Stalking Mr. Right*

Before I go off on a series of tangents signifying nothing, I need to remind you of TED's unified dating theory. A proper date must have activities from both of two classes of activities: the social and the sexual. These categories are to be construed broadly. Social activities can be dinner or a movie or a cup of coffee or a drink in the hotel bar. Sexual activities can range from spending the night tied in a sling right on down to a goodnight kiss. But the deal is, you have to have both. If you have social activities without any sexual activity whatsoever, you have just hung out with a friend, possibly a friend of very short duration. If you spend the evening making out and/or producing fluids but you don't have any social activity (five minutes of post-coital conversation does not count), then you've hooked up. If you get both, then you've had a date.

Anyway, now that I'm entirely single again, I've been doing some dating, and it's been fun on both social and sexual levels. I like the living-in-the-present aspect of early dating. If you're dating a guy for a while, then you have to start thinking about The Future, but for the first so many (ten? fifteen?) dates, the only things you have to think about "are am I having a good time?" and "do I want to do this again?" And you shouldn't really even think about that second one until after the date or, if you're an overachiever near the very end of the date. Thinking ahead is just going to drive you crazy, and, let's face it, most guys you date aren't going to end up sharing a checking account with you, so why go there?

Contrariwise, I find that when I'm actively not thinking about the intermediate- or long-term potential for any of the guys I've been out with, I enjoy speculating about who the perfect guy for me would be. And in the minutes I've spent pondering this matter, I've come to two main conclusions:

1. I want a guy who's not around too much.
2. Real men are overrated.

The "real men" thing just means that flesh-and-blood guys (although they have the immense advantage of, well, flesh) never measure up to men from movies or books or television. And since I'm already dating real guys, it just makes more sense to search for the notional Mr. Right in the popular media.**

As for "not around too much": back when I was shacked up with my last partner, I found that we were happiest when he had taken on some overseas consulting work and was gone three or four times a year for two to three weeks at a time. And he was a pretty nice guy, so it's not that I didn't like him: it's just that I like my space. On the other hand, I also like having someone to share the bills, so I'm basically looking for fictional men who travel a lot but share their home base with me. (I am aware that the practical applications are rather severely limited.)

So, who might measure up?


George Clooney in Up in the Air. Sure, I'm aware that George Clooney is the actor, not the character, but did you remember "Ryan Bingham"? I had to Google to figure out the character's name. Anyway: George Clooney, traveling corporate hit man. Let's evaluate, shall we?

Assets: Easy on the eyes. Hardly ever home, so very low maintenance. Apparently very skilled in the sack. TONS of frequent flyer miles = free vacations!

Liabilities: Straight. Probably wouldn't remember my birthday. But really, the biggest problem with GC is that he's just starting out on his midlife crisis. Within six months, he's going to have quit his job and will be staying home learning to knit, so I'd get home every evening and dinner would be ready, but he'd always be there, and he'd be wanting to discuss our relationship. Egad, no.

In general, I think there are just going to be problems with heavy corporate travelers. To begin with, most of them are going to be in sales, and, well, ewwww. So let's leave behind the world of commerce and look at that other source for frequent travelers: G-men. For starters.



Bond. James Bond. We're using the Daniel Craig incarnation here, because he seems the least fictitious of the bonds, but it doesn't really matter: one Bond's as good or bad as another.

Upside: Easy on the eyes. Fast cars, exotic locales. Reputation for being great in bed, so unlimited opportunities for threeways. Big payoff from the British government when some foreign strongman or other finally cuts his throat.

Downside: Straight. No, really straight, and probably narrow. Seriously, look at the nipples on Daniel Craig: they've never been bitten. And I'm guessing he's not that good in bed anyway. There's a lot of close your eyes and think of England going on. Worse still is the near certainty that some day you're going to wake up bound, naked, tortured, and held for ransom in the hold of some freighter off the coast of Africa. (I realize that this would go under upside for some of you, and, hey, I don't judge, but it's not my thing.) And, sure, he'd probably rescue you eventually, but that sort of thing is tiresome and just try explaining it to your employer.

Moving on.



Agent Dale Cooper.

