WHEN HE WON’T TAKE OBLIVIOUS FOR AN ANSWER

I’d recently written here and here about my puzzlement over a budding friendship with a guy who lives in my building whom I run into often at the gym on the first floor. He’s married to a woman whom he introduced me to a few months ago when we ran into each other on the street, an odd moment seeing each other out of the regular setting, maskless even. A quick hello, a hasty getaway on my part. Chitchat is not my strength. 

 

Damien is a likable guy and we’ve got some things in common so I always said “sure” when he suggested we go for a walk sometime. Still, I’d had some weird vibes, as though Damien might be interested in me. Silly thinking, I kept telling myself. I’m that sort of Guy Next Door who oozes niceness, albeit awkwardly, but doesn’t register to people in a possibly sexualized, I’m-Into-You way. In the past, I’ve wished otherwise, but I have to assume some kids keep fishing out my tossed fountain coins before the aqua-genies can make things happen. (It’s only one of the reasons I’ve gone cashless.) When we finally set up a time to go on that walk, I thought, whew, he’s not gay. After all, most gays I’ve known don’t follow through. At the very least, they’re never on time. He showed up on the dot. 

 

So, it was clear. Not gay. Proceed to possible friendship…with caution, of course, as my chitchat challenges could flub it up. And yet, throughout the walk, he kept dropping gay-leaning hints…a guy’s abs, his love of musical theater, comments over my fitness.

 

Okay, then maybe Damien’s bisexual. I don’t have any bisexual friends. It’s very possible that a bisexual man and a gay man can be just friends, especially when the bi guy is married, right? Even if there was any other sort of interest, I doused them when I explained that my fitness was rooted in an eating disorder. Not sexy. 

 

I know how to repel men; I just don’t know how to attract them. 

 

Since then, I’ve put off Damien’s suggestions we go for another walk or grab coffee. A month has passed. I’ve seen him in the gym a couple of times, but he can’t talk much on the StairMaster and I do my best to look especially focused on chest presses. I maintain that grunting is uncouth, but I can conjure one up the equivalent in one of those cartoon thought bubbles above my head. Damien texts now and then. I never initiate, but I was raised with enough social skills to know that a reply is in order. Keep things cool. Let that bi-gay friendship emerge slowly. 

 

Our second walk is on Friday and I’m concerned based on Damien’s recent texts. I keep telling myself it’s nothing, that I have no grounds for intuiting anything suggestive, but Damien seems intent on breaking down my act at being oblivious. 

 

FIRST RED FLAG: "Hey there. How’s life? We will find some time for that coffee. Gabi goes to Toronto on September 2 for a week."

 

Okay, nothing, right? Coffee when the wife is out of town is just because the guy’s got more free time. Nothing else at play. It’s fine.

 

SECOND RED FLAG: "Hey sweet friend. I have Friday off. You free for some coffee and conversation?"

 

No doubt, guys say “sweet friend” all the time to other guys. Good riddance, “Bro” and “dude.” The only reason I’m not familiar with it as a regular practice is because I’m not up on regular social exchanges between platonic male relationships, especially in platonic bi-gay friendships. It’s just Damien’s way of saying, Thank god we can drop that machismo shit. Should I be flattered (and perplexed) that he thought I had any machismo to drop in the first place? Maybe it’s from not shaving as much during COVID.

 

He’d suggested meeting for coffee and I replied my schedule was open.

 

THIRD RED FLAG: "Looking forward always. I am wide open too. Sans spouse."

 

Um, still okay. I guess. Must not read anything into the “wide open” remark or the reminder that his coffee will be away. Happy couples often look forward to a bit of space. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

 

I ran into Damien in the gym yesterday. It wasn’t my regular time, but I had to fit in a workout before some dental surgery. 

 

FOURTH RED FLAG: "Happy thoughts with your laughing gas. Let me know if you need anything at all. Heal fast. Bjs."

 

Um…

 

What do I make of the last three letters? Did his phone fail to autocorrect “bye”? The j and y keys are awfully close together. Same for s and e.

 

I Googled “what does bjs mean,” and it turns out there are other possibilities. Sure, I had to scroll down quite a bit, but I found them. Could be the Bureau of Justice Statistics which is the primary source of criminal justice stats in the U.S. Hmm, possible. Could be Beaux Jardins du Soleil, located in what Wikipedia says is a commune in southwestern France, admittedly a random reference, but perhaps Damien was watching a documentary on YouTube. Other plausible options: basic job skills, British Journal of Surgery, a videogame called Battle Just Started, the Beloit Janesville Symphony (established 1954) or the code for an airport in Beijing.

