Now, Cupid smiles

By KATHRYN WEXLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 30, 2000

[Times photo: Jonathan Newton 1999] When first met Russ Brantmyer, he was cruising the clubs, looking for chicks. The Times story about his exploits opened his eyes, he says.

TAMPA -- Let others prowl Tampa's glimmering bars and dance clubs, night after night, year after year, for that elusive love.

Russ Brantmyer, profiled last year as an incorrigible bachelor addicted to busty blonds with matching fingernail and toenail polish, has sworn off the hunt.

The 6-foot-4 Internet entrepreneur says he is a new man.

"Occasionally, I still go out with the guys," he said, sitting in a West Tampa living room with his live-in girlfriend. Her long hair is . . . auburn!

"But I'm more an observer now."

The Feb. 10, 1999, article about Brantmyer -- headlined "Cupid Shrugged" -- chronicled a night he spent in Tampa's singles bars, looking for Ms. Right, or at least Ms. Right Away. "A lot of guys go out to get laid. I go out to have a good time and know that I could get laid," he said then.

Though he claimed he was capable of an arresting stare -- his so-called "stun gun" -- that mesmerized women, the weapon apparently malfunctioned and he went home alone that night.

The story led to subtle and not-so-subtle criticism from friends, family, even strangers, Brantmyer said.

"I think women perceived me as a chauvinist pig," he said.

Actually, that was one of the nicer things people said.

"He will never meet the perfect woman anywhere because the only 'cupid's arrow' he knows is in his pants," a Safety Harbor woman wrote on the Times Web site.

The jibes weren't lost on Brantmyer. At 47, he has three failed marriages and even more bleached ex-girlfriends. Wooing pretty women gave him a charge, but to what end? The story brought about an existential crisis.

Instead of hunkering down with his playboy image and a few more Coors Lights, Brantmyer undertook some serious self-examination. "It actually made me look at me differently, because I'd never assessed me," he said.

He got some clarity, he said, particularly about what he came to see as a self-defeating predilection for blond locks.

"I was trying to break that inside myself," he said. "Blonds were just terrible for me."

In short, Russ Brantmyer decided he needed someone different. And then he met Alicia Glover.

It wasn't easy. Sure, conversation and giggles flowed when they talked at a South Tampa party last May.

[Times photo: Toni L. Sandys] Now Brantmyer has settled down with Alicia Glover, 30, who has a 2-year-old son. The couple, who live together, "have a family situation,'' Glover says.

But for Brantmyer, the first hurdle was her physique: 5-foot-10, curvy, with long, soft tresses spilling midway down her back. Fingernails painted red, toenails sometimes left unpolished.

"She was the very first woman who had red hair that I'd ever dated," Brantmyer said.

Glover, a full-time medical lab technician who owns their brick house, decorated with hanging plants and Norman Rockwell prints, said the first thing she liked about Brantmyer was, well, his physique.

"When I first met him, of course I was really attracted to him," she said.

Their interests overlap. She likes to cook and Brantmyer likes to eat. She laughs at his jokes and doesn't try to change him. He likes that.

Glover is 30. When Brantmyer says, "She's mature but she obviously is maturing more because she has the benefits of my experience," she doesn't flinch.

And there's Glover's 2-year-old son, whose care they share.

"We have a family situation," said Glover, pleased.

Brantmyer has proved quite the romantic, buying her jewelry and surprising her with cards.

It's the "next level," said Brantmyer: Embracing stability and family life over the carousing and come-ons and drunken driving, which cost him a few hours in the county jail on his August birthday.

"My friends are constantly trying to search," said Brantmyer, his favorite disco tunes beating softly from the living room stereo.

"But for what?"

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