Plus: Sex on a motherfucking stick. Likes pie. Possibly could be nudged to bi. Will never cheat.

Minus: Probably wears boxers. Sexually conventional, so nudging to bi would be a lengthy process, and he's much more likely to go for Sheriff Truman than for me. Will never cheat. Bob.

So, no business travelers, and no government employees. Who does that leave?


Oberon.

Pro: Smoking hot. Pan-sexual. Will bring a continuing stream of sexually adventurous woodland beings home to bed with him. Supernatural. And this is Rupert Everett from the movie, so it's long before that unfortunate cosmetic surgery.

Con: Always sleeping outdoors. Also, as much as I love A Midsummer Night's Dream, I don't think I could bring myself to watch that version of it again. Whoever cast Ally McBeal as Helena needs to be shot. Or at least sternly reprimanded.

I guess it's back to the real men. Alas.

*Yeah, I know: no actual stalking is going on or is even contemplated. It's just not my style, but sometimes I like a provocative title. Hire a lawyer and sue me.

**I am aware that the logic here is, shall we say, weak. But we're tongue-in-cheek in this post anyway. I don't actually spend my time fixating on movie characters.

Sturm und Drang

I meant to post yesterday, on Valentine's Day (hereinafter V-Day, because, really, any holiday with a name longer than "Yule" is just too much trouble to type out), but I got busy, and, more to the point, what I was writing was crap.

Anyway, my V-Day started at 7:30 with a phone call, from a very sweet guy with whom I've been on two dates, wishing me a happy V-Day. I'm not sure that waking someone up via cell phone is a great strategic move on V-Day, but whatever. There followed a text message with a ridiculous V-Day graphic, and I was of two minds:
1. Dude. It's only been two dates: ease up a little.
2. What? No chocolate?

It is a sad but undeniable fact that I am more likely to want what is harder for me to get and what I probably shouldn't want. Put another way: I'm more likely to be into a guy if he seems less into me. I am given to understand that many others of all genders and sexual persuasions are in the same boat.

If you analyze this phenomenon (as I have, obviously), you come to a couple of conclusions. First, it's often to your advantage to appear less interested than you are. "Playing hard to get" is the more negative way to put that because it makes me sound like I'm playing games, and nobody wants to be accused of playing games, even if that's what he's doing. In any case, playing it cool is wise not just because it usually makes you more attractive. Emotions often outrace reason, and if you act on the former, you may have already done something you'll regret when the latter catches up.

The second conclusion is that I should really learn to value guys who are into me more than I do. And, you know, for the last several years, I've determined to spend more time with guys who are willing to chase after me and less with guys who I have to pursue. And, well, it's a work in progress. I'm doing better with the not-acting-too-interested part than I am with the rewarding-interest-in-me part. But I find that being aware of the ways in which my psyche acts against my self-interest is a big help in modifying the behavior.

Well. There's my moment of introspection for 2012.

As for V-Day itself, I see a lot of whinging from both the attached and single segments of the population. If you're attached, the whinging goes something like, "Egad, yet another instance of the greeting card-florist-industrial complex conspiring to make me spend money on frivolities." And, well: really? The fact that you have someone to do something for is, on balance, cause for gratitude and celebration, not for complaint. Besides, V-Day is the easiest holiday ever! Finding someone the right Christmas or birthday gift can be really difficult, but on V-Day, you get some chocolates and flowers and you're done. [If you're feeling especially kind, you can throw in some sexy underwear or a sex toy, but I mention this only so that I can tell a story at my own expense. That Guy, with whom I recently broke up, was a very stylish dresser, but he wore underwear (white woven cotton boxers: ugh) that were totally at odds with his image. So early last month, I went online and ordered him some more appropriate underwear, thinking it would make a good V-Day gift. Then I broke up with him. And, well, I'd ordered underwear on clearance, so it couldn't be returned. And it was size small, which I really am not. Fortunately, last weekend, I got a late night call from one of my favorite gentlemen of horizontal acquaintance asking me to come over, and it occurred to me that said gentleman is probably 5'4 and maybe 120 lbs if he's soaking wet, so I grabbed some of the underwear and took it with me. He was happy to have it, though when he tried it on, it was a little too big. I reckon it'll shrink in the dryer, though.] It's pretty easy.

