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Authors: Charles Willeford
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reason for doing this, officially, is personal enterprise. I'm showing initiative, and if the Colonel ever finds out about my plan he'll have to back me up with IRS because he's a great advocate of personal initiative. Besides, it isn't costing National a dime."
"What's the real reason?"
"Compatibility. As I said, the girl who signs up for ElectroDate has to pay fifty bucks for five dates. The male client only pays ten bucks for his five dates. So much for Women's Lib, you see. But she will be favorably disposed to me from the beginning because she has put down on her form what kind of man she wants to date, or thinks she wants to date, which is the same thing. And on a first meeting, we won't need any elaborate setting, nor will I have to spend a lot of dough. We'll want to talk, to explore each other, discover our likes and dislikes. No movie, no Miami Beach first-date crap, with the big stage show and champagne cocktails. No. Just me. Honest Larry 'Fuzz' Dolman, and the sincere here's-what-I-think-what-do-you-think heavy rap. One hamburger, two cups of coffee, at Howard Johnson's, let's say, and I can take fifty bucks off my income tax for a so-called investigation. If I like the woman, and if she likes me, on the second date I'll have her in the sack in my apartment.
"What do you think?"
"I don't know, Fuzz. In a way, it sounds almost brilliant. But it seems to me that women who would sign up for a computer date are either going to be dogs or desperate for a husband."
"That used to be true. The older dating services were mostly match-making matrimonial set-ups, but that isn't true any more. Women have changed..."
"When it comes to wanting marriage, women never change."
"The form will avoid such problems. All I have to do is put down that I want to date a woman who doesn't want to get married. A career woman, or something. Anyway, when I get the questionnaire, I want you to help me with it. You're the man with a degree in psychology, and these data forms have probably got a few catch questions."
"Why not?" I said. "We'll have some fun with it, and you can hardly go wrong on a ten-dollar investment. But if IRS ever calls you down, don't count on me to go down there with you."
However, you can go wrong on a ten-dollar investment, as Larry found out on his first date.
CHAPTER SIX
The questionnaire, when it arrived, was not what we expected it to be. What Larry thought, and was led to suspect, was that the form would be a series of multiple choice questions, all of them concerned with the personality traits and characteristics he wanted his ideal girl to have—like the tests they run occasionally in the women's magazines, with the things you like least versus the things you like best in a "mate." 'Cosmopolitan'' magazine has tests like these all the time, and any person with a fair grounding in psychology, and mine is a good one, can score a hundred every time on such tests.
I was particularly good on testing, anyway, because of my two years as station psychologist at the U. S. Army Pittsburgh Recruiting Station. It was my job then to weed out military misfits, to interview admitted homosexuals, actual and phony, and to make decisions on whether to accept borderline enuresis cases or to send them home. The testing department was also under my supervision, although I had a Master Sergeant who ran this section for me. I was smart enough to let him alone and allow him to do things his own way, and as a consequence I learned a lot from him.
The only disagreement we ever had was about my attitude toward draftees who asked to see me because they were homosexuals, or claimed that they were. Sometimes, oftentimes, they were not, and it was easy enough to tell when they were lying.
When you ask some innocent eighteen-year-old, "What do you do together,
"What's the real reason?"
"Compatibility. As I said, the girl who signs up for ElectroDate has to pay fifty bucks for five dates. The male client only pays ten bucks for his five dates. So much for Women's Lib, you see. But she will be favorably disposed to me from the beginning because she has put down on her form what kind of man she wants to date, or thinks she wants to date, which is the same thing. And on a first meeting, we won't need any elaborate setting, nor will I have to spend a lot of dough. We'll want to talk, to explore each other, discover our likes and dislikes. No movie, no Miami Beach first-date crap, with the big stage show and champagne cocktails. No. Just me. Honest Larry 'Fuzz' Dolman, and the sincere here's-what-I-think-what-do-you-think heavy rap. One hamburger, two cups of coffee, at Howard Johnson's, let's say, and I can take fifty bucks off my income tax for a so-called investigation. If I like the woman, and if she likes me, on the second date I'll have her in the sack in my apartment.
"What do you think?"
"I don't know, Fuzz. In a way, it sounds almost brilliant. But it seems to me that women who would sign up for a computer date are either going to be dogs or desperate for a husband."
"That used to be true. The older dating services were mostly match-making matrimonial set-ups, but that isn't true any more. Women have changed..."
"When it comes to wanting marriage, women never change."
"The form will avoid such problems. All I have to do is put down that I want to date a woman who doesn't want to get married. A career woman, or something. Anyway, when I get the questionnaire, I want you to help me with it. You're the man with a degree in psychology, and these data forms have probably got a few catch questions."
"Why not?" I said. "We'll have some fun with it, and you can hardly go wrong on a ten-dollar investment. But if IRS ever calls you down, don't count on me to go down there with you."
However, you can go wrong on a ten-dollar investment, as Larry found out on his first date.
CHAPTER SIX
The questionnaire, when it arrived, was not what we expected it to be. What Larry thought, and was led to suspect, was that the form would be a series of multiple choice questions, all of them concerned with the personality traits and characteristics he wanted his ideal girl to have—like the tests they run occasionally in the women's magazines, with the things you like least versus the things you like best in a "mate." 'Cosmopolitan'' magazine has tests like these all the time, and any person with a fair grounding in psychology, and mine is a good one, can score a hundred every time on such tests.
I was particularly good on testing, anyway, because of my two years as station psychologist at the U. S. Army Pittsburgh Recruiting Station. It was my job then to weed out military misfits, to interview admitted homosexuals, actual and phony, and to make decisions on whether to accept borderline enuresis cases or to send them home. The testing department was also under my supervision, although I had a Master Sergeant who ran this section for me. I was smart enough to let him alone and allow him to do things his own way, and as a consequence I learned a lot from him.
The only disagreement we ever had was about my attitude toward draftees who asked to see me because they were homosexuals, or claimed that they were. Sometimes, oftentimes, they were not, and it was easy enough to tell when they were lying.
When you ask some innocent eighteen-year-old, "What do you do together,
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