June 10th, 2009

Leonard is late for our third date. I have wandered around the parking lot in the driving rain, checked inside the restaurant, and returned to my car where I check my phone three times in eight minutes. When he finally arrives, he tells me he spent a half hour at home looking for his glasses. He is only mildly apologetic.

I climb into his truck, glad it’s warm, fasten the belt, and stare. There is a three-foot lizard spread across the dashboard. “What’s with the lizard?” I ask leaning forward to discover it is plastic. His explanation is perfunctory, as if the question is out of place, as if everyone has a lizard on the dash. I shiver, pull my raincoat around me, and put up the hood even though it seems ridiculous for a June evening inside a truck.

That is when I decide there is more to this man than he is letting on. And less. It is the less that concerns me. I feel no warmth, no pull, no connection after three dates. Another controlled guy. The control seems to be who these men are and it translates to discomfort with self, unwilling to disclose. Whatever name you call it, I can’t see myself becoming closer, more connected to the tightly guarded. And here I am trying to decide who to spend time with, open up to, hug as if I mean it.

We head downtown for Thai food. It is windy, the kind of damp nastiness that makes you want to cling tightly to someone, so we hold hands, the most intimate we’ve gotten in three weeks. The play is some Ionesco thing, weirder than weird. We are in the front row, close enough to see the sweat, the hairs on the actors’ arms, the crotch bulges when costumes are bare-all.

One actor has a bad body, a phrase my good friend Frieda and I have used in the past when critiquing beach bodies, a summer hobby. This actor’s body is more girl than man, pear-shaped, saggy-assed, and I give him credit for hanging it all out there without fear.

I need a little of that, the without fear factor. I need it to forge on, trying on men the way I’d try on a dress at Macy’s or Ann Taylor, to obtain the best fit possible, something that clings in the right places, doesn’t bind, makes me look and feel just a little better than I really do. Leonard gives me a hug in the parking lot at the end of our evening. Alas, there is space between our bodies, enough space to drive a bike through.

Leonard is not the dress I’ve been looking for.

The next day I receive an e-mail from Leonard telling me how comfortable he feels with me and do I feel the same?

It’s amazing that we are so far apart in our assessment of how things are going. Perhaps Leonard’s dashboard lizard says it all.

I wait two days before e-mailing him that I do not.

Sometimes you can read a guy from nothing but a phone call. You may even be prepared to like him, especially if he gave good e-mail, took an interest in your profile, and never missed a day of writing. A real plus these days with all the ghosters.

Now Jimmy sits patiently waiting on my cell phone as I weave through traffic. I've forgotten my Bluetooth and need to be a tad cautious, especially because a walker yelled at me in about the same spot three days earlier for blocking the crosswalk while blabbing on my cell phone. So when Jimmy calls, I tell him I have to put the phone down. Then I pulled into a space at the side of the road and leave the motor running, air conditioning blasting in the heat.

Jimmy wrote because I intrigued him. "I'll wait to meet. As long as it takes. I want you to be comfortable."

Well, this isn’t so bad, this being waited for until I’m ready. I hold the phone in my left hand, watching a woman with a toy poodle also on her cell phone. The poodle lifts his leg on a telephone pole. "I was watching the fifth Harry Potter movie. Eating my lunch. Have you seen them?"

"Er, well I saw the first." I shiver in the air conditioning. Harry Potter movies? What is he talking about? The lunch hour must be a long one.

"Well, I got them for my daughter's baby; she's six and I decided to watch them myself. You know, to talk to her about them."

"Oh." The man is a Harry Potter-ist.

“So what do you teach?” I can almost feel him listening as I tell him about my job, that mostly that I am thankful to have a job that I enjoy. "Of course, some days are bad, just like anywhere. But mostly I like what I do and with so many people laid off, I'm lucky to be working." So how had I got on to a heavy topic so soon, much too soon? Certainly Jimmy had something to do with it, encouraging my openness, my willing spirit. I want to meet him sooner, not later.

"You're lucky you never had the experience of being laid off then," he says.

I tell him it had been a long time ago, but I’d lost my job. "But when you're older, it's scary. It's different, being older."

"Well, here goes. I might as well be honest with you," and he tells me that he's been laid off from his sales job since February, that he's been looking, that he's had offers, but can't see himself taking anything until recently. "It was a job in the medical field. Sales. I think I’d be good. If they offer me that one, I will probably go for it." He pauses. He has more to say. “Then two months ago I had a heart attack.”

"I can’t imagine," I manage to say. I don’t want to mouth just anything to show I understand what life changes are in store for a man in his early fifties who’s had a major trauma. I sit stunned for a few seconds. "I just can’t imagine what that’s like."

We talk about how this has changed his life. His doctor wants him to exercise and I am amazed that he seems resistant. I am amazed that he hasn’t been exercising all along. I am amazed by every day facts, by people with certain priorities different than my own. I try to remember his profile photo and yes, he’s certainly got a chubby face, but nothing more, nothing grotesquely huge to indicate a serious health problem. He is six years younger than I am.