The whinging by the single people usually goes more along the lines of "Egad, the media are conspiring to make me feel inadequate because I'm single." This, reader, is an error. The media are, in fact, conspiring to make you spend money because that's what they're there for. So if you're single, wrap yourself in the mantle of intellectual and moral superiority: "I am too smart and too good to be duped into feeling inferior by people who only want my money." Or, if that doesn't work for you, buy yourself something. Chocolate is half off!

Tempus Fugit

So, apparently, there was this Super Bowl thing yesterday. I gave up cable a while back, so I couldn't have watched even if I'd wanted to, but I did get a text message from a guy with whom I'd been on a brunch date that morning/afternoon:

At that point, I just assumed that the Giants would score very late in the fourth quarter and win the game, and I didn't think about it again until this morning. I'd claim to be psychic, but, really, who didn't see that coming?

I tend to think that American football is one of the dumbest sports imaginable, which -- to me, at least -- explains its popularity. At the best of times, I am somewhat disdainful of the collective intelligence of my compatriots, and I can only imagine the level of ignorance and mendacity that we're in for between now and the November elections. That's another good reason not to subscribe to cable: if I had to watch political ads this year, I'd spontaneously combust. Citizens United: feh.

Anyway, while others were watching football, I was spending a relaxing evening with the girls. Today is my fifty-first birthday, but EFU doesn't get home before 10 pm on Mondays, so they wanted to celebrate yesterday. EFU got me a Sodastream, and YFU got me a couple of canisters of syrup to go with it. They (correctly) assumed that I wouldn't care about having the presents wrapped, so they made me close my eyes while they brought them into the living room. Then when I opened them, they accused me of having present face:



But, in fact, the Sodastream is a really cool gift. (The girls complain bitterly about how hard it is to come up with decent presents for me, but they always manage just fine.) I'd been thinking about buying myself one for some time now, but I was worried about finding space for it in the kitchen. The girls told me I should take it to the office, at least for tax season, so that's what I'm doing. Fizzy water on demand: who could ask for anything more?

After the presents, the girls went to my favorite local chicken place, El Pollo Rico, and bought dinner for us. It was the perfect low-key birthday celebration, and I am all about the low-key celebrations. I eschew pomp. Fifty was kind of a big deal, but fifty-one is barely a blip on the pomp radar screen.

As it happens, I was pretty beat yesterday afternoon/evening anyway because there'd been a fundraiser at church Saturday evening, and I'd volunteered to cater it. What that means is that I spend a lot of evenings over the week before the event cooking things that can go in the freezer, and then I spend about six hours Friday evening and all day Saturday doing food prep. At about four I get to the church, and some other volunteers join me to help get everything assembled and plated while I do some additional prep (For example, I make and freeze the puff pastry a week in advance, but I don't roll it, cut it, and bake it until I get to the church. Then I hand it off to someone else to split and fill with lime curd. Mmmmm.) and try not to panic. I was better organized this year than in the past, and we had everything except the sorbets plated before the first act started, so I was able to get downstairs and into my tux in time to see everything except the very first number. Then, with about two songs to go in the first half, I slipped out to scoop out the sorbets (one was strawberry with red wine; the other was sangria) so that they could go out with the rest of the desserts during the intermission.

I opened the second half of the entertainment with "Some Enchanted Evening." I have since listened to the recording, and I sound pretty good on it, but as someone once told me at one of these things, "You're a very good singer, but no matter how good you are, you're always going to be upstaged by your food." I guess that's better than being upstaged by someone else's food.

That much kitchen work (there was also the cleaning, and then the lugging of all my equipment and the extra food -- everything that went out got eaten, but there was extra of many of the ingredients) left me pretty fatigued, and I may also have been a bit dehydrated/hungover (wine is very good for the voice, you know), so it was something of a struggle to get up, showered, and dressed in time to make my 11:30 brunch date, but I managed.

