Duck, duck, go away
I made a hasty decision agreeing to meet John. We’d talked on the phone once and texted for a day, but he was eager and I was bored. I knew I was in trouble when, four hours before before meeting, he asked me how I felt about shorts. “I usually don’t make the switch until after the New Year,” he confessed. This is Virginia and we’ve already had 20-something degree days. While I wanted to tell him to put his big boy pants on, I told him to be comfortable.
An hour before meeting he texted me that he had just gotten home and was jumping in the shower. He had one clean, ironed shirt that he couldn’t wait to show me. At this point, I was in it for the cider and chanted an old New York girlfriend’s manta, “A girl’s gotta drink.”
He was standing in the cider tasting room and he was easy to spot because he was the only 50-something in shorts amongst the 20-something cool kids. “Tah-dah. What do you think? I got the shirt at Fan Thrift,” he boasted. He had on a bright green/chartruse-colored Ralph Lauren button down on with a blue horse on his nipple. Cargo shorts are never a good look on anyone, especially when the pockets are loaded. But the outfit was truly complete with old LLBean duck boats. This was a preppy flashback like I’d never seen. My response was unfiltered, “The 80’s called and they want it all back.” That made the bartender choke on whatever he was drinking.
We sat with our sampler platter and I feigned interest for an hour. After he confessed he had been separated since 2009 and couldn’t get divorced for “tax purposes,” he asked me if I’d like to go to a nude beach. I smiled and said no, naked middled aged people are not my thing. He then asked me to take him shopping. “I know I can do better,” he said. I declined that invitation and suggested he purchase a pair of jeans and up-to-date mock turtlenecks for the winter. Better yet, maybe his wife can take him shopping.