Age is relative. Age is the drunken uncle that punches me in the face right before I look in the mirror each morning. Or the bratty niece that kicks me in my knees and ankles before I start my evening walks. Age can be the nasty spouse saying mean things when I needed encouragement. Age may be relative, but usually not a very kind one.

I continue to be 55 years old. I remember my parents turning 35 when I was 10 or so. I thought they were ancient. Up until just recently, I would hear some of my high school teachers were still there educating. I would think, how is that possible? Weren’t they already old when they taught me? Math, which I learned from them, tells me they were probably in their very early thirties. I thought they were in their fifties.

When I was 24 or so, a young lady lied to me and said we were the same age. We dated for some time before I learned she was 28. I broke up with her because I thought she was too old for me. Now that I am in my mid-fifties, I’m fully aware no woman younger than 40 will even look once at me. At about 45 or so, some women may look my way. The rare one will even look twice. I have messaged women in their late thirties. I always get the automated message back immediately: “Soandso only accepts messages from certain users. Why don’t you message someone closer to your own age, Crypt Keeper?” The youngest I’ve ever exchanged messages was 42. 46 was my youngest date.

From the messages I get, I surmise older women seem to like me very much. Even now, 60 seems old to me. When I turn 60, I will raise the moment one turns old to 70. It will continue to rise as long as I do. I think the oldest woman I have messaged was 63. I went out on a few dates with a 60 year old. The range of years I find attractive has expanded upwardly with every year I get older, but I notice I have qualifiers. I usually think to myself, she looks great for a 60 year old. She could pass for her early fifties. And what does that even mean? I suspect I mean she must have great genetics or diet and exercise has done well by her. Maybe she has had plastic surgery and it has been done very successfully.

I know occasionally I meet a guy and I find out we’re the same age. Sometimes I think, “Holy crap, he must smoke, drink, and eat to excess. And the sun did him no favors. Also, stress!” I have to remind myself, that’s what 55 looks like. It seems my relative age may be grandfather.

#age #aging

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov

#middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #love #kissing #sex

My friend Charlie liked to tap the ladies, preferably without any sort of commitment. He prowled the bars, night clubs and hotel lobbies. He didn’t join just one online dating service, but all of them. He could meet a woman waiting for his coffee at Starbucks or buying iceberg lettuce at the supermarket. He could play it smart or dumb it down, depending on whether he thought the woman was seeking or dispensing advice. He had confidence and style; he had the gift of gab; he had a glint in his eye and an assured smile; he had good looks and a good build; and Charlie was a wolf.

Charlie saw Sally and Sally saw Charlie on a sordid site. And they sort of liked what they saw. He messaged a hello and within 6 messages, Sally offhandedly mentioned she had just had a mani/pedi and a waxing. Charlie was not the kind of guy that would allow the mentioning of waxing go by without comment and she said it was so she could wear her bikini properly. Two messages later and Sally messaged Charlie she preferred a clean slate as far as that went. Charlie licked his lips, as wolves often do.

Bikinis were going to be Sally’s primary clothing for the next week at the beach and Charlie was sorry to see her go, because she seemed a lively lass. She knew how to keep his interest though and sent a bikini photo daily and sometimes at night a picture of herself in bra and panties. Sally wore these items well and Charlie growled ever so lowly.

They talked of meeting and kissing and fucking. They sexted. She masturbated or said she did, which was much the same as far as Charlie was concerned. Charlie could hardly contain himself and paced his floor waiting for her to get back. He howled at the moon. When she did arrive back home, he asked if she might not like to come by his place. She could give him a fashion show in person, he slavered.

And something strange happened just then. She reminded him they didn’t really know each other. She would not be comfortable going to a strange man’s place, which would seem a reasonable response in most cases, but they had been working towards noncommittal sex for 10 days now. A cold shiver ran down Charlie’s back. His grip on the phone grew flaccid. What do you suggest? he asked. So they met for coffee in a diner and talked for a really long time. She was playful, but not as playful as she had been in text. They parted.

Later, as the weekend was drawing to a close, she texted him, I’m lonely. Charlie’s hackles rose. Come over, he offered. She said she would. He lay in wait, knowing satisfaction was coming. And he waited and waited, until finally she texted and said she was very tired. She asked, Can I get a rain check?

