Getting On
May 22, 2007
3:31 AM CST
I was reading Rachel’s post about online dating profiles the other day, and several things occurred to me, in no specific order.
The first was that I am so glad that I am out of the dating pool, forever. I got the heebies just thinking about having to start all over again finding a woman I didn’t hate (Step 1 in the Kim Dating Process, and believe me, it isn’t easy). I had to suppress the urge to run into the other room and hide Tech Support’s cigarettes—the only thing preventing her from being the perfect woman, in that the foul things are going to kill her one day, and there’s nothing I can do about it. And if Messrs. Benson & Hedges do manage to kill her, I could only hope that it would happen a.) after I was already dead, or b.) while I was lying in the IC ward in an irreversible coma, or c.) while I was lying in some managed-care facility, my brain operating at about the level of scrambled eggs, and yelling feeble curses at the nurse for changing the TV channel off the test pattern.
Yes, the thought of ever dating again fills me with that much dread.
The second prospect, equally horrible, was that of having to package this broken-down old compendium of ailments and foul temper into something which would not make any woman, given a choice, pick Freddie from Nightmare On Elm Street over me. Good grief: how could I honestly describe myself (without lying), and not have the woman decide that maybe Rosie O’Donnell had the right idea by batting for the other side?
”Foul-tempered old man, very set in his ways, not especially fond of women, but willing to put up with their shit for the occasional burst of laughter and even-less-frequent good time, seeks woman of any advanced age who will not scream and call for the cops when she sees him at her front door. Pets okay, as long as they don’t crap on the rug or chew his shotgun stock.”
Pretty sad, really, isn’t it? Forget long romantic walks along the beach: I loathe getting sand in my shoes, and unless there’s a prospect of a stiff belt of single malt or a dead animal at the other end (and preferably both), I refuse to walk more than twenty yards anywhere.
I know, I know; what’s really called for would be something like this: ”Well-traveled, erudite senior citizen seeks soul-mate who will enjoy spending the rest of our lives together...”
Good grief, I can’t even write that without thinking that I need to put some clause in there about changing my adult diaper when I get the runs from the Colchicine which I have to take for my frequent gout attacks which render me into a whimpering mass of pain. Or that I prefer the smell of spent gunpowder to anything ever produced by Balmain. Or, speaking of gunpowder, that every TV in the house is at risk of being perforated by a .45 bullet when Dr. Phil or Oprah comes on. Or—well, you get my drift.
I can’t remember the exact stats, but I recall that if a couple has been married for longer than twenty-five years, and one spouse dies, there are excellent odds that the surviving spouse will croak within the next twelve to eighteen months. I’m sure that people will think that this is because of a broken heart or some such romantic reason.
Nonsense. The people die because they try to fill in some dating form (either in their minds, or in reality), and find out that there is absolutely nothing about them which would make anyone ever want to be in the same room as them for longer than five minutes, let alone share a bed or, gawd forbid, have sex with them (the prospect of which alone makes me think that given the choice of geriatric dating or some form of cancer, I’d likely go with the latter as being less bothersome, less humiliating, and ultimately less painful).
Women seem to handle widowhood much better than men handle their widowerhood; they putter around in their gardens, play bingo, knit sweaters for their grandchildren and somehow seem to have a more fulfilling life.
We men, on the other hand, degenerate into drooling, malevolent idiots, shouting at our neighbors, getting into feuds with our best friends, and in general, acting like Hitler’s Last Days. The movie Grumpy Old Men was close to the mark, except that we all know that Ann-Margret is never going to come along to save us, so instead we’ll just carry on trying to kill each other. We’re just like the movie (pre-Ann-Margret’s appearance), except we aren’t cute like Jack Lemmon and Walther Matthau, we’re more like a cross between Bruce Dern in The Wild Angels and Danny DeVito in Taxi.
Yeesh, what a prospect.
The Mrs. thinks that I protect her in all things because I’m some kind of chivalric Knight In Shining Armor. I’m not. I’m actually a querulous, timorous coward who can’t face the prospect of life without her.
Compared to getting back into the dating scene, taking a bullet for her would be a doddle.
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