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

Molly and I would drive up and down the eastern seaboard on I-95 like two characters out of a Bruce Springsteen song, circa The River or maybe Nebraska. Sometimes we like to pretend she’s Faye Dunaway and I’m Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde. We don’t rob banks though; we rob jewelry stores and the occasional gas station.

Molly had a sly smile. She’d be the first to tell you she had a great sense of humor, maybe a little sarcastic, but not in a mean way. Molly was as comfortable in jeans and t-shirt, as she was in a formal gown and furs. As much as she liked camping and hiking, she would be just as happy to cuddle on the sofa watching Netflix. I found her among a thousand other women available on a dating service online. The line that drew me in though was she was looking for a partner in crime.

As it happened, I was looking for a crime partner myself. Imagine my infinite delight to find a woman of refinement and criminal intent all rolled up in an hourglass figure and beautiful auburn hair and violet eyes. I messaged her on the dating app a few times, as one does in these situations. I started off cautiously and gently probed around the periphery, trying to figure out what kind of crimes were her specialty. Maybe she was a grifter, making small-time scores at the local Five and Dime. Or maybe she was looking to hire a gun to kill her cheating bum of a husband. Or maybe she was the local police or, even worse, the FBI. So it took me a few days of slow circling the subject before I realized she was a small-time shoplifter. Her potential partner would act as lookout, while she snatched some small, valuable items and threw them into a foil-lined purse. I had bigger plans.

We met, dated a few times and I actually helped her shoplift at the local Megamall. We needed seed money anyway for the things I wanted to do. We needed casual but fashionable clothes, expensive shoes, manicures, and some classy jewelry. We’d choose a little boutique jewelry store in some tired town in Vermont, case it for a few hours and go in just before closing. Molly would flirt and ask to see a dozen different items from several cases. I’d play the rich husband who gave her anything she wanted, but let me look at the men’s watches while my dear Molly enjoyed herself. I was the long-suffering, but ultimately indulgent, husband. She was good with her playful banter and seemingly innocent display of her décolletage. Sooner or later, the old proprietor would forget to close a case. Molly would want to see something elsewhere and I’d swoop in and snatch a few baubles.

Several hours later, we’d be laying on the bed in some roadside motel in Delaware. I’d light two cigarettes and pass one to her waiting lips. We’d sell the goods, buy ourselves a nice dinner out, and plan our next move. I loved Molly, my sweet partner in crime.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #brucespringsteen #bonnieandclyde

#partnersincrime

Your pet is my nemesis. We are not friends; we only pretend to like one another. We are in a competition for your time and your affection. Your dog is winning. The pet never outgrows the need for supervision. Even if a woman has a 10-year old child, chances are there’s shared custody and the little fellow will be able to be left alone in the foreseeable future. Not the pet. Any moment of romance can be cut short by an inopportune yip saying, I need to pee. A weekend away? The dog laughs, Don’t even think it. I’ll be having intestinal issues starting Friday.

I told you about Max, Cindy’s yorkipoo, which did sentry duty the one night I spent there. He paced back and forth on the bed all night. During one fitful moment of sleep, I dreamt Max spoke to me with a French accent, because no one can express contempt quite as well as the French. Max said to me, “Well I was there and I saw what you did, Monsieur; I saw it with my own two eyes.” Max is a fan of Phil Collins.

I have been known to sneak dog treats on first dates in case theres a dog waiting at the door. The greeting I get from the dog is often considered a portent of my character or how the date may go. If the dog growls upon meeting me, I might as well call it a night right then. Should we come back to her place for a night cap, the dog may sit vigilant by her side. I know it’s eyeing my jugular in the hopes my guard slips.

Cats are just as bad, maybe worse, since they pretend not to care at all, callously ignoring my very presence until I start down the stairs. It is precisely at that moment, the cat will decide to run between my feet. Or I wake up at night in my lover’s bed to find the cat stealing my breath. She stares at me as i gather my wits. Foiled again, she thinks, if only I could slip him a mickey.

Narcissus didn’t drown himself as has been told down the years, he was pulled in by the koi in his lover’s pond. As for me, I keep plants. They keep their opinions to themselves and never try to steal my breath while I’m sleeping, but do their best to provide me with oxygen. I like plants. I’m not a fan of your pet.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #narcissus #petpeeves #catsanddogs

“Youth,” George Bernard Shaw once said, “is the most beautiful thing in this world—and what a pity that it has to be wasted on children!”

I’ve been reading the sci-fi series Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. It’s also a series on Netflix with lots of graphic violence and nudity. The main character, in fact everyone in this futuristic world, has his memory, knowledge and basically his soul downloaded into a chip implanted in the back of his neck. The data can be transferred with the chip or via transmission and so can be put into another body. In the future, one can live forever in a series of youthful bodies.

