Friday, March 7, 2008

The Perfect Man

I've just met him — the perfect man. His name is James. But I had to meet a great many imperfect men before I reeled this one in. I started with Match.com, and then moved on to Yahoo Personals. I found James on Plentyoffish.com. I would recommend this site to anyone interested in dangling her feet in the water. For one thing it is free. For another it is a very active site. And of course, that is where I met the perfect man. I will come back to him later but first let me tell you about all the fish I threw back in.


When you begin to look at profiles on the Net there are many that get sifted out immediately. I have learned not to bother with those who live too far away, and I wonder about those who don't show their photos. Are they ugly, in relationships, married or just incompetent with a computer? I don't dismiss them out of hand, though, because I respond postively to good writing.

The ones I dismiss are those like "Cass ... Going my way" who writes so badly I am sure it is a joke. The introduction which is supposed to attract potential partners reads: "Life is like me you never depent on me im lazy i dont like work i have no hobbies i like weekend stay at home watch tv drink beer all my friend dont visit any more i dont no why all i said next time you come bring food and beer and my women must be fit and have a good job a good you no what hope to here from the lucky one soon."

Then there is the one whose third photo shows an ugly leering man in a mean little room wearing boxers that jut out at least a foot. At my age I am concerned about size ... and seek out normal or on the small side rather than broom handles. Just how much personal lubricant would be necessary to deal with Walter?

So yes ... the worst have already been winnowed out, but those who remain in the race seldom pan out once you get past the first few face-to-face meetings.

The very first man I met was Daniel, a retired policeman from some place in redneck Ohio. Go figure, eh? But he sent lovely emails. He wrote well, was intelligent and kind, had traveled and studied, liked Canada, spent his time helping rehabilitate offenders, and thought women were equal if not superior. When he told me he voted Republican and believed that people had the right and duty to carry guns, I argued but still thought he was a possibility. After all, on balance, he was a keeper. Then I met him.

He was enormous and shuffled uneasily on flat ground. His only means of locomotion was his car. His manner in public was that of a breezy insincere salesman. He wanted us to have sex as if we were lesbians. That prospect would not have been as horrifying if he had been a woman, but he was a parody of a man; his body was grotesque, his skin pasty and he felt soft and flabby. By the time we had spent a couple of days getting to know one another I never wanted to see him again, and the feeling was mututal. Today he is happily married and sends me jokes from time to time.

After Daniel, I began to look for articulate intelligent left leaning Canadians. The problem with my screening process is that I can become enamoured by good writing and the correct political perspective. That's why Ben was so attractive. In fact, I half fell in love with him before we even met. He had everything ... he read widely ... he wrote beautifully ... he was a fine photographer, and a canoeist. He was way left of centre and had a global perspective on life. He had all the warmth of his native Newfoundland and he was good looking and liked to touch. I found myself ignoring the yawningly long lectures on politics, since it was easy to silence them with a kiss. After a few weeks of frenetic and passionate wooing he announced that he was heading south in a trailer with his girl friend ... a doctor from the Yukon.

Back to the profiles, this time determined to judge dispassionately on the basis of good conversation and whether the man was presentable, intelligent and left leaning. I ignored spelling errors and merely cringed imperceptibly when a grammatical fault grated.

I met Gene, the poet who was terrifying to drive with, but was attractive behind thick glasses, gentle, intelligent, and had his rebellious drug-addicted grandson living with him. We cross country skiied together, he sent me poems, and I liked him ... but there was no spark. He shared his medical problems with me. In his case it was an inability to urinate easily. That might explain the guttering spark.

After Gene there was a musicologist who spent all his time listening to concerts with a laptop on his knee. Too single-minded.

I met a man who was living with his immigrant girlfriend and looking after her toddling nephew. The boy was soon to be returned to his parents, they would stop living together and he would have a girlfriend into whose arms, bed and home he could fall. Ta very much.

Then there was the retired professor from Quebec. His wife was an invalid and they led separate lives except that they maintained a home together and celebrated all family holidays with their daughter. My role was to be travel companion and woman in the background. It was important that I be intelligent, educated, physically fit, attractive ... and discreet. Discretion is not my strong suit ... and I have always felt sorry for second wives ... so I said I wasn't interested. He did not take it well. Perhaps he was afraid he had already compromised his secret life.

One day Santa Claus appeared. He was a crossing guard in his seventies who donned a Santa outfit every Christmas season for the kids he guided across the intersection. He became very angry with me and accused me of being a games player because I was hesitant about meeting someone his age so far away.

Next was Wesley. Wesley deserves a whole book ... and if you gave him the chance, he'd write it himself. Wesley is the man who spent fourteen years on a psychiatrist's couch and still blames Mommy, Daddy, his ex-wife ... and now me ... for the abysmal state of his mind.

