When I became liberated a few years ago I entered the much-ballyhooed middle aged dating marketplace. Women in their 40's know what they want, I was told by well meaning and somewhat envious peers. They are mature, settled, know themselves, are financially independent. They're sexually liberated! They don't have to worry about getting pregnant so they're worry-free in the bedroom! They'll really appreciate a man like you. Yes, well. And that's worked out so well.
Let me tell you about a few of my close encounters with the female half of the middle aged gene pool. While I have met some very interesting, intelligent, attractive women who are "of a certain age", they are no less hung up, whacked out, needy, unstable and downright identical to the women (and men, for that matter) I knew in my 20's, albeit a bit more wrinkly and curmudgeonly. I mean all of this only in the nicest possible way, of course.
OK. How about Ms. Pathological Liar? She sounded pretty normal on the phone. We talked a couple of times, during which she told me she'd never been married, had a good job, owned a condo in...hmmm, perhaps I'd better keep that detail to myself. So we met for lunch. So far so good. During one of our phone calls she had told me that she'd been in a long relationship with a man who was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident. Of course I empathized with her on that, tried to imagine how horrible that must have been, etc etc. Then we met for dinner at a pretty nice restaurant in .... no, you're not going to get me to divulge that either! During this more lengthy and intimate meeting she told me a "funny" story about how she had duped a friend of hers at work into believing some personal story that she had invented. She relished the private joy of knowing that she had told a whopper and gotten away with it with a fairly close friend. I got a bit quiet and then asked her if everything she had told me thus far in our nascent relationship was true. She admitted that she had already told me "one or two" things that weren't exactly uh, true. Then she smiled sweetly, as if sharing a good joke with me. I instantly flashed back to the motorcycle story. I didn't hang around long enough to ask if that was one of her little witticisms.
Then there was the so-called Funny Lady, whose ads I still see on CL and in the Reader. She made a big point of explaining that she was a stand up comedienne and that she was hilarious and smart as a whip. She also had some pretty exacting standards for the kind of man she was looking for. She mentioned several times what good shape she was in and how she worked out five days a week at the gym and that if a man hadn't seen his feet in ten years he was certainly not the man for her!
Again, she seemed OK on the phone (I'm starting to distrust that infernal device); moderately entertaining, "nice" (loaded word, that), in short, safe to meet. We met for dinner - never a good idea for a first date for all you newbie daters out there. In short, she was short, dumpy, frumpy, lumpy and about as funny as a lamppost. She also never thanked me for paying for her dinner. Oh yeah, I forgot the part about how she told me half way through dinner that she didn't have any money with her. She also had the gall (I'm not sure if it was mitigated or not) to tell me how she thought we could be "friends" but that she didn't think I was quite her type, physically.
Gotta get going, but in a future post I promise to tell about the attractive nurse who kept saying things that, try as I might, I just could NOT understand. Also there'll be the story of the woman who got very excited when I kissed her but freaked out big time when we (at her request) slept together on our third date and refused to ever talk to me or see me again. That one'll have to be at least R rated.