Sure, he replied and they never contacted each other again.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov

#middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #love

#wolf #nsa #sex

I remember 9/11, of course. I watched much of it occur in plain view from a fair distance in Queens. I remember thinking even before the second airliner hit the south tower that it was an act of terrorism. It was such a clear day, not a cloud in the sky. Nobody accidentally flew a plane into the tower.

I watched the smoke rise and the towers fall. I wondered how many thousands of people must have died. One of my co-workers that day was with the FDNY. He shuddered as he watched, because he knew his company was there. He knew his friends were gone. They were too close not to be there. And he was right. They were gone.

I remember they closed down the bridges and there was no way to go home. I just had to wait until they decided to reopen them. I remember getting home towards evening and holding my children so close. My son was old enough to know something was very wrong and my daughter was just a baby. I heard Sue from down the street was unable to contain her grief about her husband Paul, who had a meeting on the upper floors of one of the towers that morning. She hadn’t heard from him all day. She was certain he was dead and she was right too.

I remember all the love and all the hate. I remember. I remember.

#911 #worldtradecenter #remembrance

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov

#middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #love

You can believe it or not, but Sophia really had a smile that could light up a room. Her smile was more dazzling than Mary Tyler Moore’s (and hers could turn the world on, whatever that meant). Think Julia Roberts during the press conference at the end of Notting Hill. I first saw a hint of her smile in her profile pictures, but the pictures were just faint representations of the reality. Her pictures revealed a beautiful woman in her mid-fifties, but with the appearance of someone younger. She was in the medical profession and obviously took care of herself. Blonde hair, hazel eyes, 5’6″. We discovered we both loved reggae. She hit all the marks on my dating checklist. Except one.

Sophia lived in Brooklyn. Brooklyn has become the jewel of New York City in recent years, but Brooklyn is a bitch to get in or out. I had recently read a different woman’s profile and she said she wouldn’t limit the distance she would travel, because love was worth the effort. I kinda liked that, but I did set a limit: if I was willing to travel the same distance to work (which I’m not that crazy about), I’ll travel that far for the chance to date a beautiful woman and the possibility of love. And I have worked in Brooklyn many times. So we set a date for a weekday mid afternoon in Bay Ridge. I wouldn’t go home, but leave straight from work in lovely downtown Newark.

The drive includes a trip over the Goethals Bridge, through the wilds of The island of Staten, over the Verrazano Bridge, and right into Bay Ridge. It’s a middle-class neighborhood that has maintained its small town feel, with many stores and bars lining the main streets and neat houses along the side streets. Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever would still feel at home there.

We met at the Salty Dog, a saloon converted from a firehouse on 3rd Avenue. They had the garage doors open, so the street outside was part of the atmosphere inside. And they played good 70s and 80s rock songs. I ordered a cider at the bar and waited for Sophia; she texted a few times to say she was still a few minutes away. It was the usual story, the closer you are, the later you are. She arrived, pretty as her pictures, but her smile could’ve stopped a forest fire. I thought, my God, doesn’t she know about her smile? I don’t think she did.

Sophia said before she ordered her drink, “I really shouldn’t get this, because it gives me brain freeze.” She did order it, a drink that looked like a slushee, took a sip from the straw and immediately gave herself brain freeze. She gave me the smile after the thaw. We talked through two drinks about family and music. Two is my limit and we said our goodbyes with a hug and a peck on the cheek. Later, we wondered why we hadn’t kissed more passionately. I certainly regret it.

I then drove home from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn during rush hour on a Thursday evening. I went north to the Brooklyn Bridge to the Westside Highway (Yes, I know that’s not its name. You can call it whatever the hell you want) to the George Washington Bridge. I crawled in bumper to bumper traffic nearly the whole way home. It took me 2 1/2 hours.

