My friend Lauren McLaughlin, an excellent new sf writer, has a story up on today's Salon — "The perfect man" — the story of a woman who found true love by designing an AI, and then turning him loose.
Martin was a mouth breather. Jim lacked ambition. Rennie's head was too big. Craig licked my face like a dog.
But Pritchard. Pritchard is everything I want. And I'm not going to apologize about the way I met him. Especially not to my friends still slugging it out on LovePlanet.com. I did LovePlanet. Seventy-four dates with sixty-two men. You know what I learned? People lie. Sylvester was fifty-five, not thirty-five. Jacob was an unemployed bartender with halitosis, not a financial planner with a beach house. I admit I lied about my weight. All women lie about their weight.
But I can laugh at all of this now because I am off the roster. I am no longer "out there," as they say. And I didn't have to lower my standards or search outside my geographic region either. What I had to do was stop searching and start designing. That's right. I designed my boyfriend. I'm a busy woman. I don't have time for the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys the world keeps throwing at me.
Update: Here's a great interview that Lauren McLaughlin conducted with Kelly Link, the award-winning author of Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners — thanks, Matthew!
