know no guy would go for that.  That was Susanna’s first reaction, her true feeling.  It made Susanna ashamed, though, and she amended herself to say, Sure, do it.  See who it attracts?  But I wonder if he’ll be a wimp?  One of the problems with Feminist women in those days, at least those who were heterosexuals, was that they weren’t attracted to the men they’d helped to mold.

            Emilia tried one more friend, her first lover after the divorce, who was now happily married to the woman of his dreams, a woman 15  years his junior, who had been a cheerleader in her suburban high school.  He was well on his way to having his second child by her, his fourth in all.  His other two were teenagers who lived with their mother in a Midwestern city.  Who do I look like, Ray? Emilia asked him.  I’m going to place a personals ad, and I know I’ll attract the guys if I can tell them I look like someone Rich, Famous, and Beautiful.

            Ray, a colleague in her department, had been a fan of Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones, of Joan Baez, and of Joni Mitchell; of Peter, Paul, and Mary, and of The Mamas and the Papas; of Ray Charles, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and The Big Bopper.  In fact, Ray’s field of scholarly study was The Poetry of Song Lyrics, and he taught that course on all four of its levels.  The course had been instituted during the social upheavals of the sixties.  Ray should know who she looked like, for he still kept up on music, and admired the philosophical insights of school dropouts in their adolescence, people such as Prince or Boy George.  The younger crowd he hung around with now, his second wife’s graduate student friends, were the same age as the crowd he had always hung around with.  Only Ray had aged, but he didn’t mind being arrested in his mid- to late twenties, he often told Emilia.

            Now he studied her with a twinkle in his sexy eyes.  You know who you look like? he said.  Belinda of the Go-Gos.  That’s who.  You’re the spitting image, only a few years older.  You could be her older sister, or her mother.

            Thanks, Ray, Emilia told him, and she kissed him on the cheek.  Poor Ray.  She didn’t tell him that looking like Belinda of the Go-Gos wasn’t quite what she had in mind.  Though he was right, in that, if she put it down, it would probably attract a guy her own age.

            She decided not to mention a famous look-alike.

            This project was becoming an obsession.  Night after night she searched her Roget’s Thesaurus and her O.E.D. for just the right adjectives.  On the subway on the way to work she eschewed her usual crossword puzzles for the counting of potential letters and spaces for Her Ad.  It was the thorniest writing problem she’d ever had.  Even when she’d done her dissertation, that widely unread but oh so important contribution to knowledge, called, Teaching Aging Adolescents To Write In Expository Styles Popular In The 1920’s:  An Historical Study, where she had reviewed the evolution of the quotation mark and the five uses of the semicolon, she hadn’t agonized so much.

            She had decided that her budget had to be under a hundred dollars for this ad, because her daughter kept calling long distance to ask for money, and her phone bill being so high, meant she had no discretionary funds for frivolities like Personals Ads.  It would have to be a three- or four-line ad, including space for the box number.

            She O.D.’ed on adjectives.  She tried, Warm, Vibrant, Witty, Successful Professional Woman, 40’s, Seeks Warm, Vibrant, Witty Man, 40’s, For Conversation,  Long Walks, Discussions of Books and Avant-Garde Composers.  How dull.  Emilia was making herself sound like all the other people in all the other ads.

            She tried the unvarnished truth.  Bespectacled College Professor, 45, 5’2″, 130 lbs., Is Lonely And Needs Intelligent Sexual Company. No, that wouldn’t fly.  She dummied up a lie:  Divorced White Female, 40’s,  Highly Educated, With Glamour And Sophistication, Money and Charm, Ski Lodge in Aspen, Winter Home in Bermuda, Anorexic, Tall, Former Model, Large Alimony Settlement From Last Big Daddy, Seeks New Big Daddy.  But Emilia was too much of a truth teller.

            She tried Humble Woman Of The Streets, With Great Suzy Wong Body and Slit Skirt Seeks William Holden.  The oriental woman was very attractive to men her age.  But she just couldn’t do it.

            Emilia made up fifty-nine ads and rejected them all.  It took her months.  She had never been engaged in such a demanding composition task.  One night, bleary-eyed, she had nothing ready to teach her students, and so she decided that she would ask them, the next day, to write a Personals Ad.  The results were so good that no one misspelled a word.  She came home, and instead of working on her own ad, she began writing an article for that famous journal, Teaching Composition To Aging Adolescents.  The article was immediately accepted for publication because it was so trendy.  It would come out in three months’ time.  By then, Emilia hoped she’d have her own ad in and answered, and be on her way to the end of loneliness.

            She began to do frequency counts of adjectives used in the Personals Ads in that slick and glossy magazine, and also of the adjectives used in the less expensive, and more frank, weekly newspaper from the village neighborhood of the central borough.  She began to wonder which adjectives and nouns were most successful in generating responses, and she sent a survey to some of the people who advertised.  She got 10 out of 100 queries back, with the adjectives checked off.

            This encouraged her, and so she wrote a proposal to that famous foundation that won the Golden Fleece Award several seasons back.  Within months, she had won a grant for $500,000., to study the language and syntax of Personals Ads.  Her college grants office was ecstatic.  A radio station got wind of it,  and sent their investigative reporter around.  He was a handsome young man with a walrus mustache, and Emilia was quite taken with him.  He wasn’t with her, though.  But he did put her on the radio, and she became a regular guest.  The magazine of the People, that could be read in 10 minutes in the supermarket line, took an interest in the radio show, and did an article about her.  Emilia was on her way; she was the Queen of the Personals Ads, the Dr. Joyce Brothers of the insecure single ad writers.  She was catapulted to visible prominence.