Wesley was one of these men like Ben who is at his best when writing, but unlike Ben, Wesley walked like a short chubby penguin whose feathers were too tight. He affected a British accent and seemed to be attempting to emulate the worst aspects of the Motherland. He was an intellectual snob and didn't seemed to realize that his abject incompetence made him ridiculous, particularly when he was being arrogant.

He had lived in his apartment for two years when I met him, but still had not unpacked. He led a peculiarly barren andchaotic existence. In addition to the boxes were a dozen baskets of dirty clothing. Not only did he refrain from unpacking, and stay away from the laundromat, he chose not to clean the bathroom or the refrigerator. What he did do was sit at his computer, play sacred music all day and night, volunteer at his church and one of the city's music festivals, collect things in bins for recycling, and visit his psychiatrist twice or three times a week. I called his psychiatrist Dr. Grunt, because he apparently said nothing ... just listened and occasionally made gutteral noises. I wondered what good he had done over yea these many years, since all I could see was someone who needed props to face each day.

But of course, Wesley didn't reveal his arrogance or show me his apartment at first. Instead he swarmed all over me and insinuated himself into my life. My place began to feel alien to me. I found myself cleaning up after him and paying far more for groceries and hydro than I had in the days before Wesley.

We had a few good dates before he did this. One day, he arrived wearing an embarrassingly tight red spandex outfit and we biked to Kanata where we had lunch before biking home. We attended a good concert at the NAC. I am hard pressed to think of other pleasant outings just now. But he had some good stories to tell about the life he had led before he fell into this mess. He had been a student, a traveler, and had worked abroad leading a life that would not have been possible in Canada. Servants kept him, his wife and their boys organized. He came from money and was due to inherit a couple of million when his parents and other old people died. I was willing to overlook the overstuffed appearance and manner. Was it his history or his future prospects? I don't know.

At any rate, we eventually ended up in my bed and that began the slide into absolute chaos that was my life for two months. That was when I learned that he didn't like to rise early and get on home. That was when I discovered he didn't clean the bath after himself. That was when I realized he had no sense of time. That was when I watched in disbelief as he took over my computer ... and imported several viruses.

One day he brought his laundry. It took me three full days to do it. I used to like doing laundry. That marathon dampened my zeal.

My sixty-fifth birthday was the penultimate straw. Wesley wanted to give me a perfect day. What would I like? I wanted to plant herbs with him and have a nice dinner at home. He was to come over at 10 and we would do the planting. Then he would make me a great meal, bring a special wine and the perfect birthday cake.

Well, I began receiving the phone calls about noon. ... excuses for being late. Wesley is never responsible for his fuck-ups you understand; it is always the fault of an alarm clock, a delivery man, an ex-wife or his children.

I transplanted the herbs, his and mine. By four I pointed out that unless I bought the food and cooked it we would not be eating dinner that night. He suggested I buy it and follow his recipe. It was one of these complicated things that require cutting many things into tiny pieces and using five pots to prepare each stage. Not the kind of meal I would ever have chosen to make myself ... and certainly not on my birthday, but I did it. Shopping took an hour. Cooking took three.

He arrived shortly before it was ready with two bottles of wine: one a twenty-five year old burgundy; the other a decent red. I was almost ready to forgive him when he snatched back the burgundy and said he was donating it to the church, but thought I would like to see the wine he purchased when he got married, when he was still sane, employed and competent.

Oops ... he'd forgotten the cake so off he waddled double quick time. He arrived back an hour later. Dinner was ready. As a matter of fact I had begun to eat. (I had started drinking much earlier.) He was empty-handed. "Where is the cake?" I asked. The store was already closed when he got there. Why was I not surprised?

We had another similar meltdown over time the day we were to leave for a trip to New York City. It soured the trip, as I remember ... but the trip was also not enhanced by the fact that I did most of the driving and had to endure his twitterings about speed throughout. "I am simply keeping up with the traffic," I said between clenched teeth, and drove on. "This is the USA," he bleated. "They are stricter here." I pulled over. "Drive," I muttered. So he did for twenty miles and then pleaded exhaustion.

I took a break for a while after Wesley. Sixty-five is an age which demands a little self analysis. I needed to regroup and re-evaluate internet dating. I also needed to think about what I wanted. Sex had, by this time, become secondary to just having a best friend. So I had to ask myself why I wanted it to be a man at all. Why not simply continue enjoying the friendships I had? Did I really want to live with someone? Especially someone who might expect me to cook and clean for him; someone who might want me to mother him; someone who might demand (nicely) that I drop what I was doing in mid-sentence in order to provide succour. The break stretched out.