In the past, I have approached dating with something between trepidation and outright loathing, but I have adjusted my attitude this time around, and, hey, suddenly it's fun. Appropriate date selection (as in the right guy and the right restaurant) is, of course, key, but deciding in advance that I'm going to have a good time is surprisingly effective.

And, you know, maybe I should have figured this out ten years ago, but a date where a prolonged horizontal encounter isn't even a possibility turns out to be a good thing. This particular guy lives in Siberia Baltimore, so both our dates have involved meeting somewhere in between, which leaves plenty of opportunity for flirting and touching and, well, prolonged making out in one or the other of our cars, but nobody's clothes are coming off. To say that this is not my usual modus operandi would be something of an understatement, but it's a good time.

Semi-annual Update

I considered a New Year's resolution to post more frequently here, but my history with resolutions is spotty at best. I generally think it makes more sense for me to make post-April 15th resolutions, since that's really when life restarts for me, but I don't keep those resolutions very well either.

I was having this discussion with That Guy in his bed one evening shortly after the New Year. I asked him if he'd made any resolutions, and he said that he had resolved to live his life more fully and to have increased financial discipline in 2012. I pointed out that his resolutions were a) helplessly vague, and b) self-contradictory, and he didn't really appreciate that. When he asked me what my resolutions were, I said, "I'm going to moisturize this year." He didn't really appreciate that, either, but I figure moisturizing is a) specific, b) useful, and c) achievable. At which point, he said "Kiss My Face," which turned out to be a brand recommendation rather than an invitation to anything amorous. For what it's worth, I'm sticking with Aveeno. That's pretty much the entirety of my skin care regimen, except that I mostly remember to shave in the morning.

As it happens, I broke things off with That Guy this past weekend. There isn't any point in going into details. If you complain about boyfriends or ex-boyfriends, either you sound petty, or you invite people to wonder why you put up with him for as long as you did. I'll just say that over the course of the year-plus that I dated him, I learned a number of valuable lessons, and my tolerance for spicy foods increased by a factor of maybe three. You should really try my chocolate pots-de-creme with cayenne and cinnamon. My only real regret is that I ordered his Valentine's Day gift before the split, but I'm happy to have it over before tax season gets grueling. Live and learn.

Anyway, the big news of the past few months has nothing to do with departures. We have added a new member to the household. After an application process that was probably only slightly less involved than getting a high-level security clearance, we adopted a rescue greyhound.



We picked Luna up from her foster home the day after Thanksgiving. And, well, let me just say that I love having a dog, and I especially love having this dog. She is perhaps not overly bright, and she's kind of clumsy, but she's incredibly sweet and very pretty. I don't have any really good pictures of her because she is, apparently, genetically programmed to move quickly whenever a camera is trained on her.

For years I've wanted a dog, but I'd held out because of my schedule. But with EFU living with me while she gets her master's (and then, the plan is, during her first year of teaching), it works out pretty well. EFU feeds and walks Luna in the morning, and I feed and walk her in the evening. When tax season gets hairy, EFU will likely take over more of the duties. Also, when EFU moves out in another eighteen or so months, she may take Luna with her. At that point, I might volunteer for foster care during the slower months of the year.

The adoption organization (which, believe me, is an incredibly thorough group of greyhound lovers) requires us to take Luna to obedience training, and we're starting that this coming Saturday. I found a beginning class on Saturday afternoons at 4, so I should be able to make that even when the returns are coming fast and furious.

Greyhounds are pretty great dogs, and they work really well with my lifestyle because they're very active for about fifteen minutes twice a day, and then they mostly turn into couch potatoes. (Because we had her, we drove to Florida right after Christmas this year to visit my mother and some of the rest of my family, and Luna was a champ all the way down and back.) Also, their racing background means that they're crate trained and they actually feel very comfortable staying in their crate, so I can just give Luna a treat and latch the crate door when a gentleman caller shows up.

Some of their other quirks include their leanness and their short hair which combine to make them need a coat when the weather turns cold. I've made a couple of coats for Luna. This is not one of them:



That's actually Luna in the pajamas that my mother sent to EFU for Christmas. They are not so appropriate for a twenty-two-year-old with a fear of synthetic fibers, but EFU had a lot of fun making Luna wear them. Luna tried her best to ignore the rather obvious affront to her dignity (as well as the poor fit). She's good at that.