            Oprah Winfrey’s producer called and they wanted to jet her to that great city on the end of the lake shaped like a ladyfinger, in the middle regions of the land.  This was just after she signed the book contract.  She was becoming known as the Shere Hite of the Personals Ad, the Dr. Ruth of frustrated divorced people. Her fifteen minutes of fame was lasting 30 minutes.  Her Ph.D., though it was in the teaching of composition to aging adolescents, gave her credibility.

            Emilia hired a research assistant, a handsome young man familiar with the statistical packages available at The  Great Computer Center of The Great Regional University, and she began to get the results of her frequency counts and surveys.  She hired another research assistant to administer follow-up questionnaires to the personals ad writers they reached who were willing to be interviewed. More and more of them had heard of her, and so they were willing.  Other researchers began to talk of replicating her studies.  She lost fifteen pounds and could feel her hipbones again. 

            Mind you, she hadn’t been Fat.  But she hadn’t been Slim, either.  Now she was Slim.  She bought a long dress with beads on it that showed her cleavage.  Ancestry had given her a good cleavage, at least, even though Ancestry had also given her bad eyes.  She received an invitation to a party honoring the Ambassador from the first country to be pulled behind The Iron Curtain, and to another party, honoring the daughter of a famous movie star, upon her graduation from high school.  Emilia was on her way on the Party Scene.  One of these parties was held in a triple apartment, called a plex, that overlooked the park where all the joggers and muggers spent a lot of time.

            The captain of the caterers, in his tuxedo, confessed to her that he’d read her book when it came out, and that he listened to her all the time on the radio.  You’re a lonely single? she asked him.  He was certainly very handsome to be a lonely single.  Why do you have trouble meeting women? she asked him.  He replied, They want me for my body and not for my brains.  A common problem with handsome young men in tuxedos, Emilia responded.       

            She received other invitations, also.  Many of these were to speak with and counsel people who wanted to place personals ads in their own regions’ magazines and journals.  Dr. Emilia Laungtree was The Acknowledged Expert.  In a way, giving the workshops throughout the land was like teaching composition to illiterate eighteen-year-olds.  Emilia had finally found a calling that used her substantial verbal skills.  The bucks were rolling in.  She jetted from region to region in their great land.  She met many people, both unrich and unfamous and Rich And Famous, though the former outnumbered the others, for Emilia wasn’t a movie star or anything.  That famous tabloid wasn’t about to feature her on its cover along with the news of UFO sightings.

            She went on a speaking tour to the midwest, around that city famous for making automobiles.  Emilia Laungtree, The Mother Of The Singles, one brochure advertised.  She didn’t like that.  Well, at least it didn’t say, Grandmother.  She gave five speeches in five suburban towns, and one in a nearby university town. That same night, she was on a telephone call-in show on late-night TV.  She and a hunched man who ran a dating service newsletter, discussed How To Sell Yourself In Twenty Or Thirty Words.      

            When Emilia got back to her room, in the wee hours, exhausted, she noticed that the congealing remnants of her hasty dinner from room service had still not been picked up by the luxury hotel’s room service.  As she lay back on the vast and empty king-sized bed, flipping channels from one black and white movie to another, feeling a strong discontent, Emilia finally decided.  She would put her money where her mouth was.

             No one, in all her recent forays, had asked her about her own personals ad experience.  And she was supposed to be the expert.  Now, here she was, alone in a suite in a hotel in the city where automobiles are made, trapped downtown, hemmed in amid vandalizing mobs of youths who would probably kill her if she stepped outside to even go to a bar and try to pick up a lonely single.  She had accomplished nothing.  She was still single, and still lonely, herself.

            Well, not exactly nothing, she told herself.  She had improved the syntax and the choices of adjectives in the personals’ ads throughout the land.  Now, in ads everywhere, one saw words like Prepossessing, Sportive, Mettlesome, Plucky, and Gambol; words like Languorous, Haughty, Headstrong, and Nimble.  People were becoming poets.  And all because of Emilia Laungtree. She had accomplished something.  Not nothing.  But now she had to do it.  And Emilia went to the drawer, took out the embossed stationery of the hotel, and began to compose her ad.

            It went like this:  Bespectacled College Professor, Impostor Masquerading As Celebrity, 47, 5’2″, 110 lbs., Is Lonely And Needs Intelligent Sexual Company. Preferably Divorced, 35 to 55, Studly, Not Threatened By Fame And Fortune.     She pulled on her jogging shoes, jeans, and a t-shirt, wrote a personal check, and took the elevator down to the desk, bought a stamp from the portly desk clerk, and went to one of the couches in the warmly-lit, nearly empty lobby.  She re-read her ad and began to address the envelope.

            Did anyone ever tell you have glamorous glasses? a voice said.

            She looked up.  He was Tall, Thin, A Sam Shepard Look-alike, With A Hard Cover Book In His Capable Hands.  He was sitting reading in the wide chair across from her.  He had corduroy jeans and a woolly pullover sweater.  He wore no wedding ring.  He had interest in his smiley eyes.  Emilia ripped up the letter and took it from there.

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