Why I am Done with Dating: How Fondue Changed My Life

I keep getting, every now and then, messages from friends that go something like this:

I was just skimming through xyz online mate hunting [that's what I call it] and I "happened" to look at Connecticut in your area and I found these guys.

After which I am sent the pictures and bios of one to three guys that they think I might be interested in. Up until the reappearance of 'Matt' into my life, this happened every couple of months, from probably four women. Since then it is far less often, but I happened to mention that as I age, I realize sometimes I do get scared. I have cash and I am very frugal, so it will last me at least four years right where I am living now. But I am 59, not 85. When the demons bite deep, well, I get scared. Two other women and I frequently remind one another that we will find a way to hook up and join forces, but a lot can happen in four years.

And once in a great while, I am simply lonely, until I remember how NOT alone I really am. Nevertheless what sticks with people are those few times I express the fear or loneliness, not the 98% of the time when I kinda LIKE being alone, and realize that when I want company, I have it with my friends. 

Regardless, they try to "help" me. Furthermore, I did read an interesting piece in another blog about how it should not be put down if a woman treats finding a mate like any other dream, where she goes after it systematically and all out. After all, isn't this one of the most important things you would ever do with your life? Why would you think, especially after a certain age, that it will somehow come to you?

The thought of doing that makes me want to toss my cookies. Besides which, until Matt came back, men were entirely off my radar. I frankly had no interest or time to worry about dating, small talk, dealing with strangers because maybe I might want to live with one. Nope. The one reason I sometimes wish I'd never let him in the door is that it woke the woman up entirely and now she has nowhere to go.  But the trade off still doesn't seem worth it.

Besides which, I have a mirror. I am not someone any man would go ga-ga over. He might grow not to care about the imperfections and over-abundance, if he found me funny, interesting, and smart;  still, we'd have to get over that initial first impressions stuff. And, then, too, so would I.

But I find it interesting what these women think I will want. The men all love walks on the beach. Okay. I can't walk. One wants a fit woman who loves the outdoors. Yeah. Well. So much for that. I love the outdoors, but mostly I have to watch it from a porch or a window. Another guy--and I really love this--wants a woman between 45 and 55 "who enjoys long walks and has no baggage."

Long Walks and No Baggage Issues: Small Talk at 59
Let's look at that, shall we? I'm 59. Both friends who sent this particular guy to me, said, "Lie." Uh huh. "They all do that." Oh, goodie. This makes what really amounts to slicked up blind dating extra special. I then point out that if a woman that age has no "baggage" she's lived in a cave, in which case she most certainly does have baggage because she would have had to avoid living life! "Oh, you know what they meant."

Yeah. I do. Dear Readers, if you have read the last four entries in this blog, how on earth could I be a person without baggage? In my background we have alcoholism up the wazoo, and older brother who may or may not be alive but we do know was in prison for three years and has been gun runner and drug dealer, two suicides, sexual abuse, divorce, losing a child -- you name it. Something for EVERYONE in my life.

"So don't talk about it."

Okie doke. Piece of cake.  That would presume I'm interested in casual dating or relatively casual sex. I'm not. I'm more interested in pursuing creativity than a man. But let's just look at that, in case I wanted to know someone. In case the fear of the future outweighed my faith that things will work out.

We have a first date and go out to dinner. He sees clearly that I don't look as good as the photo I may have put together for the online dating hoo-ha. But, then, neither does he. That's okay. We both get over that and laugh. But he also sees that, as we are walking to our table, I got the dragging one leg thing going for me and I keep having to straighten up because I tend to lean more and more forward as I walk. It's really pretty.

He's a good guy, though. We sit down. I quickly ask him the first question because, like, I don't want to, like, let him know who I actually am. And besides, I know that the strain of walking through the restaurant has brought beads of sweat to my forehead, and my eyes are kind of shot. Fortunately, all that disappears quickly, so I'm okay in a minute. He talks about his two grown kids and that he and his ex-wife are on speaking terms as long as they are not in the same room for more than an hour, with the kids and grandkids. I get him to keep talking for fifteen minutes, but, as I said, he's a good guy.

Long Walks
"So what about you? I noticed that you had some trouble walking there. Are you okay? How did you hurt yourself?"

