DATING APOCALYPSE

Since December I’ve been awaiting a six-week in-patient treatment program for my eating disorder. As I’ve had traumatic experiences in hospital before, I pushed for a three-month group home option instead. Unfortunately, the medical team feels my symptoms are serious enough to require hospitalization first. (That’s right, my six weeks in hospital may be followed up with three months in the group home.) Seems my forty years of eating disordered behaviors really did a number on me.

Knowing I’ll be stepping out of real life for a significant chunk of time, I’ve told myself that dating is not an option. After all, it’s far from ideal beginning a relationship with hospital visits as part of the courtship. So no dating.

Still, there’s a little dreamer inside me—persistent sucker—that says this is when it happens. Off the market, I’m suddenly of interest.

But, no. There hasn’t been some hunky dude trying to strike up a conversation with me on an elevator. I haven’t had some dreamboat wanting to share my bench at the gym. An adorkable man hasn’t asked me about the ripeness of melons at the grocery store. I’m as invisible as I’ve ever been.

Same goes for online. I may tell myself that I broke up with the dating apps (or we’re taking an extended break), but it feels like the apps dumped me first. My inbox is empty. Always. I’ve even wondered if OkCupid is working anymore. Maybe the site shut down so no new messages are possible. For anyone. Ah, delusion. I wear it well.

I should correct something. I’m not as invisible as ever. I’m more invisible, if that’s even possible. I guess I knew it was coming. It’s part of being fifty-something. The younger set doesn’t notice you. Not even the forty-nine year olds. In gay culture, you’re supposed to step on an iceberg and float away. I do like the cold but I’m a little afraid of polar bears. Cute but beastly. So no thank you to the iceberg. No thank you even to Palm Springs. I am the walking dead in Vancouver. Without the zombie allure.

Technically, I should have company. There should be some other fifty-somethings, newly or perennially single. But I can’t identify them. Some have wisely decided to live as shut-ins, taking advantage of home delivery groceries and restaurants that hire cyclists to bring a jumbo burger and double order of fries to their door. Older gay men online have taken to lying about their age. A “fifty-five year old” is really mid to late sixties if not seventy-three. The fifties set pretends to be forty-two, maybe forty-five,...something far enough away from that dreaded half-century milestone. It’s blatant lying mixed with wishful thinking and the cop-out line, Everybody does it. In some ways, I get it. I too wonder how the hell I ever became fifty-four. I still feel thirty-four. I still want to believe I look that age. Or forty-four. It’s true, I’ve had people tell me I don’t look my age (although that’s become a much rarer occurrence). Basically, fifty-somethings are in hiding. So how are we supposed to find each other?

But, again, I’m not supposed to be thinking about such things. I’m supposed to have chosen this dateless predicament. I should really be focused on eating more and exercising less. Still, it doesn’t feel good, knowing that six weeks from my hospital admission—or six weeks and three months from then—I’ll be facing datelessness for real.

Maybe ice floes aren’t so bad. Maybe polar bears won’t sniff me either!