It’s a wonderful concept and I wish I had thought of it. It raises questions about who are you really seeing when the soul is in a body different than the one in which it was born. Obviously today, we cannot plug our very essence into a whole other body, but damn we’re trying our best to reinvent and reinvigorate, whether it be diets, exercise, steroids, hormones, plastic surgery, Botox, liposuction, body augmentation or a smorgasbord of any or all. There are chin implants, cheek implants, breast implants, butt implants, rib removals, neck lifts, boob lifts, face lifts, skin peels the list goes on and on. Women remove their eyebrows and then tattoo in replacements.

We have been altering ourselves for millennium to appear better and more youthful, from Cleopatra to Queen Elizabeth (who layered a caustic potion of lead and vinegar on her skin) to Michael Jackson. Sometimes, we alter ourselves right out of appearing human. Joan Rivers and the comedian Carrot Top looked bizarre after their various operations and treatments. Athletes have shaved years off their lives injecting themselves with steroids.

We Americans don’t think twice about orthodontia or even rhinoplasty for our young children. We equate so much of our happiness with how we look. We endlessly cycle between dieting and weight gain and exercising to sculpt the perfect body. As we grow older, we despise every wrinkle and grey hair, so we inject Botox and dye our hair.

As a man I mourn the loss of my own hair and resist the temptation of transplants. I try to exercise to keep the weight off and stave off the signs of aging, but mostly I’m just delaying, not curing. I had braces as a kid. I do not look the way I would had I been left to nature. Knowing this, I often think I have some nerve looking askance at those who have had work done, but sometimes I think some people have gone a nip or tuck too far. They’ve sailed well past their destination and landed on alien shores.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #icecream #chocolate

#alteredcarbon #plasticsurgery #botox #antiaging #balding

When I was a young boy, my parents gave me an allowance of 25¢ per week. For this staggering amount of money, I was expected to do certain chores around the house. I remember I was in charge of the garbage, emptying the various receptacles and making sure the pails got out to the street every Tuesday and Thursday. After school, the empty pails waited for me to bring them back to their spot by the garage. We were a family of seven. We produced a lot of garbage. I mowed the law, raked the leaves, and shoveled the snow.

For many years, our chores were separated along gender lines. The boys did the physical, outdoorsy work and the girls did laundry, dishes and house cleaning. At some point, even though we were not a liberal household by any means, women’s liberation gained a foothold inside our little chauvinistic fiefdom. Funny thing though, I suddenly found myself doing dishes and vacuuming, but nobody was helping me with the garbage. We all became in charge of our own laundry. My own experience with women’s lib was it made my life more difficult.

This is all to say I did a lot for very little money and that quarter meant a lot to me. We weren’t poor exactly, but there weren’t a lot of extras either. We had 3 square meals a day, but meals got stretched pretty thin sometimes. There was no fancy cereal, no soda, and no desserts. Don’t cry for me, please. I had a quarter each week. With that quarter, I was able to go around the corner, where there were several little businesses, including a candy store and a luncheonette. The candy store sold hostess pies and the luncheonette sold ice cream cones. I could get a hostess pie each week, if I liked. They were 25¢ each. Or I could save my allowance for two weeks and get an ice cream cone. These were real ice cream cones, scooped out of big 5 gallon tubs inside the aluminum ice boxes with the hinged lids on top. I can still hear the ‘thunk’ sound of the lid opening. They had two flavors in that freezer: chocolate and vanilla. I always had chocolate, always. And frankly, I looked down on those who chose vanilla, because they were too timid to enjoy the exoticness of chocolate.

Then, like women’s lib, another macro factor crushed my micro world. Inflation. It seemed overnight everything doubled in price or in the case of the delicious hostess pies (which were only meant for one person to begin with), halved in size. The pies were no longer satisfying and the cones were out of my price range, but it didn’t matter anyway. My allowance was taken away. Things got tight at the now women’s liberated fiefdom.

One day, a few months after the allowance cessation, my father said, “Son, I’m going to take you to see the NY Giants play at the Yale Bowl in Connecticut. My boss gave me tickets.” Now he might have said we were going to see a hurling match in Scotland for all I understood. You could not have possibly found a boy less interested in sports or less knowledgeable about geography than me. I knew the general rules of wiffle ball and I could navigate approximately a mile in any direction around me. I never understood why he took me. Both of my brothers would have been better candidates.

The trip seemed interminable. We went over the Tappan Zee Bridge and into a state other than the one I lived in or New York. It was all too much. The game was a spectacle and I enjoyed the roar of the crowd, but I really had little idea of what was happening on the field. Who had the football? Did our team win? Did we lose? I had no idea.