"So now you know. If you don't want to meet, I'll understand."

"You mean you can't take me to the most expensive restaurant downtown?"

"Well, I could, actually. I could. But there are so many things to do that don't cost a lot of money. And I'll be working again soon."

I nod into the phone, my mind galloping. And this is what charms me the most, the idea that he can amuse that way, without spending money, by using his imagination.

In the following days, I expect another call. Instead there are e-mails. Their tone is more of a waiting stance. Jimmy expects me to make a move. I am perplexed and finally, after a week of back and forth friendly, meaningless e-mails, I send him this:

Hey Jimmy,
Let's talk tomorrow--I'm gone in the morning, so let's talk in the early afternoon--hey! coffee tea icccccccccccckky, what happened to those ices? Iiiiiiiccccces sound gooooooooooooooooood
x

His response:

I waited for your call or message. None
Best of luck on your quest to find a match.
Jimmy

I stare at his e-mail, reread it. Does the I waited for your call part mean he sat by his phone? In my mind I fabricate a living room in the suburbs, a safe, bland community of mostly married folks, where Jimmy sits on a green couch, highly textured, his cell phone at his side, watching Harry Potter number five. I’ve never seen Harry Potter number two, so I have no idea what thrills Harry five has to offer a man in his fifties. Do I detect a pout factor in his Best of luck on your quest to find a match?

Too bad. He gave superior phone, the phone of a seasoned salesman. In a fit of good will, I e-mail him in spite of his last communiqué, clearly a kiss-off.

Hi Jimmy,

It seems I've offended you. And I was waiting for you to ask me out for an ice. How ironic. You were honest with me on the phone, so I have to tell you that I am not a pursuer. My not calling was nothing more than that. (You're still on my phone, btw, and I have 2 more VaCa days.)

Geez, it was so easy talking with you that first time!

X

There was, of course, no response to this but the man was aggressive in his own way, deleting all our past correspondence and taking me off his favorites.

I take him off my cell, call my walking pal Tony, and invite him for an Italian ice.

Jake e-mails me the last day of his dating membership, all fluttery and flattery about my cleverly worded profile. He gives me his real e-mail address. Then he sends me his profile with everything except his tall or short quotient. I only notice this informational discrepancy the day we are to meet because I often choose my shoes according to the man’s height. Yeah, I’m all about promoting comfort level where physically possible.

His e-mails are brief, so brief I start calling him three-word man. Our running joke. When we talk on the phone though, the conversation flows, that is, what goes through his head pops out his mouth. Yes, he comes under the talky category, always a plus.

He invites me to tea.

Jake phones the day of the meet to assure me he has a GPS, and when I mention walking after tea, what a beautiful day, Jake says: “Well, I don’t know. I may need to be available for a friend in crisis. He’s going through a rough patch.”

I hang up the phone. Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard of the phone-call-well-timed, the rescue phone call. Don’t flatter yourself, Jake. I won’t keep you tea-ing it up too long. My friendly spirit sinks a few inches.

At the bookstore-coffee shop, I walk around inspecting would-be Jakes for several minutes before yanking out my cell. A short guy standing by the cash register pulls out his ringing phone and I wave. “I was just looking at this,” he says walking over. He barely registers me, holds out a book by Anna Quindlen on dogs. “I’m thinking I can read this and then send it to my daughter. She’s not speaking to me right now.”

We find a table, discuss tea choices; he talks about the importance of soy milk in his diet, tells me he is an almost-vegetarian who eats fish, has given up sugar for a month, says he didn’t have time to spin, mentions knee problems, again with the diet, and I tell him I don’t eat meat.

And then he launches into the tale of his good friend, how he spent three hours the other day tending to the friend’s psychological needs, how the friend aborted  a vacation in Costa Rica, returned to the States, and was hospitalized for two days. How more recently the friend blew him off blab la blab la the girlfriend bla bla jealous lalala. So this guy Jake drives an hour and a half to have tea with me and tell me in way too intense detail about his friend’s roller coaster love life. My mind is pan-sautéing, poaching, steaming this glut of information. I want normal. I want a man who keeps it light, at least for a few brief shining moments, oh please it’s a first meet I don’t want to hear about your cuckoo friend.

“I see you’re practicing your therapy,” I say, referring to his graduate degree and the career in social work he’s abandoned for the more lucrative sales in, er, I can’t remember what.

“It’s not therapy. I’m not his therapist.” And he launches again, telling me how he is there for his friend when he’s needed, anytime he’s needed. “I may have to make the drive this afternoon,” he says. “It’s an hour and a half, but if I have to, I’ll do it.” He shrugs. “I’m available if he needs me.”