After several months I was bored. That was when I met the Brit who had spent his youth in Kenya, and still attended regimental reunions there. He pronounced the "e" in Kenya with the heaviness of the colonial presence. He collected antique cars, lived in a Kanata condo in summer and in a gated community in Florida in winter. He was well traveled, intelligent, and talkative. We met a few times and found we had a lot to talk about. His last partner, now deceased, had been a bad potter and a great partner. They divided the chores equally. She cooked, cleaned and put the food on the table; he looked after the investments and the cars ... and he paid for the hotel rooms when they traveled. He traveled first class. She traveled tourist because they paid for their own airline tickets. He also managed to fit in the information that he was taking some kind of penile erection aid. Lovely. At our last rendez-vous, I realized this was going nowhere. We had dinner at Red Lobster, his favourite eating place because the servings were enormous. Did I mention his large gut? A friend of his was there with his lady friend. The men talked about antique cars and such. The other woman and I discussed the meal and our children. I knew I was never going to choose to shuttle back and forth between Kanata and Florida. Both options were anathema to me ... a kind of horrible endless purgatory ... and I was not ready to become "the little woman". Someone was, though ... an American who immediately married him when I stopped seeing him.

After this man there was another long hiatus. Then I met someone who was very intelligent, well educated and held the right views ... but one lunch in Wakefield was enough for both of us. We were unable to do anything but agree with one another.

Then George, the 78 year old inventor, got in touch. He seemed nice, but more fatherly than husbandly, I thought, and besides he lived in Scarborough.

Then Al and John, the same man with two names, who had played with the RCMP band, contacted me. I can't remember what their most important problem was, but I wasn't interested.

Then a widower sent me a note. He was a lot like the music lover, even had two pianos, one a Steinway. He lived in a pleasant part of Ottawa South and was not hard on the eyes. But when he told me how uncomfortable he was with the written word and dropped hints about nocturnal habits necessitating getting up at noon, I wrote and said I thought we would grate on each other in no time.

And then there was Angus, the man who said he was independently poor, when in reality he was simply poor. He sent many emails and we met once. He said he generally ate vegetarian ... lots of lentil soup but at my place he wolfed down two large portions of the pork tenderloin and asked for more. He also drank more than his fair share of the wine I provided. (He had brought a loaf of stale bread which I sent home with him). When I said I was not interested in getting physical that evening, he desisted immediately, but went home and wrote me an email that said he had no burning desire to see me again.

I was about to give up again when Richard got in touch. He seemed lovely ... a little shy ... an accountant ... had a teenaged daughter living with him ... kindness incarnate ... and like me, an early riser. He came to visit and I liked what I saw. However; he was on a liquid diet for six weeks, despite being a normal size. I didn't know that men of nearly sixty ever suffered from anorexia. I also hadn't encountered such indecision before. I began to think of him as Richard the cowardly lion.

Shortly after we started corresponding, Richard 2 got in touch. He called himself Richard the Rebel. We exchanged pithy flirtatious emails but I told him I was not interested in casual sex with anyone and thought that Richard 1 would be a better choice for what I wanted. He agreed but tried to tempt me one last time by sending me the beginning of a pornographic story. The last paragraph of the story's beginning began with the words, "Her hand brushed his thigh. She felt his hardness, and began to ..."

I was to finish the paragraph as part of this game. I sent him the concluding word ... laugh ... ("Her hand brushed his thigh. She felt his hardness and began to ...... laugh")

One more exchange of emails and that was the end of that.

So one staid responsible Richard who was too indecisive for me and one who was funny and adventurous but wanted casual sex with no commitments. Too bad there weren't some kind of happy amalgam of the two.

And then Wesley came back into my life briefly. He invited me to dinner to see his new condo, purchased since inheriting his first million. I was to meet a friend of his who was helping women in the developing world.. Bruce thought I might be able to help with the writing for the organization. I was very interested in her micro-lending project in South Africa so I agreed.

I arrived. Wesley did his best to kiss me on the mouth. I presented the other cheek. The place was as cluttered as the old apartment had been. Books sat in piles on every available surface. The kitchen counters were heaped with things that should have been in cupboards, drawers or hung up. He had been in this place for six months. When his woman friend and I were introduced, she responded with a harsh "Who are you?" and I realized she had no idea I was coming.

Dinner had not been started and would take three hours. Wesley explained that he had fallen back to sleep that morning and offered the excuse as a perfectly valid reason. He also mention that his son who had been supposed to give him a few hours work had shown up a little late. I looked at him and muttered, "Deja vu", and said that I had to leave by 8:30 as my building site would be hazardous after dark.

Wesley suggested eating out.

The other woman said she and I should cook the food. We went into the kitchen to confront the stewing beef. She asked whether I wanted to be the chef or the sous-chef. I suggested we be co- chefs. She agreed and then disappeared into the livingroom to eat dolmadas and drink with Wesley while I cooked.

