Dont Mince Words

I’ve ramped up my Internet dating again. After last week’s happy hour fiasco, I’ve gone back to the horrid 20-minute coffee date. Tonight I added a twist. I brought a dog, or as I will now call him, my “get out of jail free card.”

Tex is an 80-pound American Bulldog I’m fostering and he is probably my new surrogate boyfriend. I brought him with me because I just had a sense I would need distraction to get through the date. By god, my instincts were right. My date was probably around for Eisenhower’s inauguration, not that there’s anything wrong with lying about your age or looking like a craggily dirty hippie wannabe.

As you would expect, it gets better. When I was making shitty 20-minute coffee date small talk, I decided to ask him what he did in his free time.

“Fuck,” he said.

Honest response, but creepy coming from an old man. That’s about the time Tex came to the rescue and began flirting with the passers by. I ended up meeting a lot of nice young men (probably WeHo gay, but I did say YOUNG), who wanted to pet Tex. Gramps was still on a mission to know what my tattoo said. I told him twice it wasn’t funny unless seen in context.

“I’m never going to see it, am I?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” I replied.

We got up and said our goodbyes. His final words were, “So call me if you are interested in going out again. I’d like to see you all dolled up and get you drunk.”

I smiled and crossed the street. Tex took a massive shit on the other side. I laughed and told him he was a good boy, “Yeah, I couldn’t wait to get out of there either.”

What makes dating worthwhile? The stories I suppose. But at what age do the stories become cliché and you give up dating and invest in a rocking chair and cats instead?

This morning, a friend told me about her Saturday night date with a 47 year-old man. She cooked dinner and they had hot monkey sex afterwards. He fell asleep at 8 p.m. and did not revive until the next morning.

“What do I do with him? I was so bored, I just watched TV and got on the computer. It was as if I didn’t even have a date that night because we didn’t get out and do anything,” she said.

I reminded her it was probably time to shave her legs and do her nails anyway, but the next time, don’t do it for a guy. Then I uttered my favorite four-lettered word.

N-E-X-T.

I was at my teen writer mentoring event yesterday afternoon. When we wrapped up, about a half dozen of us commented about how we couldn’t wait to get home in the rain, curl up and watch TV (some with their cats). Are we women who have just given up, or know better.

We know what’s out there.

I’m being courted for a job back in Richmond, Virginia. Now that I’ve done my tour du Marna, which included the cities of Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, I have to say the idea of settling in a town of a quarter million people has an appeal to it. If dating is bad all over, maybe I need to start looking for affordable housing so I can plan my retirement… with cats.

In the dating world, I would be considered the Dating Sensei and my mother would be my Grasshopper. She could learn a thing or two from me, and yet, she continues to wallow in semi-happiness and complacency. She has not learned from my lessons, but I have learned from hers.

“This is all your fault,” she squawked to me last night on the phone. I continue to be blamed, four years later, for placing the personal ad that yielded her an old man she respectfully refers to as Mr. Harris.

“He thinks going to the pool is bathing and he’s cheap. He lives with me and won’t consider buying ½ a car with me, but it is OK for me to chauffeur his ass all over town and put miles on MY old car,” she said.

“Well, mom, why don’t you go retro on him and quote him rates. Hookers have base rates and a la cart price lists. Tell him it is $2.00 to get in the car and $.35 each quarter mile,” I suggested while she laughed.

It pains me to see Mom in this situation. Dad has been gone nearly nine years. She had an adjustment being alone after being an old man caregiver for so long. It was fun to see her excited about dating, but she didn’t broaden her sample size prior to settling for this dirty, alcoholic, and cheap old man. Now she is complaining and realizing she compromised standards and yet she can’t give this bad habit up. The fear of being alone grips her again.

I asked her if Mr. Harris has ever told her he loved her, but I quickly told her I didn’t want to know. I know the answer is no. They care for each other in their own weird help-I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up way, but there’s no love here. I guess codependency breeds contempt.

I continue to learn through my mother’s bad examples and she won’t listen to me. Why be bothered if you aren’t having fun? If you don’t smile and receive joy from your partner, love will never grow.

Why waste your time?

NEXT.

Move on and never settle for a bad definition of happiness, grasshopper.