Anyway, having a greyhound is great, and I highly recommend it, especially to anyone with a high tolerance for having his face licked. And the ones that don't get adopted get shot, so there's that, too.


There's not a lot of other stuff going on. The holidays were very pleasant, despite the $244 speeding ticket I got in Waldo, Florida (apparently, I'm the only person in the continental U.S. who doesn't know there's a speed trap there) while driving down for the holidays. In general, I don't recommend twenty-hour car rides, but with such pleasant company, we managed to have a wonderful time, our encounter with Officer Friendly notwithstanding. I and the girls (two daughters, one dog) ended up spending New Year's Eve in a motel room in Greenville, North Carolina, where we ate substandard Chinese takeout, played card games, and watched a marathon of The Big Bang Theory. It was not, perhaps, fabulous, but it was great.

Time on My Hands

Now that the extended tax return deadline (October 15) has passed, I have a few months during which everything is much less hectic at work. There is, of course, the holiday season to contend with, but since I discovered that a) the girls only really care about turkey, mashed potatoes, and pie at Thanksgiving, and b) the Internet makes Christmas shopping a breeze (Amazon Prime, yo), the holidays are nothing but fun. Of course, the holidays have always been predominantly fun for me. Family, food, and singing: what's not to love?

With an attitude like that, you might well suppose that no one is less qualified than I to take up the mantle of curmudgeon laureate so recently fallen from the shoulders of Andy Rooney. (To be honest, I haven't seen an episode of Sixty Minutes in years, and I had no idea that the dude was still alive until I'd heard that he'd died.) And you'd be right: I don't see the need for professional curmudgeons. And if I did perceive such a need, there are so many people more qualified than I to whinge about life's inconsequential insults.

Nevertheless, when I saw the above sign affixed to the new shopping carts at the supermarket closest to my house, I had a moment of curmudgeonliness. Or maybe it was just disbelief. I took a quick look at the wheels on my shopping cart, and I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't really lock if I were to push the cart beyond the yellow line in the parking lot. I have not, of course, tested this: why would I want to steal or even appear to be stealing a shopping cart? I wonder whether Andy Rooney would have been similarly skeptical. Regardless, a week or so later, I saw a few shopping carts that had been abandoned five or ten yards beyond the yellow line. I didn't bother to investigate, but I'm pretty sure a number of other people decided to test their suspicions about the so-called locking wheels, got beyond the yellow line, verified that the carts still rolled, and then abandoned the carts because, well, they didn't have any better idea than I what to do with them.



Ok, so you may have a fancy iPhone 4 or 4G or whatever the hell the latest version is, but did your kids give you an iPhone case with a llama in a yellow cab on the back? I didn't think so. I win.

--------------

Speaking time on my (or anyone else's) hands, I heard the other day that American GDP had rebounded to pre-financial crisis levels. Yet unemployment remains at 9%. Does it not occur to anyone that there's only so much work that the economy can support and that if some combination of technology and increases in worker productivity mean that it takes fewer workers to do that much work, there can't help but be fewer jobs? This doesn't seem all that complicated a notion to me. The obvious thing to do here is to have people who do work work fewer hours so that more people can work.

The slightly less obvious answers are to end the wars and tax the rich, but, truly, those answers are only slightly less obvious. I don't feel like getting into it right now, though.

--------------

So one of the ways I've been spending my temporarily somewhat more available free time is on the very popular iPhone (and, I'm sure, other smart phone/tablet/whatever) app Words with Friends. I don't like to brag, but most of the time I kick ass at this game.



I especially love it when I'm trailing coming into the last round, and I pull a humongous score out on the last word to take the game.



But I also like leading from start to finish, crushing the hopes and dreams of my opponents. Yeah, I'm a little bit ruthless when I play.



I win somewhere between 85 and 90 percent of my games I reckon (Hey, app developers, how about some better tracking of my record and statistics? I paid the $0.99 for the non-free version of this game, and I realize it's only a pittance, but the only thing I got was an absence of ads. Maybe come up with some features and more people will buy? It seems reasonable to me.), but I'm sure that much of my success is due to playing random opponents. Some of y'all must rule at this game: challenge me!

