I've seen a lot of unusual stuff in my time in New York, but Saturday night I observed something new: a woman in a coffee shop having dinner with an invisible boyfriend. She even referred to him as such. She was just an ordinary looking gal in her late twenties, maybe thirty. A little on the chubby side, perhaps, but she could have gotten plenty of visible men going for her.

Her situation would have seemed sad if she weren't so loud, chastising the waiters for not doing things precisely the way she wished. She sat in a booth, drinking the free glass of wine which came with her dinner entree--the free wine which was the very reason I myself had come to this diner. I couldn't see who she was talking to, and I was hoping that maybe it was a "little person" whose head just didn't come up over the top of the booth, but who was nonetheless sitting there, feet dangling and chin just inches from the table top, drinking the beer she'd ordered for him and which the waiter courteously served with patient befuddlement. But no, when I walked out of the restaurant I could see she was talking and confiding to the air...or rather, to her invisible man.

I did muse about whether the whole thing was a put-on, or some kind of thespian stunt. A lot of young actors and actresses live in my neighborhood (the theater district/Hell's Kitchen which borders Times Square) and I wondered if maybe the chick was doing some oddball acting exercise.

Then on Sunday night, in another diner further uptown, I heard a fortyish woman at the booth behind me attempting to render a man invisible with her endless chatter about the joy of having children and making babies. It seemed to me as if this couple were on a first date, judging by the stiffness of their initial comments about weather, and her quick segue into the topic of the creative joy of both making and raising children was almost as surreal as the gal chatting with an invisible guy.

This second lady had an educational, schoolmarmish tone, and her companion barely got a word in edge-wise. I started to imagine him becoming translucent, transparent, and then vanishing into thin air. She kept telling the poor schmuck how much "fun" it was to make the babies she'd already had (okay, I can buy that), at least two of which were pretty much grown up, and then she would say to the guy, "What are you smiling about? And what are you thinking?" Then she quizzed him about whether he'd ever had or wanted to have children himself. By his barely audible answer, I gathered his response was probably, and most shamefully from the lady's perspective, in the wretched negative...

Just like my response would have been...

I read in the newspaper over the weekend about a female author who says the current slang term "MILF" (meaning "Mom I'd Like to Fuck") is offensive. My interpretation of her reasoning is that she feels that "MILF," in recognizing the fuckability of mature women, therefore simultaneously and with great sexism implies that there are also MIRNFs (pronounced "murrrnffs") meaning "Moms I'd Rather Not Fuck." Jeez, I don't think it implies that at all, I think this lady is overreacting, but in any case, it's unreasonable to look at the world and say, "Yes, all moms are equal on the fuckability scale." (Of course, to be either a MILF or a MIRNF, a female just needs to be somewhat mature; actual momhood, or proof of progeny, is not necessary.) I mean, the Land of Desire is not a democracy, everybody knows that, especially bald and paunchy middle-aged guys like moi. On the other hand, it could be said that for every MIRNF, there are gents who consider her a MILF. Every type of woman has her fans.

Including those who prefer to date invisible men!