I made a capital error, as Mr. Rochester might say. In the short attention span of dating (or is it the short attention span of younger men?), I left town. I had the trip scheduled for months and we know that these days airlines will have you killed if you try to change or cancel a ticket. So, I went out of the country for two and a half weeks. How was I to know that would spell the death knell of the great affair I was preparing to have (IN MY HEAD!)?
I texted One Syllable when I came home and was immediately brushed aside with the news that he had guests for the weekend. At the time ready to swallow any line, I was, nevertheless, chomping at the bit. I had enough self-restraint to wait until the weekend was over, but eager to see the man, I texted and he texted and I flirted and he flirted.
I wasn’t suspicious or aware of any slackening of emotion. How could there be… what about all those fulsome compliments? What about that mighty attraction? Surely if someone says things like that to you, they mean them? Those thoughts and feelings don’t dissipate just because you’ve been absent without leave for a short time.
Well, you can all intuit the sorry end of this experiment in living happily in the fantasy world, called by my fellow blogger, Jane, ILANALAND. I will spare you, gentle reader, the details since I resolved when writing this blog, to say only things my Grandma Gussie would be able to read (of course Grandma Gussie and I went to see Women in Love and a host of “R” rated films together, but nonetheless….).
I did see him one more time, some wishes were fulfilled, but it was an odd encounter at best and we shall draw a discreet, gauzy veil on the episode. I will say that younger men seem less clued in about the feminine psyche than older ones. Of course that isn’t always true, but let us just say that it was true in these circumstances.
He later emailed me that he had met someone from the Old Neighborhood, and though there were “red flags” (red flags you say?), he was going to be patient. Do I hear all the collective groaning? Yes, of course I do. What happened to “dating, nothing serious”? Obviously, a lame excuse to get rid of poor bewildered and thoroughly bamboozled me. A few more emails passed between us, I was puzzled and hurt (REALLY HURT).
Nevertheless, in the middle of that mystifying, wholly dissonant situation, another dating opportunity presented itself. I don’t want all of you to get depressed, and so we’re moving on.
Yet another young buck presented himself and claiming interest in the mature woman, wanted to meet. I now kinda liked the idea of a younger man. I wasn’t feeling this in a cougar, predatory sort of way since predatory is about the last descriptor anyone would use for me. (In passing, why does “cougar” have a negative connotation while if a 60 year old man gets jiggy with a 25 year girl old it’s all “atta-boy”?) Editor’s note: for the record, I have nothing at all against cougars; it’s just not my style.
For me, it was that visual thing again. Guys in their forties and early fifties just didn’t look as decrepit as the men my age were looking – this with the possible exception of Richard Dean Anderson or Harrison Ford.
This candidate was a year or so older than One Syllable. I had seen him around on the various dating sites in the past, we were going to meet up, we almost did, we talked and then nothing ever happened. But this time, I wanted to get though my sincere disappointment and pushed it.
Really, we’re MOVING ON.
Met again at my favorite coffee place (but a different branch) no reminders, my friends, and I got myself some green tea and a scone and just waited. I admit that normally I try to be a little late so that the guy is there before me, but he was slightly tardy (sorry, that from my school teacher days). But I was up for a new wind to blow…another shot across my bow, climbing that mountain top that would make me forget, and…jeez getting a little carried away here.
He walked in and UGH. I’m sorry but major UGH. Shirt out, jeans baggy, some kind of golfing or perhaps what they used to called a driving hat on head and a face broken out in some kind of indescribable yet not deadly rash. I don’t blame him for the rash, that isn’t his fault (unless of course it was caused by some awful lack of hygiene, but I was sitting across from him, downwind I should think, so I don’t know). I will say this: he was a complete slob, looked like he had just rolled out of bed and hadn’t taken the slightest trouble to doll up for date with “absolutely beautiful” his words. At least now I didn’t believe that stuff.
REALLY WE’RE MOVING ON.
Nothing there, unsurprisingly; there was nada chemistry not a dash, not a soupcon, not a scintilla (this is all terribly multilingual). We had a pleasant chat; we each waited for our turn to talk (oh, just so you know, One Syllable didn’t do much of that…I was waiting for him to say “just the facts ma’am”). Slob asked me a question about what we’d talked about at the end of the evening, and frankly, it had fascinated me so not at all I forgot and probably answered incorrectly. So, once again, very unsurprisingly, there was nothing said about meeting again.
MOVING ON.
I admit to some intermittent backsliding, some blue days, some days when I wanted to email, text, call, send smoke signals, ANYTHING to One Syllable. But, I was strong, and eventually, I really did stop hurting. I still think about him, but I have, for the most part, MOVED ON.
Took myself very quickly off of POF, especially when I saw that he had also done so. I was rooting around his profile in my backsliding days, still looking at his complimentary messages and texts, but forced myself to get back on the horse.
My cousin recommended that I get on another free site called www.okcupid.com. He said that there was a somewhat better selection process, (read a selection process); that people were asked questions which they could choose to answer or not and suggested matches (known as Quiver Matches, sigh) were gleaned from those questions. Since I was still determined not to pay for the non-follow through, I took a look. I thought it seemed like a classier site than POF (actually, anything, including porn, would be a classier site than POF) and got busy.
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