I phoned my new Austin girlfriends.  "You should totally come with me.  They’ll also be photographing Austin’s most eligible bachelors."  I was scheduled to arrive at a sports bar for a photo shoot with Austin Monthly Magazine.  "The Bachelor Issue."  They’d be photographing me and then shooting the men.  My single girlfriends agreed and arrived in their trendy Wednesday best.

"Last year’s bachelors were such a disappointment," one of the girls said.  And I of course assumed she was talking about their looks.  I guess when you hear "most" eligible bachelor, you think calendar men.  I think dynamic men, accomplished, and sure easy on the eyes.  But what really makes one a "most eligible bachelor?"

See I know a single guy in Austin who’s eager for a real relationship.  As a friend, I know he’s a nice guy, affectionate, sweet and probably communicative in a relationship.  If he were furniture, he’d be a lazy-boy recliner.  But when he speaks, as a woman, I cringe.  Last time we were together I asked how work was going.

"It’s going.  I mean, I’m still working for a living, which I guess is fine for now, but really, I’d love to get on welfare."  Dear lord.  What woman wants to be with a guy who’s got no ambition?

"Don’t you want to make your mark on the world?  Do something big?"

"Nah.  I leave that to you creative types.  I’d like to never have to work, or to take a job where I could get away with doing as little work as possible."  I cannot bring myself to set him up with anyone.  "Come on," he says, "you’ve got to have some hotty to set me up with.  No one fat.  I don’t like the fatties."  Ew.  Now I want to smack him, but the thing is, he really is a good guy, but I cannot imagine setting him up.  I’m certain he’d take her for fast-food.  The boy doesn’t understand going out to restaurants where linen draped across tables is the norm.  "What, like that meal you just paid for, do you really think it was 50 times better than a McDonald’s cheeseburger?  Is it really worth paying 50 times more than a perfectly good cheeseburger?"  You can’t teach this.  The thing is though, he’d make a great father and attentive husband to someone.  Just no one I know. It’s exactly why I invited the girls to the bachelor photoshoot.  Eventually though, we got too hungry to stick around and wait for each man to arrive, so we headed across the street for mini-burgers and corn dogs.  Not a far cry from McDonald’s after all.