You mean you aren't dating anyone? |
I'm not the kind of guy who wants
acquaintances fixing him up.
My friends know me well enough to not
even broach the subject. If I want to meet the female friend (or
relative) of one of my friends, they know I'll ask. “Hey, can you
introduce me to so-and-so?” If I don't utter those words, I'm nyet
interested. Nyet, no, no way, no how, not on your life, nein, nada, not a
snowball's chance in hell....you get the picture.
For one thing, people who know me have
grave reservations about inflicting me on some unsuspecting, fragile
female friend or relative anyway. I mean, I wouldn't inflict me on
someone I like. Moreover, people who know me are well aware that I am
not so much a confirmed bachelor as a commando bachelor. That is, I
love my singleness and defend it vigorously. I could see myself
developing a relationship from scratch with some unknown female
quantity, but I would have to be sufficiently smitten to do all of
the hard work and spend all the dough required to attain a
relationship status. A long shot, indeed.
If it's not a relationship, I don't need it.
Sometimes the well intentioned will say
to me, “But don't you want some companionship? Wouldn't you like
someone to have dinner with or go to the movies?” Let me think for
a second....uh, no. I have friends and I have a cat. The damn cat I
can't get rid of, and I can always track down a friend for some human
interaction.
I've reached a point in my life – read
that: mellow and mature – when I am no longer willing to invest the time, emotion
or cash required to court someone new. It was tough enough 30 years
ago when women in my target-age group weren't hauling around the tons
of baggage they would carry three decades later.
I can imagine many of you tsk-tsking
and shaking your head. Here's the thing: I only have a limited number
of hours, days, years left. What is the point of treeing a woman at
this stage of my life? To grow old together? I'm already old!
So, I'm not on the market to be fixed
up. That, however, doesn't stop some acquaintances from giving it the
good old college try. Some people just can't stand to see someone
else unencumbered; while others see fixing you up as some sort of
good deed as if they are mating missionaries converting unwashed
savages in the jungle of the companionless. These are the worst and toughest
to convince their efforts are unwanted. I could always yell, “Please,
just shut the ef up!” But that's frowned upon in polite company.
I had a conversation about this issue
with a single pal of mine who had a terrific suggestion. When he told
me, it was an ah-ha moment. I slapped my forehead with the palm of my
hand and yelled, “Why didn't I think of that!”
I wish I would have had this advice a
few months ago when accosted by one of those do-gooder busy-bodies in
one of my favorite Greenville watering holes. This is a guy I
know marginally and will have a casual conversation with whenever I
run into him. But he's not a pal and certainly not someone who knows
me well enough to understand my revulsion to fix ups.
He began dancing around the margins
with innocuous questions about how I spend my time and about my
interests. Eventually, though, he got around to questions on whom I
date and so forth. Finally, he launched into descriptions of female
friends he thought would be “just perfect” for me. Every once in
a while he would nudge his wife and attempt to enlist her support for
this or that candidate. She prudently stayed out of it.
No matter how many times I told him I
wasn't interested – and even a couple of my friends who were there
told him to stop wasting his time – he relentlessly continued on
and on.
Knowing now what I should do, I could
have nipped it in the bud by looking him dead in the eye after
talking about the first woman he proposed, and without cracking a
smile said, “Wow, she sounds great! However, here's what's really
important to me: Can she take a punch?”
If I said something like that to
someone who knows me, they'd know I wasn't serious. But anyone who
doesn't know me well enough to try to fix me up with his
twice-divorced cousin, couldn't be sure.
This is all speculation at this point
because I haven't had the opportunity to test it, but I know that,
sooner or later, I'll get to try it out in the lab of life. In
theory, though, it sounds nearly foolproof.
I'll post the results when I have them.