No One Ever Gets There But You Can Try

Recent events:

This past Sunday, I was the soloist at church. I'm the soloist at church regularly, mostly because I'm a reliably good singer, but also because I'm willing and able to sing without much notice. This last time, for example, the music director sent out an email to her list of soloists and small groups, and she had a series of dates for which she needed music, and one of those dates was ten days after the email. Other people started responding quickly (reply all? yikes!) for the later dates, but I was pretty sure that I'd be the only one to say, "Sure, I can sing a week from Sunday." That means I get one thirty-minute rehearsal before choir practice on a Thursday night, plus a run through before the service on Sunday morning. I've been singing for a long time, so I can do that, provided I don't want to do something difficult. So no Handel arias, but I do get a fair amount of freedom in deciding what I want to sing, so long as it's arguably appropriate to the sermon topic. This past Sunday, the sermon was about learning, so I chose three selections from Schoolhouse Rock. It's decidedly kick-ass to get to sing Schoolhouse Rock in church. I did "Interjections" for the prelude, "My Hero Zero" just before the sermon, and "Conjunction Junction" as the postlude. They were very well received, particularly by people about my age, for whom they were moments of major nostalgia. Saturday morning TV from the 70s. That was before Scooby Doo jumped the shark, y'know.

Also in attendance was That Guy, whom I have been dating for about ten months now. He'd never heard me sing before, neither had he been to my church, so it was nice of him to come. His comment, after hearing and seeing me do "Conjunction Junction": "Who knew you had so much rhythm? We have to go dancing sometime." There's no pleasure without pain, I reckon.

I am somewhat unfamiliar with the world of intermediate-term dating. The last two times I dated anyone for over six months, I ended up married to and/or cohabitating with said person for a period of thirteen and six years, respectively. I don't foresee any such outcome with That Guy, but then I have given up on trying to see what's coming. I'm content with the way things are.



This past Tuesday, EFU came home from classes (she is now pursuing a Master's in education; she is also doing a student teaching internship this year) and announced that there was "a situation," by which she meant that she'd picked up a stray dog on her way home. The stray dog had been running in traffic on a major highway, and I could hardly object to her having saved a dog (her mother, on the other hand, would certainly have turned the dog away). This particular dog was an extraordinarily well behaved golden retriever who, alas, made me itch. A craiglist ad and a visit to the local humane society later, Lexi (we had temporarily named her Lola, which seemed appropriate because we were having trouble getting a good look under the hood, so we thought she was a she, but we weren't certain) has been returned to her owner, who was apparently having some issues with her invisible fence. Operator error, I reckon.

Earlier this year, I had started the process of adopting a rescue greyhound, but then EFU had said that she might seek employment abroad next year when she's finished with her master's degree. Part of the deal with getting a dog was that I'd have someone else around to walk him or her during the part of the year when I regularly work fourteen-hour days. Now that Lexi/Lola has gone, EFU very much wants a permanent dog, so I will likely restart the adoption process, provided I can satisfy myself that the allergy issue either won't recur or will be manageable. I'm not allergic to That Guy's dog, but it's a Labradoodle, a breed known for not causing allergy. And for the first few years b&c and I were living together, he had an elderly Sheltie who never caused me any problems at all. My mother's dog (a Shitzu) also doesn't make me itch, so the whole thing is a puzzlement.



September has become a month when a lot of things happened. Personal things, that is. February is the biggest month for commemorations since I and the girls were all born in February. September holds the anniversaries of my father's birth (80 years), his death (1 year), and the purchase of my house (2 years). These are not occasions for which one sends greeting cards (at least not any more), and the actual dates tend to sneak up on me and then pass so that I only realize a day or two later, but they're still big time reminders of that whole tempus fugit thing. I reckon in two -- or at most three -- years I'll have to think for a while to remember how many years it will have been since any of those events happened.

