DATING MYSELF

Back when I was a bachelor, the idea of asking a sweet young thing out on a date presented me with a quandary: what do people DO on dates?
Movies did not clarify matters - according to most American high school flicks, EITHER you got drunk and had messy sex in the back of a car, OR you danced yourself jiggy at the sock-hop, and shared a malted afterwards.

[Women's movies were even worse! Pianos, whales, weeping, and Mel Gibson.]


I had no car. Couldn't find a sock-hop if it came up and bit me.

What I grasped was that relationships involve liquor, cars, dancing, and perversion.

Books also proved surprisingly useless - shan't tell you what Van Veen and Ada did with each other, it's entirely immaterial. Barbara Cartland left everything! up to her readers imagination. German Bodice Rippers spelled it out with near-clinical precision.
Regarding Van Veen and Ada, Nabokov had totally perverted tendencies.
Regarding reading Cartland and imagining things, I also have perverted tendencies.
Regarding German Bodice Rippers -- Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!
Guys, you lot are NO help.

So for over two decades I didn't think about dating. Instead, I took walks with someone, went out to dinner, occasionally watched movies and held hands. Sometimes we had hot chocolate with whipped cream.
All of this seemed to work just fine. While it lasted.


THE MODERN ERA

Here it is, twenty-one years later, and now apparently dating involves vehicles, drunkenness, and spasmic jerking to electro-house funk or world beats. The equivalent of a sock-hop seems to be a crowded warehouse space with strobe lights and designer drugs. Plus mega perversion.
I've read about such things, but I refuse to experience them myself.
Well, except perhaps for the perversion.

Nabokov, Cartland, and the authors of German Bodice Rippers would not know what to make of it either.


You will understand that I am somewhat hesitant about the whole dating thing.


On the one hand I have absolutely no interest in girls with tattoos or piercings, on the other hand I'm not looking for someone from my own era either, seeing as I've never actually been to a sock hop.

All I'm really interested in is taking walks, going out to dinner, and occasionally watching movies or holding hands.
And perhaps some perversion.
Or hot chocolate with whipped cream.


==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================