 

Okay then, Damien likes a symphony in Wisconsin. There is so much to learn in the early stages of a friendship.  

 

If “Bjs” meant something sexual, it would have fit better before “Heal fast,” right? Maybe “bjs” means something else. Maybe Damien’s into K-pop and mistyped BTS, even if I can’t figure out why he’d end a text with an announcement about musical fandom. I replied with, “Everything went well, thanks. Glad it’s over.” Should I have tacked on “abba”? Maybe “sarabareilles”?

 

Good god, life taunts me. Social situations with people I don’t know well are awkward enough. I don’t need them spiked with additionally awkward elements. I’m bracing for a possible Friday morning text in which he says, “Hey, I just brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Come on down.”

 

No, no. I’m way past the days of someone saying, “Wanna come in for a drink?” Okay, the only time I ever heard that was while watching TV but, jeez, I’ve spent my entire life being cast as the harmless Guy Next Door with the genitalia of a department store mannequin. For once, let me land the role when I actually want it. This is one week when I don’t think I’ll be saying TGIF. 

 

 

 

MEMORIAL (Book Review)

By Bryan Washington

(Riverhead Books, 2020)

This is the story of two young gay men, one Black, one Japanese, living together in Houston. They’ve been in a relationship for a couple of years and their future is uncertain. Going forward may be the easier option, but is it the right one?

 

Time doesn’t stand still to allow people to stop and assess a situation. In most cases, there isn’t even the space to permit two people to step into a bubble to talk things through, uninterrupted. There always seems to be other matters and other people to attend to. That is no different for Benson and Mike. 

 

Enter the mother. Mike’s. She’s flown in from Japan to see her son, but Mike hasn’t told her he’s flying out the next day to Japan to see and take care of his dying dad, from whom he’s estranged. This will leave Mike’s mother with Ben, at Mike and Ben’s place, until Mike returns, whenever that may be, if he returns at all.

 

If you’re like me, or basically any somewhat logical person, you’ll want to ponder that setup again. What?! Why would someone allow his mother to fly from another continent for a visit only to take off, leaving her with a boyfriend whom, by the way, she’s never met? Why, in fact, would he allow her to fly in from the country where he’s going? Sure, she lives in Tokyo and the father, her ex, lives in Osaka but, even without checking Google Maps[1], most of us know that Houston is a hell of a long way from either Japanese city. Who would do that to his mother? Who would do that to his partner?

 

You have to go with the premise. You have no choice…unless you wish to abandon the book and go back to watching reruns of “Friends” or pick up a different book about something more plausible, something perhaps with sharks that fly and humans that shoot bullets from their nostrils.

 

I chose to read on. Nostril warfare sounds too violent. Still, for a story in which I think author Bryan Washington wants you to like both of the main characters, Mike is starting off at a distinct disadvantage. I mean, what an asshole, right? Sure, he’s off on a noble mission to take care of his father, but he knew about the father’s situation before his mother made the flight. She’s the one who broke the news to him…while she was still in Tokyo! 

 

The dying dad is an acceptable plot point to separate the two men, to allow them to think about where their relationship is at. The de facto mother-in-law being forced to live with the boyfriend is an unnecessary contrivance. Why does she even choose to stay in Houston when her son bails on her? Presumably, she’s going to have to fly back anyway. Why would she stick around?

 

I do like “Friends,” but I haven’t gotten into watching it in syndication. I suppose I could’ve watched the Olympics. But I didn’t. I said, Okay, lame premise, I’ll stop questioning you and try my best to focus on what will become of Ben and Mike. 

 

The story is told in three large chunks, the first and final parts told from Benson’s point of view while in Houston and the middle section is Mike’s experience in Japan. I didn’t feel like the two characters’ voices were distinguishable enough, something that is a challenge for most writers. Different POVs (points of view) is a fun structure to take on, but it works best when the characters are wildly different. Both Mike and Ben come off with similar outlooks, ennui mixed with indecision, which happens to be a potent combo to create a sort of paralysis. Their relationship is just hanging there. Maybe it’ll continue. Maybe it won’t. Even a shoulder shrug requires too much effort.

 

It’s all stereotypically millennial. I don’t care. Or maybe I do. Why should I have to figure it out?

 

Indeed, why should I?

 

Unfortunately, it’s not just the two main characters who can’t truly express themselves. Every other character seems just as incapable or unwilling. From Ben’s father to both of Mike’s parents, to a younger guy who works for Mike’s father, they all live shrouded in cloaks with stenciling on the back that says, “Don’t make me say or do anything I might really mean.” It’s taboo for anyone to express any sort of fondness for anyone else. Of course, they do. Begrudgingly. Fleetingly. Not directly but snidely, gruffly, often through action that goes against surface statements that would indicate otherwise. If it were one character, a reader might think, Well, isn’t she a curmudgeon? When it’s everyone, the thought is, Why am I still reading this? 

