Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men (8 page)

Arriving in each city, Carol would drop a note to the “names” in that area (the postal system
is
marvelous—letters arrive almost as quickly as telegrams) saying whom she was a friend of, where she was staying, and that she’d love to say hello to them in person. Then she would go sightseeing, return to the hotel later to learn who’d called up. If respondents (nearly all respond because Europeans are polite) were tepid, she let them off the hook. But usually they invited her for tea, to an art exhibit, down to the country, to a christening or said they’d be by in fifteen minutes to buy her an apéritif. This all sounds like too much luck to be true, but this is a true story … because Carol
made
it come true.

One day she was sitting on the stone steps of a mansion in Grasse, France (the perfume belt), teeth chattering, stomach growling, wondering just what in hell she was doing there. She knew
what
she was doing. She was waiting for the divorced sister of a friend of a man in Paris, who was a friend of a girl in Detroit Carol had gone to college with, to come and take her off the doorstep and give her some sherry. But
why
was she doing it? Actually she knew
why
too. Because it was part of her credo … leave no stone step unsat upon in Grasse or anyplace else that might produce delightful memories.

This meeting turned out not to be memorable … it didn’t produce any men … the sherry was only fair. But the same system produced half a dozen “true” romances … one with the manager of a cosmetics firm in London with whom she not only
could
have danced all night but
did
… another with a first-rate painter in Paris, an embassy member in Brussels, an importer in Rome and an American rancher in Naples. No action in Capri or Sorrento. Carol used the time for postcard writing, diet and sleep.

She is sure much of her luck came from traveling alone. It takes guts, though. Undoubtedly it can sometimes be risky. But it seems to work in Europe. People are charmed by a lone attractive girl and are inclined to take her to their bosom. Two or more girls, they figure, have each other and need no mothering.

According to Carol, all smart girls go to Florence … or any other Italian city. When an American girl steps out her hotel door, she is set upon by those gentle Florentine wolves. They are not ravening so much as they are genuinely crazy about American girls. Many of them are dreadfully poor. Men who look like sculptures are selling souvenir catalogues o
utside
the galleries … or else selling that stuff they pour over ice that tastes like Lavoris would if you
drank
it. But they are charming and courtly and you can store up enough flirtatious looks and florid compliments to last into your dotage.

I don’t have the exact odds for meeting men in all vacation lands. Friends tell me they have had fabulous luck in Honolulu and Mexico City (traveling alone or with friends), also Nassau and the Canadian Rockies.

Others say they never met a man.

The situation probably changes hourly.

In the United States it’s best to take a playmate unless you’re stopping with friends who can entertain you. You can check into Dallas, Miami or Palm Springs in your prettiest gown, and those cities, like all the others, have a way of not even looking up.

Planned vacation tours exclusively for bachelor girls and men sound intriguing. I don’t know anyone who’s been on one yet. Maybe they all got married and never came back!

Traveling on Business

This is terrific fun. Someone else pays. You usually travel first class. You have a mission in the city even if a man never casts his shadow on your Val-a-Pak. It’s the old cry. Girls with something to do and places to go are better game than placid creatures who are kind of underfoot with their “Here I am, would you like to do something about me?” attitude.

Carol, alone in Europe, for example, used business as an excuse to meet and talk to people not otherwise approachable. Her business was the next thing to monkey business, of course. She made it up! In Paris, for example, she visited a reducing salon, also famous for bust development, and chatted with the hep manager about exporting the same techniques to the States. In Rome, she called on the American Consulate to ask if there were any Italian knitwear companies who wanted representation in the United States. (She knew how well the Marchesa di Grésy and others had done.)

You may think Carol sounds like a kook. Or one of those shot-out-of-a-cannon aggressive types. Actually she is a sensitive scaredy-cat but she does have a nimble brain and quiet, personal guts. In contacting Europeans on business she did nothing show-offy or that could really backfire. She just wanted to fill her trip with all kinds of people. Once home, she realized she was in no position to import bust development
or
Italian sweaters. She was much too busy managing the office of a C.P.A.