I don't much like to dwell on the passage of time because it makes me sad, and it's not like I can do anything about it. I mean, sure, there are people who say that a keen awareness of the brevity of life helps them live life to the fullest, but lately I've begun to wonder whether living life to the fullest isn't more trouble than it's worth. Don't get me wrong. If you're the sort of person who wants to climb Everest or worry about his legacy, then go for it, and good for you. I'm just not convinced that, in the long run, achievement is better than contentment. I go back and forth on that one, but consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, right? Some days I want to get stuff done; other days, I just want to sit on the couch and watch the girls play Legend of Zelda (Wind Waker is my favorite, but I'm really not that picky) or make out with a nice guy. I'm convinced that the relatively breathtaking technological progress of Western civilization is mostly evidence that Europeans were bad in the sack. Nowadays, I reckon Europeans are more content than in the past (which likely means that they're better lays, but I suppose it could be all the alcohol; let's hope it's both), but I think that's because they're mostly over the notion of conquest.

I don't know exactly when I got over the notion of conquest, but I'm clearly a lot more content these days than I used to be, and it's not only because I'm so much better in the sack (I jest, but then again, I don't) than I used to be. I'd like to think that it's something like wisdom, but the more likely answer is that it's just time.

Old

I lose track of my age all the time. Or at least I lose track of TED's age. TED, of course, is an Internet construct, but the differences between me-TED and me-just me are not profound. And TED not infrequently shows up in my offline life, since it's the name I have used to arrange many of my encounters of a horizontal nature. This quasi-double identity has never presented much of a problem, in part because many of these encounters are a one-off, but also because I have grown accustomed to hearing myself called TED by the people who know me in a primarily horizontal context.

There is one gentleman in particular who phones or texts me with some regularity, and his usual spiel begins, "Hey, TED. I'm in the city, and I thought I might stop by and say hello." He always refers to horizontal quality time as "saying hello": he has since the very first time we met. (As euphemisms go, HQT is infinitely superior to "say hello.") His meaning was relatively clear, but part of me wanted to say, "You're coming all the way out here just to say hello? Don't you want to fuck?" But I suppose politeness and gentility are very important to him (politeness is important to me, too), and I have noticed that there is sometimes a correlation between politeness before HQT and depravity during it, and that's a good thing.

Anyway, this particular gentleman doesn't know my real name, and it's unlikely that he ever will. I think (I have not done the math) that in most cases where there's a repeat offender, I let him know my real name, but the two minutes of polite post-coital conversation that I regularly have with this guy are entirely indicative of a desire on his part to be genteel: he has no real interest in who I am. Besides, he lives in Northern Virginia, and by my reckoning, a gay man living in NoVA is only a click or two away from being GOProud. I suppose that it's wrong, or at least a little sad, to be so dismissive of someone who is so eager (on occasion) to see me and who (more importantly) kisses well, but there it is. There is a reasonable probability that at some point during the next few months I will be asked to move an existing relationship to an exclusive level, and if that's the case, I won't have any regrets saying goodbye to Mr. NoVA. Would that I could say that about all of my horizontal acquaintance, but I suppose I'll cross those bridges if and when I have to.

The keeping-track-of-my-age question is really mostly important in the context of TED because the only people who give a rat's ass about my age are folk on the Internet who want to meet me for nefarious purposes, and for the most part, these people want, or at least expect, to be lied to. In that vein, a few years back, I quipped to my then-partner that for Internet purposes, I was going to be forty-three for the next few years, until such time as my birth certificate would indicate that I was fifty, at which point I would leap frog directly to fifty-five, where I intended to stay, presumably until death.

I mention this mainly as the background that explains why when V. (formerly b&c, the aforementioned then-partner) emailed me a couple of months back to ask who* he should invite to my fiftieth birthday party, he also asked me how old I intended to be. I sent him some names, but I told him I'd have to get back to him on my age. I'm still working on that

It hadn't occurred to me that V., or anybody, would be throwing me a party, but it was very nice of him, and I found -- after he'd told me it was happening -- that I was rather looking forward to it. My birthday (which, to my everlasting pique, I share with Ronald Reagan: we differ by exactly half a century; also, I'm still breathing) falls right on the cusp of when tax season usually starts to kick into a higher gear, so I typically celebrate it by buying myself something nice and cashing a small check from my mother.