 

It’s going to sound cheap, but I kept reading because I bought the hardcover book last fall, paying thirty-six bucks Canadian, a harder pill to swallow when the book jacket reminds me it’s only twenty-seven American.  The book had been resting on my coffee table, begging to be picked up but being ignored (and too rarely dusted) because I was inundated with all the holds I’d placed on books from the library while it was shut down during lockdown. My pickups at the Have to Read nook at my local branch kept coming, three or four at a time. Ignoring Memorial for so long, I felt more duty-bound to read it all the way through. All those feelings of abandonment it had, seemingly forgotten alongside a heavily faded New York Times article I’d cut out about men getting neck lifts…I had to make it up to it.  (I’ll blame this extended period of total and pseudo lockdown for the fact I’ve come to think of books as my sad clique, a group they, no doubt, never wanted to be a part of. There’s no point in scrutinizing whether my pre-pandemic life was any less sad or weird.) 

 

So, yeah, I stuck with the book, reading it until the end.

 

The strange thing is, despite having legitimate things to bicker about with Memorial, I did not hate the book. I suppose I liked it, in that same sort of begrudging way that some of its characters may have liked each other. I cared about Ben and Mike the way I care about relationships of friends that got off to a good start but now seem to be coasting, drifting aimlessly. I found myself rooting for the fictional pair just as I root for my friends. Sometimes having the luxury of a bit of distance from the epicentre of a relationship, one can see its continuing value and put aside the daily moments of dissatisfaction and the wonders of whether there could be something better out there. But then that distance of outsiders like me includes an unknowing as to how dysfunctional things may be. Washington gives us some insight. Things are definitely dysfunctional with Ben and Mike. Is what they have enough?  

 

I do recommend Memorial despite its flaws. We all know relationships like Ben and Mike’s. We all know of people who shrug aplenty, but never take a step. An ex of mine was fond of that crass expression, “There comes a time when you have to shit or get off the pot.” It’s the kind of thing one--or all--of these characters might say. Bryan Washington is a good writer. I’m interested in reading more of his work. With more life experiences of his own, I hope he’ll develop more varied characters and plots with more oomph. 

---

[1] Okay, I went there…to Google Maps, that is. Driving distance from Tokyo to Osaka: 506 kilometres. Flight time: one hour. Driving distance from Houston to Osaka: CAN’T DO IT! Physical distance 11,075 kilometres. Flight time: seventeen hours.

THE IN-BETWEENERS: What to Do after a Middling First Date

Bad first dates make for easy decisions. No thanks. Never again. Have a nice life. Sometimes I’ve meant that last part; sometimes I’ve thought he doesn’t deserve the sentiment.

 

A bad date is not a total loss. It makes for a story to tell my friend Ron when we meet next for pizza. (Poor Ron.) He professes to have zero interest in dating but has politely listened for years to my dating adventures--usually too dull to be true “adventures”. I tell myself that sharing a bad episode is his reward for sitting through talk about all the others. (I’m thinking I need to pay for his pizza next time. That might be a better reward.) 

 

Bad dates also make for fun blog posts, my one-sided smears of a perhaps misunderstood man becoming a distracting read for three or four people who might say to themselves, “Thank god he got away from that one.” No need to probe whether the “he” in that thought is me or the other guy.

 

Good dates also have predictable follow-ups. Of course, I’m going to send another message…unless he, fingers crossed, messages me first, preferably before I even get home. Eagerness is sexy when it arises in the context of mutual interest. Sometimes the good date leads to a second date; other times--sigh--it leads to nothing. No reply. Checking my inbox on the dating site dozens of times doesn’t change the result. Mr. Right becomes Mr. Out of Sight.

 

Sometimes I share this unfortunate episode with Ron, but often we just talk about the pizza crust. Ron is a foodie and can talk at length about crusts. I listen as intently as I can. I owe him that for having his ear when I unload about a bad date. I also often blog the good first dates that lead to nothing. I tell myself that stories laced with dejection, anguish, bewilderment and resentment make for a good read. Maybe it’s a pick-me-up for them. “Well, at least I’m not him!”

 

As for the good dates that lead to an encore, I share some and keep mum about others. The ones I’m tight-lipped about tend to be those I think might lead to something longer term. I don’t want to jinx things. I also don’t want there to be a trail for my 💖Future Husband💖 to read three years later. “What do you mean you didn’t like my flannel shirt? And what’s the big deal if I ate three-fourths of your scone after I asked if I could have a taste? The wedding’s off!” I get no credit for mentioning his puppy-dog brown eyes.

