TOAD PETTING TIME

Under pressure from friends I joined an internet dating site.
This, as you no doubt understand, was a really bad idea.
As well as a glimpse into the pit.
All the likely dates in my ballpark are either sixty plus grandmothers with dogs, descendants, and Jesus in their lives, OR non-smoking non drinking saintly virgins who watch Snooky and America Has Got Talent.

Women I would never want to meet.
Some of them list the DaVinci Code as their favourite book.

How utterly ghastly.


What I want to find is someone who is rather like me.
But smaller, and without the beard and moustache.
Badger-like.
Not the best person in the world.

[* BEARD AND MOUSTACHE: a trim goatee, very dashing. Collegiate, yet devilish.]

A solitary type with a social streak.
Tolerant of stubborn men.
Fond of pipe-smokers.

As well as hot beverages and furry creatures.

I'm guessing all such women already miraculously found their ideal.  That being a five foot eight and a half tall grumpy 52 year-old Dutch-American who speaks mediocre Cantonese, veers towards Nabokov and Dunleavy as authors, and smokes a pipe.

There were probably two other such men in the Bay Area, they're married now, and deliriously happy.

Bastards.


I'll admit it. I'm not interested in single women my own age.  They're usually clapped-out alcoholics, neurotic, and too eccentric by a wide margin.  This is San Francisco, so most of them are also unbearably creative and unique.
No, not interested in grandma with her dogs and spoiled infant relatives either.

This decrepit old fart is looking for someone notably younger than himself but more mature, who can be encouraged in her fondness for all the trade goods of yore: coffee, tea, tobacco, highly refined white sugar, and incorrigibly decadent authors.
Someone who gets along well with stuffed animals.
And likes noodle soup.

If you've wasted your time on mediaeval studies or Elizabethan literature, so much the better.
As just two examples of non-business related fields.


Absolutely no dogs or Jesus.


Period.


FYI: this is as close to an obscene proposition as I'm ever likely to make.



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