The Scope Narrows

Today I had lunch with B, who had beeen too busy to see me the last two weeks. He's the one whose wife is in a nursing home. A lovely man, unfortunately not in the physical sense. I'd forgotten that he's 75 years old, and he appeared even older to me.

We talked about politics, about which we mostly agree, but it was the usual: he was eager to tell me his opinions on current events, not to hear my own apercues. This doesn't bother me when someone knows more than I do, or has fascinating things to say, but alas, not in B's case. I'm quite sure that a single man will never read this blog, but if he did, I'd like to tell him that the secret to capturing a woman is to ask her questions and actually listen to the answers. It really isn't all that hard to do.

So then I asked about B's life (he was totally uninterested in mine). He's been married over 40 years, and his wife was an unusual woman. Though she didn't go to college, she rose from secretary to a high-level position at a financial firm, making tons of money before she became ill. I was way more interested in her than I was in B himself. He told me the wrenching story of her degenerative illness, and while I was touched, I did feel the randomness of it: I don't know this person and I'm hearing these intimate details -- why?

B seems well-off; he lives in a pricey zip code in Manhattan, and has a house in the most expensive part of the Hamptons. Yet he accepted my offer to pay for my lunch, which came to ten dollars (I had an appetizer). I know many men are sensitive about being exploited (see Rushed Lifestyle Man) and complain about women's expectations of being treated to meals, so I'm fine with any way of doing it. I always pay for myself unless someone insists, but with the house in the Hamptons, I confess I thought he'd insist. Oh well. I can afford ten dollars too.

One interesting moment in his tale: when he proposed marriage to his wife, she broke down and told him the awful truth that she was seven years older than he was. He emphasized this as though she had been withholding the news that she had infectious plague. He immediately withdrew the marriage proposal in the face of this horror: when I'm 43, he reported thinking, she'll be fifty! Of course this made me feel about 100. Some time later he realized he missed her and they did get married, but apparently her advanced age bothered him for decades. I pointed out that he is eleven years older than I am, did that bother him? No? Wasn't that a double standard? He looked mightily confused, but came back with: I just go by what pleases me. If a woman doesn't like my age, she's free to withdraw.

Though I liked B, I can't see hanging out with him. And one reason is that he feels too old for me. Put that in your irony pipe and smoke it.

Coming up next: three big fish swim near my net; meeting one tomorrow, one Saturday, and one not yet pinned down. And these are salmon, not little herrings.

And I've made a new resolution: I am disavowing the Broad Scope Principle.

Though the fava bean tortellini appetizer at Nice Matin was fabulous.