Salmon Turns Out to Be Herring

I'm feeling better about The Philosopher, now that I have some perspective on it. I can't help suspecting the problem for him was physical attraction, possibly due to my age. My only evidence for the latter is that he listed women 35 and over in his search; this is a bit unusual for men of 65, because it implies they think women 30 years younger will respond to them. Twenty years younger is common as grass, but not 30. Now, I'm a bit spoiled in my dealings with men; in all modesty, they usually like me, unless it's obvious to both of us that it's not going to happen. The button that The Philosopher pushed is my fear that this appeal I've had for men is changing as I grow older. And I can't help noticing that I keep growing older.

But I was cheered by the thought that I had three more starters at the firing line coming up. That is, I had written to about six more gentlemen, and several who seemed promising answered. Today was H, a therapist who lives and works on the Upper East Side. Since he also has a Masters in literature, he had the commonality thing going for him again. We had made a date for coffee today by email before talking, and had only a brief conversation to confirm the time and place. But the brief conversation was disconcerting. He dithered, asked questions I had already answered, sounded aged and fragile. Oh dear. I wasn't looking forward to this, but it seemed rude to cancel, so I went. I was glad I had decided not to repeat the lunch syndrome, which was getting expensive and fattening.

It was actually worse than anticipated: I won't use the word "torture" out of respect for victims of war, but I will say that I kept wondering how soon I could escape without hurting his feelings. And he had walked all the way from the East Side to my own area on the West Side, so I felt I had to pay him back for his ergs of exercise. It started badly when I saw him -- his looks sort of matched his telephone voice. Then there was a lot of fussing about where we'd sit. It had to be the back of the cafe, there couldn't be noise, we had to locate where the music was coming from so we could avoid it. Except there was no music. When we finally sat I discovered the reason for all this: there was a hearing aid in one ear.

I felt bad that I had attributed the fussing to his personality instead of to a handicap (though it would have been better if he had simply told me about his deafness), but in fact it turned out that it wasn't just his condition. (I have noticed that life is often like this, haven't you?) He actually was an irritating person. It seemed to me that his deafness was both physical fact and apt metaphor. He spoke about uninteresting things in an uninteresting way, and I couldn't even get him to tell his life story, which usually keeps my attention as a last resort. For an hour he asked a zillion questions and then cut me off immediately every single time I tried to answer. I couldn't help wondering how he operates as a therapist. And obviously a successful one, as he supports an office in a wealthy area of the Upper East Side. I felt I was in a Woody Allen movie, like the one where Marshall McLuhan appears to explain the film Woody is waiting to see. I wanted Freud to materialize and tell me what exactly H's patients see in him.

Don't get me wrong, he was a nice guy. And I've rarely been so motivated to leave for the library to get to work, so I'll give him that. Plus the full-body eye-sweep he gave me at the farewell reminded me that The Philosopher had done nothing of the sort, either at meeting or parting, and that's more evidence for the latter's lack of physical attraction to me. I must remember to take that as a sign: look for the ever-common full-body eye-sweep, and if not there, do not push.

Next is the letter I, who seems to be quite a character, and J, from Brooklyn, who is more promising. But I'm starting to have serious doubts about the promises that dating profiles make. And profiles are all you have to go on before you sample the products, unfortunately. So they are pretty much in the same relation to what you are going to get as those greener-than-thou ads for British Petroleum are to what really happens in the ocean.