From Sheila Kelley (head of S-Factor)'s newsletter, August 2006

I love this story -- and it REALLY exemplifies the whole "Bond Girl thang." Hope you enjoy it!

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I set my friend Rebecca up on a blind date with my friend, Sam.

Cute guy. Nice guy. Not a red-hot, smokin’ babe, but a good guy. A guy you wouldn’t mind hanging onto for a little while.

A long-term relationship to Rebecca is four months, and she’s had three of them in her life. She’s thirty-two. Rebecca’s nice-looking. She’s a lawyer who went into the stock market, got out good, and is set for life. Then she decided to learn to play pool and became a world class pool shark.

To call her an overachiever is simplifying the point. She moved to LA to find the perfect man, settle down, have kids and live happily day by day. She told me that East Coast men didn’t ‘get’ her.

Like most people, she wants a great love in her life. So I set her up on this blind date with my very sweet, successful, ‘nice guy’, buddy Sam. It was a double date. We went bowling. Rebecca and Sam have one lane, Hub-man and I have the next one. I am bowling with my lover and I am there to have fun and get sexy with him. Hub-man and I are rolling balls, striking and guttering and, generally, just getting turned on by each other. I roll a strike, he rolls a strike, I knock down eight pins and then a gutter, he knocks down nine and a spare.

When we’re almost done with our game, I look across the lane at Rebecca and Sam. He’s sitting at the score table, smiling. She’s standing there, prepping to roll a ball, and I can see yet another strike written all over her face. He’s admiring her form. She’s driven to conquer. I look up at the scoreboard. She’s got 125, he’s at about 110. He checks her butt out. She rolls. It’s a strike. She raises a fist up to the ceiling like a Masai Warrior. He tries to catch her eye for a congratulatory smile but she's already set on the next set of 10 pins.

He stiffens a bit around the shoulders, looks up at the score board, and nods his head a little. I pull her away from the lane, look her in the eye and ask, “You like him?” “Yeah, he’s cute,” she says with a smile, “I really like him!” I get real somber. “Then it’s time to roll a gutter ball.” Her face is blank. “What?” “Roll a gutter ball, Rebecca.” “Are you serious?” I gaze steadily into her eyes, “Never been more.” “I don’t get it,” she says. “Why would I do that?” “Well, do you want to totally emasculate the guy or do you want to titillate him, flirt with him?” I ask. Rebecca smiles, shrugs off my request and rolls yet another strike, and wip-dee-shit wins the game by a long shot.

Therein lies everything I’ve ever observed about women and men and the all-around game of missing each other over and over again. You are on a date with a man you like. You think he’s hot. You go bowling with him. You want to ‘hook up’ so to speak. So you kick his ass because you are such a great bowler. For some reason, this means more to you then finding a true love, warm arms and a symbiotic connection.

Why the hell do women do this? I would, by the way, say the same thing to a guy friend in the same situation. I would tell him to roll a gutter ball, wake up and see that he’s alienating this woman that he wants to impress. I’m not saying lose the game but make it close, for God’s sake. Tease him with the game, flirt with him through the game, make the game about connecting with him, not winning and losing.

There are tangible, physical gifts that we give people we care about in our lives: a watch, a stuffed animal, a nice shirt. There are also gifts that we can give people that are not tangible, but usually more important and more meaningful: giving a lapdance, a compliment, a hug or, in Rebecca’s case, rolling a gutter ball. I’m not endorsing that anyone should make any less of themselves, but I did want Rebecca to see that the guy she was with wanted to make a connection to her but she was so busy playing a hard game that she wasn’t looking at the signs. She didn’t see him looking at her, checking her out. Instead, she was overwhelmed by her mission to win. Look, there are times to kick some guy’s butt bowling and there are times to use a game as flirting or foreplay. Notice the difference. Ask yourself what you want more, the victory or the flirt? Sometimes you can have both - they don’t have to be mutually exclusive - bowl a good game but at least let him see some humanity through the fortress of your athletic skills.

"Rolling a gutterball' is a metaphor for living life moment-to-moment and knowing which moments to focus on. It's a metaphor that screams life is this wonderful thing that takes place while you're focused so single-mindedly on something in the future. "Rolling a gutterball" is a statement of "Hey, you're more important in this moment than everything else." If you want to take it even further, are you here in this life to win at all costs or are you there to connect to another human being while having a great time? In that game, there are no losers.

I love men. They inspire us, confound us, irritate us, enrage us, tickle us, frustrate us, elate us, send us to the f#$%@& moon and back. I have given up believing I will ever truly understand them. That's okay. I just need to know how to love one. I worship their masculinity. I could snuggle my nose into a man’s chest and breathe in his ‘scent’ for days. I take it as part of my job in life to make my man feel powerful, virile, utterly male and adored. He makes it his journey in life to make me feel feminine, adored -- no, no, no -- more like worshiped, powerful and divine.

Two weeks after the bowling date, I see Rebecca and she asks about Sam. She wants to know if he has said anything about her? Yeah, actually, he did. He said he liked her but…(I bet it’s something many a man has said about her)…she was a little “hard.” “Yeah, she’s cute but didn’t seem interested.” “Yeah, I like her but she’s a little, boring.” Even, “Yeah, she’s hot but a little tough - not someone I would want to cuddle up with in a storm.” I soften his actual comment a little with, “Yeah, he liked you but he’s not sure you’re a match.”She smiles tightly, wants to move on from the conversation but forces herself to ask, “What was that thing you said about rolling a gutter ball?”