From there he takes the conversation back to his diet, his daughter, cell phones, his diet, touches on the divorce, then to the women he has met on the Internet who all want an instant connection. “‘I don’t feel there is a connection.’ That’s what they tell me,” he says, repeating the theme he began on the phone a week earlier. “How could there be a connection? We’re having a cup of coffee.” He laughs. “Of course I don’t say that. What’s with them? What is that? They want the thunder and lightning bolts to come out of the sky,” he says. He looks at me.

I nod. Out of politeness. Perhaps this is his rational way of dealing with rejection. You are wrong. I don’t say this out loud. You can have a connection from sharing, talking, laughing. A connection we are clearly not enjoying.

People are standing, waiting for tables, and several women drag chairs and cluster around a nearby table, a lot of scraping and chatter, so it is an excuse to leave. He pays for the dog book, asks about a bathroom, refuses my offer of the best toilet in town (at the museum); we pass a few stores (he talks about his wardrobe), and mentions that he’ll spin later.

“We’ll talk,” he says and heads off to his car. I nod, having perfected the nod.

It is a glorious afternoon and I have it all to myself.

I’m all into me.

(ASIDE NOTE: Check out Quindlen’s book Thinking Out Loud, essays on lotsa stuff.)

He had a lisp on the phone. I was certain I detected something, attuned as I am to the physical imperfections of those men who might enter my life, however briefly. I am already a dentalist, a person who crosses men off my list of possibilities if they have punky teeth. Punky teeth can be a sign of poor hygiene or a life spent smoking. Was I a lisp-ist as well?

The parking lot of Bacci's, right off the highway, sounded perfect for our meet. "What color's your car?" A short-cut to locating him.

"A red Mercedes," he said. "Red."

"I have old. Old and blue." I held the phone too tightly. He's overcompensating with the Mercedes; probably it's a convertible, too. "And we have our cell phones," I said. "To guide us."

The parking lot wasn't packed that early, so it was easy to spot the Red and the man standing alongside it protectively. It was one of those the second I clapped eyes on him, I knew I didn't want him moments.

I've known men who, when relating a first meet anecdote about why they weren't interested, sheepishly play the superficial card, careful to duck the head in full apology mode. The explanation usually goes this way: "I can't help it, I have a superficial side." Shrug the shoulders or do the head duck.

And I admire them for recognizing that attraction is important, even though I don't put much faith in the instantaneous click. How many middle-agers can wow you at first glance? Yet, for some it's obviously all about the elusive chemical dance. So, they may say they'll telephone, in an effort to ease the moment of departure.

There is, of course, no phone call.

He climbed out of his car, we shook hands and there they were, bouncing in the sunlight off the chrome of the Mercedes sportsmodel. Buck teeth in the extreme, the kind rarely sighted these days on an adult. My last memory of buck teeth was when I was around four years old, I'd asked a neighbor who wandered over to our yard to talk with my mother, "Why can't you put your teeth in your mouth?" I saw the horror register on my mother's face and after the neighbor left, she sent me to bed at an unnaturally early hour, my punishment for being indiscreet.

Now I knew why the teeth didn't fit. His parents hadn't seen fit to send him to the orthodontist, nor had he felt the need to brace himself into adulthood. The dentalist within me reared up in irritation as if I'd been tricked. His photograph had shown a man with an arm around a spotted bulldog. No telltale smile. He'd even told me during one of our phone conversations how fussy he was; he didn't date many women. I was special.

I didn't think he could afford to be fussy.

We walked, talked about workout routines, and back at our cars an hour later, he asked if I'd like to get together again.

"Sure," I said with a straight face and a mustered smile. "It was nice."

"I'll get tickets to a play. On a Saturday when you don't have to get up early the next day," he said. He was referring to an earlier conversation when he'd invited me to see Hairspray on a work night.

That afternoon I sent him the rejection e-mail. All the laws of Internet dating dictate the suitability of e-mail rejection after only one date.

I still feel guilty about my superficial side.

We're on the phone. The phone is an amazing instrument because you can learn so much about a man from a short conversation.

He wants to meet half way. This is a turn off. If he's already calculating the distance between us, unwilling to make a little effort in the driving department, what will happen on a dinner date? By that time, he'll have reached maximum laziness level and I'll have to fork-feed him from my plate.

"What about meeting half way?" he asks. "I thought you said you'd meet me half way." Another conversational downer. I make an excuse about not wanting to drive. This doesn't discourage him. Now we must find a place to meet.

"What about a Dunkin' Donuts?" he asks. Pause before I tell him gently that I don't want to meet at Dunkin' Donuts. "I don't care where we meet," he says. I don't tell him that I care deeply, that I judge a man, in part, by his ability to set up a meet. It's too late for that sort of deep disclosure.

"Do you know a Starbucks?" He wants to stick to the main road he's familiar with, a straight line off the highway to his destination. I ask about a GPS. He doesn't have a GPS. I ask about MapQuest. He doesn't use MapQuest. I sit in front of the computer, talking him through the various Starbucks that pop up on my search, but he's not biting. The main road, Route 77, sticks to his mind like a pimple on the roof of his mouth.