A Pound of Dates--Hold the Meat : L.A. Stories: A slice of life in Southern California

If you are what you eat, then you might say that Lynn’s former boyfriend was all heart.

Tongue and bratwurst too, for that matter, because Lynn’s ex stocked the refrigerator with all sort of innards. Not so the very vegetarian Lynn, who insisted on his-and-hers refrigerator shelves when the two were living together.

“He would eat disgusting things,” she sniffs. “We just couldn’t shop together. I wouldn’t want to see his arteries. If I were a blood cell, I would reject him too.”

Alas, their union was not meant to be, although it took meatier matters than mere meat-eating to pull them apart. Still, when Lynn went mate-hunting last summer, she armed herself with the resources of Vegi-Match, a dating service for untethered vegetarians in Los Angeles.

“It’s like religion,” says the 29-year-old aerobics instructor, who asked for anonymity. “It’s one more thing you don’t have to hassle with.”

When Vegi-Match comes on to singles with the tease “Tired of the Meat Market?” it is, shall we say, talking turkey. The service is the brainchild of Marla Friedler, a 33-year-old vegetarian single who nonetheless does not avail herself of Vegi phone numbers.

“It would be unprofessional,” she says.

Friedler bills Vegi-Match as a computer-matching service, although the technology consists of, well, Friedler. Still, at 25 bucks for at least three matches drawn from a pool of 250 meat-eschewing unmarrieds, it’s one of the better deals in town for the love-hungry. (Fees for other dating services can hit four figures.)

Friedler matches vegetarians according to their answers on the Vegi-Match questionnaire: Do they like reggae? Are they talkative? Do they smoke? Are they Protestant? Jewish? Hindu? Moslem? Democrat? Green? Republican?

Republican?

“It’s surprising,” Friedler says. “There are very few.”

That’s not really surprising.

“I was going to say, surprisingly there are even a couple.”

A little nittier and grittier for vegi-matching purposes, exactly how vegetarian are they? Vegan (no animal products, period), lacto vegetarian (bends on the milk question) or lacto-ovo vegetarian (sunny-side up, please)?

But the No. 1 Vegi asset sought by most aspiring Vegi Matchees is not spirituality, not holistic leanings, not ecological correctness, but--you guessed it--looks.

“The truth is, everyone really wants a picture,” says Friedler, who is happy to oblige.

Of course, some vegetarians place special orders. Like the guy who wrote, “A slightly neurotic woman is always interesting.”

And the woman who huffed that slightly neurotic men are always un interesting: “I am tired of men who . . . have a chip on their shoulder about women. Not all of their ex-wives can be old dragons.”

Friedler does what she can to make ends meet, and so far, the 3-year-old service hasn’t sent anyone down the aisle. But she did manage to make a Vegi-Match for Lynn, who has been shunning meat with a tasty business manager for a couple of months. And getting sometimes finicky vegetarians together is no mean feat.

“Vegetarians are more selective--they’re more careful about health,” says Lynn. “I’m vegan. One guy I went out with ate dairy. To me, that’s less healthy than eating meat because of the cholesterol in cheese. I would go to restaurants and do ‘When Harry Met Sally’: ‘Can I have this and this on the side?’ I’d see his eyes bulge out. I couldn’t sit there and tolerate that.”

Friedler started Vegi-Match partly to help bankroll the 500-member Los Angeles Vegetarian Assn., a social club she founded about the same time. Most vegetarians in her network range in age from the mid-20s to 50, and their occupations run the L.A. gamut--engineers, show-biz technicians, computer programmers, maitre d’s.

“I don’t really find that many people who think vegetarians are wackos anymore,” Friedler says.

Friedler, a project manager for an ad agency, has been a vegetarian for 20 years, ever since she witnessed a cow being slaughtered. And although she has dated meat-eaters, none of them has ever achieved “major boyfriend” status.

“I don’t think I could ever live with someone who wasn’t a vegetarian,” she says. “I had a roommate once who wasn’t a vegetarian, and it made me sick. I lived there first so I made the rules. He had his one pan that he could cook meat in and one dish, and I didn’t want him to touch any of my dishes. I know this is going to sound neurotic, but I wanted to make sure it didn’t get contaminated.”

Friedler’s kind of guy would simply have to hold the vegetarian view of the world: “It’s just a different kind of person from the Average Joe who likes to eat at McDonald’s and go shooting on the weekend.”

But don’t get her wrong. Even Friedler wouldn’t necessarily blow off a guy just for swinging by the drive-through now and again.

“I wouldn’t rule anyone out, because I know they’d become a vegetarian after being with me for a while,” she says. “It’s just a little more work.”