IN WHICH I FINALLY TAKE THE PLUNGE AND MEET SOMEONE or EARLY COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT

It felt really great.  I was getting lots of feedback from the talent on POF. There was much praise for my sexiness, beauty, intellect, etc., all of these sterling character traits obviously gleaned from the photos.  Hence, from such enthusiasm, came many pleas to meet up.   

I received a lovely message from a 27-year-old guy who informed me that he was well hung, clean, disease-free and ready for anything NSA.  No, all you policy wonks, that doesn’t stand for National Security Act, I later found out it’s another dating-internet acronym.  It means, “no strings attached”.  I wrote him back and said how charming I thought his letter was NOT…in actuality I wrote him back and said, perhaps it was a generational thing, but I thought he was just a tad crude.  I expected rudeness and acute defensiveness back and was pleasantly surprised when he wrote that he just wanted to be honest and straightforward.  I thanked him for his offer and said I’d keep him posted.

I was amazed and gratified at the amount of attention I was getting from younger guys… they were the most effusive in their praise and, you guessed it, my ego was massaged and my susceptibility to flattery was on high alert. 

May I just state here that you forget? 

If you haven’t dated in a while and you’ve watched too many chick flicks…the sincerity that Tom Hanks had for Meg Ryan or even Seth Rogen for Katherine Heigl, is really quite missing in real life.  You forget the games that people play in their quest to allure, and how you’re supposed to respond to those games, how much you’re supposed to believe and how much you’re supposed to laugh off.  I formally admit and confess that I believed, something like Natalie Wood at the end of Miracle on 34^th Street. I forgot it was just bait from the preying mantis, which in this case, and possibly in the interest of avenging all males in the insect world, was going to eat me when it was done having its way with me.

But I digress.  I lied.  The first guy wasn’t the 27 year-old with the sincere proposition; it was another – one sworn to protect and to serve with slightly more subtlety and in his early forties.  He put the hard sell on max and had all the visual attributes as well as an unusually sexy and deep chocolaty voice. 

Initially I was evasive, after all, he was young, and as stated, I wanted someone who remembered the 60’s, not born at the end of them. He was the outdoorsy type, and I am definitely a hothouse flower who thrives on indoor activities, such as watching my TiVo, using my laptop and eating marshmallows by the bag.  He was action man, and I, except for doing the exercise tapes in front of my TV, was somewhat less kinetic.

Ego won over and I agreed to that lowest key of all meetings:  The coffee date in a public place. After said agreement, I finally read to the end of his profile, I recommend reviewing profiles before your first encounter, then you can avoid such gaffes as: asking them about their ex-wives if they’re widowed, or seeing the BIG RED FLAG where he wrote that he didn’t want a relationship, just dating nothing serious.  In passing, why would you just want to date?  Is there anything fun about this?  Oops, yeah, I forgot, that’s man-speak for “I just wanna get laid”.

So, to get to the exciting part of the story – we met at a local coffee bean.  He was a manly man, not pretty but tall, built, sexy, and had a one-syllable name.  My heart beat faster, I became giddy, tongue-tied and experienced something I hadn’t experienced in years… major ATTRACTION. And…it was mutual. Ahhhhhh…. At least so he said with his “you’re absolutely beautiful” and “you don’t look your age at all.” In passing, can that be a turn-on for men looking for older women?  Isn’t the point TO look your age??

We texted back and forth, he said really nice things to me – in texts… everything I could possibly want to hear and then some.  I was totally and utterly euphoric, sucked in, swept away, walking a couple of feet off the ground and completely forgot the “dating nothing serious” angle.  When I asked him about this, he said that it was because of his schedule.  That was very easy to believe in his line of work.

I must also just say that feeling this was wonderful.  It was a blissfully heightened state of awareness as though one was really in one’s life – not, as John Lennon said, busy making other plans; more in the moment than usual.  I think this is what a lot of people mean by love at first sight, but of course it wasn’t, I knew at the time it wasn’t, it was acute infatuation, but, brothers and sisters, it felt beyond fantastic.

Contrary to his demanding schedule (and I googled him and so knew that he was who he said he was) we saw each other three times in one week, and I completely disregarded the “dating and nothing serious” angle.

(I now recite this like a mantra, that and READ THEIR PROFILE UNTIL THE END. Contrary to the awful communicators men are supposed to be, I’ve learned that they do say what they mean, especially if there’s any chance that some silly, utterly ignorant, susceptible female thought they might want a longer term relationship than say, as above, “I just wanna get laid.”)

I busied my very active imagination thinking of ways and means to let this completely different person in my life.  Would he like my mother?  Would he get along with my brother (would anyone get along with my brother?)? Would he be kind to my Golden Retriever, and could he stand meeting the odds and ends of my family and friends at a 4^th of July barbeque?  I didn’t have us married (as I used to do in my 20’s and 30’s) but I did have us having a long and satisfying affair.

In short, I did everything wrong.