Another Lesson Learned the Hard Way

I make it a rule to never go to older male doctors. I learned long ago that most older male doctors, particularly docs who are 10 to 20 years older, lack the ability and/or willingness to listen to patients, or at least to me. I always choose female doctors, because I've found it much more likely to get a doctor who will listen. And over the years, I've seen this same inability or unwillingness to listen in some older male coworkers, who take my work-related questions as an opportunity to subject me to long, unwelcome monologues of whatever wisdom they think I presumably lack, delivered as always with benign condescension. I don't know why I didn't apply this same rule to online dating, which is why I got stuck on a four-hour first date with one of those kind of men this past weekend.

A couple weeks ago, I agreed to a first date with a guy 10 years older than me, the father of two teenage kids. Even though he is older than I prefer, I liked the no-bullshit attitude in his profile, his love of camping and the outdoors, and the fact that he grew up in Montana. And he had been learning how to two-step and swing dance this past year. Promising. So, without much emailing back and forth, I agreed to see standup comedy with "Montana" a couple weekends later, the first night we were both available for a date.

We met at a bar for a drink before the show, and the first thing Montana opened with was a five-minute monologue on how his maternal ancestors kept trying and failing at homesteading, which pushed them from the midwest to the plains states and finally to the west. Trust me, it wasn't as exciting and sexy as I just made it sound. Then he moved on to his career as a scientist at JPL and a well known defense contractor, followed by a lengthy explanation of why he was getting an MBA on the side. I tried to interject with questions and comments, but found it really difficult to get a word in edgewise. He just kept on going and going, so after 30 minutes of conversational rebuffs, I gave up trying and just thought, 'F*ckit. I'm stuck in a boring lecture. Maybe he'll take questions at the end.'

He talked about his kids and his impending divorce, which hasn't happened yet, although they've been separated for many years of their 20-year marriage. Even though he knows from my dating profile that I have a kid and I'm divorced, he didn't ask me any questions about my situation. Even when we had something in common, he wasn't interested enough to ask me about it.  Somehow he rambled on to the topic of petroleum economics, which is something I know a little about, since I once worked for an oil and gas consulting firm. Every time I tried to add something relevant to his lecture on the current state of gas prices, he would stop for a few seconds and stare at me in the same uncomprehending way my dog does when I talk to her. The whole evening was a chance for him to display his admittedly considerable knowledge. Awesome. I just love to sit mutely and not share my own opinions. WTF?!

Two-and-a-half hours into the date, he finally asked ME a question -- the first of the night -- just as we were about to be seated for the show. And it wasn't even the standard "What do you do for a living?" question, which is usually number one or number two on a first date. "What do you write about?" he asked. I wish I had had the audacity to say I write a bitchy blog about comically bad first dates like this one, but I didn't. I'm much too polite, a character flaw I blame on my smalltown midwestern upbringing.

The standup comedy was nothing great, although I did have some fun when the host asked the audience if anyone was celebrating a birthday or anniversary. I raised my hand and pointed to Montana and said, "He is. He just had his 20th wedding anniversary a couple days ago." The host looked confused, so I elaborated, "But not me. I'm not married. We're on a first date." To Montana's credit, he laughed and seemed delighted by my comments.

Maybe this, along with my damned politeness, is why Montana asked me out again in a way that assumed I would be totally onboard with it. I nearly spat out my coffee when he texted me to ask what I did for a living -- three days after our Titanic of a first date. I would like to think the question finally popped into his mind after he was talking about me to a coworker and when the coworker asked him about my job, it suddenly dawned on him that he didn't know, even after spending four hours with me on a first date.

To sum up: avoid older male doctors, don't start a date off with a boring narrative about your failed homesteading ancestors, and always buy online-dating bail insurance (insist on the standard first date at Starbucks, so you can politely bail after an hour of misery).

Online Dating Time

"Getting divorced is like stepping out of a time machine. But it's a really shitty time machine. It's the kind of time machine that takes the real amount of time to take you to the future." -- Louis C.K.

If marriage is experienced in real time (and unhappy marriage in excruciatingly slow time), then online dating is experienced at a much greater velocity than real time. A week in online dating can feel like a month or two in real time, especially during the time before you actually meet up in person.

A while ago, I was contacted via the dating website by an "age appropriate" guy in NY who is moving back to LA at the end of the year. Since then we've been writing back and forth like two hopelessly single characters kept apart by cruel circumstance in a Jane Austen novel. No texting. No phone calls. No Skyping or Facetiming. Just good old fashioned words, the comfort of the familiar to an analog girl adrift in a digital world.

It seems like I've known Age Appropriate for months, but I haven't even met him in the flesh yet. In fact, we've only been writing to each other for a mere *three weeks*. It's all very You've Got Mail, minus the Nora Ephron dialogue and the Upper West Side travelogue.

