Finally a Decent Date or Was He?

It has been a rough 2 years.  Since 2008 I broke up with a guy I really liked who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis & decided he wanted to get as much out of life as long as possible so long term relationships were no longer his focus.   Then I was one of the early casualties of the recession & lost my job.  After waiting two months for my unemployment to get straightened out, I walked into a chair at home & broke my toe.  Needless to say with all these pressing issues dating & socializing slipped way down on my priority list.  Impending poverty tends to take the thrill out of spending another hour exchanging information with some stranger while sipping wine.  So I had almost as few dates as I had interviews.  As Carrie said on Sex & the City, “dates are like interviews with cocktails,” & I needed to reserve my stamina for job interviews not potential boyfriends.  So I stayed home through Xmas, New Years, my birthday & all national holidays.  But even the most disciplined find that there is a tipping point where you need to get out & interact with the opposite sex.  So I set out to reboot my social life & slowly began to accept dinner invitations.  In the last two months I’ve had 3 dates & one interview!  Date number one showed up looking disheveled as if he had been under a car instead of an office all day long.  We had a pleasant dinner before walking around the lower east side & ended up sitting on a bench in Tompkins Square Park.  While sitting there he attempted to kiss me but I resisted & the date ended unceremoniously with a trip on the R train where he got off several stops before me & I made my way home alone.  NEXT! 

Date number two was more animated & we shared pizza & wine in Greenwich Village.  Again the obligatory walk around town, which was more entertaining since he’s a tour bus guide.  After learning little Trivial Pursuit worthy bits of New York history, he led me to a garden that I thought was private property.  Seems I was right since a few moments after entering he grabbed my face & proceeded to kiss me before a security guard showed up & threw us out.  I’m not sure which was worse being evicted from the garden or being kissed without wanting to be.  At least this date ended in a cab in front of my home.  Still no new interviews so I gave the dating game another try.  Last week I agreed to go out with a guy who referred to himself as Big Jimmy.  I’m always leery of people who refer to themselves in the third person, but I digress.  The usually unreliable subway was late & so was I for the 5:30 reservation I made at an Italian restaurant.  I found myself frantically rushing along the NYU buildings trying to find the location in the dark.  Suddenly I heard someone call my name & turned to see a guy who looked better than I thought he would.  I was relieved for a brief moment, then worried that I looked a mess in front of a rather attractive guy.  We entered the restaurant & found it packed.  We moved to the bar to wait for what seemed like an eternity before being seated.  I was still in a tizzy worrying about how I looked but he reassured me I looked fine.  After dinner we walked through the very crowded streets.  While zigging & zagging through the crowd, he stopped, took my hand & then kissed me.  It was welcome this time but unexpected especially in the middle of the college crowd that congregates in the Village on the weekend.  We walked around, did some window shopping, ran into a colleague of his & ended up at a bar where he could catch some football.  Of course I sat sipping my Cosmo attempting to be chic & sophisticated. 

Finally we got a cab & it became obvious he was hoping for an after dinner treat.  When he reached my home, he got out instead of telling the cabbie to take him home.  He tried every which way to get an invite but I resisted.  I walked him over to the bus stop that would take him home.  At that hour buses are almost non-existent so I offered to stay with him until one came.  The entire time he made a concerted effort to convince me to let him stay over, which I continuously shot down.  He made comments about the best ending would be waking up next to him, etc. but I didn’t flinch.  I stood my ground & when he saw the bus finally approaching, he kissed me on the cheek & left.  Now I’m a big girl so I won’t sue a guy for making a pass, especially if I do find him attractive, so I wasn’t particularly upset.  I called a friend when I got upstairs to give him the low down & my final assessment was that it was a fun date.  He mentioned wanting to go out again & how he wanted to introduce me to Indian food.  He even sent a text saying he had a good time.  The next morning we started texting while watching the NYC marathon & I sent a text asking if he was upset that I wouldn’t let him sleep over.  He said no in spite of being touchy feely he was fine with my decision.  I couldn’t leave well enough alone so I asked when the last time he had sex was & he didn’t respond.  Hours later I resent the message & I am still waiting for an answer.  Now a week later I am beginning to reassess the outcome of our date.  He’s 49 and never married & I’m beginning to think he’s a player.  Since things didn’t work out the way he hoped, planned or whatever that may well have been our one & only good date.

Facebook and Facing Fears

Contrary to what some may think, mature adults can be computer literate too!  I like to pride myself on my willingness to not only learning new technology but embracing it.  I’ve been using computers since the 1980s when they were ugly boxes without any sex appeal.  Now they are slick, stylish, mobile and so much more than we could have imagined when the “weird kids” were taking computer science in high school.  I took my first computer class on a classic Mac at the YWCA in 1988.  It was an exercise in frustration but I didn’t let that deter me because it was obvious computers were going to become an integral part of the workplace.  Since then, at one time or another, either on my own or the suggestion (and financial support) of an employer, I’ve taken courses in Lotus, WordPerfect, Dialog, Lexis-Nexis, Access, PowerPoint, Excel and even the internet.  So as I began to read and hear about social networking, I felt obligated to get on board.  At first I didn’t see the point as it seemed to be a lot of self indulgent jabbering.  It was about even less than nothing than Seinfeld.  In time however, I became more engaged as I discovered a quick and easy way to communicate about everything from politics to the banal.  As I got acclimated to networking, I slowly dipped my toe into opening up doors that had long since been closed.  I tried to find my former college roommate and while that was unsuccessful, I did connect with many former classmates from as far back as junior high.  I have to admit that every time I reached out and received a friendly response it was exhilarating.  Not only was it the chance to communicate with people who “knew me when,” but old petty issues were finally put to rest.  One of the best conversations took place with a girl I “couldn’t stand” back in the day.  She was now a mother and quite accomplished and it felt like a period had been added to our story.  We were no longer self involved tweens but mature women who had lived and evolved to the point where we discussed meeting up when schedules allowed.

