For reasons I don't fully understand, my phone has been ringing a lot today. In fact, the number of calls seemed to multiply exponentially when I was already on the phone. Perhaps it's some sort of telephonic convergence. I should alert Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Regardless, I was Mr. Popular today, though, to be honest, a lot of it was people returning my calls. What I can't figure out is why they all called either when I was trying to nap or on the other line.

One of the calls, easily the most tiresome of the bunch, came from my former neighbor, the divorced ex-Mormon Chilean stripper. She was calling to thank me for taking her to her plastic surgery appointment last week. I can't make this stuff up, folks.

The whole story really starts a week ago this last Friday, which, looking at my calendar, would have been the 28th. Not one of my proudest days, by a long shot. It's no secret that it's been a struggle making (and, more importantly, keeping) friends here in Portland. And on that particular night, that aspect of my life was feeling particularly bitter. I was having an allergic reaction to my isolation, and proceeded to call every local I could think of to head out for drinks, a movie, whacking ourselves with a hammer in public... whatever. So long as I didn't have to do it in my apartment.

The sum total of my Portland Little Black Book consisted of about three working numbers. It didn't take long to exhaust those possibilities. One didn't answer; I left a message. Another was, apparently, permanently grafted to his couch. The third had responsibilities relating to his sister's upcoming wedding.

Naturally, I did what anyone would do in those circumstances: I started drinking.

Well, not right away. First, I moped. Then I started mixing drinks based on the available contents of my fridge. I hit upon a not unpleasant concoction consisting of gin, orange juice and Diet Squirt, which sounds awful, and probably is, but the overpowering citrus hides most of the noxious flavor of the gin. I don't know why keep buying that stuff, but now I understand the appeal of wine coolers a little better. Why drink alcohol when you can drink Kool-Aid?

At some point, I decided it was time to reconnect with some Portlanders I hadn't spoken to in a while. Mostly this meant the divorced ex-Mormon Chilean stripper that I used to be neighbors with. Our personalities are somewhat like the vegetable oil and vinegar in Caesar dressing. Sometimes, if the conditions are right, we mix, most of the time we don't. But when you're desperate for company, you'll try anything. Or at least, I will.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on your take on the outcome, she wasn't home. So there would be no stripper fraternizing (or would it be "sororitizing"?) that night. That's mainly the reason I pal around with her, truth be told. I keep hoping I'll get invited to one of her stripper slumber parties-slash-lingerie tickle fights. The odds are, I know, slim. Far as I could tell, she never had one during the months I lived next door, and she hasn't expressed an interest in them in our limited conversations since then. Actually, there's really only one conversation topic she has ever expressed an interest in: herself. Sometimes for hours without stopping to breathe.

So, in a critical error in judgment, I left her a note and went home to drink more.

The night wasn't a complete loss, though. Rather than mope, I opted to do something productive, namely update my online personals profile. Snicker if you must, but it's been surprisingly effective, especially since that Friday, I discovered the formula for the World's Most Effective Personals Ad.

Hang on. You don't seriously expect me to reveal my secret do you? Not a chance. But since I posted this, the activity on my profile has expanded exponentially. It's been viewed something like 150 times since I posted it, and about 10 percent of those women went ahead and wrote me. Not a landslide, but still better than I had been doing. I think the major difference is that so many of the women's ads I look at are so incredibly homogenous. I figure, though I haven't investigated it personally, that the men must suffer from the same. It's not unlike politics, where polls and consultants have paralyzed all the candidates from being distinctive, even from the other party. I think people are just too afraid potentially offending someone, and so no one stands out. Everyone likes good senses of humor, everyone likes going out for a nice dinner, and everyone is sometimes up for going out for a nice hike or curling up on the couch to watch a video, depending on their mood. We know these things, okay? They should outlaw putting them in a personal ad. Are all the singles really this similar, or are they just deluded into thinking that those things somehow make them different?

Perhaps its really all this homogeneity that keeps them single? How ironic would that be?

I am really the wrong guy to ask, though. I'm far from an expert. I sometimes jokingly refer to myself as "socially retarded." To be my age and have the weak relationship history I do is either a sign of pathetically bad luck, emotional damage, or both. Or possibly I have a horrible deformity that no one has been able to tell me about, but is invisible to my naked eye.

But I have faith that my luck is going to change. I have to, otherwise I'd just slit a wrist right now and scrawl Schopenhauer quotes on the walls in blood until I blacked out.

Anyway, I'm glad I finally got the profile revision out of the way, because there's a young lady on there that I've been dying to respond to, only I was afraid my profile was too goofy, too out-of-date, too... well, me. All the me that I don't much care for when I look in the mirror, anyway. Now it's improved somewhat, at least more up-to-date; I suppose the goofy is hard to get rid of. Ditching it would probably be tantamount to false advertising.