 

The hardest first dates to walk away from are the in-betweeners. Nothing bad about the occasion. The guy made an effort in picking a shirt without a ketchup stain (or is that blood…his or someone else’s?). He didn’t talk about his top five Trump rallies he’d attended in the past year. (Not even one!) Alas, a nice shirt and no professed affinity for a certain election loser do not suffice to constitute a match. 

 

When I mention one of these dates to Ron, he just keeps eating his pizza. He doesn’t ask, “Why don’t you go out again?” He doesn’t say, “I’ve had to listen to so many of these stories. Maybe you’re too picky.” He also knows not to say, “Perhaps you should look elsewhere for a relationship. Pizza will never let you down.” It would be a compelling argument. Bad pizza is better than most good dates.

 

Enter Mr. Saturday Night. (Technically, Mr. Saturday Afternoon.)

 

Our coffee meet-and-greet extended for ninety minutes. We laughed, he looked fine, he was nice. I really, really wanted to like him in that Carly Rae Jepsen kind of way. As I walked him to his car, the goodbye got cut off. Had this not been the COVID era, I might have hugged him but, even though we were both vaccinated, it just didn’t seem the thing to do. He stood in the bike lane, turned toward me, saying, “That was fun. I’d be into--”

 

I cut him off. “Biker coming!” I swear I didn’t plan that. He stepped toward me instead of toward his car, but the moment was gone. Further pleasantries were cordial but nothing more. “Thanks for driving out this way.” “Ride your bike safely home.” “Have a great evening.” “Take care.”

 

Pedaling home, I figured I’d message him. Nice guys--as I believe both of us are--deserve a second date. But my mind kept asking, Why?

 

I knew I wasn’t interested in him in a dating sense. He’s more like the type of guy I’d meet at a backyard barbecue, the spouse of a co-worker or a new boyfriend of a friend of mine. We’d chat for ten minutes and I would walk away to get a bit more potato salad, feeling very happy for my co-worker/friend. They found a good guy. And that’s the thing…I don’t tend to want to date other people’s spouse or boyfriend. Thumbs-up does not mean, let’s date if your current gig doesn’t work out. I can be happy for them, even happy for myself that I made it through a conversation with a stranger and it seemed to go well for both of us. We can chat again at next year’s barbecue. 

 

After a couple of hours, I logged onto the dating site. By then, it was clear to me. I was hoping there wouldn’t be a message. There wasn’t. Relief. The guy’s not gaga. (I quickly quashed feeling a tad insulted.) Next morning, no message. Twenty-four hours later, no message…not from him, not to him. Sometimes, after a middling date, this is the best kind of match. 

 

Nice enough…but not enough.

 

HERE I GO AGAIN--Part Two (Glass Half Full)

Okay, so logging in to online dating sites wasn’t all bad. I just needed to get what has always bugged me out of the way. I get frustrated because there are guys who, to be blunt, don’t give a shit. 

 

I’m single, I’m looking. I spent three minutes creating a 

clever name: HotGuy69j. Go figure that nine other dudes 

already thought as clever as me.

 

Well, I’m done. Just waiting ‘round for all the messages

to pour in. Love when guys send stuff like ‘how r u’. 

Again, so clever.

 

All right, I’ll move on. I assure you, I look away from literal train wrecks. Need to work on transferring the skill to the figurative world.

 

There were some decent profiles. Four or five caught my eye. Because the good ones are relatively few, I tend to feel a sense of urgency when I see one. Must message immediately! He’ll be taken by Tuesday, married by October! “Cheers to the happy couple!” And then I’ll have to cross my fingers for a quickie divorce. 

 

One of the guys lives about fifty miles away. Not normally an issue. I’ve had a long-distance relationship with a guy in Portland, Oregon (320 miles away). Right now though, it is an issue. My car is in another part of the province, waiting for a part to arrive from a place that is apparently the most remote spot on the planet, suffering terribly with no Amazon delivery service and a state-run postal system still operated by stagecoach, all of which are currently out of service, parts pending from the second most remote location, on a different continent, of course. I’ll spare you the car story. As you may surmise, it’s a LOOOONG one.

 

I’m too old to hitchhike. And too old to be picked up. I hereby forfeit my chances with fifty-mile-away guy.

 

Another guy lives about thirty miles from me. I could walk it, but I don’t like the idea of lugging a tent on my back. I like even less the prospect of putting up the tent on the first night of my trek. I know my challenges. It won’t transform into a tent and will only serve as a tarp to lay on a bench so I’ve something between me and crusty bird poop. Ixnay thirty-mile guy, too. 