On the way back though, my father did something else surprising. He stopped at a Baskin Robbins. He lead me in and showed me the list of flavors on the wall. 34 flavors to be exact (when you include chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry). It was more than this boy could fathom. I asked politely for a chocolate. My father, flabbergasted, said no, choose again. Ok I’ll have a chocolate chocolate chip, please. My father literally said, Arghh! I looked that list up and down for what must’ve seemed like forever and lighted upon mint chocolate chip. It was a shade of green not found in the natural world, dotted with small specks of chocolate. Oh, that was something new on my tongue. There was still the safety of chocolate, but so much more. It’s been my go to flavor ever since. I can barely remember the drive or the game, but I’ll always remember that cone and getting out of my comfort zone. Some 43 odd years later, I’d face too many choices again.

And, besides mint chip ice cream, didn’t the ’70s suck?

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #icecream #chocolate

#70s

Truth be told, I wasn’t sad to part ways with Cindy. Yes, she had so many positives about her, but somehow I could not commit fully to her. Why was this true, I’ve wondered. Was there something lacking in me or did she not fill my needs? In other words, did the relationship fail for legitimate reasons or did it fail for no good reason at all?

I’ve had two longstanding relationships in my lifetime. Certainly I can commit for long periods of time, though ultimately those relationships failed. I am convinced I am searching for my next and, hopefully, last love. I am told men my age are not really looking for a long term relationship and definitely not marriage. We are of an age where we think there is still time for exploration and adventure. As we enter our 60s and 70s and our attractiveness and health are on the wane, we look for the person who will care for us in our old age. Women not so much. They’re looking for the commitment now and if the relationship lasts, caretaking wouldn’t be out of the question. It’s a theory I’ve heard. I like to think I’m not like that, but the evidence may prove otherwise. I do think it lends itself to the stereotypes men and women might hold against each other. Specifically, women are looking for financial support here and now and men want a nurse and mourner in their dotage.

As for my relationship with Cindy, I lay its failure at my own feet (and at Max’s paws). I can see the nit picky things that bothered me: the child under 18, the all-seeing dog, the boobs, her monitoring my online activity, the rapid pace and need for commitment. All are legitimate concerns, but none of them, even combined, should have doomed the relationship at first bloom.

She was my first experience out of the online dating gate. As much as I may have told myself I was looking for the long term, I was excited to explore. With each passing day and week, I got better at introducing myself, bantering, and moving towards a real date outside the internet. I was a child in a candy shop for the first time and apparently, this kid’s a glutton. I should’ve shown more patience. I should’ve expressed my doubts and complaints with adult words, so she could have explained, changed or ignored as she wanted. We weren’t perfect together, nobody ever is. I apologize to her. She was part of my learning curve and it was very early innings (ooh, check out the sports reference. You won’t see many of those here.)

Having said that, I still blame the dog. Fuck you, Max, and your all-knowing stare!

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #shakespeare

We spent that Saturday night in her king-sized bed, just the three of us, including her little dog Max, a yorkipoo, who remained in the bed throughout the night, including during our lovemaking (mine and Cindy’s, that is). I could feel Max’s disapproving eyes. Whether he disapproved of my technique or me in general, I wasn’t quite sure. Max kept me up the rest of the night with his pacing from one end of the bed to the other. Cindy slept soundly. I left early the next morning in a fairly foul mood.

And just like that, I went from flirtatious and solicitous to inattentive and distant. She texted often the next two days, but my replies were short and did not invite more. Did you enjoy yourself last night? Sure. Would you like to get together again soon? You bet. When? I dunno. She complimented me and wanted compliments in return, but I remained quiet. What she really wanted-and I was unable to give-was some sign of commitment. By Tuesday morning, she had had enough and asked if I thought the relationship was going anywhere. And I said I didn’t think we were traveling at the same speed. I told her she deserved better. She agreed she did deserve better and with just a few lines of text, we parted.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss

And before long we made our way to my bedroom, where I’d like to say I performed spectacularly. I would like to say it. <Crickets> Cindy was playful and sensual and her body was lean and lithe. Because she carried very little to no body fat, her breasts were quite obviously implants. (I’ll get into plastic surgery and body augmentation at a later date. I’m not looking to body shame anyone, but a frank discussion might be enlightening, especially for me.) She left and we continued our texting back and forth.

Cindy went to the beach one day with a friend, shortly after our liaison. She wanted to show her friend what I looked like, so they pulled up my profile. PoF denotes online members with a little green dot and Cindy’s friend duly noted that I was in fact online at the moment and would stay active for quite some time. Cindy told me later this embarrassed her.

We kept up with our playful banter through texting. Despite some wariness on her part, she invited me to her place for dinner a few nights later. It was a couple of days after her birthday so I brought a dozen roses. Her boys were away for a couple of nights and she made it plain I could stay over and so I did.

This was all in the course of no more than two weeks. And in those two weeks, I had gone from flirtation to kissing to spending the night and suddenly I felt too close, too connected, too much. She was effusive in her compliments of my looks and sexiness and I thought much the same of her, but I held back. Just as I knew she was looking for commitment, she felt my reluctance. I was still on PoF. Still looking. Dissatisfied in the Sea of Satisfaction.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss

There are all sorts of acronyms used for dating in the digital age, such as LTR, ONS, FWB and NSA. The one I heard just recently and didn’t know existed was PDQ: Pretty Darn Quick.

Initial meet-ups are often awkward and disappointing. I am certain I have disappointed a few of the women I have met and have had been disappointed in turn. I suspect women may not have liked how quiet I am, as much as I’ve tried to warn them. They may think I’m disinterested, when I’m really afraid of being uninteresting. Luckily for me, I’ve found most women love to talk and I don’t mind listening. Talk my ear off, if you like. I have two. And I warm up in time. Before long, we may even be chatting warmly. The disappointments I have had mostly were due to not quite matching in person with the picture sent. And sometimes, my date and I just cannot get a decent conversation going. I blame myself as I rely so much on them to keep it going.

Cindy, I should say, was not a disappointment. Her pictures showed her as she was in reality. They weren’t taken at crazy angles or great distances or several years ago. She said she was athletic and she was very fit and lean. She had a good job. She had stories to tell and drew me out of my shell quickly.

After our initial walk and innocent parting kiss, we continued our messaging. What to do on our second date? I suggested another walk. She wondered aloud if we were destined to just be gym partners. Cindy knew what she wanted and wasn’t shy about firmly guiding me down the path she liked. I didn’t mind. I was a bit of a lost lamb and needed shepherding. We decided on a Thai place situated roughly between us. She wore a clingy blouse with spaghetti straps, revealing some serious cleavage. We had a fine meal and nice conversation. I walked her to her car, put away my qualms, and we made out beside her car in the parking lot. Once again, I was self-conscious, but I do love to kiss. I’d prefer not to do it publicly, but anything goes in a pinch. And, as I hadn’t been in a relationship in quite some time, I considered myself in a pinch.

For our third date, we (she) decided to have drinks at an upscale restaurant pretty close to where I lived. We took a corner booth and enjoyed a couple of drinks, before I suggested going back to my house. We arrived, snuggled up close on the couch, and proceeded to make out, privately for once. Hands roamed freely. Things were getting serious.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss

I sent out my feelers, funny but brief hellos, into the online messaging world. The women I messaged were attractive, fit and smart, or, at least, they presented themselves as such. It’s hard to fake smart, especially after an interchange or two, but it turns out you can fake attractive and fit pretty easily, at least until the first date.

Several women replied despite the rather crappy pictures I posted in my profile. One thing I noticed quite quickly about myself was that I disliked when the woman didn’t carry the conversation forward at all. If her response to my little one-liner was a simple hello back, I immediately thought she was going to be too much work. There is only room for one taciturn person in a relationship and I already occupied that spot.

One woman caught my eye. She only had two pictures and they revealed a pretty, but not drop dead gorgeous, woman in her early fifties. She lived a few towns away. Her profile said she was athletic and her pictures confirmed she was. She wrote in her profile she loved life cuddling a good meal. No commas at all, so I wrote asking what it was like to cuddle a good meal. She answered good-humoredly and we were off on a two day chat, before she wondered in a message if I was ever going to ask for her number. And so I did. And after a day or so of texting, she asked if we were ever going to go out.

Now Cindy-not her real name- is an avid runner. And I am a walker. We agreed to go for a nice little walk in her hometown. We met by the railway station. I was a little early and waited for her on a bench. I dressed casually and she dressed athletically. She was every bit as pretty and fit as she appeared in her pictures. She wore black Lycra with the see-through patches and her top was low cut revealing very, very firm, good-sized breasts. I’m thinking c-cups.

We went for our walk and an hour passed quickly. We talked about her job as a lawyer and mine as a construction supervisor. Our children were another conversation source. I’m a firm believer in setting a short time limit on the first date. One can always extend, if it’s going well, which is what I did. We went another mile or two, talking like old friends, nary an awkward pause.

We got back to the station, had some water, and took a seat at bench. I had a feeling quite quickly that she wanted to kiss there and then, if I wanted, but I didn’t, mostly because PDAs are not my thing. Also, who wanted to see two upper middle-aged people making out. I’ve often felt the least sexy scene I’ve ever witnessed was Jack Nicholson kissing Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give. After a lot of close proximity and arm touching, I really wanted to let my hormones have their evil way, but resisted somehow. We parted with a sweet kiss on the lips. She placed her hand on my cheek and I was smitten for sure.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov #middleageddating #lastfirstkiss