This girl embodies everything about the kind of girl that I used to get mad crushes on in high school, and that I still have some sort of primal response to in women to this day: She's brassy, she's bold, she's vivacious. She seems to have some sort of sense of humor. But I've spent so long trying to come up with a suitable replacement for my profile that I'm afraid I may have built her up so much in my head that I won't be able to approach her without (metaphorically) spilling my drink on her.

I'm probably overthinking this. In fact, I know I am. I always do. People often accuse me of thinking too much, which I find to be a peculiar insult. Would you rather I thought too little?

But enough about that, back to the divorced ex-Mormon Chilean stripper. Earlier this week (I can't remember whether it was Sunday or Monday), she called me out of the blue and said that she'd received my note and was out of the country at the time. (In Chile, naturally.) After some extensive chit-chat about, well, her, she asked me what I was doing at 7 AM the next morning. As it was about 10 when she called, I replied probably nothing. Except, you know, sleeping. She informed me that her car had broken down and that she needed a ride to the doctor. To do what, I asked, hoping it wasn't contageous. She danced around the subject a bit (no pun intended) and finally revealed that she was "having her lips done." With the amount of embarrassment she put into this statement, I assumed she meant the lips only her customers get to see. I'd heard of some women, unhappy with the, I don't know, less-than-ideal appearance of their vaginas having them altered. Seeing as how Oregon strippers get completely nude, this could be, I suppose, a very real business concern.

I didn't press the subject and agreed to pick her up at 7, with the promise that she'd fill up my tank as a reward. With gas prices as high as they are, this wasn't a bad deal.

Somewhat surprisingly for me and my overactive need for sleep, I woke up 15 minutes before the alarm. The trip there went surprisingly smoothly. Traffic was nearly non-existent, and though Chili was as talkative as ever, I had my CD player to keep my mind busy while I nodded and uh-huh'ed. I was paying enough attention, though, to stop her from popping a Vicodin before the surgery. She believed it would help with the pain after she was done, which is true, especially if the anesthesia and the Vicodin mix and kill you during surgery.

Bolstered by this victory, I went ahead and asked her which set of lips she was having done. Thankfully, she was having the top ones done. Not collagen, but some other futuristic treatment that makes your lips puffy. To which I can say, "Well, whuppity shit." Who cares about the hood ornament if the car's got no engine?

The surgery went quickly and without cardiac arrest on her part. Unfortunately, she looked like a domestic abuse victim, and for a woman who's had a kid (haven't all strippers?), she had a remarkably low tolerance for pain. We went to the store across the street, but since it was still early, the pharmacy wasn't open yet, so we got her ice packs, then we stopped at a 7-11 a few blocks away to get her real ice since the ice packs weren't cutting it.

You know, when you do this shit for your sister or your girlfriend or whoever, it's easy to overlook the complaining and the effort, but it's amazing how much of that relies on affection. I managed to be kind and understanding, but not far from the surface was a lecture about withstanding pain that I was tempted to unleash. And today she had the nerve to call me up and lecture me about how men don't have to deal with as much pain in our lives. Pardon? I've never heard of a man going out and getting injections in his lips. And don't tell me that women do that shit for us. Find me a man who cares and I'll show you a shallow prick.

Still, I put up with it and played the understanding surrogate boyfriend because that's how I was raised, and I hate to see any woman in pain. It's a guy thing, and women should count themselves lucky we have that response. Just cry a little and you can get anything you want. Except maybe the presidency.

So I got her home, by which time she was thoroughly doped on two (or more) Vicodin, and I went about my business. Later that day, though, she called and asked me to come over and jumpstart her car so she could take it to get fixed before (wait for it) her hair appointment. Once again, I obliged, in spite of the fact that I had my night class coming up all too soon. I got the car started, and with just 45 minutes until class started, she asked me to tail her to the mechanic to have the electrical system checked out. Again, I obliged, because I'd already come that far, and I damn sure wasn't going to get counted out of any slumber parties for not doing this much. But then she managed to put three cars between us after turning the first corner. By the first stop light, she had ditched me completely, running a yellow light. Having no idea which mechanic she was going to, only the general vicinity she was talking about, I drove around a bit, but never even caught sight of her again. And I was late for my class.

In our conversation today, she informed me (very casually, I might add) that, at the time, she was not only still dosed on Vicodin, but also stoned on pot. Wonderful. I guess that explains her poor judgment, but not why she thought it was a good idea to be driving or making hairstyling decisions.

The moral of the story is, I guess, no matter how lonely you are, choose your friends wisely. Either that or take the bus.