I'm a child of the Love Boat generation, which means my perceptions of how relationships should progress have been severely warped by characters like Doc, Gopher, Captain Steubing and cruise director Julie McCoy. Every Saturday night, I would settle on the couch to watch as people met, fell in love and found happy endings, all within the span of an hour. The formula was unfailing: get on the boat at 9, meet by 9:15, fall in love at 9:30, discover shattering secret at 9:45, reconcile and get engaged or remarried by 10.
So it was with high expectations that I signed up for the Silicon Valley Singles Convention in Palo Alto, which promised to bring together more than 2,000 bachelors and bachelorettes -- condensing years of relationship experience into an afternoon of seminars and producing "a good man for every woman" by the evening dance. Since joining the Palo Alto Daily News nearly three years ago, I've focused most of my energy on my career, and because it's never a good idea to date your sources, that rules out almost all the single men I encounter. I had written an article about the singles event coming to town, so I decided to give it a try.
Rich Gosse of AmericanSingles.com, the organizer, said he chose Palo Alto because of the plethora of high-tech engineers, many of whom, he claimed, hadn't gotten up from their computers in years except perhaps to cash in their stock options. Moreover, a survey showed a huge surplus of available men in Santa Clara County -- 5,372 more men than women among singles ages 20 to 45. Such prospects raised a flurry of interest in gold diggers from as far away as Scotland, who decided to fly in and help these desperate techies.
When I arrived for the afternoon workshop on relationships, there were about 200 people milling around. That included television reporters from every network, as well as several women who admitted they were attending "undercover" for magazines like Mademoiselle and British Vogue. The workshop was held in a meeting room at the Palo Alto Hyatt, and for some reason, the only way in (or out) was via a steep staircase at the back of the hotel's dimly lit sports bar. I wondered how many singles, faced with the long walk past the beer drinkers and peanut crunchers, simply forfeited their $35 registration fee and bolted. I admit I was tempted to call it a day right there.
The workshop leader, Captain Bob Smith, was billed as an "actual firefighter and relationship expert." I dutifully took notes as Captain Bob explained the secrets to relationship success. The "combination to women's vaults," he told the handful of men in the audience, "is to listen to them like girlfriends do." Women, for their part, need to take an interest in men's hobbies and not try to change their partners into someone new, he added, drawing applause from the men. "Any questions?" asked Captain Bob, before rushing to the lobby for his interview with CNN.
Armed with the combination to men's vaults, I ventured to the evening dance along with about 600 others, at least half of whom seemed to be journalists. The scene in the hotel ballroom was a lot like a seventh-grade mixer. Some of the men, wearing pressed Dockers, leaned against the wall and played solitaire on their Palm Vs or made calls on their cell phones. Dozens of women in black dresses wandered the room, searching for a nice fellow who hadn't come with his own camera crew. (Torn between blending in with basic black and screaming "available" with hot pink, I wore a glittery sweater set -- black, yes, but with silver threads and some cleavage.) Most of the action was at the cash bar, where a man who bore no resemblance to Love Boat's lovable Isaac Washington dished out $6 martinis rather than pithy advice. I struck up a conversation with an engineer from a start-up who said he had read about the convention in the Palo Alto Daily News. "What a coincidence," I said. "I wrote that article!" The man glanced down, past the cleavage, to the spiral notebook sticking out of my evening bag. "You're a reporter?" he asked, glancing left and right for an escape route.
We journalists weren't the only ones with ulterior motives. One man told me he had been thrilled when a beautiful woman accepted his invitation to dance. Halfway through "Disco Inferno," she tried to sell him a membership in a singles club. It's not fair, the man said, when guys can't tell the amateurs from the professionals.
The cruise wound down with a few brave folks dancing, neckties loosened and pagers switched to "vibrate," while the cameramen coiled up cables and shut down strobe lights. There was a frantic exchange of business cards and a flurry of promises to meet for lunch before the DJ packed up his disco ball and we called it a night.
I left with a handful of phone numbers -- some for single guys, a few for other reporters. It beat staying home watching reruns on Nick at Nite, but I suspected I might have had a better time if I'd kept quiet about my job.
When I was 10 years old, I wondered where the passengers went when they got off the Love Boat at the end of the show. As for this cruiser, I went home feeling slightly seasick and vowing to give my next relationship more than an hour to develop.
Provided, of course, that he listens like a girlfriend.
Emily Richmond, MA '97, is a writer living in Palo Alto.