I don't know how to field this. Do I minimize it and, well, lie, just so maybe I have a second date where I'll have to explain why I lied?  Okay, you can just tell him about the back and be strong. "I had a lot of back surgery a long, long time ago, and now I have the problems that happen later in life. You know, some arthritis and nerve damage, but I'm working on it every day. I just have trouble walking is all."

Lame. The words sound so lame. He is quiet a minute and says, "Well why did you have all that surgery?"

"I fell down the stairs. Slipped on black ice." I've fielded this one before, when I didn't want to say that actually, I have had back trouble all my life, but I thought everyone did ...  that it started when my brother used to push me down the stairs and then would go, "Mommy, Jetty fell!" Baggage. So I hope he does not pursue the back stuff.

"So.... how many back operations?" Oh, GOD no. So much for small talk there.

OR, he doesn't ask about the back. He really doesn't feel like he wants to know just yet about the limp. Already he is, in his head going, 'She's really overweight. She can't walk across a room, let alone on the beach. Well. She is kinda pretty anyway. She's funny, too. I'll ask her about her family. That's safe.'

Got Kids?
"You have any kids?"

Inside my heart hurts. My Jessie. My Jessie. And I know that this just is not a topic for a first date. But I cannot leave her out. She was my daughter. Okay, I have to be honest, because when people find out that she was my Stepdaughter, lots of times they get annoyed that I was not clear from the start Of course that always makes me really mad, because when I love someone, there is no step-ANYTHING. But do I lay this on someone now? There is no graceful...

"Hello...." he might say, little laugh. "I didn't want this to be a trick question."

I blurt, "I had two. I raised my ex-husbands two kids. I had a son and daughter." And there it is. That silence that I know so well, from a man or woman.

"I'm afraid to ask. Had?"

And there we go...

Let's try a third angle! Surely there is a safe area. Even if we start with books and movies and things like that, and it's okay. Somewhere in that conversation will come up family. And the second area of family questions is...

So. You  have brothers and sisters?
"Do you have brothers or sisters?"  "Are your parents still with us?" Things along that line. And somehow it will get to They are all dead.  Granted, many have lost their parents by now, and possibly a sibling if they are the youngest. But most haven't lost them all. Most didn't lose both parents when they, the kids, were in their thirties. Most haven't had their siblings die and get the bonus of a gun-running, drug-running brother who has had two contracts on his head. It's dramatic, but my guess is it also qualifies as baggage.

Bottom line? There is no small talk for me, when it comes to my health or my family, that will not devolve by the third round of back and forth into baggage.

Baggage--We All Have Baggage, and Shouldn't We?
Maybe the guy has had a life full of baggage too. Well, of course, to some extent, and that's a good thing.  I don't really want to date a man who is younger than 55 or older than 64. Why? Because, quite frankly, we wouldn't have some crucial sensibilities in common.

The teenage and college lives of most people I've met who are more than five or six years older than I are far more like people of the generation up to ten years older than like the kids who hit their teens in about 1962 - 1972, give or take.  The Beatles. The Stones. Viet Nam. The Kennedy assassinations. Martin Luther King. No curfews in college. Wearing jeans in high school. Marijuana. Acid rock. Work shirts. Fraying your bell bottoms--not buying them that way. Ironing hair. Afros. "You look like Jesus." Post Elvis. Just after the height of the Detroit sound, and moving into folk rock and James Brown...

So many things like that, that were part of my sensibility. And a woman's being a little uncomfortable at the chivalry of past generations--I like simple courtesies.  And I enjoy being pampered, but I also like to pamper. There is a feeling of condescension sometimes for me in chivalry, which puts me on edge. I don't like it when a man gets annoyed that, on a first date, I want it dutch.  And far too often I have found, even when I was much, much younger, that we just had such different experiences that it's too hard to get through. I like the idea that there will be that generational shorthand that comes with generally shared experiences.

The point is that, my generation, like any, will have had baggage unless we have lived in a tree--a really boring tree at that. If some of it is shared already, where it's a given that we were award of protests, feminism, a guy's fear of the draft lottery, the way vets were mistreated when they came home, the rise of divorces, so MANY things--if we already know all of that, we can have more relaxed conversations.