We texted often over the next week or so, but were unable to see each other and somehow the smile faded from my memory, but the 2 1/2 hours of traffic did not. She graciously said goodbye a week later after bigger gaps between our chats and I called her to apologize. Lesson for myself, two bridges may be a bridge too far.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov

#middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #love #brooklyn #brooklynbridge #marytylermoore #juliaroberts #nottinghill #smile

But you don’t really care for music, do you? -Hallelujah

I do care for the music of Leonard Cohen. The words could stand alone, but just add the minor fall and the major lift, the violins and keyboards, and the voice. I imagine they may have heard his melancholy bass-baritone in the ancient temples of Jerusalem and Babylon. He sounds like Nick Cave and Lou Reed, but deeper, smarter, and sadder.

The songs I like best are all love songs, but they’re not happy by any means. Hallelujah is a love song, but it’s a violent, sexy sort of love. The relationship in this song isn’t very healthy, but it sounds religious and euphoric. When I first heard Dance Me to the End of Love, I thought it was about a couple reaching the end of their lives, Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in. I made the mistake of reading up on it and Mr. Cohen wrote it about the inmates who played the violins while their fellow Jews were marched into the gas chambers. It’s a lesson, take what you want from a song, not necessarily what the writer meant.

So Long, Marianne really is about him leaving his longtime lover. Her name was Marianne Ihlen and they spent most of the1960s together, but parted, and so it’s time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again. They must have remained friends over the ensuing decades though, because as she lay dying, he sent her a letter telling her, “Well, Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.” He died a few short months after her death. Until the end, he still had love and the words to express it.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov

#middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #love

#leonardcohen #hallelujah #solongmarianne #dancetotheendoflove

They killed Shakespeare in the streets of Hackensack in July. They killed him like shabbily-costumed matadors at a Spanish bullfight. Few witnessed the slaughter. In fact, the killers outnumbered those who saw it.

The play was All’s Well That Ends Well, but I was quickly sure it would not end well at all. My date lived in one of the more upscale apartment buildings along Prospect. We stopped in a little tapas place on Main, shared a few small plates, drank some sangria, and pretended we were in Barcelona instead of crowded, small city New Jersey. We discussed the play, a comedy with mistaken identity at its core. It was filled with banter and double entendres. We looked forward to enjoying the play in the cooling evening. How were we to know we were walking into a murder?

The play and Shakespeare himself never stood a chance. How could he in such a noisy little park plaza in the middle of Hackensack. Cars and trucks drove by occasionally honking their horns, strollers talked loudly and laughed as they walked by us, the actors’ spoken lines were muddled, my eyes and ears wandered elsewhere. The scenery was as sparse as a bullring, the park’s semi-circular stage basically unadorned. The players barely costumed. The king had a crown, the women wore dresses, the acting just as mundane. Beautiful Helen was dowdy and cross-eyed. I did not question Bertram spurning her romantically, though he was no prize either. The few audience members were restless.

So the actors conspired and fell upon Shakespeare as he lowed his head sadly just offstage. I only stayed for a few stabs of the banderillas. He bled freely and weakened noticeably as the actors massacred him. I watched morosely, but didn’t stay for the tercio de muerte, the estocado, the final thrust of the sword bringing a merciful death. I couldn’t watch anymore. Let it end, I thought, though not at all well.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov

#middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #love

#shakespeare #all’swellthatendswell #williamshakespeare #thebard #hackensack

Money, it makes the world go around, the world go around, the world go around.

It’s sad but it’s true. We are in the latter part of our careers. We pretty much have what we’re going to have. Granted, with the kids mostly grown and the mortgage perhaps paid off, a lot of financial ground can be made up in a final sprint. And after a money-draining divorce, most likely it has to be. If we were dating in the real world, the physical component would reign utmost in our first appraisal, but online we have the answers to a whole questionnaire ready for our perusal.

We all have qualifiers, the characteristics we won’t allow our potential match to fall below. Usually, it’s not one thing but several. Age is usually the first non-photographic quality we look at. We may have a 10 year period we’re willing to work between. Mine is around 14, skewed more below my age than above. Height too tends to be a disqualifier. Women tend to not want men shorter than themselves; men tend to not want women taller. I am 6′ tall and have on my profile that I prefer tall women. Women often message me saying they’re probably too short. Let me just say, cute trumps short every time. There are a bunch of different qualities of lesser or greater importance from education to childrens’ ages we use to gauge whether to pursue or let loose.

