For weeks I’d been bugging my friend Frank (that’s not his real name; he doesn’t want to spoil his church-boy image) to take me out for a night on the town in the picturesque bayside village of Castine. Frank is a student at Maine Maritime Academy. He’s not in the regiment, which means he can wear flannel and let his beard grow to his heart’s content. One recent Saturday night, we made it happen.

Why was I clamoring to cruise Castine’s nightlife?

It all started a few months ago, when Frank was talking one evening about the struggles of dating in a place like Castine.

Maine Maritime Academy – or MMA, as it’s called – has a predominantly male student body. MMA isn’t a military academy, but participation in the regiment is a requirement for several of the school’s majors. About 55 percent of the student body is in the regiment, according to the MMA Web site. The rest of the students are in majors such as power engineering technology and small vessel operations.

Based on those factors, plus the plethora of anecdotal evidence I heard from Frank and the usual struggles of being single in a small coastal town that shuts down in the winter, it must be pretty tough to be a young, smart, single guy in Castine. One estimate I heard on my night out was a ratio of seven men to every one woman.

The idea of checking things out for myself intrigued me. So off I went to the coast for an evening of beer and straight talk.

Frank gave me a quick tour of Castine before we headed out to The Reef, the only bar open in the winter. We drove up the Backshore Road to a picturesque beach where guys take their girls – when they have them, that is – for late-night smooches and the occasional beer bash. We went to the State of Maine training ship and stopped at Frank’s dorm room for a minute.

It was as neat as any other dorm room I’ve seen, which is to say it was pretty messy. But Frank told me he has always tried to keep things tidy when he lived in other towns because there were actually girls around to impress. In Castine, that’s not an issue for Frank and his roommate. There aren’t enough girls around to worry about it.

Finally, we got to The Reef.

It turned out to be a quiet night, with Easter Sunday the next day and some students in Portland for a school event. We ordered nachos and a couple of beers anyway, and some of Frank’s pals wandered in.

It took just a small bit of prompting to get these guys to start talking about their dating struggles.

“You go to a party and it’s like 40 dudes and 4 chicks,” Frank said. “Why bother?”

The guys nodded.

“And the girls can do whatever they want,” one of Frank’s buddies added. “Love doesn’t really happen around here.”

There certainly weren’t a lot of women happening at The Reef that night. For most of the evening there were two of us customers in a room of 10 guys, plus the bartender and another employee. For a while it was just me. A little while later a woman walked in the door … with a guy. Same thing a few minutes later.

I could see what these guys are getting at. Forget the usual struggles. You can’t be in a healthy romantic relationship with yourself. Last time I checked, you needed another person.

All of this sort of gender inequity in Castine makes for a lot of drama, too. Frank and his friends said they often hear about fights over girls – there was one after I left, although it didn’t reach the fisticuffs stage.

Even the most short-term couples are rare, they added. For what they’ve seen, girls go out with a guy one week or two, then dump him and go for someone else the next week. The girls are in control here because, well, they’re the ones in demand.

That has led to a lot of bitterness. The older guys pity the freshmen and new kids who are away from home for the first time and get used, as the guys put it, which leads them to have a bad perception of women.

“It’s all skewed,” Frank said. “They don’t learn the ways [of normal relationships].”

I wondered if going out in places like Ellsworth and Bucksport was an option. Some people do, but the windy, rutted road back to Castine isn’t exactly inviting after a few beers.

I didn’t know what to think. My usual dating optimism was crushed.

But isn’t there life after college and Castine? Don’t you go to college to gain skills for the real world, where there are tons of nice, smart, cute women who would fight over a nice, smart, cute man with a degree from MMA?

That’s what I asked another of Frank’s friends. What about meeting someone after graduation? Probably not going to happen, he said. He plans to take his MMA skills and someday go out on boats to “make a lot of money.”

What about meeting someone, I persisted.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, I don’t care,” he said. “This place prepares you pretty well for that.”

‘Single File’ switching days

OK, folks, get out your social calendars: “Single File” is moving from every other Saturday to every other Friday.

Now you can pick up some tips, ideas and encouragement for that big first date, girls’ night out or simple flirtation just in time for the weekend.

Jessica Bloch can be reached at jbloch@bangordailynews.net