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Month: November 2014

Dating a Musician? I Recommend Bass Players

If there were a Pocket Field Guide to Dating Musicians, it would read like this:

This species can best be viewed in its natural habitat, under the colored lights of nightclub stages — and in the drier months, anywhere there’s free beer.

At the front stands the lead singer, scientific name Egos maximus, a close relative of the peacock. Don’t look him directly in the eye; he views this as a mating call and will rip his ironic T-shirt right off and begin caressing the mike suggestively if he thinks you’re the slightest bit interested.

To his left is the guitarist, Controli freakata, recognized in the wild by his rock-and-roll power stance, practiced indifference, and telltale markings: pants several sizes too small and bits of twine, locks of hair, and other strands of refuse wound round his wrist as boho jewelry. Beware: He is prone to depression; it’s when he writes “his best stuff.”

And making all that racket at the back, on the riser, is the grinning drummer, Rhythm perspiratious, descended more recently than the rest of us from apes. This good-time boy is a competent multitasker but frequently shamed by his bandmates for not knowing scales. Feeding habits: Large meat sandwiches that he stores in the bass drum and gnaws on between songs.

Then there’s the keyboard player, who … Wait, no. This isn’t 1985. There is no keyboard player.

But hark. What is that intriguing breed on the right? The one standing in the shadows with the quiet intensity and the booming, low-slung bass? That, my boyfriend-shopping adventurers, is the extraordinary Fella perfectata from the family Delicieux. His coat is less showy than the others’, so he often goes unnoticed. Yet he’s always there when you need him, steadily, deftly weaving the band’s rhythm and melody into an impenetrable humming-thumping-humming-thumping musical fabric that—scientifically speaking—you just want to wrap yourself up in. Naked.

Plan B Partners

See, I have this dress. It hangs unworn in my closet, flattened between more practical items. It doesn’t fit me well anymore — neither my body nor my lifestyle. It’s a little too short and show-offy.

But, man, there were a couple of years when it not only made me feel beautiful, stylish, and sexy, it made me become those things. That frickin’ frock was the crème de la closet.

There’s a foolishly optimistic part of me, a tiny gooey spot in my otherwise fully baked brain, that holds out hope I might someday rock that dress again and feel that good in it. And be that good in it.

And because that fantasy is so delicious — because the mere memory of wearing it guns my engine as I’m rifling through my wardrobe each day — I will never, ever give that dress away. It’ll hang there between my sensible skirts and other forgiving go-to garments until I’m too old even for those.

But I was surprised to learn recently that size-too-small dresses aren’t the only things that people keep simmering on the back burners of their lives. A study published in Computers in Human Behavior found that technology is making it easier than ever before for people to maintain a “backburner relationship,” or to stay in digital communication with someone they see as a potential future lover.

Here’s the surprising part: People in committed relationships have just as many “backburners” as single folks do. And these results jive with a recent Daily Mail survey revealing that half of married women have a “fall-back partner” in mind just in case their marriages go south.

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