Basement Files: A waiting bachelor

Every month, the Mercury profiles an area bachelor looking to be adopted into a loving, committed relationship. Today, we profile Ted Rodenberg, a 37-year-old systems analyst for DataCorp International.

Ted Rodenberg loves TV. Boy, does he ever. As soon as he gets home from work, Ted sits down on the couch, turns on the TV and doesn't move a muscle till bedtime. Last night, it was a Providence-West Virginia basketball game on ESPN. Tonight, it's a billiards tournament from Reno, Nev., on ESPN2.

"I like the way they're always thinking three...maybe four shots ahead," the alert and observant young man says from his divan. "Man, I wish I could shoot pool like that. I'd go to a bar and just smoke all those tough guy posers. I should think about putting a table in here. I'm hungry now."

You may remember Ted from our profile of him in August 2003. Sadly, no one has stepped forward to claim this promising young bachelor. And yet he's made so many steps to improve himself in the last year. Working with a team of our counselors, Ted has learned to stop cutting his own hair. Though still irritated by the "waste" of $20, Ted now sees the wisdom in trusting that important job to trained professionals. And the results have been amazing!

Unfortunately, Ted was taken advantage of by his latest hair stylist. Sadly, there are still people--hair stylists and clothing saleswomen--who will prey on vulnerable bachelors. Ted was talked into a cut that requires some complicated and artful gelling, a commitment he never should have made, and is incapable of honoring. Any prospective girlfriend must know that she will have to date Ted during the awkward hair-growing-out phase or must tend to the gelling herself.

Less successful were our efforts to remake Ted's apartment into an environment more conducive to adult, inter-gender socializing. An unused foosball table still dominates the otherwise empty dining room and the life-size John Wayne poster still glares at infrequent visitors from its perch on the west wall of the living room. Redecorating will be a challenge, but one custom-made for the practiced eye and loving hand of a new girlfriend.

We won't kid you. Ted is what's known as a "difficult placement." Experts say Ted has the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old. Ted has great difficulty accessing his inner emotions and may react with anything from stony silence to violent anger when asked to do so. Ted responds poorly to confrontation, or being told he's wrong, or social events that require dressing up and talking to people.

Ted suffers from a kind of emotional autism, one that makes him acutely protective of his own weaknesses and insecurities, but also renders him blithely, even cruelly, inattentive to your own. To adapt in this world, Ted seeks comfort in the predictability of his unvarying routine. Any injury to this routine, any variation from the comforting norm, can upset Ted. A lot. Ted doesn't like going out much, especially to fancy, expensive places where people "put on airs." And any gathering that involves your extended family? Forget about it.

Ted is a "special needs" boyfriend. He will need help with basic hygiene. Ted doesn't use bar soap, arguing that his generic baby shampoo actually cleanses the skin as it rolls drainward down the body. We believe that with time, patience and a loving tone of voice, Ted could conquer such bathtime rudiments as bar soap and washcloths within a few months. With an especially encouraging Annie Sullivan-type girlfriend, Ted might someday use a mesh sponge and lightly scented body wash. But let's be fair...that's years away.

Likewise, Ted struggles with basic grooming. Any woman interested in dating Ted will need a thorough knowledge of astringents, face creams, hand lotions and hair-removal strategies. For instance, Ted allows great thickets of unsightly neck hair to grow in equatorial splendor between hair appointments. And that won't change without your help. Know in advance that dating Ted means having to buy the Braun trimmer with your own money and hacking away at his neckline yourself. Weekly. We can't overstate the commitment.

Though he tries, Ted cannot yet dress himself. He favors unflattering underwear that hangs in tatters from stretched-beyond-utility waistbands. Pant hems reach in vain across a sea of jarringly colored socks to touch the rocky archipelago of his ankles. Beyond that lies a continental shelf of absurdly cheap and discordant shoes, which match his belt, if at all, by the most random of chance. In short, behind Ted's protests of "Look, I'm no clotheshorse" lies a fundamental misunderstanding of the sizing, coordination and maintenance of the modern wardrobe. However, if matching clothes are laid out for Ted, he will often don them with very little fuss.

Ted will need help feeding himself. Ted has the diet of an 8-year-old, and yet he seems eager to learn about proper nutrition. He really does. He just needs someone to show him. Someone like you. In fact, Ted has scored above average for intelligence. His brain works fine when processing new information; it's stored information that's difficult for Ted to retrieve.

For instance, Ted won't remember your birthday, anniversary or Valentine's Day. You'll need to remind him. And despite Ted's gift with numbers, he'll need you to remember for him the birthdays of his mother, father, brother, both sisters and all seven nieces and nephews. Bless his heart, he just can't remember those.

What does Ted really want? He wants what we all want. To be loved, wanted and needed. Well, maybe not needed so much. But definitely wanted. Won't you help?