By Alex Palombo
After being single since 1967, Sgt. Simon Pepper has announced via his Twitter (@Sgt_Pepper) that he is tired of being a lonely heart and plans to create a profile on the popular dating site match.com.
“Sometimes being on your own is a good thing, but enough is enough,” Pepper tweeted. “I need somebody to love.”
Pepper, the 64-year-old Army sergeant known for his Nehru jackets and rose-tinted glasses, first got noticed in 1967 with his Lonely Hearts Club band—a group of rockers with busloads of LSD, bhangras and groupies. He said that while he has had enough anonymous sex to last him a lifetime, he wants someone more permanent in his life.
“Since I broke up with my ex-wife Prudence, I’ve been feeling so low,” he said. “These girls do nothing for me. I just need to get back out there. I haven’t dated since 1973, and I haven’t felt content since 1981.”
Image by Sally Russell
Pepper has been single since his ex-wife ran off with Silver Hammer, a Native American, in 1981. It was later revealed Hammer had been sneaking through the window of the Pepper’s two-story colonial since 1976 to rendezvous with his lover. Heartbroken and alone, Pepper said he sat in his basement high as a kite, writing silly love songs, trying to fill the hole in his chest. He bounced from woman to woman, briefly dating a woman named Rita in the late ‘80s but never settling down.
“It just didn’t work out,” Rita said. “I couldn’t handle his pessimism, and I couldn’t put up with those technicolor nightmares he calls clothes.”
Pepper said he’s never tried online dating before, but after stalking his old high school girlfriend Eleanor on Facebook, he feels ready to join the new generation and find love on the web.
“A bunch of my mates have tried it after their marriages failed, and they’ve found love,” Pepper said. “It just seems like this is the way things are headed these days: If you can’t meet a girl at a bar, you need to put yourself online.”
Pepper’s friend Brian Cray said that he’s sick of Pepper’s misery and hopes that by joining match.com, he’ll be less of a downer at parties.
“My wife and I like to have dinner parties, and we always invite Pepper,” Cray said. “But he’s the only single one, and he always brings down the mood. He drinks too much, whines about how lonely he is and just ruins the mood. He’s an absolute buzzkill.”
Cray’s friend Anne Gregory agrees. She said she loves Pepper’s sense of humor and intelligence, adding that he is a polite and considerate fellow. But every blind date she sets him up on crashes and burns.
“I’ve set Pepper up with a bunch of my friends,” she said. “But they never work out. He gets so eager ‘that this girl will be the one, that this one will last forever,’ and then they all leave him. I know he’s just looking for someone to settle down with, but I just hope he finds someone soon because I’ve run out of desperate single friends to set him up with.”
“The only thing I’m afraid of is meeting someone perfect online and then finding out she’s not as she seems,” Pepper said. “I don’t want to meet a beautiful blonde who’s perfect for me only to discover she’s missing a leg and did German porn or something.”
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Alex Palombo is a senior journalism major who has a strong compatability rating with Sgt. Pepper on match.com. E-mail her at [email protected].