Pining for togetherness but ... Nice blokes sleep alone

Press, 28 December 1987, Page 10

Pining for togetherness but ... Nice blokes sleep alone

Totally unrealistic expectations about marriage mean many people who would like to be paired stay single, according to DUO writer MIKE BYGRAVE.

Bruce Feirstein, author of “Nice Guys Sleep Alone,” lives by his own dictum. Not only does he sleep alone, he also lives alone — except for half a ton of word-processing equipment. It’s not by choice, however. Feirstein, a short, dark-haired 33-year-old with a typical New Yorker’s energy and intensity, would like to be one of a pair. He believes that the inflated expectations of the last two decades are to blame for the present crisis among “singles.” “The message of ‘Nice Guys’ is that members of the baby boom generation, like myself, were dealt totally unreasonable expectations about marriage and relationships. “As a result we’ve been dating for the last 20 years instead of making a commitment and getting married. Women especially are starting to wake up single and aged 35 in a total panic, feeling they’ve been sold a bill of goods.” He worries about "how it’s going to work out for all these people who are getting married to total strangers at the age of 38 because they’re lonely and there’s no time left.” “It’s kind of all spaded

up. You immediately get the house, that’s the project for the first year, then you have the baby, that’s the project for the second year. And then you have to face each other.” Though “Nice Guys” was written before A.I.D.S. became a major crisis, Feirstein says the disease has reinforced his message. “Frankly, I thought I’d get killed for some of the things I said in the book, like, people go into dating with expectations beyond just having fun — whether they admit them or not — and that casual sex has a cost. By the time the book came out, everybody was saying the same thing.” Feirstein, who was married once for two years — to “a college sweetheart” — counts himself among the casualties of the endless dating game between United States yuppies. “Based on my books and their sales, I’m supposed to be leading some incredibly glamorous life — out every night. As you see, I'm not.”

Like a young Woody Allen, Feirstein has a gift for turning his personal

problems into universal humour. “Nice Guys” may read like a series of witty observations on the battle (in Feirstein’s view, the trench warfare) of the sexes, but in fact “it’s ail about one woman.” “I wrote it while totally recoiling from one relationship, and when I finished I swore I would never again be a refuge for neurotic girls.” “Real Men” had a similar beginning. “I was working in advertising as a copywriter. I started writing scripts. The second one I wrote had a line in it where one man in a bar -says to andther, ‘Real men don’t eat quiche.’ The producer I sent it to circled the line and wrote: ‘That isn’t funny.’, "After I wrote the book and it was a big success, I copy to that pro-i

ducer.” Feirstein says he probably wouldn’t have returned to the humour market had it. not been for that miserable romance. “Now I want to write a novel. It’s time to grow up. “My own agenda is basically very simple. I’d like the respect of my peers. I'd like to be able to write what I want, and I’d like to be with somebody.” —Copyright DUO