I listened to their conversation as I chopped, floured and seasoned on the square foot of counter at my disposal. I joined them while the stew simmered, getting up occasionally to stir or adjust seasonings and add wine. The conversation was full of truncated thoughts interrupted by Wesley's attempts to find tupperware with lids, cooking utensils, serving dishes and plates.

What I remember best was the other woman's manner. She reminded me of everything Wesley complained his parents did. She ordered him about in a sharp no-nonsense voice whenever his indecisiveness became really annoying, and, in general, treated him with the disdain one reserves for the incompetent or for children one does not love or respect. I said little, but thought (and remembered) a great deal.

When dinner was ready, I served. Wesley poured a very decent wine and we began to eat. During the dinner conversation Wesley went into one of his tirades against his ex-wife. The other woman cut him off and told him no one wanted to hear about his obsessions or his mental health all the time.

Bravo, I thought. Her high handed behaviour towards Wesley had made me feel embarrassed for him all evening, but I agreed with everything she said and sympathised with her frustration.

Wesley continued to hammer away as if she had said nothing, and then suddenly commented that he was very hurt by comments made this evening. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes and his voice broke. More memories that made me squirm. She apologized. Then he surprised both of us by saying it was my comment that was so hurtful. (Remember deja vu?) I apologized for voicing my feelings, cleared the table and left.

By now I had decided internet dating was not a very good way to meet men. Good writers could portray themselves as congenial and sane, but there was no guarantee that anything was true or possible.

Someone suggested Plentyoffish.com so I decided to give the whole thing one last try. I was surprised by the flurry of activity that greeted my entrance.

Three men around my age contacted me immediately: one who had just grown up but sounded intelligent and a little off the wall; another who lived peacefully in the Gatineau Hills not too far away from me; and Mike who was looking for an activity partner.

Then there were the young ones: a 23 year old who was sure he could fascinate me;. a 33 year old who thought I could teach him something (wink, wink); and a 47 year old Ethiopian mail sorter who seemed desperate to make contact and said his last girl friend had been 60. He didn't have a trace of the arrogance of the others, and there was nothing flip or dishonest about him. He was just a little sad.

And then along came James, the perfect man.

Oh I know what you are thinking. There is no such thing as a perfect man. I'd have agreed with you a couple of weeks ago, but James has convinced me otherwise. It has taken him four "dates" to do so, but now I am absolutely sure. He tells me he was the best technical vocational teacher in Quebec, perhaps Canada, probably the world. The government wooed him away from a well paid engineering job and when he graduated from teachers' college, hundreds of job offers awaited him. His school was the best in the province and the tech-voc wing which he designed was perfect. He insisted that every project he undertook was and is completed to perfection. His children are also marvellous. His favourite daughter lives in a seven million dollar mansion in Florida where the front entrance is big enough to house three cars and the ceilings are 13 feet high. Doesn't that sound cozy?

On our first date he ate before we went out to dinner and was not able to find anything that appealed to him on the menu. I helped him choose a small pasta dish and the meal continued. It felt a bit like an interviewing situation rather than a conversation.He picked nervously at his pant legs, talked incessantly, and accidentally grazed my breast with his hand, but I attributed all that to first meeting jitters.

Because he paid for dinner I invited him to have a meal at my place the following Sunday. He began to expound on all the things that made him special and I began to have difficulty eluding his amorous advances. As I walked him up to his car, he offered to finish putting up my clothesline and I was torn between wanting to get the job done and not wanting to give him any false hopes, because it was clear to me that this was not going to go anywhere. The next night he arrived to scope out the materials. When he tried to kiss me I told him I thought this would not go further than friendship, and I was tired and wanted to say good night now. He left saying he would be back at noon the following day.

The following morning I awoke feeling horrible — some kind of 24 hour flu, I think. I was going to phone him around 10 to tell him to forget it as I was ill, but he arrived at 9:30. I tried to stay outside to help him but the combination of the flu bug, the heat and his explanations of why this method was so much better than any other; his insistence that other people were careless and sloppy compared to him; and the fact that he always seemed to have his hands on me when they weren't on one tool or another sent me in to my bed for the day. I came down at noon and made him ham sandwiches which I put in the fridge with cold drinks. I told him where the food was and was about to return to my bed when he told me how badly the boards and posts had been cut by another friend. I said I really didn't care. He retorted that he did because he had to adjust constantly to the other man's incompetence. I went back to bed.

About 3, I felt well enough to come out again and help with the last few things that needed doing, but half an hour of James' bragging and putting down of other people was enough. I said my thank yous and good byes and hoped I would never have to see the man again.

I realized that James made me just as uncomfortable as Wesley had — for different reasons of course, but both men evoked in me a similar distaste.

I have decided that internet dating is really not for me. The imperfect ones are too imperfect and the perfect ones are intolerable.