 

This is all good. It narrows things down and improves the likelihood that Guy 1 and Guy 2 will be scooped up by other suburban gays. Let this be my sacrifice to allow more people in smaller towns to have a personal connection to gay marriage, sitting on either side of the aisle.

 

To put things in perspective, I’m more bummed that my car is being held hostage by a posse of conniving rural mechanics than about the fact I lost out on two men who were clearly marriage material. It would have been embarrassing if I were in a wedding anyway, having no one sitting on my side of the aisle. (“Really, Mom, how good is that symphony orchestra in your neighboring East Texas community of 10,000? And there will be other mah-jongg tournaments.”)

 

Bright side to everything, folks. 

 

Over the next few days of reactivating my Plenty of Fish account, several people pressed a heart button in the corner of my profile. Bing. New email! “HotGuy69c likes you!” Ick. Good thing nineteen other guys got button-happy, too.

 

This kind of action is slightly better than that whole secret crush phase from junior high or, for me, my twenties. Like, heart, woof, wink…it’s bland and easy, but it is, technically, doing something. 

 

Over to me then. Gee, thanks. I wasn’t feeling so invested just yet. Presumably, I was still getting over losing two Mr. Rights living only a %@$*!6# car ride away.

 

The minimal response to a like/heart/woof/wink is to do the same thing in return. So I did. Two or three times.

 

Ha! Your move, RicoSuave2! 

 

This was progress!

 

A day later, I decided to be bolder. I would send a message to one of the guys to whom I’d sent like/heart/woof/wink.

 

I see you and I raise you.

 

This could actually lead to a coffee BEFORE I get my car back.

 

Even before opening my laptop, I’d decided the person I would message: an accountant in one of Vancouver’s closer suburbs. I could bike it or take Skytrain, our quickest form of mass transit. 

 

You may be thinking, An accountant? Aren’t there any professional surfers or lion tamers or helicopter pilots? Where’s the excitement? What about self-made billionaires or wildly successful physicians? A free meal might be nice, right? 

 

Really, an accountant seemed right in my lane. Aware of stereotypes, he promised in his profile that he had a personality. He even led with a joke, a decent one even. He posted three reasonably photographed pics, smiling in each. Like it or not, Calculator_Wiz was getting a message from me.

 

I logged in and had a message waiting for me. A first. Someone had dared to communicate beyond a like/heart/woof/wink. 

 

Calculator_Wiz.

 

I braced as I always do before opening a message. I had to prepare myself for facing blatant grammatical errors and incomplete sentences, if there were, in fact, more than three words in the message. Sometimes it’s just “hey,” a slightly more attention grabbing version of a like/heart/woof/wink, but always a stunt that backfires. Really? That’s the message?! 

 

Calm and ready for worst-case scenarios, I opened the message. I glanced at a standard salutation and then words. Plenty of words. Enough to make sentences, each correctly punctuated. I swear I wasn’t getting aroused, but I did let go of the tension in my neck and shoulders. 

 

By god, there were paragraphs. In the right places! I may have been a tad excited…not like winning the lottery, more like being informed I got a free bonus play because two out of seven of my numbers showed up on the Wednesday draw.

 

That’s what I seem to aim for now. Two out of seven is a good day. It beats nothing matching at all.

 

Calculator_Wiz hadn’t written me a dissertation and he hadn’t dazzled me with wit and Pulitzer-quality prose, but he’d communicated. Clearly. Properly. 

 

I messaged right back. Never mind that old game where you’re supposed to wait XX period of time to reply. Calculator_Wiz seemed of similar mindset. And so now it’s set. Coffee. I can bike to the spot, maybe make it a long walk. 

 

Ready or not, dating world, here I come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HERE I GO AGAIN--Part One (Glass Half Empty)

You don’t procrastinate doing things you really want to do. Two months ago, I blogged that, now fully vaccinated and perhaps staying in Vancouver for the indefinite future, I was teetering toward possibly reactivating my online dating profiles. But I didn’t. It became a “chore,” on my To Do list, a Post-it that no longer registered with my brain even though it was slapped right next to the handle on my fridge. It joined “mop under sofa” and “figure out how to put sliding door back on to cover laundry area.” Important, perhaps, but these are the kinds of things I rely on someone else to nag me about until one or both of us screams, “I’ve had it!” Prepare to die, dust bunnies. 