I'm not sure how it will all play out with my unexpected new penpal. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll even meet, a thought which may merely reflect my impatience with delayed gratification and not really mean anything at all. However, as a writer I have to guard against "talking an idea to death." Instead of pursuing an inspiring idea by writing about it, sometimes a writer will pursue the idea by telling everyone about it, and then lose interest in it without ever writing a single word. I wonder if that same thing happens in online dating if there is a lot of email before a first date. Maybe we're emailing to death the possibility of dating before we even go out.

We'll see. In the meantime, I'm rediscovering my long dormant love of writing an engaging letter. Instead of being able to rely on a sexy dress or a smile, I take the time to write something thoughtful or funny. On the other hand, it's a lot of f*cking work, this epistolary seduction. So I'm hoping he just moves here already and we get the first date over with.

See? I told you I was bad with delayed gratification.

Daily Devotion

During the early days of my first semester of college, I would wake up to a new set of music lyrics scribbled on my white message board attached to my dorm room door. (Yes, I'm *that* f*#king old. I went to college before cell phones and email). A boy who lived in my dorm would wait until I was asleep, then leave his carefully chosen poetic lyrics from a well known song as a little gift for me to open every morning. It was sweet and surprisingly touching to a smartass girl prone to cynicism. This went on for a couple of weeks until we both found what we were looking for -- love. Him, with another girl. Me, with excessive quantities of beer.

A thousand years later, I still find it touching -- that little gesture of daily devotion. So, you can imagine my reaction when my friend, who is also in the mix of online dating, told me she has a lovesick lothario in Sri Lanka who sends her cheesy love poems twice a day -- every morning and every evening. So jealous! Where's *my* lovesick foreigner sending me mawkish poetry in broken English?!

It's that daily devotion demonstrated in small ways that really resonates with me. (I just eat that shit up.) It makes me feel that I'm remembered, that I matter to someone. Even if that someone is a goofball in Sri Lanka.

Sometimes I Just Can't Look Away

Maybe it was the Leo Sayer fro that made me click on the online dating profile of this 47-year-old guy who lives near me. Or was it the suggestively open leather jacket with no shirt underneath? Most likely it was the light saber he is brandishing, or what at first glance appeared to be a light saber. Even after scrutinizing his photo blown up to the largest size on my computer screen, I still don't know what the hell he's holding.

If I *had* to guess his occupation, I would go with magician. But I have no idea, based on his profile that is mostly littered with sexual innuendo that makes me cringe, not smile. Yet I am compelled to read every word of his creepy train wreck of a profile. I just can't look away. It's like watching Intervention or those tv shows about hoarders.

Good thing, or else I would have missed the very last sentence of his profile -- the coup de grace:

First date: some place original for the scratch and sniff encounter.

Ick.

I wonder what original place Magician would suggest for that scratch-and-sniff encounter. How about a nursing home to see him perform his magic show? That's original. Or maybe the dance studio where he practices his light-saber dance routine? Call me cynical, but I'm guessing it's his van with the bed in the back.

Just My Type

About a month ago, a guy with a wildly funny online profile checked out my rather boring profile. His profile showed off his keen intelligence and irreverent sense of humor, which together, as I've mentioned before, is catnip to me. A yoga fanatic with a couple of tattoos on his arms, he is a playwright and an artisan coffee roaster who looks like he's in his late-50s -- an aging hipster. The kind of guy one would see cavorting in his native habitat on Abbot Kinney in Venice.

Every day I checked Aging Hipster's profile with the same obsessiveness as a 13-year-old girl with a Justin Bieber crush, hoping he would contact me. His hilarious profile prompted me to finally put in some time and effort to beef up my own phoned-in profile. Yet my "charm" seemed to elude him, despite my desperate pleas to the Universe to make him take notice of me.

Then last week out of the blue, Aging Hipster revisited my profile and gave me the cheesy 4- or 5-star rating that seems to mean he likes my photos or my entire profile. Excited and intimidated at the same time, I decided to send him a private message if I could come up with something funny. Finally, I came up with this:

You are hilarious. If you're an asshole too, you're JUST my type -- at least based on some of the guys I've dated. 

Aside from master sushi chef and ruggedly handsome burly fireman, artisan coffee roaster might just be the perfect vocation for my next boyfriend.

He responded right away and told me I was hilarious. After a few funny messages back and forth, we quickly made plans to meet up for coffee four days later on Saturday afternoon. He even picked one of my very favorite coffee places in LA, located near me.

After making plans with Aging Hipster, the other first date I had made for that week really lost its appeal for me. Although I did go through with it anyway and had a pleasant time, it was as if I were stuck in a waiting room somewhere and casually browsing through a Pottery Barn catalog. That kind of pleasant. But with margaritas.

Finally, Saturday arrived and I woke up to this terse message from Aging Hipster:

I have to cancel. I'm sorry.

What the hell?! The one guy I've been dying to meet for over a month cancels on me without explanation. Maybe he really *is* just my type. I guess I should be careful of what I wish for -- even sarcastically.