Louise, on legitimate business as a traveling fashion consultant for a bra and girdle company, spotted an elegant, steely man on the train down from New York. He was seated across the aisle with a beautiful older woman, slathered in mink from chin to hem (not the wet-rat kind but opulent, pulsating mink).

Louise listened to their conversation (finding it a damn sight better than her thoughts) while pretending to sleep. During the miles of eavesdropping she gleaned that the man was an attorney, probably single, as he never talked about his wife, and that he was a family friend of the woman’s—she had five children. They had met on the train accidentally and she called him Marcus. As Louise feigned sleep, she even heard them talking about
her.
They thought she looked tired and seemed rather young and alone, and surmised she might be traveling on business. Louise, feeling a bit warped and woofed from days on the road, thought this couple as shimmery as Prince Ranier and his Grace—or at least Grace’s mother.

At 30th Street Station in Philadelphia when she couldn’t get a cab, the dapper attorney came to her rescue. His lady friend had departed. He said strangers in their city often hadn’t the knack of hailing taxis and he offered to share his with her. Bliss, thought Louise. Pure bliss! To her consternation, however, as they sped along the cool Philadelphia streets that night, he didn’t try to get better acquainted. He barely talked. The shared taxi was strictly an act of kindness. They reached his hotel first, he paid his fare, bid her good night and a pleasant stay in the city, and disappeared like Rumpelstiltskin.

Louise brooded about him for two days. He hadn’t asked her name or where she was staying so he couldn’t call
her.
And since he had evinced no red-hot interest, she couldn’t call
him.
Besides, she didn’t know his name … not
all
of it. Her fingernails down to the half-moon, she finally picked up the phone, dialed the Warwick, asked for the name of the attorney who lived there—Marcus somebody. The switchboard girl who could have been a pill but wasn’t, supplied the name quickly. Apparently he was a favorite. Louise, still a pussyfooter, didn’t ask to speak to him even then. On leaving the city, she sent him a little note saying she appreciated his kindness at the terminal, that she was traveling in the East on business, that if he were going to be in New York City—her next stop—during the next two weeks, she would adore to have a drink with him. She mentioned her hotel.

How much did she have to lose? If she never heard from him again, there was no person-to-person embarrassing rebuff. He did call her in New York, however, suggested that she hop on a train and come down to Philadelphia for dinner with him at his club, the Brookline.

Knowing she ought not to do anything of the kind and should insist on his coming up to see her, she got right on the train!

They had a marvelous evening. They danced. She met some of his friends, and discovered that he was extremely rich, played golf with Eisenhower and was about as good a marriage bet as Cardinal Spellman. This was the most bachelor bachelor she had ever met … a good gray bachelor with a permanent hotel suite for a home, his golf cronies, an occasional girl, and that was that. But it was a lovely petite adventure. Carol got back on the train at midnight to look for her next Philadelphia lawyer.

Sometimes you can embark on petite adventures on trips-business and pleasure—that you wouldn’t quite have the nerve or impetus to embark on at home.

Planes, Trains, Boats

Planes can be great providers of men, for temporary use at least. It’s blind luck when you sit next to a Possible, but remember … airline stewardesses have full date books and marry young. (Too bad we civilian girls can’t prowl up and down the aisles and pop down next to the Most Likely too. Oh well!)

Whether the man is date material or not, he can make the trip go faster; and if your four-leaf clover is fresh, you may sit next to a downright fascinator. There’s something sexy anyway about being sequestered 20,000 feet above the earth almost as close to a strange man as a banana to its skin, motors humming (yours and the plane’s) and nothing to do but get to know each other. (Faster jets than ever are going to come along and louse up everything, of course. You won’t even get to unfasten your seat belt, much less delve into your respective childhoods.)

I don’t have to tell you to be sure you
sit
next to a man. If you see a lady bearing down and there are still empty seats in the plane, be ruthless. Pile your hatbox, coat and newspapers in the seat next to you and go to sleep immediately. Remove everything and wake up smiling when a man appears. Incidentally, if you should draw a real bore, male or female, simulated sleep may be the only defense. If they keep poking you in the ribs so you’ll wake up and talk, which any self-respecting bore will do, yawn and say you think your infectious hepatitis might be coming back. That may send them to the lounge for the rest of the trip!

