Bidding for Bachelors

What do women want? We still don’t know the answer to Freud’s question, but after the Cystic Fibrosis Bachelor Bid, I do know what a thousand or so Dallas women want: a dream date with Mitchell Fonberg, who was auctioned off for $2,500 after spirited bidding.

Fonberg, a twenty-nine-year-old investor with his own company, is fit, impossibly tan, and fun-loving to a fault, to judge from his impromptu striptease on stage. Of course, it probably didn’t hurt that he was willing to take his date to La Costa, the California spa.

Given that Bill Carter, the sleek-looking forty-year-old president of Carter Financial Management, brought $2,200 for a day in San Francisco with dinner on Fisherman’s Wharf, it becomes increasingly clear that what Dallas women want is a date with a well-tanned financial consultant who’ll get you the hell out of town. Carter lost points with me for that dinner on Fisherman’s Wharf, an area that has been the gastronomic pits for some time now, but that didn’t deter the consortium of women who nabbed him.

Observing the group-bidding and repeat-bidding by individual women stockpiling dates, I came away from the Bachelor Bid filled with admiration for the pragmatism of Dallas women. Many women unwittingly end up sharing men; at least the Carter consortium knew what they were getting into.

Another group of women-“about six girls with bad backs.” according to their spokeswoman-shelled out $475 for a romantic evening at the ballet with twenty-nine-year-old chiropractor Roland Nadeau, presumably to be followed by spinal adjustments for everyone. And a single bidder dropped $1,800 fora lakeside picnic with thirty-three-year-old restaurateur Robert Colombo of San Simeon, “so I can always get a good table at the restaurant.”

Potential bidders were given pamphlets describing each fellow’s occupation, age, height, hair and eye color, hobbies/interests, date package, and answers to two key questions (What do you look for in a woman? What kind of woman would find you interesting?). This Horchow catalogue-like prelude jibed with my long-held notion that those engaged in dating should exchange resumes before the first date so as to save on the getting-to-know-you wear and tear. Unfortunately, the descriptions of the bachelors did not include the most important dating considerations: a guy’s track record for calling the next day, and his philosophy on the critical matter of sending flowers.

Along these lines, the bachelor with the best understanding of what women find irresistible was thirty-three-year-old restaurateur Mark Terheggen. yet another tall, tan guy, who announced, “My dream is to get married and have babies.” Such sentiment was apparently a considerable selling point (to the tune of $650) in these uncommitted times. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Mark’s date package that did it: he offered a motorcycle ride to Arlington to “drink beer and eat hot dogs and watch a baseball game.”

On the personal heartbreak front, I will never forgive myself for chickening out on bidding for polo player Bill Walton, who inexplicably went for a mere $300. Not only is Bill heartbreakingly handsome, he was appealingly modest and embarrassed on stage-and he kept his shirt on.