Valentine's Day

It’s Valentine’s Day. But I woke up recalling a memory from Christmastime a couple years ago. In fact, as I recall, it was the darkest day of the year, winter solstice, December 21st…. my marriage ended around summer solstice that year and as the days grew darker, so did…. well, everything else… But survive, I must! And so I was out in some western suburb killing time until an evening showing. I stopped to have salad bar at a grocery store and perched at a booth in their sad cafeteria. Karen Carpenter was singing Christmas tunes over a poor quality sound system and nearly everyone was middle aged and alone. And eating a salad. As I was thinking…. so this is how it all ends for me…. A guy approached my table and slapped something down, exclaiming, Merry Christmas!  I glanced down at what was sure to be a $5 gift card, but it was a pamphlet proclaiming “An intimate message from God to me.” 

Now… If we were at one of those churches with a body of water in the name, a thinly veiled intolerance of homosexuality (as long as you don’t ACT on it, it’s fine…) and a Christian rock band playing every weekend, this story would end with hands in the air and my sudden realization that all I need is to be loved by God and forgiven for my sins. And I’d be lying if I said I’ve never been in a pew of one of those churches wishing that did it for me.

But that evening, that moment…there was something about that word on the pamphlet. Intimate. And I think that very sad, very alone moment under the florescent lighting of Lund’s grocery cafeteria and eating while someone who had died of an eating disorder was singing Christmas tunes…. I think that moment was the start of something.

It was a while before I ever got the gumption to try actually dating again. But I did. And you know what we do now, right? All the kids are doing it. Sigh. Dating apps. Thankfully, many of them are free, but if you go down a certain rabbit hole at 2am after clicking on a Facebook promotional article, you may be convinced that you should join a paying one. Not that I’d know anything about that.

Anyway, if you are one of the lucky humans who has never had to resort to such tactics, perhaps you don’t know the logistics of all of this. Let me help you understand…

First, you make a profile. You look through your phone pics and realize you don’t have any good photos of yourself, so then comes a selfie photo shoot… in which over thinkers (again, not that I know anything about this) try to capture a decent likeness of self, yet a realistic one, so as not to alarm potential date as you approach the table, unrecognizable. (Note: you do not yet know that you will not be able to recognize at least 80% of your dates because they did not overthink, or even really think at all when they chose their photos, several of which are from 2003).

Next, you write a flowery little blurb about yourself (which you will later revise into a more biting, sarcastic, realistic blurb about yourself, in the hopes that you can weed out some of the sad, tragic and crazy messages. Spoiler: You cannot). 

And sometimes you don’t use your actual first name and you have to pick a clever user name. Some of the apps give you a pep talk about this (Be creative! Be fun! Show your personality!) 

Here are a few actual examples my dating pool has come up with:

Uwilneed2hands

Tired Of Searching
SurprisinglyHappy

Upforanything (really? ANYTHING?)

Doounow3 (*****Doounow1 and Doounow2 obviously taken)

YoungCub4Cougar (this guy is 25 and included a photo with a single tear running down his soft, baby man cheek)

If you aren’t having fun yet, not to worry. Because we still get to click on the actual profile and see what they’ve written for us….it’s like Christmas morning, really! I will be sure to copy as found, with no edits, punctuation or grammatical corrections, so as not to spoil the fun. 

Frank didn’t have a lot of time, so he cut right to the chase...

Looking for fun wet punnay. Make me an offer I cant refuse. Loveable and hard as a rock get it… We should Chat

Irresistible, right? 

And then there’s Jim. He fought spell check HARD for your entertainment, ladies...

If yur’oe albe to raed tihs, yuv’oe had eonguh to dinrk.
I love it when u give me head, I hate when u give me headaches.

Surely, he’s beating off the ladies with a damn stick, people!

This next guy, though. He KNOWS how to use his charming honesty to attract that woman who is perpetually making horrendous decisions about men....

If we go camping, I will drink too much and piss up the tent. I think kids are fun if I don’t have to remember their names. If I’m around long enough to remember their names, I’ll end up teaching them to swear and smoke… I like going out to see live music and love hearing myself sing karaoke (dont ask me to sing a duet, you probably suck…) I’ve been investing heavily in Jameson and 1994 buick century wagons so we will have to roll with progress and let the lady buy.

On one of the apps, they have fun little things you can write about (to help us seem more interesting). This guy chose to answer “Two truths and a lie”....

ive been stabbed, ive been shot at, ive been arrested

BUT I WANT THEM ALL TO BE THE LIE!!!!

Describing your “ideal first date” is another option. And I think we can all agree that Brendon really nailed it here...

My ideal date would be to meet for coffee at McDonalds in a place between where the two of us reside. 

It’s frugal, it makes geographic sense, it’s the best coffee of all the fast food restaurants. Brendon is a safe, responsible choi—- sorry, I nodded off there for a sec.

And then, once you’ve had an opportunity to sort through all these heart stopping profiles, you have a choice. You can shut off the phone and cry yourself to sleep, you can binge another Netflix series for 8 straight hours, you can eat the rest of the bag of Doritos and wash it down with some whiskey (Note: All three can actually be done in one evening) or you can PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE and try sending a message. But before you compose the message, know this: The people who seem most interesting/promising are likely: 

1. Not real humans (bots and scams and blah blah blah) OR…
2. Never going to meet up with you because evidently 1/3 of the people on dating apps NEVER actually go out on a date with anyone OR…
3. Narcissistic predators (to be fair, this problem is not specific to dating apps)

Despite the fact that pretty much all of the odds are against all of us at all times, sometimes, you match with someone AND you have a decent conversation via the app AND you even exchange phone numbers AND you actually meet somewhere on a date. 

I could regale you with these stories for a long time. But I do go on. So. Let’s just say I have been on dates where…. I was told in detail about how one’s wife and his OWN MOTHER had him committed to a mental institution twice (but they had it all wrong, really), I’ve made it clear there was no attraction and would be no sex and been BEGGED for “at least a blow job” and I’ve been in an argument over the location of the nearest record store. God that guy was annoying. But a special shout out to you, Judy, for having my back that time I had to escape the crazy guy!

They aren’t all terrible, though.

When you’re middle aged, you most certainly have your fair share of baggage, and sharing these war stories is part of the date. I actually find this refreshing. Being young, hopeful and not yet jaded is so…. overrated. And for those of us who have been beaten down a bit by life (ok, maybe more like smashed into a pulp and reformed as if from clay), it’s nice to be with another human who is honest and knows their own shit. Or knows they don’t totally know it. Or at least is willing to try and know it. Something like that. Where was I?

The other night I had a good date. And I had a moment sitting at the table across from another beautiful, broken human, where I was so very grateful for good conversation and hope and Chile Rellenos and romance and not listening to Karen Carpenter singing Christmas music at the salad bar. And even though a goodnight kiss in middle age means you can’t really see the person because things that close up are super blurry….. I’ll take it. All of it.

I still believe in love.