Mom had asked me, a couple of weeks prior to my birthday, whether I was worried about turning fifty. She said that my father had had a very difficult time with fifty. This puzzled me: my father never seemed to have much difficulty accepting the inevitable. Besides, it's just fifty. It's my impression that forty is typically the more difficult milestone (some would say thirty in the gay community, but at thirty I was still in fairly deep denial), and I don't recall any angst at forty, so why should fifty bother me? Nothing really happens when you turn fifty except that you start getting pestered to join AARP (which is, I suppose, a bit of a knock to people who bother to open their junk mail), and you can put more money in your 401(k) or other qualified retirement plan.** And I suppose that there's a somewhat ominous medical procedure that your doctor recommends merely by virtue of your age, but I've found that it's better not to mention that somewhat ominous medical procedure, unless you want people to go on -- at great length and in an inappropriate amount of detail and in a manner that's meant to be reassuring but is not -- about that procedure. And you do not want this.

The party itself was a lot of fun, though a bit of a blur. I had about twelve ounces of wine upon arrival, and -- loath though I am to admit it -- twelve ounces of wine pretty much ensures that I'm going to be pleasantly drunk for several hours. And when I say "pleasantly drunk," I mean drunk enough that when someone presents me with a rainbow-glitter top hat and a purple feather boa, I don them with good humor, but not so drunk that I don't remember to insist that someone take a picture of it with my iPhone. That way, no one feels the need to capture elsewhere that particular ridiculous outfit, and I maintain control over the image. As it happens, the glitter top hat (in jewel tones) is a pretty good look for me. That guy kept telling me how good it looked on me. For days afterward he mentioned it.

I had asked V. to invite that guy to the party because it seemed like we had been dating long enough for him to meet some of my friends. This was a matter of some trepidation for me, not his meeting my friends, but I was not thrilled about explaining to V. that I'm dating someone in a manner that may not be entirely casual, and I wasn't sure how that guy would feel about being invited. But V. wasn't the least bit troubled, and that guy loves a party. That guy, in fact, appears to love any party: this is not something we have in common. But we did both have a great time at my fiftieth, and my friends all liked him, of course.

(In fact, one of them liked him so much that he asked that guy out, probably -- I am giving him the benefit of the doubt here -- because he didn't realize that I and that guy were dating. That guy went, not realizing that he'd been on a date until he was recounting the evening to me, and I said, "Dude. You were on a date." A month later, that guy is still not quite ready to concede the point, arguing -- rightly -- that going on a date with the man in question would be like going out with a certain public television children's television host who is known for make believe. Of course, a lot of people really like cardigans: I don't judge. I am highly amused by the entire incident. To my shame, I am not above whistling "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" at inappropriate moments, which never fails to elicit, "It was not a date.")

I've had about six weeks now to get used to the notion of fifty, but I am still unable to ascribe any particular meaning, let alone dread, to it. I think for a lot of men, the forties are typically a period of great struggle and the fifties are more a period of stability and acceptance, but I've always been pretty good about acceptance, and stability is always an illusion, albeit a pleasant one. I do feel qualitatively and significantly different (and better) than I did a year ago, in a number of ways, but this has nothing to do with fifty, and everything to do with the death of my father. As awful as that was, getting through it has opened me up in ways that I could not have anticipated. It is a useful coincidence that his death occurred a few months before I hit fifty.

I still haven't figured out what to do about TED's age, though. Fifty is a nice, round number, and it's easy to remember, but there's a certain hunger and disreputability to the mid- to late-forties that is much more useful for the purposes of TED. I don't think I'm quite ready to give that up, but it may be only a matter of time.


*I have elected not to use "whom" here. I am not up to arguing about it.

**Fifty also presents some horizontal opportunities with the sort of, often young, person who will only date people fifty or over, but, apparently, I do not look sufficiently fifty for this sort of person. Alas. I am starting to get some flecks of gray in my hair, and I'm very happy about that, though more for aesthetic than horizontal reasons. I have always wanted to be salt and pepper.