I’ve heard that the older you get, the less picky you get. At least when you’re still single. Always single, that is. Not divorced once, twice or three times even. Who told me this? I don’t really remember any one person telling me. Just that is story of came into being as a real thing.
Between my mother telling me I should sign up for an e-harmony account and friends telling me how great a catch I am, and that they “can’t believe” anyone hasn’t snapped me up yet, being single at 40 years old sucks more than I ever imagined it could. Not that I ever imagined being single at this age until I was 36 years old, but still even then I didn’t expect it to be quite like this.
I’ve had my run ins with misanthropy. I’ve been a hermit at times. I’ve been a drunk. A wanderer. A fool. A student. A teacher. A prick. A goof. A dork. An idiot. A lot of things, really.
My dating history isn’t very impressive. Compared to most. Except in my ability to commit. Which, in and of itself, may just be the problem. Or not.
The first girl I dated, she was a slut. She fucked me in bed, then fucked me in the head. Left me wondering what the fuck that was all about. But other than a short-lived obsession with the Buzzcocks and Tom Petty’s first three albums, I survived and actually thrived.
The second one was the first “love of my life.” I’d had a crush on her since the first time my eyes saw hers. And she admitted she felt the same way when we finally got around to dating. Only problem? She was a virgin. I was a dork. And eventually she was a lesbian. Although, technically, I suppose, she always was. At leas that’s what my buddy Matty V. told me one drunken night. Yep.
The third one was a year later. Just someone to occupy time, really. I felt bad for being that way the entire time. And ended up being cruel to her. I’ve always wanted to apologize, but she’s one person who seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
The fourth came during my “finding myself” faze of life. Stupid label, but it’s when I finally got the balls to get the fuck out of my mundane existence. I lived with drug dealers, but didn’t do drugs. I rode a motorcycle. I drank exotic things. And I fell in love. Definitely for the first time. Time and distance and way too much thinking about the past lets me know that.
We were passionate about each other. We were too stupid to talk about it. Instead, we played along with whatever life dealt us and didn’t really think about it enough. Then one day, distance and the wrong set of circumstances and choices put it to an end.
The next one was the so-called “love of my life” at least that’s the label I attached to it for way too long after it ended. There wasn’t a moment during the relationship that I doubted it. Not a single second. Even the day it ended. We were so different, I figured it would work. She was driven to succeed. I was driven to be in love. She worried a lot. I never worried at all. She thought of what if, I thought of what next. Eventually, she just stopped. I didn’t understand it then. Didn’t understand it for years. Now, I mostly do. Time and perspective and comparison and such.
The last one was simply crazy. She was 23. I was 36. She had a kid. I didn’t even have a pet. Not even a fish. She was a chameleon that became what the person she was after wanted the most. I was an open book that couldn’t change if I wanted to, no matter how hard I try. The sex was great. I had blinders on to the rest. In the end, she read something I wrote and couldn’t separate the me in that piece of my past and the me that was standing in front of her. That’s what I like to tell myself. To stay sane. I know she just got bored or whatever and moved on to the next. And eventually the next.
I’m cool with it now. All of them. I know where the mistakes were made. I hope they all still think of me in a good way at some time. I didn’t mean to hurt any of them. And I believe all but one of them didn’t try to hurt me either. But, we all hurt each other in some way.
I never thought any of them would end at the beginning. But they all did. A good friend of mine told me more than once “always expect the worst. Then you’ll never be disappointed.” My reaction to that was “man, I can’t live that way. I’d rather be completely disappointed by someone, something or myself, than to never try to find that perfection.”
And that brings me back around. Looking for perfection is impossible. Yet it’s all I do. Not in face. Not in looks. But in love. It’s got to be there. And if it is, it’s perfect. It’s been that way before. It can be that way again. Right?
But, as a man better than me wrote once, and sang a bunch of times… “always hated saying so long. But it always comes to that.”
It’s why one woman in particular stumps me. We get each other. We laugh all the time when we are together. Except when I get stupid drunk and she goes off chasing musicians. But, everyone has things they need to work on right? But anyway, despite these great signals of greatness, there’s no chance. And I’ve known it since the first conversation. There were many on line versions. We e-mailed, we texted, we just did that modern day romance thing that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan did so well.
Then we met. And within five minutes the conversation somehow steered towards the “perfect” guy and gal. I said my piece, sort of describing her, you know, red hair, a great smile and eyes that tell the truth. Then she said the same kind of thing, except for the end.
“I only have two things that are a killer,” she said, taking a swig of her beer.
“And what are those?” I asked expectantly.
“He’s got to have good teeth and can’t be shy.”
I felt like Harvey Kietel in Bad Lieutenant after Darryl Strawberry doesn’t come up big for the Dodgers. My fate is sealed. I now just have to go through the motions before the gangsters shoot me in the face.
Yet, I keep going back. Because, you know, I can always get my teeth fixed.
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