Match.com: Plenty of Fish in the Sea

It seems all my friends are trawling these days on dating sites and I have a lot of chum to chew about.  I’ve vowed that if I ever have a single life, I will never go out to sea.  Take Bob, by far the best fisherman out there and my gf’s ex.  She left, he wasn’t ready, and with a broken heart, a heavy dose of sexual rejection,  he did exactly what men do to heal—they fish the sea of women.  He’s not into the catch and release program and he’s floundered the last month with at least a dozen fish,  some still on ice, in his walk-in-cooler.  I know he’s not exaggerating; my cousin, an experienced fisherman has told me many times the lure can be a phone call, a cheap dinner and a bottle of wine.  “Dawn,” he said, “there are so many women out there!”

So when Bob showed me his line and hook, and made his cast, I had no doubt they’d feast on his bait.   He listed his income in the 99% that most of us 1%er’s despise yet covet and then characterized himself as loving, generous and out for a long term relationship with a woman who could travel the world with him and visit exotic places.  They swarmed.

Bob responded, and with a heavy heart telling them he was still in love with his scornful wife and terribly lonely.  Men, he cast the perfect line.  This wounded guppy created the perfect feeding ground for bottom dwellers.  Woman #1 responds.  He tells me she is self-made, a professional gambler,  living with her aged parents, who she lovingly tends to and runs an internet business on EBay. I’m sitting right there when she sends him a picture of her at that moment in her panties. A Black lace piece of dental floss.  I look down at my crotch imagining what my husband might think if I sent him my shot, right at that moment—jockey microfiber granny panties.  I tuck away the idea of doing something fun for David and  went back to Bob’s plight.  Hi mind was wound in the Black lace but my logical prefrontal cortex was screaming.  So I translate: Compulsive gambler, lost so much money she has to live her parents basement and sell her garage sale finds to fill her gas tank.  I add that she might be selling her used underwear.” 

“But she doesn’t drink,” he retorts.

“Oh,”  I say, “she’s a recovering alcoholic too.” 

A week later he tells me I was right. His revelation came after he found himself eating alone in the casino dining room and after she swiped the tip off the table for “just one more game.”  The evening was topped off with wild sex after she beat him at strip poker and out of a couple hundred dollars.  “How did that happen?” I asked.

“Every time I lost a piece of clothing I had to pay her fifty dollars.”

By now he’s got a new one on the line.  “She’s really down to earth,” he tells me. He describes her life:  She doesn’t care about money— which was a revelation after her near-death experience, after the bus hit her, and after the state took her four kids when she woke from the three month coma, couldn’t recall her own name but had to start again by working in a soup kitchen and living in a studio.

“How old is she?” I ask.

He responded but all I processed was “still fertile.”

“Did you use a condom?” I asked. 

“Oh my God,” he said. “I never thought about that.”

Somehow my mind conjured up the predatory image.  Nothing more juicy than a fat wallet and a desperate man. 

“Bob, it’s like the food chain.  You think your landing plenty of fish but they have to feed too.”

As the weeks went by  Bob got tired of his expedition. “It’s like a full time job,” he told me. “Depressing as hell.”  

He turned the iPod towards me so I could read it. 

All the right words were there; Attractive, divorced, financially secure, wanted honest long term relationship, loved to travel to exotic places. . . .”

He scrolled up to the photo.  It was his ex.

In Case you Didn’t Know, We Baby Boomer’s Invented Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll

In Case you Didn’t Know, We Baby Boomer’s Invented Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll 

When I said that to my college class, they applauded.  I know I invented the first two.

I could roll a joint with my toes when I was 16.  I perfected the art of sex with my first husband in his mother’s basement. Although he got carded when he bought condoms, we managed to make a love nest in an old coal bin.  We bought a kerosene heater for the cold winters and of course, a cot.  Little did we know that the fumes went upstairs and his mother ended up calling the fire department who busted through the tiny window above our heads—finding us naked under a moth-eaten army blanket.  I was grounded for a year and sent to a shrink.

It didn’t stop me from growing pot, a need that grew from my grounding and the weirdo I was forced to meet with once a week.  So, in between my mother’s tomatoes the tall plants thrived.  After I ripped out all the males (you can tell them by their tiny balls at the crotch of a stem) I harvested the five pounds of heavenly weed, with Krissy, my best friend.  We hung the plants in my basement, in the closet that my mother’s wedding gown and honeymoon ensemble were in.  They never smelled the same again.  Krissy ended up getting busted at a concert when Stewie Savolinsky narc-ed her out.  I buried my stash in my grandmother’s yard and then I drove to the jail with her father and we bailed her out.  In the car she pointed to the tiny vest pocket where she revealed a rolled joint.  It’s amazing how clever we were.

Do any of you have those memories?   

We were the Woodstock generation, primed by the mantra “if it feels good do it.” We protested and rocked.  We made love and fought to end the war that took our young men to Vietnam,  battled to end segregation and spread the seeds of tolerance for gay rights.  I even stopped shaving my legs—for about three years, then I burned my bra in Philadelphia with a woman who wrote Sisterhood is Powerful.  I’ve often wondered where she is now.  However, I can hardly think of another generation that did as much.  Tell me if I’m wrong. 

Of course if you’re younger you might not believe your parents did these things.  Perhaps they weren’t as wild as I was but the air of the era was contagious.  If they had a Bob Marley album in their vinyl collection, or if they know who he is, they rocked.  But time rolled on and most of us left those lives behind when we faced babies, mortgages and car payments. I shaved my legs, bought a support bra when I saw what my grandmother (who never wore one) looked like in the nude.

  

I never told my own children what we did—at least not until they got through all their adolescent temptations.  I stopped the smoking—you can hardly get a PhD being stoned all the time.  My attitudes towards sex have changed too—we are having way too much with too many people and for all the wrong reasons.  Who ever thought you would be able to flip a switch on the computer and have streaming porn.  In our time my bothers thought the Sears catalogue was the deal.  After it arrived, the bra ads would be missing.  They swore they could see though the fabric. 

I live in Woodstock now, a community with one of the largest aging in place boomers.  My kids are grown and I find my life in a sort of pleasant retrograde.   I’m having fun.  I’m not the only one.  Our generation is not taking to retiring in a rocker.  We’re beginning our second act; new careers, new lifestyles and breaking the rules—again.