Trains were once almost as gay and romantic as
The Hucksters
said they were. The last one I rode still had vestigial traces of glory … the snowy-white napery, the marble washbowls, but no vestigial exciting men like Vic Norman in
The Hucksters.

Travel on boats is strictly B.Y.O.M. (Bring Your Own Man). For every unattached male over nineteen, there are thirty-nine females to track him. Vivian managed to snare the purser on a recent cruise and was enormously pleased. They smooched in deck chairs, stole kisses by the lifeboats, shared midnight brandies and cigarettes in the bar … all very romantic. She made the mistake of dating him ashore a year later, at which time he showed her his color-slide collection. There she was … Kodachrome No. 73 in a brilliant collection of 104 Kodachromed ladies. (He had made thirty-one voyages since hers.) Talk about somebody with a good thing going!

On cross-country buses it’s probably better if you don’t talk to
anybody.
Just take Nembutal.

Driving in heavy traffic offers possibilities. Leave the window rolled down on your side and always look interestedly into the next car. It might be a Possible. If the snarl is severe enough, you may become acquainted after several shared stops at red lights.

Sales Conventions

The lid’s off! Most manufacturers hold conventions. So do professional groups. If you can get assigned to work at one, you’re apt to have fun galore.

Polly has attended four for her sweater company and reports it’s like being the only sorority girl on fraternity row on a Saturday night. I think she has become the unofficial convention sweetheart. This is a serious sort of convention—her company’s sixty salesmen, from all parts of the country, some without their wives, some single or
permanently
free of wives, are there to work, but they also have time for fun and games and visits to the city’s best night spots. Polly has heard Mort Sahl fourteen times.

See if you can track down a convention!

Business Banquets, Luncheons

There they are again … men! … Row upon row. It would seem that all you need to do to corner a year’s supply is sweep into the hotel dining room and scoop them up.

Not so! A man at a business luncheon is in one of his male moods and can make you feel as
de trop
as a dowager in the men’s locker room.

“Okay,” they challenge you across their parsleyed potatoes and wilted lettuce, “you’re here in your crazy hat, but leave us not forget we men run things and this is a business meeting.” Your feminine wiles will have all the potency of salted garden snails.

If the luncheon concerns you as a business woman—perhaps someone from your company is speaking—go anyway, and to banquets too. It’s a good way to permeate a man’s consciousness so that when he meets you under more convivial circumstances you won’t have to start from scratch.

The Man Next Door

Excellent! Talk about being in the right spot to wait out his other romances! If he doesn’t get sick and tired of your watchful eye at the front-door aperture or your listening ears against his walls, or move from the neighborhood
prematurely
, he’s sure to succumb to your blandishments finally … hot fudge brownies on a plate when he’s starving but too dumb to fix breakfast … martinis in a pitcher to celebrate the management’s painting his kitchen. Don’t go
too
far with the culinary bit. I know one young lady who is virtually running a free cafeteria for a building crew. It started when they came over, pitifully, to borrow a peanut-butter sandwich, and the situation worsened steadily. Remember, you deserve spoiling too.

Neighbors make good extra men at parties—and competent bartenders too.

Shopping in Men’s Departments

Rarely will you meet your love, or even a date for Sunday brunch, among the briar pipes and Harris tweeds. Another place, true, where the men
are
but alas, not adventurous ones. Those who spend their lives shuttling between inventory and stock control are usually married and security-minded.

Shopping for tie racks and other male accessories, however, is a good way to
practice your femininity.
Donna says a sort of gracious-lady attitude sweeps over her in men’s departments as she trustingly asks whether Oxford is as nice to be next to as broadcloth. I wouldn’t want it back but this must be how it was in the Edwardian era when men were all-wise and women were all wiles. I must say the staff at Brooks Brothers, Los Angeles, can make you feel like a grand duchess pondering some sartorial tidbit for the duke. They’re the
most,
and adorable.