 

Days passed, then weeks. Did I really want to look at thumbnail pics of men again? Did I want to get rattled by the site’s less than genuine declaration that it sought to bring together people for healthy, happy relationships? Why then, dear Cupid, would the screen page default to “You might also like…” after I send someone a message? Are you telling me I aimed too high in writing a clever little note to VanMuscleMan? Don’t you just want me to click, click, click so you can show advertisers how heavily browsed your site is? (As a writer, specificity adds character to a piece, but I can’t recall a single advertiser and I’m not about to log in to peruse ads. I have better things to do. Like mopping under the sofa.)

 

On Sunday, I took a corner table at a café and finally logged in again, first having to tell OkCupid I’d forgotten my password and then surprising myself that I breezed right into Plenty of Fish. Oh, POF, if only we could break up for good. 

 

When I first joined these sites way back when I could still call myself middle-aged, it was all free. All my clicking presumably brought in enough income. Over time, the sites wanted my credit card deets in exchange for “highlighting my profile” with a gold star or maybe dancing pickles above the header. Very suggestive, right? I passed. I’m desperate enough to still be on your site but, dammit, I’m not $10.95 per month desperate. And the reduced rate if I go for the annual plan only admits the sad reality that, yes, I’m a likely candidate for site surfing into perpetuity. Hope and denial prevent me from making an economically savvy decision.

 

I updated my pics. I tweaked the paragraphs in my bio. I added and deleted interests. Seems I like the idea of kayaking more than actually going for a paddle. (But I’ve added it to my To Do list.)

 

I browsed. POF flashed the message “Someone Likes You” a few times. I would have to pull out my credit card to find out. No thanks. As I clicked on profiles, parts of each were cut off. Again, the site interrupted my search, imploring me to grab my VISA to “read Leif72’s full profile.” I was tempted. Leif is such a great name. So Nordic! I’m partial to all things Scandinavian. Leif and I could fika on the first date. (Don’t be sleazy, Dear Reader. Fika may be a four-letter f-word, but it’s perfectly acceptable to do in public, even with Granny Eriksson watching.) Still, I resisted the expenditure. I also made a note to revisit my profile to make sure my first paragraph, in particular, popped.

 

It turns out there was a legitimate reason for my procrastination. The catalog of men underwhelmed on both sites. OkCupid was especially chintzy in letting me browse for free. They’d made it so I could only see one profile at a time and I would have to do the equivalent to swiping left or right as a rash judgment for someone before I could see the next person at the mercy of my click finger. Four or five no’s and I had to stop. It felt harsh and dismissive, which it literally was, at least as to the latter part. I logged out. I haven’t gone back. It’s time for me to accept, once and for all, that OkCupid and I are not a match. All the best to you in your future pursuit of desperate men’s cash.

 

Plenty of Fish and I have a much longer previous relationship, albeit often acrimonious. Once I’d navigated around all the attempts to rob me of my meager funds, I took a deep breath, entered a search and looked at the results. After five minutes, I knew I needed an attitude adjustment. I was reacting with horror and hostility to many of the profiles. So many guys with the same photos I’d first seen years ago. It seems these guys don’t age and/or they don’t know how to take a quick selfie on their phone. While I think I could connect with another tech-challenged man, I’m turned off by the clear lack of effort here. 

 

Scroll, scroll.

 

More agitation. When you create a profile, you have a chance to show your best self. Unlike all the dreadful annual school photos, YOU get to choose the pics. Snap, delete ad infinitum until--Wow! This one’s not bad. Almost looks like me even after cropping, editing and choosing a “Dramatic Warm” iPhone filter. I’ve been deceived by a profile photo a time or two. But many of these Fishermen didn’t seem to get the art of self-promotion or even the concept of giving a damn. 

 

One guy posted a single photo, blurry, mostly of an indistinct background wall. (Sir, please go to YouTube and type “how to crop a photo” in the search window. Even easier, use the crop feature that POF provides before you post your pic.) 

 

Scroll.

 

Another guy who ascribes to the One Photo Is Enough school of thought posted a shot so dark that I wasn’t sure if I was looking at his face or a fire hydrant. Another man included several pictures, but I’m not sure what he was going for. One consisted of his feet and a shadow on the ground. Another had him holding up a barbecued rat (squirrel?) on a skewer. I don’t know about the others. The rat was enough of an unwelcome surprise. 

 

SCROLL!

 

Another guy demonstrated a knowledge of cropping skills, showing one shot of his abs--um, no complaints--and a second of him standing in gym attire in a locker room, his baseball cap and its shadow covering his face. What’s there to intuit? See me for my body, not my face.

