My Last Five Dates: Phone Porn, Porch Makeouts, and A Hot Younger Man
As the frosting on the cupcake, Dan said his amicable ex-wife would vouch for him, and he gave me her number. My dating fantasy is to check references with the one person on earth who really knows your potential soulmate so I dialed Janet immediately.
She was lovely. “First of all, you should know Daniel really needs friends,” she said, which is the second scariest reference you can hear about a potential partner. “Next, I’m not his ex-wife. I’m his wife,” which is the first. They’d been separated for five years following a family tragedy and decades of Daniel’s untreated alcoholism. To this sisterhood candor, I was speechless, first with shock, then gratitude.
Date 4
My advisors suggested dating closer to home, so I could check references a bit more readily. Conveniently, Tony* showed up in my Instagram feed. He lived a half-mile from my condo and his white Audi TT was the chick version of his black Porsche. He worked in IT intelligence and had a government background, which in DC means CIA. He loved his sailboat. His top travel destination was Positano, my favorite Italian village. It was fate!
We went for a socially distanced walk and ended up making out on his Georgetown front porch in view of at least a dozen passersby and neighbors. He was eight inches taller than me, so I nestled nicely into his chest. His beard was scratchy, his hard-on felt huge, and I was all in.
Two days later, driving my old minivan instead of the tell-tale TT, I stopped at a red light and watched in utter amazement as Tony, one hand clutching a pretty brunette, the other holding the leash of a bulldog, ambled across the street four feet in front of me. When I’d stopped hyperventilating, I called him. “That’s my wife,” he said. Well, at least he was honest.
Date 5
My radar for spotting unavailable men was getting sharper, and the coaches instructed: in addition to dating local and checking references, get to “no” fast. Stop creating the perfect man by fantasizing about every male you meet. When a guy expresses interest, talk to him within a few hours. Ask blunt, revealing questions like, “Are you single?” Be transparent. Focus on flushing out fatal flaws or incompatibilities as quickly as possible.
Along came an East Coast entrepreneur with a passion for biking and birding, a Southern gentleman who wanted more than a local belle, a doctor whose wife had died of breast cancer. My new “transparency first” approach led to authentic, albeit brief, connections with each. All had their upsides, but something was missing, every time.
I kept returning to my favorite girlfriend advice: “It takes a special man to be better than no man at all.” The truth was, on this roller coast of dating and quarantining, I got to truly love living solo. For the first time in my life, I could see myself alone—forever. Picking what I wanted for dinner every single night, living where I wanted to live, washing my hair once a week, sprawling across the bed, not ever sharing a closet—it was all growing on me.
One Sunday in late summer, I worked on a vision board. “It’s no longer just a dream” and “Get closer” and “Getting warmer” were the random headlines from magazines that drew my subconscious. I glued them onto posterboard and dreamed of my future.
The next day, out of the blue, I went on a hike with a recently-divorced dad I’d known for 15 years. He was more handsome than I remembered. Funnier, too. In breezy conversations, we touched on the joys of grandkids and the pain of ending a marriage. I felt butterflies, not fireworks. I failed to flush out any fatal flaws or current wives.
We’ve been on at least 100 pandemic dates since then. We’ve never been to a movie theater together. Or a party. Or a work barbecue. He’s not seen me in a dress. I’ve seen him buck naked or in sweatpants more than slacks. However, the pandemic has afforded unlimited time for talk and sex, so there’s that.
My cats like him. My kids think he’s the one for me. Even my ex-husband thinks he’s the one for me. And most importantly, I think he’s the one for me. You might conclude that the first date with him was the most important one. However, the time I invested to change my dating patterns, explore all the wrong possibilities, and face being on a lifetime date with myself? That, actually, was the most important date of all.
*Names have been changed.
Leslie Morgan is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Crazy Love. Her latest memoir (The Naked Truth, Simon & Schuster) explores femininity, aging and sexuality after 50. Visit her via her website, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
