Besides, single 30-year-olds are grimly pursuing fathers for their unborn children and 40-year-olds are tired and cranky from working too hard. And what's paramount in the dating game, I suspect, is novelty. Older women with older children? They partied through the '70s and the '80s. They're experienced, they've got special tricks, they can take you to interesting parties, they laugh more, they're a better deal. They're hot! I am so so so tired.

A few months later, I found myself sitting in angel face's room in the hotel with a bottle of Irish whiskey between us, and he's running his surprisingly practised seduction routine as I slide closer and closer to the door. His final move is to tell me he wants to be Prime Minister and how should he go about it? Move to Quebec, I suggest, before bolting down the corridor to the guests' section of the hotel. Kobe Bryant should be a middle-aged Canadian columnist -- he wouldn't be in the dock today.

Usually, I've found, telling a man you're a Christian is the best way to scare him off. I automatically run that by every married man who takes a shot at me. I lie in wait, too, until they're really comfortable with me. Shrivels them up like shrimp tossed into a frying pan, especially tall patrician American environmentalists who are friends with Ralph Nader and want to micromanage everyone's life, just for example. This, I might add, does not work with men who are actually Christian, but luckily I run into very few of those.

(Copyright National Post 2004)

enickson@nationalpost.com

I need a break from all the marriage proposals and declarations of love

A few summers ago, I was visiting one of my best friends, in Washington. His wife of 25 years had just left him for her much younger (female) personal trainer, and he had spent a season devastated, complaining to anyone who would listen. By summer it was a different story. It was open season and he was the prey.

The morning I arrived, we sat having coffee while his answering machine picked up four invitations to an Opera Club ball from flirtatious women with a slightly desperate edge in their voices.

He joked he was going to buy a house with a very large television and a very small fridge, because he was invited out for dinner every single night. He also said that though he'd never been the object of a bidding war for any of his books, he sure was in one now.

Well, thought I, between moments of seething disapproval, this will never happen to me. He's a tall, rich, good-looking Yalie, and I'm just a middle-aged country girl. If I ever become single again, I shall languish on the vine, doing good works.

Was I wrong! I am so exhausted. If you've taken care of your skin, and not layered on an extra 30 pounds, all bets are off. Today, you might as well be 30 as 50 (for the sake of argument). In fact, 50 is the new 25. Gas-station attendants flirt as if you were 16. I need to pick someone and settle down so I can have a break.

I have lost count of the declarations of love. I've been proposed to twice, once with apples and firewood, the other with a prenup demanded in the same breath (I burst out laughing), and I have the same expression on my face as my Yalie friend did when the telephone rings, which is one of wry disbelief.

And my e-mail? My e-mail freaks me out completely. I don't know who's more to blame: Matthew Fraser for making me have a new photograph taken, my hairdresser for insisting that I was really and truly a blond or Demi Moore for demonstrating that older women are the new new new thing.

It's Demi Moore who's most responsible, I think. In the same way that Bill Clinton showed pre-teens that oral sex is not sex, she has suggested to every man under 30 that older women know more about "love," and are a lot more fun, plus a lot richer, than the dough- faced sillies they've been chasing around.

Besides, single 30-year-olds are grimly pursuing fathers for their unborn children and 40-year-olds are tired and cranky from working too hard. And what's paramount in the dating game, I suspect, is novelty. Older women with older children? They partied through the '70s and the '80s. They're experienced, they've got special tricks, they can take you to interesting parties, they laugh more, they're a better deal. They're hot! I am so so so tired.

The first indication I had that things had shifted radically was the blushing angel-faced 21-year-old manager at the achingly hip (and cheap) hotel I use in Vancouver. Now this may have been triggered by my stumbling in blind drunk after dinner with Allan Fotheringham, having lost all my keys.

A few months later, I found myself sitting in angel face's room in the hotel with a bottle of Irish whiskey between us, and he's running his surprisingly practised seduction routine as I slide closer and closer to the door. His final move is to tell me he wants to be Prime Minister and how should he go about it? Move to Quebec, I suggest, before bolting down the corridor to the guests' section of the hotel. Kobe Bryant should be a middle-aged Canadian columnist -- he wouldn't be in the dock today.

Then there was the Christian. I met him as I was going into a church for an interview, and I recall thinking, oh, he's gorgeous, I hope he's in my meeting. He was. I subsequently quoted him briefly, he came over to my house, we went for a walk, had lunch, and the next day I started receiving furious, drunken, misspelled and threatening e-mails from a television presenter in New Zealand he had dated briefly.

I forwarded them to him, embarrassed and slightly angry. Then followed a couple of months of persistent calling. Why do men call every 30 minutes until you pick up the phone, shouting and furious?

Shouting, I've found, doesn't really work. It's like dogs. When they bark and you shout at them, they think you're enthusiastically joining in, and bark more. And the police? They weary of one's love life, so I'm saving them for serious stalkers.

I've developed strategies. A besotted reader from Toronto called me every single evening in July until I found a polite and effective way to tell him to bugger off. It worked, but can you see why I'm exhausted?

Usually, I've found, telling a man you're a Christian is the best way to scare him off. I automatically run that by every married man who takes a shot at me. I lie in wait, too, until they're really comfortable with me. Shrivels them up like shrimp tossed into a frying pan, especially tall patrician American environmentalists who are friends with Ralph Nader and want to micromanage everyone's life, just for example. This, I might add, does not work with men who are actually Christian, but luckily I run into very few of those.

I seem to have developed a somewhat grim facial expression when I receive effusions of love. At lunch on Saturday, for instance, with what I thought was a new friend, not a suitor: When he told me he had fallen in love with me, I fixed him with a furious glare. He stuttered and said, "intellectually, of course." "I should hope so," I said.

I'm going to the hairdresser this week and telling her to take it down a notch. I can't live up to the blondness, it is simply too exhausting. And Demi Moore? If I ever run into her, I am going to give her a piece of my mind.