Beauty Queen pt1

Speaking of curious cases, this one is more recent:

Early last December, the woman I had been dating, and who had professed her love, unceremoniously broke off our relationship. She is deserving of a multipart series of her own, of course, and I hope to return to her soon. During all of the time I dated her, and in fact all of the two plus years I’ve been on these dating apps, there has been another woman. Let us call her Pia, my friend Pia. We met right after I started online dating. I’ve mentioned her before (in particular here). The month of December, as it often is for me, began fairly bleak. The woman who loved me, broke up with me. My birthday occurs mid-month. My now ex-girlfriend had booked a hotel in Washington DC for the weekend. We were going to have ourselves a fun little getaway. Those plans were quashed. My friend Pia stepped in and saved the day for me. It was quite nice. As often happened with her though, I would hope we were getting more serious and she would pull away. During holidays, she often disappeared almost completely.  New Year’s Eve was barreling towards me. Pia made plans to see her spinster, older cousin at the New Jersey shore. It was looking like I’d be alone.

Maybe I could bandage my broken heart, I thought. I went on a dating app after Christmas, swiped right on a several women, and waited. A few women matched back  and I chatted them up. One caught my fancy more than the others and we honed in on each other. Her profile gave her age the same as mine and her photos showed a pretty woman who appeared younger than her years, fit and happy. We chatted easily by text, discovered neither had anything to do new year’s eve and decided to meet late that afternoon at a restaurant in beautiful Piermont, New York, along my side of the Hudson River. The scenery, however, was shrouded in darkness due to the early sunsets in December. We met at the bar. She looked decidedly older than her pictures. Nevertheless, she was an interesting date being a costumer for major movies. She had fun anecdotes about famous stars. We were not a match, though, and the date died a natural death a couple of hours later. Neither of us texted to the other, Let’s do it again. Anyway, I have a rule about that: if I pick up the check, I leave it to the lady to call or text me a thank you. She did not. As it turns out, this post isn’t about her. It’s about Tasha.

By the time I got home it was still just early evening. I mixed myself a drink, took a seat on my couch, and resigned myself to an evening of Netflix. Pia and I would exchange a few messages. I would wonder why she chose boredom down the shore when she could have been bored with me. My phone pinged. I looked down and saw I had a new match. And thus, I was introduced to Tasha. There once was a study that folks on these dating apps choose people who are 25% more attractive than they are. How do they figure this out? The person chosen gets more hits than than they do. I opened my app and saw clearly Tasha was not 25% more attractive or desirable than me, she was easily 75% more. She was so ridiculously beautiful, she could have been in and won a major beauty pageant. I’m talking beautiful. Her profile said she was in her mid-40’s, lived a few towns away, had a daughter, and ran her own little business. She was blonde and extremely well-proportioned. Her pictures were sexy, while not being overtly sexual. In one, she had on fitted jeans and a cropped, button-down knit sweater, that showed a bit of her defined abs and cleavage as well, but offhandedly, not ostentatiously.

When you get a match notification, you can surmise the lady is on at that moment. Despite Tasha being out of my league, the drink in my hand, combined with the two I had had earlier at the restaurant, lent me liquid courage and I dm’ed her: Hello Tasha, I wrote. Would you believe I’m wearing that very same sweater?

Really? she asked, almost immediately. And we embarked on a whirlwind night…

#middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #love #aging #autobiography #memories #writing #nyc #bergencounty #nnj #biography #covid19 #coronavirus #beautyqueen