 

The next profile featured a stunning photo of a camel. The guy was there too, kneeling behind, most of him obscured by said camel. So, he’s portraying himself as an adventurer. He went to Egypt, I presume, but why is my eye drawn to the camel? To be perfectly clear--and this is essential--I’m not into camels, but there’s a rule in acting that kids and animals will upstage you every time. Same for dating profile photos.

 

Scroll, scroll.

 

One guy added a caption under his photo: “danceing Through the Tulips”. 

 

You have no idea what kind of a battle Autocorrect and I had over that one. It got quite heated and the barista told me to quiet down or I’d have to leave. Here’s a partial transcript immediately after I first typed the tulip dancer’s photo caption:

 

                        Autocorrect:   Whoa! You’ve been drinking ciders 

                                                again, haven’t you?

                                      Me:    Have not.

                        Autocorrect:   Whatever. There. Fixed.

                                      Me:    No! It’s supposed to be that way.

                        Autocorrect:   Hell, no! Allow me to show you how 

                                                it’s supposed to be.

                                      Me:    I know that! I know how it’s supposed 

                                                to be. But I want it to look wrong.

                        Autocorrect:   Good god, don’t be daft. There. 

                                                Fixed again.

                                      Me:    Stop that. I need it to look exactly 

                                                how someone else wrote it.

                        Autocorrect:   That’s just mean. Surely, he’d want 

                                                things to look proper.

                                                That’s my raison d’être.

                                      Me:    Apparently not. I’m thinking he 

                                                turned you off.

                        Autocorrect:   The fool! Who would do such a thing?

                                      Me:    Exactly. So, it’s staying as is.

                        Autocorrect:   This is painful.

                                      Me:    Agreed. Let’s move on.

                        Autocorrect:   Yes. Let’s.

 

You’ll be happy to know the barista didn’t kick us out, but he looked at me oddly when I said my friend and I wanted to apologize.

 

Another gentleman claimed to be sixty-one. I double-checked that. Huh. This is one of those guys who thinks, I’ll just subtract ten, maybe fifteen. My friend Norma says I look young for my age. Dude, Norma was being nice. Be you. Be your age! I’ve heard men lament that no one will look at them if they give their real age. Hell, that’s MY lament. But it’s the reality. What are you going to do when you meet for coffee? Borrow that baseball cap from Mr. Abs?

 

AAAAAAAAH!

 

There is only one possible explanation for all these ill-advised, low-effort presentations: My mom made me create a profile. Well, Mom should have had a peek before you pressed the save button.

 

Plenty of Fish and I are all caught up. I can’t say it’s good to be back.

 

         UP NEXT: After regrouping, it seems I’ve got a date lined up.  

A CLEAR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COVID & THE AIDS CRISIS

Over the last week, eighty-four-year-old gay actor George Takei, best known as Sulu from “Star Trek,” was trending on Twitter. That’s not so unusual. The social media platform has given him a higher profile with more than three million followers, many of whom presumably were not around in the days of Sulu and may have never connected with any of the “Star Trek” incarnations. (Takei also has ten million Facebook followers.) He’s known for tweeting sharp, sometimes humorous, takes on politics, clearly leaning left, as well as regularly recognizing LGBTQ accomplishments. 

 

In 2019, after Donald Trump refused to denounce the Proud Boys during a presidential debate, Takei took to Twitter, proposing that the LGBTQ community take over #ProudBoys by using the hashtag and tweeting photos of men kissing. That would show what proud boys truly looked like. It worked. 

 

This week’s attention comes from a tweet opining that people who choose not to be vaccinated and wind up in hospital should not get priority care over others seeking treatment for equally urgent conditions.

The willfully unvaccinated who wind up in hospitals from Covid should not receive priority medical care over other very sick or injured people who are as much in urgent need of medical care.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) August 13, 2021

Provocative. It’s reflective of the palpable frustration regarding the rise in COVID cases yet again and the inability to stop the spread of variants in part because too many unvaccinated people continue to spread the coronavirus. The unvaccinated pose a continuing burden on the healthcare system and, while claiming their stand is, inter alia, an assertion of individual rights (it’s more complicated than that), causing the general public to face a regression in terms of their own freedoms (e.g., renewed travel restrictions; mask requirements reinstated) and affecting the livelihood of many service industry workers due to such measures as restaurant and bar closures. 

 

Many responded to Takei’s comment with wholehearted agreement, almost 40,000 liking his tweet and 9,000 retweeting it. I first ran across the tweet on Saturday morning when someone identifying as gay embedded Takei’s tweet and responded by saying this was a hideous, draconian proposition, akin to arguments during the AIDS crisis that gays shouldn’t receive empathy or care since those that got AIDS brought it on themselves.[1]

 

Oh, dear. Good point. Medical care does not judge. A lifelong smoker who gets lung cancer gets every possible treatment deemed effective. She is not tsk-tsked and told to wait until a nonsmoker with lung cancer is seen. An AIDS patient teetering toward hospice care does not wait longer as another patient in an equally dire medical condition is attended to. An addict who overdoses is not left if an unconscious person from a car accident is rolled in on a gurney.

