Good Vibrations welcomes Rachel Sarah as a Sex & Parenting Featured Writer. Rachel Sarah is the author of Single Mom Seeking: Play Dates, Blind Dates, and Other Dispatches from the Dating World. Look for more articles by Rachel in upcoming issues of the GV Weekly! Go to www.goodvibes.com (click past the age page and check out the GV Weekly for Sex & Parenting articles!

I’d been a single mom for six months when I decided that maybe, just maybe, I was ready to go on a date. But it was complicated. It meant finding a babysitter; and leaving my 11-month-old daughter, who was nursing, for a few hours.

It was the year 2001, when online dating was just making its mark, and I was not ready to go there. So, I asked my neighbors Susan and Jim, a wonderfully neurotic Jewish couple with a daughter who is six months older than Mae, if they knew any available men.

“I’m not really ready for a real relationship,” I said to Susan. “Just sex.”

She exploded into laughter: “Well, let’s not be vague here!”

I turned red. Did I really just say that?

I trusted my friends. They’d known me since Mae was a couple of months old and remained my friends even after my boyfriend, Eric, the father of our daughter, left. I also knew that Susan and Jim had my well-being, and Mae’s, in mind.

“So, what are you looking for?” Jim asked me.

“It’s pretty simple,” I said. “He has to be single and attractive — oh, disease- and drug-free, too.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Jim said.

That’s when Jim said to Susan: “Mark?”

“Oh, no!” Susan said. “Don’t do that to Rachel.”

“Don’t do what?” I asked.

“He smokes pot,” said Susan, as her daughter climbed into her lap to nurse.

“Last I heard, he’d quit smoking because the office was doing a drug test,” Jim said.

“I thought he had a girlfriend,” Susan said.

“They just broke up,” Jim said.

I was touched that they were so eager to make me a match, but Susan’s hesitation made me uneasy.

“I don’t think he’s mature enough for Rachel,” Susan said.

“She didn’t say anything about needing him to be in therapy,” Jim said.

Susan turned to me and looked serious. “He recently asked us if we know any cute single women,” she said. “He’s very cute, but he has major commitment problems.”

“Sounds great!” I said. Noncommittal is just what I needed.

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