I can do this, I think to myself, as I stare at my
computer screen. “This ain’t my first time at the rodeo,” I announce to the lofty walls of my empty office.
Visions of Mommie Dearest, of Fay Dunaway’s legendary boardroom scene swim through my head then slap my hands into motion—propelling them across the keyboard of my computer.
I’m a 50-year-old man and I’m entering the world of Internet dating. The dating site is requesting a list of my favourite things. I consider the question. It all feels forced and silly, like I might as well write that I like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.
This is fake, I think. Fuck this! Fuck The Sound of Music! While Julie Andrews croons to the Von Trapp children -- all dancing through my thoughts -- I consider my options for meeting other men my age: Going to a bar? Ummm no! Meeting at a party? There seems to be less of them happening -- if at all. Another fix-up from my straight girlfriends? Bless them, but pass.
The raindrops stop, the Von Trapp children go to bed. This is the best option for connection, for dates.
I keep going. But how does one write about how wonderful and datable you are without sounding narcissistic or cocky?
As I build my profile, it feels like I’m editing a high school yearbook. I must find the perfect pictures -- ones that seem natural, yet corner all my best angles and desirable attributes. After selecting photos and answering a succession of questions about favoured places, books, music, political views, exercise habits, and even my astrological sign, I must elaborate, compose something in the Something about Me and My Date box. This is what I write:
Humm....what to say? I’ve graduated from bars and clubs -- done my time. Thus making the outlets for connection reduced. So here I am. Match amid my fingers -- looking for the right sur face to scratch. Looking to make fire. I could write a lot about favoured books and movies,
places to visit and romantic aspirations; but in the end, it comes down to the chemistry -- an odd, albeit essential component.
If we don’t read the same books, there will be desire to share. If we haven’t traveled to the same places, there will be an eagerness to expose one another, or to perhaps rediscover the same loved destination through a new pair of eyes.
The chemistry set is a dodgy plaything -- a succession of experiments we have come to call dating. For now, it starts with a pause at the picture, a glance at the ingredients and the rest...well, it can range anywhere from a bomb to intoxicating.
If playing with matches excites you, then say hello.
Just one day passes and I am thrust into popularity, like I’ve been discovered drunkenly singing in a karaoke bar and now I’m recording a duet with Brittany—the press clamouring to gather tidbits about my life while flashbulbs pop. Fifty becomes the new forty. I feel thirty. But like Brittany’s career, it quickly fades to a robotic offbeat routine. Suddenly, the technologically infused winking does not feel the same as a wink from the handsome man across a crowded room. Some winks don’t even come with pictures, just a grey box with a darker grey man’s silhouette and the words ASK ME FOR MY PHOTO. But you winked at me! I want to yell. Why should I ask for your photo? But it falls on deaf ears. I am home alone. My computer screen is not interested.
Almost everyone winks. Instantly nothing feels special about it. Instead it feels passive-aggressive.
This is my best option for connection, for dates. I keep going. I determine that I will not be a winker. I will say hello and write something.
The weeks pass and the winking, the writing and the calling eventually culminate into dates.
Everyone I meet is nice. Really nice.
Some are funny. Others are sweet. And nothing bad happens, except for one thing: I have no chemistry with any of them. It becomes arduous when I have to tell them this -- face-to-face -- all after lots of sharing of our lives and hopes and dreams and, of course, favourite things. But honestly, I truly enjoy many of my new acquaintances; I want to be friends with some of them.
So I keep going.
This is my best option for connection, for dates.
This is what dating at fifty should be, I think: the dinner- before-dessert era.
I quickly discover it is a childless birthday party of musical chairs. Everyone wants to be romantically seated before the music stops, before age adds another candle. Everyone is looking for starry-eyed beach walks and passionate hikes. Today! Time is running out. “I’ve only got a few good years left,” says one.
All that focus on aging and matches makes me think about the story of The Little Match Girl. I go and look it up, trying to remember its lessons. Decades have passed.
She rubbed another match on the wall. It burst into a flame, and where its light fell upon the wall it became as transparent as a veil, and she could see into the room. The table was covered with a snowy white tablecloth on which stood a splendid dinner service and a steaming roast goose stuffed with apples and dried plums. And what was still more wonderful, the goose jumped down from the dish and waddled across the floor, with a knife and fork in its breast, to the little girl. Then the match went out, and there remained nothing but the thick, damp, cold wall before her.
Was my computer screen the cold wall before me? Or was it my light, my connection? The story of the little match girl is about a little girl’s dreams of hope. Alone and shoeless, she wanders the streets, trying to sell matches, while people celebrate in the warmth of their homes. Each time she strikes a match, it lights up visions for her -- dreams of a life filled with hugs, and food, and celebrations with loved ones -- a life of shoes.
With each wink and e-mail, each man, each match, each connection, I allowed my imagination to run free. But I was in my house. Alone. And so were they. Yet our desire to connect, to spark, is what brought us together -- propelling us to the Internet for dates because this is the way of tomorrow.
When I consider my childhood and remember my mother’s warning: “Do NOT play with matches! They will burn your fingers and start fires!”
But that was before the Internet, before the cyber match, before middle age -- when people were connecting, sparking each other in person, from the start.
For today, this is my best option for connection, for dates. So, I keep going -- infused with technology. I will keep playing with matches while remembering that, in the end, it still comes down to the chemistry.
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