As previously indicated, I've signed up with several online dating services. In my profile with one, I asked for candidates within easy traveling distance -- about a 50-mile radius -- simply because it makes getting to know someone so much easier. Mind you, I live in a large city, with suburbs and everything, so you'd think there would be a reasonable pool of candidates for a man my age.

Well, the pickings have proven slim; the number of possibilities the system offers ain't large. (I take this to mean that more women under the age of 45 -- my cut-off point for age-appropriate -- sign up for these services than do older ones.) Then, of course, I'm picky.

So far, since December, I've contacted about a dozen all told. Had a correspondence with one that went nowhere; had a lunch with another that proved terminal (see entries for January 12, 2004 and January 13, 2004); had one prospect interview me on the phone for 20 minutes and decline to pursue matters further; had another send me a decent note saying she'd already gotten involved; and had little other response to my own probes.

Meanwhile, my profile at this major dating site elicited only three queries, all from women who -- judging by their emails, and their online profiles -- just weren't right for me, not even close. I couldn't figure out what they could have seen that made me worth trying. (Maybe even fewer men my age than women sign up for these services.)

So, given the consequent apparent lack of action, this particular online dating service has decided to take matters into its own hands and get aggressive. Not only do they now send me two lists of prospective matches each week, but they have widened my parameters in many ways, including geographically (Anchorage, Alaska; the Phillipines . . . maybe they get a rake-off from the travel companies). Today I got a set of profiles that included this one, from a 49-year-old woman located in Stratford-upon-Avon, England (an easy commute, to be sure). She announces that she doesn't like power, money, or boldness/assertiveness (among other things), and describes herself thus:

"I'm feeling those good vibrations right down to my toes! I am a naturalist [I think this is Brit for naturist, or nudist, but maybe not] who lives in a caravan and grows organic vegetables and flowers to sell on market days. I feel that I have never quite left the Summer of Love even though I was only 12 when that great event took place. I still believe in make love, not war and the old hippie maxims. I don't wear makeup, and I make my own clothes. I guess I am a bit of a flower child still!! I am looking for a man who believes in the aesthetic and social values of the 60s and enjoys living an organic lifestyle in a fast-paced world."

Then, in the same batch, they had this one -- a 46-year-old midwesterner, much closer to home geographically (but in no other way):

"I do many spiritual things. I am a yoga instructor. I do martial arts. I can marry, bury, and baptize legally. I do Native American style rituals. I am a Celt. . . . I ride my Harley year round. I am training my new australian shepherd. I have an organic garden. I love to cook things from scratch. I like to take long road trips. I love hiking and living in the wilderness. I love good conversation and philosophy . . . I am looking for that noble savage that has eluded me all my life. I am a free spirit and old biker/hippie. I want to live in the woods but I would not want to part with my antique Harley. I love ragged and rugged individuals who look it, act like it, and live it. My ideal male doesn't exist so don't try. He would be Aragorn or Captain Blood or someone of great integrity who will stop at nothing to preserve something they truly believe in. I keep drawing the knight of wands in Tarot. It is my fate. I am ok alone. I find myself being more and more like the person I am looking for in many ways. I am just fine being alone. There is a bit of the wandering ascetic in me anyway. I dream about the wind, dark of night, traveling to a faraway place with a feeling of great haste to complete something important. There is a person next to me. I can only sense long wet hair and I smell wet leather. . . . " Her perfect date (selected, I should add in her defense, from a checklist): "Verdant conversations over cobblestone paths, each of us captivated by the perfume of blooming perennials."

These are, both, I'm sure, good women. But they actually sound better suited for each other than they are for me. If I didn't know that computer programs generated these matches, I'd ask, "What were they thinking?" As it is, I scratch my head and shrug off the occasional twinges of the despair that, as Thomas Pynchon wrote, overcomes you "when no one around has any sexual relevance to you."