I was eating soup, French Onion soup to be exact, without croutons, today at a restaurant I frequent.

Soup is all I've been able hold down this last week.

My waitress, who is from Guatemala and very sweet stood at my booth tapping her lower lip with her pen and said, "I think yous just lovesick!"

"What?"

"You needs to find you a nice woman to take care of you. Give babies. There plenty of women to loves you! I always see you alone. The other girls ask the questions about you."

In the mailbox was 3 DVDs for me to watch alone.

"The Weatherman" with Nicolas Cage.

"The Squid and the whale" by the guy that writes like Wes Anderson.

And Steve Martin's, "Shopgirl" with Jason Schwartzman and Claire Danes. I'm currently 32 minutes into this film and already depressed that I'm not watching it with a girl, sharing a bowl of a microwave popcorn.

Last night, 15 minutes before closing time at Bookstar on Ventura Boulevard I was hunting for two books, one by Philip Pullman and another by Philip Reeves. You'd think I was in some Philip funk...

Anyway, I cut a across the Romance aisle and saw 3 attractive women separately looking for a good romantic read.

In my car, under the glow of a mercury vapor security light, I wondered why it's so hard for me to meet the kind of girl I believe in my heart I would be complete with, here in Los Angeles.

I watched a guy come to pickup his girl from a store that was closing. They walked so close to each other and his right arm wrapped around her and pulled her shoulder to him tightly. He kissed her ear and said something that made her laugh and I could tell some floodgate had opened and she began telling the high points of the day. He unlocked the passenger side of his car and held the door open for her as she stepped in, then he kissed her on the top of her head as it ducked in before the door closed.

I wondered if they would stop somewhere for pie and talk about their days, or go to the drive-thru at In-N-Out Burger, flopped down on the couch to watch something they had Tivoed, or maybe he had drawn a bubble bath and set candles around the tub for her before he picked her up?

I am "Lovesick" but more sick of being alone.