Sitting home alone on a Saturday night, I decided to join my alumni association’s page on Facebook.  By the time I logged on Sunday morning there was a message from my best friend from high school.  I hadn’t seen her in 30 years and last communicated after our 20^th reunion, which neither of us attended.  Even though we had been close friends, she had changed a great deal.  She was divorced with a child, had relocated and earned her MBA.  Sorry to say my road in life hadn’t been as eventful, but I was happy to hear from her.   Even though she had given me her new number, there are timed when I am more comfortable hiding behind my monitor, so we continued exchanging messages.  One day I logged in to see she had left a message and turns out it was an invitation to an event.  I clicked on it and anxiety engulfed me.  She was coming up to NY and invited me to her 50^th birthday party.  Not that number again.  Just as I put it on the back burner of my mind here it was front and center.  But after catching my breath something struck me as odd.  Instead of googling therapists, she was celebrating her half century mark.  She wanted her friends to join her.  It didn’t seem to be an albatross for her but it was for me.  Why?  I started to think about it.  Her life was better but it wasn’t perfect.  I started to line up her life events against mine.  She had married and I hadn’t, but she was divorced.  If you never marry you never have to endure a divorce.  She had a child while I didn’t even have a dog.  Yeah but I was never maternal so I spared some poor unsuspecting child the horror of me as mom.  She had earned a graduate degree and I only dream of one.  May well be another unfulfilled dream.  She moved to Florida and I was still back in NY.  This one is a toss up.  She moved due to the job and misses NY and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.  So all in all, I decided she may well have a reason to celebrate.  Even though things may not have always turned out the way she hoped, on balance she had a good life. I hadn’t had an awful life but there was so much on the table that I had never gotten around to and probably will never get to, so my life feels unfulfilled and maybe that’s why 50 hit like a ton of bricks.  In the end it’s probably not how old you are but how you spent those years.  If you feel that you squandered opportunities and didn’t make the most of what you had, then you will feel sad and hobbled by the woulda coulda shouldas.

Now that I figured that out, can I find a decent date in time for the party?  Stay tuned!!!

Entering My Second or Is It My Third Act

2010 began with the usual cautious optimism.  Suffering from a case of terminal unemployment I was already feeling used up and obsolete, but the real panic set in as my birthday approached.  Lets face it, birthdays are no longer the “best day of the year next to Christmas.”   Once you can legally drink and sign for an apartment its all down hill from there.  But this birthday was like no other I had experienced because this was that birthday.  Yes several months ago I turned the big five oh…oh no!  I knew all through last year that it was approaching, but the actual arrival hit me upside the head like a two by four.  It was shocking, depressing, miserable and many more adjectives than my increasingly atrophied brain can conjure up.  The thing is that I’ve had these milestone birthdays before and the anticipation was worse than the event itself. 

When I turned 30, I was working as an editor at my favorite job to date.  I had bosses that I liked and who liked me, along with co-workers that were also friends.  I even split from a long time boyfriend and was eased through the breakup by focusing on my job.  But the thought that I would no longer be a 20something left a sinking feeling in my stomach.  I grew up hearing that you should never trust anyone over 30 and now I was joining that group, not by my own choice but kicking and screaming.  Literally I stayed in bed all day on my 30^th birthday, hoping that this was a nightmare on par with the one I had about Frankenstein destroying the subway when I was a little girl.  All I had to do was stay put and upon waking it would be over and the world would be the way I remembered it.  Well that didn’t happen but a funny thing did happen.  The next day I pulled myself up and found that really nothing had changed at all.  Yes I was no longer the 20something I had longed to be since I was 10, but I was a 30 year old woman.  It was time to take charge of my life and get on with it.  And so I did.

Remarkably 40 was less stressful, maybe because the anxiety surrounding 30 turned out to be as significant as the Y2K hysteria.  So I turned 40, had a new boyfriend and job that I had applied for previously and been denied.  Now I was 40 and ready for the challenge.  In my mind I had finally grown up and come into my own.  Unfortunately the 40s didn’t turn out to be the coming out party I had imagined but I survived it in tact.  Everything changed on 9/11 and I made a promise to appreciate each and every day.  Like most resolutions the promise fell by the wayside and I fell into the usual day to day doldrums while maneuvering the maze of life.  I had several slightly promising relationships but nothing that panned out or I wouldn’t still be dating at 50!

As the first decade of the 21^st century faded into history I wondered what the second half of my life was going to be like and how to stay relevant in a rapidly changing society.  Before I was able to come up with even the shallowest answer it was too late.  My 50^th had arrived and I was sitting with my head between my knees trying to breath.  Fifty, half a century, officially middle aged. There was no more pretense or denial and please it is not the new 40!  In spite of the obvious, I tried to ignore it in the hopes that it would be like 30 or even 40, but no such luck.  This time I was in the grips of despair and a depression I couldn’t shake.  When I walked out of the house I irrationally believed everyone was looking and saying she used to be hot but now she’s not!

Now we are heading towards the end of another year which means I will turn 51.  Will it be uneventful or will I hurl myself off the Brooklyn Bridge or some other NY landmark?  I don’t know and don’t want to speculate but I do know that the game of life is not a joke and I need to figure out how to make the most of it because this is not a dress rehearsal.