Chapter 27
Internet Dating From a Man’s Perspective
I met a guy tonight who has a history of accumulated dating stories that rival my own.
John is a very handsome man with a great sense of humor a few years my senior who has been divorced for ten years. He admitted that since his divorce he had not dated anyone for longer than two months. This automatically eliminated him from my own personal dating pool as I am looking for a long-term relationship. However I did have an absolute blast listening to his truly fascinating stories about some of the women he’s met during this prolonged courtship phase of his life.
“Melinda was an interesting woman,” John said. “When she met me for a drink her most outstanding feature was her obviously well endowed breasts which she touted most proudly having covered up just enough to elicit memories of Janet Jackson at a half-time show. As she sat down she lifted their considerable heft and placed them on the table before me.”
“That must have made quite an impression,” I said.
“It most certainly did,” John said. “They actually took up a large portion of the small table and I wondered where she’d place her drink when it was delivered.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“The first thing she said to me was, ‘These babies cost $6,000 a piece. What do you think of the girls?’”
“So, let me get this straight,” I said. “This is the first time you’ve met this woman and that’s how she opened the conversation?”
“Exactly.”
“How could you possibly respond to something like that?”
“I told her that she certainly got her money’s worth and admired their beauty.”
“Were they really beautiful?”
“Actually they just looked grossly huge. But it’s like when a woman asks if her pants make her ass look big. No matter what the answer really is you always respond something kind and pleasant. You would never say something like, ‘No, dear, those tight, green polyester pants are bulging at the seams and are not doing a very good job of keeping in your abundance of blubber.’ You know, you have to be nice about these things.”
“Ah, so you are trainable,” I said.
“Indeed, like the proverbial monkey,” he said.
“Well at least she got that part of the conversation over with early. How did the rest of the evening go? Did you hit it off in spite of those rather large elephants in the room?”
“The rest of the evening continued in that vein. She proceeded to tell me that one of them no longer had any feeling and she had named it Sleepy. She actually stroked it gently while we talked about it.”
“I have to say that’s a little creepy,” I said.
“I agree. She went into quite a lengthy description then of the surgery, her payment plan, how they would change her life, and how real they felt. I could not steer the conversation away from her latest acquisitions no matter how I tried.”
“So you didn’t have a chance to talk about anything else?”
“Not a single other thing.”
“How long did you listen?”
“Nearly an hour. And then I just couldn’t stand it any longer. When I finished my beer I told her I had something I had to get back to, paid the tab, and stood to leave. However at that point she said that she had her van in the parking lot. She told me that if I promised not to touch them she would take off her shirt and bra for me.”
“And did you take her up on her offer?” I asked absolutely fascinated that people could actually behave in this way.
“I declined her unique offer as I told her that if she took off her shirt and bra I would have to touch them and so we’d better not go there. I think I hurt her feelings because she left in a bit of a snit.”
“Unbelievable,” I said.
“That’s what I thought,” John agreed.
“So that was the worst first date you’ve had?” I asked.
He thought for a minute and then said, “No, actually, it was not the worst.”
“I can’t imagine a date much worse than that,” I said.
“When I met Greta,” John said, “her most prominent feature was her beautiful, soulful but very sad blue eyes. And if I had to describe her personality in one word it would be Eyeore, the donkey in Winnie the Pooh.
After a while I finally commented that she seemed to be a bit down and she said that she had recently been hospitalized for depression. I asked how recently and she said that actually she was on leave that night and was due back at the hospital the following morning. She went on to explain that she was receiving inpatient treatment but that it was actually all a mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?” I said truly in awe that something like that had actually happened.
“She said that she had, indeed, taken the bottle of pills for which she had been admitted the previous week but that she hadn’t really meant to end her life. She said that she had called 911 before she actually took the pills knowing that they would show up and save her. She seemed a bit befuddled as to the reasons they kept her in the hospital when she hadn’t really meant to commit suicide. She said that when she explained what had really happened she assumed they would just let her go home and continue on with her life.
I asked her if she thought it was a good idea to be there meeting me that night so soon after ‘the incident,’ and she said that what her doctors didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.”
I knew I wouldn’t see John again as his definition of a long-term relationship is two months, but I truly enjoyed hearing the stories he shared about his dating life.
On my way home I thought about what an enigma Greta was. A woman so desperate that she would attempt suicide and yet willing to meet a total stranger in the midst of this crisis in the hopes of having someone with whom to share a future. I said a prayer for her and a prayer of thanks that my life hadn’t veered off in a direction like that. Life is just so fragile.
****