|
Mayor Richard Daley had his moments, granted, but there's a good argument to be made that, from 1998 to 2005, it was Michael Beaumier who was the most powerful man in Chicago.
If you needed a husband, a wife, a weekend fling, or someone with whom to share your amorous response to Civil War re-enactments, your last best hope was the head of the personal ads department at the city's leading alternative newspaper, the Chicago Reader.
Singles turned to him with the most impossible of tasks: help me craft the "I Saw You" ad that will locate the beautiful stranger that I glimpsed, ever so briefly, in a public place.
Newlyweds thanked him for supplying them with their soul mates.
Even pimps obeyed him when he told them to please take their business with the prostitutes placing ads for "adult services" outside the office.
Now Beaumier, 39, has told all -- or as much as most readers are prepared to hear -- in his new book, "I Know You're Out There: Private Longings, Public Humiliations and Other Tales From the Personals."
By turns sordid and sweet, this is the tale of Bill -- names and some details have been changed -- who placed at least 30 "I Saw You" ads, including three for three women he encountered on the same night, at the same place.
It's the story of Brad, who repeatedly placed racy ads for women, before abruptly "switching teams" and placing an ad for a man.
But it's also the story of Beaumier's own romantic disappointments with a long-term boyfriend with whom he eventually split, and his dawning realization that he had something to learn from the personal-ads crowd's willingness to risk rejection, awkwardness and embarrassment.
"I went from watching the freak show [of people taking risks romantically] to finding myself in the freak show," Beaumier said in an interview with the Tribune at a downtown coffee shop.
Dating is fun
"And I think it's much better to be in the freak show. ... I can't say, `Oh, every single day of it is wonderful! Dating is so much fun! It's always great!'
"It's not. [But] I think that there's just this thing about being human where, even when you're disappointed or your heart is broken or you get frustrated or it seems like finding somebody is an impossible thing, there's just this part of us that compels you to keep looking until you find [love].
"And I honestly believe that people find it."
Beaumier, now a New Yorker and a contributor to public radio's "This American Life," grew up in Grand Forks, N.D., the fourth of nine children of a homemaker and an orthopedic surgeon. He went to college at the University of Iowa and attended graduate school at Ohio State before he landed in Chicago as a freelance writer.
His reason for taking the Reader job, for which he was originally paid $28,000, was partly practical.
"I really wanted to eat, and health insurance was this far-off dream," he says.
But he grew to appreciate his co-workers in the classified ads department and the "customers" who placed the ads.
"What was fun about that job was that everybody in Chicago would come through the door. Anyone who wanted to sell a car, or get rid of their bridal gown, or rent an apartment, or look for a date, those people would show up at the door, every day, from the time they'd be open to the time they'd close," he says.
He was part editor -- crafting singles ads from people's half-formed notions of who they were and what they were looking for in a partner -- and part counselor, doling out encouragement and advice to the lovelorn.
When pimps tried to do business with the prostitutes placing ads in the "adult services" section -- "Hey, baby, who's representing you?" -- Beaumier saw it as his job to intercede.
"There were a lot of adult services providers -- the women -- who I really liked," he says.
" ... I don't want to say it's admirable, because I don't want to sound like I'm [endorsing] a system that's not pleasant.
"But the pimps -- I couldn't stand the pimps."
One of Beaumier's most important tasks was editing the popular "I Saw You" ads in which people attempted to find strangers they saw or met briefly, maybe at a bar or on a train.
The newspaper got 50 requests a day for those ads, of which about a third were chosen for publication.
"Because those were ads that could very easily work or very easily not work, depending on what was said, there was always a lot of care that was put in those," Beaumier says.
Key details
Beaumier would coax the relevant information out of the ad-placers as best he could: "Was she wearing red? Was she wearing blue? Was she reading? Did she look at you?"
But even so, some of the ads worked a little too well.
"If the details were too neutral, you'd have 20 people calling saying, `Oh, my God! I was on the Red Line this morning!'"
Beaumier, who left the Reader last year, unhappy with the lack of human interaction that followed the paper's switch to an Internet-based personal ad system, says that he has no way of knowing how many marriages he facilitated on the job.
But, during his tenure at the Reader, it was fairly common for people to meet him at parties and say, "I met my wife through the personals, but don't tell anybody here."
One new acquaintance even told him, "I cheated on my wife through the personals."
"I Know You're Out There" ends with Beaumier composing his own personal ad, one, he now says, he never actually sent to a newspaper.
"So instead of placing an ad, I decided I would just embrace my total social [awkwardness] and go up to people and go, `Hi, I'm Michael Beaumier, and I think you're really cute. Would you like to have coffee some time?'"
Although that strategy has yielded dates, Beaumier says he is still looking for that special someone.
"I turn 40 on New Year's Eve 2006, and I have no plans," he says. "And I'm single. Put that in [the paper]! I need somebody to take me out! I need a drink! I'm counting on you."
Sounds like an offer we can't refuse.
- - -
Excerpts: Some memorable ads
- CHAUVINIST SEEKS AMENDS. Lonely SWM 28 hopes to learn to treat women far better from young professional ladies. I am honest and loyal, just misguided. I will cook and clean, I will obey. Let me repay for my wrongs to others, and learn for the future. Meet me for lunch.
- YOU SHOULD DATE my dad! He's looking for a strong, good woman 65+ with a good sense of humor for fun and adventure. Are you a lousy cook? Who cares? Can't keep house? Why bother? Life's too short for chores, and too short to spend alone. Call now!
- 45 YEAR OLD VIRGIN seeking the one. I'm attractive and fun to be with, and have dated a lot. I just haven't found the one. I'm looking for a man who . . . is nonsmoking, atheistic or at least agnostic, is lean and respects his body. I'm gentle, assertive and demand respect.
- TROPHY DATE WANTED. Cute SWF 23 seeks tall buff guy 23-27 who can shake it on the dance floor for office Christmas party. No funny stuff, I just need a dance partner and someone to sit next to at dinner so I won't look pathetic in front of the boss.
- - -
`I Saw You's' migrate to Craigslist.org site
Where have all the "I Saw You's" gone?
The "I Saw You" ads, in which love-struck singles sought to connect with strangers they saw briefly in public places, were a hallmark of the Chicago Reader's personals in the 1990s and the early part of this decade.
Even if you weren't looking for love, it was hard to resist reading about the hopeless romantics who tried to track down the girl with the white dog or the guy with the blue hat.
But now Michael Beaumier, the head of the personal ads department at the Reader from 1998 to 2005 confirms what readers may have suspected for a some time: the bulk of the "I Saw You's" have moved on.
More precisely, they've moved to Craigslist.org, the popular online classifieds site.
"The Reader now gets maybe one ["I Saw You"] every couple of days, and Craigslist gets maybe 50," Beaumier says.
"It used to be that way at the Reader."
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, the contrast was pronounced: 93 ads posted on Craigslist versus one posted at the Reader's online site.
The "I Saw You's," now known as "Missed Connections" at Craigslist, moved as part of a larger exodus of classified ads to the Internet.
Newspapers have bemoaned the loss of revenue, with a 2005 report by the investment bank Goldman Sachs citing Craigslist as a "real menace" to the newspaper industry, but consumers love the site's free services and the hometown feel of the community message boards.
"Everybody everywhere uses Craigslist," Beaumier says. "And I love Craigslist. I can't criticize it."
-- Nara Schoenberg
|