Finances. PoF, unlike Zillow, doesn’t allow you to give your desired price range. At first, one must make conjectures about the financial status of a potential match. Education, profession and town are big clues and the “about me” might provide a few more. The higher the education, the more lucrative the profession, and the more expensive the town, the more likely your date is doing well financially. What financial information are we, folks who have worked most of our careers, looking for in our potential long term relationships. After all, perhaps one doesn’t mind going out for a drink with flop house Fanny, but you’re not introducing her to the kids anytime soon.

The term I see used most often is “financially independent”. Women often use it to note they don’t need your money in the least. They’re fine with or without you. Men, I think, are looking for the financially independent. Maybe rich men aren’t. They may have so much money, another set of lips on the money teat doesn’t amount to much, but to your average guy it does. They don’t want a new burden this late in the game. I’ve heard women say they don’t want to be the nurse or purse to some soon-to-be geezer, better to be alone. Men are much the same.

I think we tend towards our traditional roles when it comes to finances. A man may hope his date is doing well, but not too well for heaven’s sake. Some may find a woman making more than themselves a bit intimidating. Having gone on several dates with women of various economic status, I have found women reluctant to help or pickup the check, even it they’re the one who asked for the date. For a short period there, I was going on a few dates a week. I had to stop because it was threatening my financial independence. As for me, I have no macho pride. I’ll happily allow my potential mate to spoil me with trinkets and vacations in Monte Carlo. No pride at all.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov

#middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #love

#cabaret #finances

What are your cultural and emotional touchstones? What movies, television series, music spoke to you so intensely when you were younger that they’re still important years and even decades later? I have a love/hate relationship with the movie Love Actually. If I happen upon it while flipping channels, I always stop and watch the remainder. I have soft spot in my heart for Richard Curtis movies .

The movie opens at the Heathrow arrivals gate with all sorts of people greeting each other and Hugh Grant introduces the movie title and theme in voiceover. He mentions 9/11 and I remember too the feelings I had that day. I’m hooked. Love Actually is an ensemble movie with several plot lines that just tangentially intersect. This would be the movie where we may have noticed most of its actors for the first time, but many of them have become names we have grown to love, including Kiera Knightley, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman, Laura Linney, and Colin Firth.

Each of the several plots is a love story of some sort, whether it be comradely, parental, lustful, unrequited, first or any of a dozen other descriptors. People will tell you they love the movie or they hate it. I do both at the same time, but it is like an old friend to me and I enjoy its company when I see it again. Of the several stories, the ones I like the most are the ones with Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, and Colin Firth. If you’re not crushed when Emma Thompson’s character opens the gift and finds a Joni Mitchell CD instead of a necklace, you might want to check the pulse on your humanity. And the use of music in the film is done very well, particularly Mitchell’s Both Sides Now in that scene and the Beach Boys God Only Knows at the end. I also like the prime minister telling off the slick American president played by Billie Bob Thorton, David and Goliath stories always trumping my patriotism. The Colin Firth story arc with the young lady from Portugal is sweet and satisfying.

On the other hand, there are several aspects that just bug the crap out of me though, like the boy learning the drums in a matter of weeks. Or the orchestral band that blooms out of the congregation with a chorus and a lead singer to do a fully-arranged version of the Beatles All You Need Is Love. By the time everyone in the band stands up, there are apparently only two or three people there to actually witness the ceremony. It seems to me a bride would’ve wondered who the hell all those strangers were. Hugh Grant dancing through 10 Downing St. seemed silly. Or the odd-looking, young man that goes to America and lands three outrageously gorgeous women merely because he has a British accent (wait, I have a thing for British accents, maybe this one could happen). Or the lady played by Linney , who brings her psychiatrically challenged brother to a mental institution in England, where he has constant access to phones so he can ruin her every opportunity at romance. It stretches the bounds of credibility and all’s that needed to be done was to make the character English. It’s a fictional movie after all, not a documentary. The same guy who wrote it, directed it. Was he that stuck on Laura Linney?

Despite my qualms, I can never pass the movie up. I think it honestly attempts to portray the many aspects of love. It fails here, succeeds there, but it’s peopled with attractive folks and fine music and schmaltz. What else were you doing anyway? Go watch it again.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #loveactually #love