And if a man does not want a woman with baggage, he ain't gonna want me. Period. And if he has none, I don't want him.

But do I want to learn and deal with a man's baggage from scratch, at our age? 
That is a question my friends and I have been addressing now. And, for all the mess, and as short as his re-entry into my life was,  I still miss Matt. I will always miss him somewhere inside, just as I did for thirty years. But it is not even near the end of the world. And even if I was out of balance for a time, I  found it again.

But the thing was, I knew his baggage. I knew him. I knew his flaws, his strengths. I knew where he stumbles. I knew where he flies. And I already had intimacy there. And he remembered me when I was young and, well, yes, pretty darned good-looking. I remember him that way as well. It took half an hour and one kiss for me to simply see him young again. I really do not care about the years of living that changed his appearance. And he behaved at least as if he didn't care either, and the truth is, he knew my stuff, too.  Our small talk lasted half an hour and we were in synch again. And I allowed myself to be that vulnerable, inappropriately, because I knew him, because it was so very easy, so very quickly.

The truth is I do not want to try to get to that place with someone new. I don't care enough about having a man as my companion to bother. I prefer the company of women.  The male/female intimacy and that sense that I was fully safe for all time, that I had with Matt... hey. I kissed a multitude of frogs before and after him, and they just didn't fit. Had I stumbled across someone back then, within a few years of my divorce, before another twenty years of living, failed relationships, serious health issues, and profound losses? SURE. It might have been fine, even though different.

NOT NOW. I am at a different point, a different beginning now.

But why is it that some women and men, for that matter, refuse to believe? Why must people tell me that somewhere out there is just the man for me? Well, yeah. there is. But he is not available and no one will know me as well as he. It's done.  There is not time.  I have too much to do with the time I have left to devote dinners to small talk. It's time for my personal, artistic soul to fly and do whatever dance it may. Solo. Why won't people understand that? Must we be coupled to be happy? No. Any rational answer is "no." Love comes in friendships, too. As do companionship and support.

The final straw was when one of my friends sent a match.com picture where the guy was a born again, fundamentalist Christian who plays guitar and sings the gospel, and wants a good, traditional Christian woman to be his "help mate." I said, "You have known me for fifteen years now. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this man's ad. He's far more straightforward than most, and I think that's great. HOWEVER, you know me. Let's see, fundamentalist Christian, wants a helpmate??  What on earth made you think he and I would have anything at all in common, and, frankly, that my meeting him would not be a waste of HIS time, let alone mine?"

"He plays the guitar."

Flash back to 1979: Up "Psycho" Theme
Which took me back to the only blind date I went on, right after Matt dumped me the first time, and I was 27 and had pretty much decided that being single made more sense than dealing with men.  I'd lately been dumped by Matt... so I was being fixed up or encouraged to date anything that moved.   It was the 70's as well: so for a time, I sort of "goed with the flow" anyway, despite what I felt inside. Yeah. I was 27. One of my best friends insisted I have a date with this guy, at her house. She even made the dinner.  I figured, if this couple thought we might hit it off, well, hey. What the hell?

He was about thirty and sort of pasty colored, a bit heavy, which wasn't a particular problem except that it supported his comment of, "Nature is over-rated. I like being in a dark movie theater with a horror flick bigger than life, and a bag of popcorn. There's nothing like being so scared you pee your pants."

For some unknown reason, picturing him that way was not that big of a turn on. I told him I loved to hike--back then I was extremely strong and could walk just fine, despite the pain I often had--and preferred films that made me laugh, not scream. I kept it light and partly thought, maybe it was a joke and he was just trying to break the ice. An odd approach, perhaps, but after all, my friends knew me really well.

He leaned in toward me, "But really, EVERYONE should experience a good scare now and then, you know?"

Okay. My life. I looked at him and blinked twice. I smiled my best "YOU asshole" smile and said, "Life holds enough of those without going to look for them."

He leaned back and had one of those self-satisfied looks that sometimes evokes thoughts of violence in me. Forget about the movies. "You're one of those women with baggage, right? Man, why the hell would they stick me with you... Right. We're a great match."

"You  are absolutely right, " I said."Well, this dates over. Let me give you a doggy bag to take home. You can eat it while you watch a movie."  And I did, and he left.

When I asked the COUPLE why they had fixed me up with him, the husband said, "He's single?"

Tableware Trauma
 Jean Ellen was having a friend over for dinner the next night, and persuaded me to join them because he had a friend visiting. Yeah. Well. Whatever. I said, "Okay, sure, but please do  not consider it a date."

She said, "Well what would you call it then?"

"FINE. Call it a date. But it's tomorrow, and it it will be done with,  and I really don't care." (Clearly, I was a very evolved, mature 27.)

I worked at a university library in the early days of Library of Congress electronic filing and inter library loan. I was part of the cataloguing department and a good part of my job involved computer research for the catalog librarian. We received a great many text books that had no official classification yet, and so we had to develop the call numbers and the correct research card classifications. It was as nerdy a job as one could have back then, which suited me. Besides which I got to meet an awful lot of faculty, and I could take free courses.

As turned out to be the case for every job I had outside of my freelance career, I was the ear of the director, and I was also in charge of developing and writing training materials for the department of which I was part. Mrs. C., my boss, was from Korea and was, by her own admission, old school. She was uncomfortable with other people's emotions and would inappropriately laugh with an old-fashioned machine gun rattle (Not as loud a sound as today's automatic weapons sounds) at people who were in pain, or who were emotionally distraught. She also had a habit of dragging me into the conference room to vent at the top of her lungs, forgetting the gap at the top of the walls, that allowed every sound to escape into the surrounding walls.  And she would slip into a clichéd version of a Korean accent, forgetting her tenses, articles, and pronunciation. She would lose control, basically, because she trusted me.

Lucky me.

The date night was to be Wednesday.  At work that day, Mrs. C. had begun to chastise me for some error on the research slips I had given her. We had enormous catalog books that weighed about 15 pounds each and were 30 inches tall by 12 inches wide. I had looked up the obscure composer's name, and then the various works this new book discussed, and created several citations for her, but they were not enough. When I balked at her, she screamed, as she dragged me into the conference room.

"You cannot take Criticism! Do you think I like it here? Don't you think I would like to work at  exciting place? You do not belong here any more than I. You are Renaisssance woman, taking Spanish and French, writing poetry, singing, acting in plays, taking education courses. You do NOT BELONG HERE. Just like me!" It never ceased to amaze me that her tirade was almost always not about my bad work, but about feeling trapped. "I have son and husband and I am stuck here with this so SMALL  JOB. I should be in New York. In California. Some place where I meet international people. And you should be too. You should go to school and get OUT OF HERE!"

But I transgress.  What a shock.

I drove home that night knowing she was right. I was full of my own frustration, mostly because I could not figure out what I truly wanted. I thought that adult education was the direction I cared about--helping adults who wanted to climb up in the world to do it.  But I knew this meant grad school, and a whole lot of work to figure out how to get there.  I wanted to forget about it for a while, and just breathe first.  It was in this frame of mind that I came home to find the entire kitchen a mass of sauce pans and smelling of hot peanut oil. Jean Ellen was in a nightgown, drenched from making I don't know what.

"We are having fondue. Beef fondue and I have made six sauces for us to dip in. The ice box cake is in the refrigerator. They will be here at 7 and I have to shower. Will you help me finish up?" It was only about 5:15, but it also was not my favorite thing to do when I walked in the door--clean dishes.  The "boys" were coming at 7:30, also not my favorite time to start dinner. It was a work night. And she had to be out the door by 6:30 tomorrow herself. One night. Who cared?

Fondue. I think it's a waste of time, having to skewer some tiny bit of beef, hold it in boiling fat, then dipping it in a sauce. All those little dishes to spill, all that effort. It was "the thing" back then, so whatever. The guys came and were very nice, but something seemed odd. It was as if Norm and Ron had some shorthand language at all, and really, Norm was not the least bit datish toward me. None of that shyness or anything.

It occurred to me, when the three others were talking, that I might do better to put a couple of hunks of beef on the fork, thereby making the process more efficient. The only sauce I liked was teryaki anyway. I stuck an extra one on... cool.

Wait. Norm and Ron were talking about their place. Hold it. "You two live together?"

"Yeah, we've been dating for more than a year and Norm--"

"Jean Ellen? Why didn't you tell me?" I was kind of pissed. I would have been totally relaxed, but no. She insists it's date?

She looked down and said, "Well, I wasn't sure you'd say yes. I figured it had to be a date."

"YOU IDIOT" I said, and laughed, thinking, oh, GOOD, I could relax.

With which I stuck the third piece onto the fork as I laughed, but had to use a bit more force. Success! I skewered the meat and my left hand, both at once!

There I sat, facing my sister, who was at the end of the table. She went, "Oh, no! oh, no!"

I was looking down at the odd effect of a long fork, a few pieces of meat on it, jiggling back and forth.

Ron went, "Pull it out! Pull it out!"

Norm, next to me and unable to see, went, "What's wrong? What's wrong?"

I pulled it out, forgetting it is barbed. It made a peculiar sound and I felt ill. My hand was covered with a comingly of beef and Jeannette juice.  I found myself thinking, "Thank God it's NOT a date."

When Norm realized what had happened, he put a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Jeannette, when was your last tetanus shot?"

"Huh?" (See, I was articulate, even back then.)

"Raw beef juice and metal? Shouldn't we get you to the ER?"

"Shit. Yeah, I guess so. But you guys can finish dinner first," I said, as the two blue spots on the front and back of my hand, straddling, YES, the middle finger, really began to let loose.

We went to the hospital.  I went to the check in lady, hand bound and held UP the whole time and had to tell her, "I stuck a fondue fork through my hand."

She moved her eyes up, but not her head. "Really? I mean, really? You stuck a fork in your hand?"


"Yes. well. You see, I figured if I could get two pieces of beef on the thing, why not three? And I did, but I sort of got my hand, too."

"Uh huh. I see. So, clearly you pulled it out, but oh, yes. Well. This is a first. On the other hand," She looked up at me and smiled, "Last night I was here and you should have seen the man who had used the attachment to the Hoover Beats as It Sweeps Vacuum..."

I paused, but said most politely, "I think I am glad that I did not."

She smiled at me and ushered me into my cubicle. In what seemed like a second, an extremely handsome, oh, twelve-year-old-intern stuck his head between the incidents and asked in a revoltingly cheery voice, "Is this the forking incident?" and came in.

Inside I went, gay or straight, never again. NEVER. AGAIN. I don't care if it is a match sent from God, never again. "Yes."

"I see. Oh, my, look at how that finger is dipping. That's going to be a problem for you for a while, I am afraid. There looks to be some nerve damage. Oh. And it went all the way through. You were hungry?" And the thing is, though the corners of his mouth twitched, he did not crack a smile. And he didn't even look UP, the coward.

"Am I going to live? May I please just have my shot?"

When he gave that to me, he said, "Seriously, if you have to use your hands a lot for work tomorrow, you will have a problem possible. You may find you have a serious reaction in your right arm, since you haven't had one of these since childhood. You may not, but be prepared."

He bandaged the left hand so I could not really move my fingers, but, yes, the middle finger was not moving at all, and dipped below the others, which, when relaxed, curled. It remained straight. Lovely.

As I left, he said, "Really, Ms L., there are more effective ways to ingest your food than shooting it up," and his laugh was really a rather engaging one. I did not set foot in that hospital again for at least a decade, just in case.

Well. Picture the next morning, when I could move NEITHER hand well. My right arm throbbed, and my left hand as well. I had to call Mrs. C and tell her what happened. Let's just say the following day I had to show her both the wound, and the ER slip. She could not stop laughing all day, especially, when I went to wave good bye to a friend while I was writing something,  and flipped her the finger, instead.

***
The night after I told Jessie and Jay this story, I asked her to set the table for dinner. I sat down and saw a spoon at my place. We were having pork shops. She smiled sweetly and said, "I love you, Jeannette. I don't want you to hurt yourself."


Eight years ago Jean Ellen and I had yard sale, to clear out junk.  We laughed about the fondue set I was tagging.  Well, let me warn you about something.  My four friends who "helped" us are my witnesses.  We put out one set, with the original avocado green lettering. When the sale was over, there were three sets.

They reproduce. (Up Psycho music once more...)