Dating and me
...A dispatch from bewilderness
I lost my life nineteen years ago, but I didn’t notice for a few months. Then someone in scrubs said I’d been hit by a drunk with a truck. The good news was I kept breathing. The bad news was brain damage. But this post isn’t about that. It’s about dating.
Three years post-truck, I met a man called John. I thought we met at a Christmas party, but John says there were only six people there and it was not a party. Twelve years of semi-dating ensured.
There were many things he failed to mention. For example, that he was semi-dating a few other women, too. He did, however, mention Martin. He mentioned Martin many times. Martin was a felled feline who’d been dead for years when John and I met.
Despite Martin’s demise, when John wished to eject as I called it, he would engineer a speedy exit by saying that Martin needed some cream. Cream, not milk, for a cat who had died. John had taught Escape and Evasion to Navy Seals and he was very good at it.
A few years back, you couldn’t “learn to meditate like a monk in two minutes” by clicking. You couldn’t click at all. John and I clicked, then didn’t click; clicked, then didn’t click again. Then I started getting old. And kept doing it, which way beats the alternative.
Today I’m sitting at a screen and must choose between clicking the woman who discovered 14 years late that she wore the wrong wedding dress or the woman who told her mate, Just Kiss Me and Do the Wash.
We don't get to keep this body forever, no matter how much we love it and no matter how strong we get and no matter how good it looks or feels.
Which for some reason leads me to online dating. A topic I know nothing about. It seems that now, if you can figure out how to swipe left or right, you can break up and move on before you even meet. I could write a sex book that would fill a paragraph. In fact, I’ve engaged in long stretches of abstinence. Either that, or my amnesia is kicking up.
Note: Parts of this piece, and much more, appear on Another Jane Pratt Thing, also on Substack.
“I could write a sex book that would fill a paragraph.”
Heck, I could write one that would fill a sentence, one with no dependent clauses. But I’m just a guy.
You, my dear Judith Hannah Weiss, are a gem, a miracle, and a presence to behold. My life got better the day I started reading you.