Dont Mince Words

I hate beginning new relationships late in the year. I freeze activity from Thanksgiving through Valentine’s day in order to avoid awkward invites to family events and eat bad chocolate. This year I was moving across country, getting settled, and dealing with my mother’s death. It was a perfect time not to date.

I kicked off the new dating season by meeting a friend of a friend. As a favor to her, I connected with him on Facebook and decided to meet on his day off “next Friday.” Well, that Friday was Valentine’s day and I didn’t realize it, but it was ‘brews and blues’ at a local ale house, so how bad could it be.

During the week, I got to know the guy better and it was not a pretty picture. He’s still married but trying to divorce his wife of 20-some years. His house needs to sell but mortgage is underwater. He lives with a high-functioning autistic 19 year-old.  He lost his job during the down turn and is now an hourly employee.

I showed up because where there’s beer, there’s a way. And I need to get out. He was short and petite and wreaked of cigarettes. I had an IPA while he sipped on  diet coke. The band was good, but I was safely home after the second set. The next day, I discovered through a Facebook post that I had attended an AA event. That explained the slow service from the bar, the 5 p.m. start time, and the lack of drinking. I suppose he was testing himself since he mentioned his sponsor was on speed dial.

This was my inaugural date for the 2014 dating season. When you aim low, it can only get better.

Dating in Los Angeles is hard.  It’s hard all over.  But I know it is difficult when a man I went out with and wrote about in 2004 is pursuing me again, unknowingly, in Santa Barbara.  The difference is, while there has chronologically been eight years since our last date, his profile age is only one year older.  Oh, the joys of having a Hollywood age.

It took me about one minute after I read his email to register who he was…. “more fun than greased weasels” and a “culture vulture” with a lesbian friend who tells him what he needs and should be looking for.  Oh yeah.  Him.  He was the guy with a membership to Magic Castle.  After being in LA longer, I learned men with memberships to Magic Castle are like women with three cats – buyer beware.  But the funnier thing was he was my first blog troll.  Long before I enabled comments, he emailed me from a hotmail account and told me I was a bitch for not letting my date know he had something stuck in his teeth.  He emailed several times after that with negative trash talk, but since I didn’t respond, I guess he found another culture vulture to circle with.

Me?  I’m really eight years older, I still floss, and I have at least one reason a week why I’m thankful I don’t actively date anymore.

I had date with another 61 year-old.  No, not the sexter, but a new one.  It made me realize that I just can’t pull off the older-guy thing.  How do the mid-life crises guys date women half their age?  What do they talk about?

John was charming on the phone and eager to meet me AFTER he did my astrological chart and determined we were a good match. I will admit, older men have mastered the art of conversation.  That’s their game.  If you overlook the orthotic shoes, age spots, and receding gums and focus on the conversation, it’s not so bad.  We met for happy hour and within one minute of meeting me, he wanted to hold my hand.  After doing the six-second size-up, all my hand wanted to hold was a beer.  When I did not immediately fall into his hands/arms, I was accused of being closed off.

Santa Barbara is like the Bermuda Triangle for men between the ages of 30 and 55.  They just don’t exist.  Or maybe they are here, but in some Area 51-type compound getting tested on so that the 60+ men can learn how to improve their game.  Whatever the case, geezers I quit you.

Put that in my chart.