 

These are the kind of ethical hypotheticals presented in university classes or on a Friday night as a group of philosophically minded hipsters smoke weed. Yes, we’ve heard that hospitals are struggling in treating and finding beds on account of increased admissions since the pandemic began. We’ve read about patients set up in hallways and even tents. Still, there are medical practitioners with different specialties and hospital units for different afflictions. The predicament Takei’s comment pertains to most would presumably involve patients in intensive care. Again, doctors won’t pit vaccinated COVID patients against the unvaccinated or someone with cancer against the antivaxxer person with COVID. Yes, in crisis situations in hospitals, certain cases take priority, but presumably this is based on how acute a patient’s needs are. Let’s hope, at least, that a scenario in which two patients with absolutely equal needs arrive in an ER with only one attending physician is indeed a hypothetical. Otherwise, I suppose it’s first come, first served. 

 

But as I was riding the elevator the next day, a flaw came to mind regarding the person who asserted that Takei’s suggestion was the equivalent to AIDS shaming. The smoker, the addict, the gay man who becomes ill requires care based on behavior alone. There is no vaccine for lung cancer, no vaccine for addictive disorders, no vaccine for AIDS. Presumably, if such vaccines existed, there would be similar frustration if a person particularly susceptible to an affliction didn’t take the vaccine and becomes ill. The initial behavior is not judged but the choice not to be vaccinated, a behavior or non-behavior itself, is what’s at issue. It’s a different level of culpability, heightening Joe Public’s frustration and likely contributing to a greater sense of regret from the patient himself. 

 

 No lie, I got light-headed just looking
 up photos of people getting vaccinated.

There are vaccines for COVID. True, we have no long-term research on any potential harm from taking it. Like EVERY OTHER vaccine, it is not 100% effective. Also, like every other vaccine or medication, there are potential side effects, some very serious. Just listen to the fast-talking listing of side effects, including death, in every medication commercial. I am taking daily meds with frightening short-term and long-term dangers, but I talk with my doctors, strongly resisting over several conversations, and then I acquiesce, choosing to trust the expert and rely on the overwhelming odds I’ll be all right. I am my own a medical problem. I tune out talk about vitamins, I am reticent to take any medication and I am terrified of needles. (It’s documented as a clinical phobia in my rather thick psychiatric file.) Still, I take my meds. I got vaccinated. (Sorry, vitamin D pill. I’ll do without.) For both shots, I asked the poor staffers, “What’s it like stabbing people all day?” Yes, I see needles as incredibly invasive and threatening. To be clear though, I was profusely apologetic for my wimpy behavior and I repeatedly expressed gratitude for their work.

 

People who aren’t vaccinated are impacting those of us who are. It’s not just antivaxxers who’ve engaged in questionable behaviors during the pandemic. It might not have been wise for anyone to walk around in indoor public spaces without a mask or attend cousin Rita’s wedding along with seventy other people. But a very high percentage of now-vaccinated people making these choices remain unaffected. The initial behaviors may be the same, but medical science, but the risks are far different in terms of both incidence and degree. 

 

Again, I think Takei’s tweet was a way of letting off steam and drawing attention to his social media platform. Many vaccinated people who are back to having to wear masks, putting off foreign travel and/or missing their shifts waiting tables for a low wage yelled, “Yeah!” and pressed the like button. I highly doubt his message made any unvaccinated person fret and rush out to get a shot. In fact, I suspect rhetoric like this causes antivaxxers to double down. No. Vaccine. Ever. Perhaps it’s a stance they’ll stick with till the day they die (hopefully due to old age, instead of this mutating coronavirus).

 

Like many, my frustration grows by the week, maybe even by the day. I also feel that getting closer to normality--some form of a freer “new normal”--is being impeded by the holdouts. How did we become so divided and stray so far from the initially universal notion of “We’re all in this together”?

 

Many of us have done what we were supposed to do, what we thought was for the greater public good and now we’re left to bang our heads against walls and “like” what Sulu says. The antivaxxers have received more than their share of airtime. Quite literally so. They make their own maddening and provocative statements. It goes both ways.

 

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[1] Sorry, I’ve searched for the tweet and can’t find it, but I’m pretty sure I’m accurately saying the gist of it. If not, I defer to dearly missed Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella.