My Overprotective Kid

You may remember me mentioning how, when he was younger, my son Balthazar disparaged men who showed romantic interest in me. (And by "disparaged," I mean that he denounced them as being serial killers whom I should avoid like...well, like one should avoid a person aiming to end one's life.) Well, given that he's achieved the ripe old age of 20 (holy shit!) and has been away at a very liberal, girl-pow-ah kind of college for the past three years, I figured he'd outgrown this absurd over protectiveness/smart-assed desire to kill my buzz.

I figured wrong.

A few weeks ago, I texted Balthy the following:

So, like, I was waiting for the Shuttle to GCT & this guy comes up to me & hands me a piece of paper saying, "Excuse me, I just wanted to say you're drop dead gorgeous, I love your hair and eyes. Here's my number, if you ever want to call me." Think I should call him?

After two days of radio silence, I nudged him. Thus replied Balthazar:

No

Me: Why not?

Four hours went by. I nudged again. Balthy wrote back:

Ask one of your friends

Me: The two I asked told me to call him. Why do you think I shouldn't?

Balthy: I don't care, do what you want. I just don't want to hear about it or find out that you're beheaded in an alleyway.

So there you have it. I mean, I'd no intention of calling the guy (he never asked me for my name, which I found really weird) and, admittedly, you never know whether a stranger means you harm. But that'd be true at a nightclub or a bar or a party, right? I mean, all the old-fashioned/more traditional ways of meeting people couldn't ensure they'd be decent, non-psycho-killers. Surely there'd be a "safe" way to get to know someone from the above scenario?

Maybe there's a more promising opportunity coming around the bend for me, one even The Kid won't be able to balk at. Obviously, I don't require his permission. But I wonder if he'll ever be OK with me having a love life of my own...

Probably not.

No, Cupid; It's Not OK

Before I get started, I want you to understand that I ain't no dating guru*. In fact, I've rarely "dated," as such. The men with whom I've been involved were known to me in some capacity, so we weren't just starting to get to know one another from scratch. The idea of meeting up with complete strangers so we can size one another up as potential mating partners rather turns my stomach.

So naturally I decided to sign up with an online dating service.

I dunno what the hell made me do it. OK, it was having coffee with a friend who met her fiancé on OkCupid. That, and OkCupid's free. Well, unless you don't want folks to know you're stalking their profiles, in which case you have to pay. Which is what I'm doing. (No, not the stalking folks bit, the paying bit, so they don't know I'm stalking.) (Looking, not stalking. Jeez, GAH!)

Anyway, I signed up on OkCupid in August but I've yet to go out on a proper date, though it's not for lack of offers. It's just that...some of these dudes are creepy.

Or maybe I just find dating creepy.

In the first week, after getting a bunch of unappealing messages, a dude finally wrote something which engaged my interest. We had some fun exchanges and, though it wigged me out that he was 29 (coming after a 42-year-old Goth Mom!), I reckoned I'd just practice flirting and see what happened.

My stomach turned, is what happened.

I should've known things were gonna get gross when, in a reference to a note in my profile that I write romance novels, he asked me how I like my romance (in, like, his second message to me). (Well, at least he actually read my profile.) I wrote back, "Slow and steady wins the race." To which he admitted a preference for racing around the track.

I shoulda known.

We wound up on the phone one night. He was, by turns, contentious and arrogant, but to his credit, he was being upfront about what he wanted. He talked of enjoying older babes because they were more mature, and not silly, like chicks in their 20s. (For future reference, Lovers-of-Cougars: don't diss half of my sex when you're kissing up to me. I was once in my 20s, ass-hat.) What he really enjoyed was the racing analogy, and he kept going back to my "slow and steady" comment. When he hemmed and hawed at one point, I asked him what was up.

Dude: You seem to want me to be...blunt.

Me: I want you to be straightforward. (Thinking over what I've just said.) Like, gently and respectfully straightforward.

Dude: Well...it's just that I want to establish a baseline of what our expectations are.

Me (torn between amusement and horror): Go on, then.

Dude: Well...I said before I like to race around. I'm an experiencer of things, you know? While you...

Me (amusement drying up in the face of this last bit): While I like to take things slowly. Yes, I can see where we might have different ways of relating...

Dude: I don't wanna scare you off, though. Man, I'm not doing a good job of calming you down...

Me (feeling my free hand curl into an actual fist): I'm not going into hysterics over here, guy. I can appreciate where you're coming from, only it's not where I'm coming from. The thing is, it's been a while since I've...dated.

Dude (sharply): How long's a while?

Me (not seeing the point of being coy): It's been years.

Dude (after a pause): Oh. So the car hasn't even been out of the garage in a while.

At this point, I'm completely done with the conversation and struggling to find a polite way of bringing it to a close. Then the Dude obliged me by saying:

Dude: I just don't want you to write this off, you know? I mean, we've had some fun banter and we find one another attractive, and I just think, you know, if you wanted to get together, we could have a good time. Besides, I'm a fucking excellent mechanic.

At that, I laughed (loudly), congratulated him on his self-confidence, and got the hell off the phone. Haven't heard from him since, which is just fine, as I'm damned if I ever let him get his mitts on my chassis.

I was prepared to write that off as just a weird experience. But subsequent exhanges with other fellas (via message only) haven't exactly been inspiring. And, actually, it amazes me what some men find to be appropriate volleys for that oh-so-critical first serve. I mean, yeah, I get how difficult it is making that first move, but don't send me a message that contains only one line of text which reads:

sexy mama

or

hey there

or (and this one's my fave)

Hi ms lady

...and nothing else!

Other ways to make a bad impression upon me include writing me things like:

Hey you seem like a wicked ball of fun, would you be game for something "casual"?

No, I would not.

U look so damn cute!! excuse my language .
would u mind if we get to know each other ? Text me plz (phone number redacted)

If you have to ask me whether I'd mind getting to know you, then yes, I probably would mind.

Hello,
I am a 26 year old (profession redacted) from (city redacted).
I love older more mature women.
Do you enjoy younger men?

Not when they look like my kid. Ugh.

In the interest of full disclosure, there was another chap who seemed more promising: he was friendly, polite, attractive, used good grammar in complete sentences (rawr!), and appeared to be just a generally decent guy (even if he was a bit of a Hipster). I had a feeling he'd ask me out, and he did, BUT, he wanted me to trek all the way to where he lives (which is a 1.5 to 2-hour commute from where I live, though a meet-up in Manhattan after work would've been easy-peasy for us both). So I wrote back suggesting a "let's meet halfway" coffee date, and I never heard from him again.

WTF? Wanker.

::sighs::

I  haven't taken down my profile, though I really don't know why I keep it up.

Anyway, things are getting busy with the day job, and I have a mini-anthology I want to put out in January, so I've got stuff to keep me busy. And I reckon that's the only thing I can do. Keep busy, leave the profile up, and just...be.

*I ain't no dating guru, but my pal Mac Perry, a fellow blogger, writer, and online dating vet, is. Check out her advice for the guys, as well as for the dolls.

Intuition...?

...or just more smartassery?

I'm sure those of you with teens can relate - sometimes, one's child develops such skill with the latter that it's difficult to discern whether:

A) your child's being serious, and if so
B) the gravitas should be trusted.

In particular, I reference my son, Balthazar, and his ready dismissal of the (very few) men to have interested me romantically since his dad and I split up, lo so many years ago. Oh, he knew there'd been a dude after his dad, but he was about 3 at the time, so who knows what a child that age can really grasp of such matters. But there'd been a long drought since that fella and it was in The Kid's earlier teens that other contenders nearly entered the ring, so to speak.

I commute into Manhattan for work and, a while back, there'd been this guy on the train who eyeballed me with some frequency. He didn't make any moves to reach out to me, just stared and let me catch him staring a few times, you know how it goes. Well, there was something about him, an intensity to his gaze, that appealed, and I was not averse to an overture, should it have come. Then one night, as The Kid and I walked past our town's train trestle, we both happened to look up at the steps leading down from it, casually noting the descending commuters, and there he was! Our eyes met and held for a few heated seconds, then Balthy and I kept walking. I slowed my pace at some point so the guy could pass us and was gratified to see him looking back at us periodically. The Kid noticed him and commented on the fact that he sorta resembled one of our neighbors. I agreed, mentioned seeing him on the train once in a while, and that was the end of that.

UNTIL I boarded a homeward-bound train one night and saw him seated at a window seat, with the middle and aisle seats next to him free. I had my chance - it was now or never! (Or so some twisted little voice in my head assured me.) I took the aisle seat. He looked up, saw me, and an electric moment of mutual awareness passed.

This is the point in the story where things should've taken a delightful turn for the woof! They kinda didn't. He tried, several times, to engage me in conversation. But my natural timidity with men (go on, laugh, disbelieve me, but it's true - I get stupidly tongue-tied and blushy when an object of my interest approaches) didn't allow for the burgeoning of rapport (or anything else, for that matter). Too, the timbre of his voice put me off, for some reason, and I just couldn't relax into the moment. I was interested but antsy, and I couldn't figure why, but I couldn't shake my uneasiness and did nothing to encourage him. Still, he gamely tried to chat me up, valiant man. We disembarked at our stop, walked together for a bit, then parted ways.

When I got home, I ached to share the experience with someone, though I didn't think I was so pathetic as to need to gush to my son. In fact, I was.

Me: You remember that guy from the other night?

The Kid: Yeah?

Me: The guy we saw at the train station?

The Kid: Yeah?

Me: The guy you said looks like our neighbor?

The Kid: Yeah?

Me: We chatted on the train tonight. I think he likes me.

The Kid: (Smirks.)

Me: What?

The Kid: (Smirks and shakes his head.)

Me: What??? (I glare at his continued smirkage.) Well, what do you think of him?

The Kid: He looks like a murderer.

Me: WHAT?!

The Kid: He looks like a psychopath, Mom. So what's for dinner?

And that really was the end of that. Oh, I saw the guy a few more times. Once, he passed by me and tapped me on the arm, scaring the ever-loving crap outta me, but my son's words echoed in my mind and kept me from welcoming further advances. Maybe a few months later, I stopped seeing him around altogether.

Now, I've no way of knowing if The Kid was sharing real concern with me or just being a snot, but what he said seemed to support my unidentifiable discomfort during my brief interaction with the guy, so I chose to believe Balthy had some sixth sense and might just be looking out for me, after all. However, about a year later, I had cause to question his purported altruism.

On Facebook, a male friend of a friend sent me a friend request. The corresponding message read, "I like your hair and eyes." I told Balthazar about this and asked him if he thought I should befriend this dude.

The Kid: No, Mom. He obviously wants to rape you and feed you to a wood chipper.

He had no reason, at all, to suggest such a thing (except maybe he'd caught the tail end of Fargo recently), still he glibly harshed my buzz.

Me (sharply): You don't ever want me to date again, do you?

The Kid: No, I want you to stay lonely. Forever.

Me: Why?

The Kid: It works for me.

Of course.

Mind you, I accepted the friend request and later wound up un-friending (De-Facing!) the dude, on account of his weird rants (and truly alarming misspellings and appalling grammar). So, possibly, The Kid's Spidey-senses did actually pick up some vibes to which this chick's ears are not attuned.

Possibly.