When I am dancing to Outkast at a Halloween-themed gay club in London’s Soho area, I am not expecting to attract anyone. But between the spider web that was drawn on my face and my ability to shake it like a Polaroid picture, I somehow had a taker. He was nice, he took my number, and that was that.
He asked me on a date via text message, mentioning how he had “never gotten a drink with an American girl before.” Thursday night was the night, and although I was reluctant to go, my girlfriends convinced me that I would have a good time. So on went my new dress and some extra mascara, and off I went, to meet him at a bar after he got off work. And when I got there, he was doing everything correctly: he bought me a drink, opened the door for me, smiled, told me I looked nice. Okay, I thought, this wont be so bad.
It didn’t take long for him to reveal that he was 29, and being only 20 myself, this put us on different wavelengths. However, his nervous quirks, which included wiping his runny nose, fidgeting with his shirt, and pointing out his odd qualities, did not convince me that he was a mature adult. He mentioned that he had recently gotten out of a long term relationship, in which him and his girlfriend were “obsessed” with each other, and also told me he was “obsessed” with a new project he was working on. Twitchy and obsessive: he wasn’t racking up the points. He also mentioned that I looked “just like that girl from Seinfeld,” which I didn’t mind because Seinfeld happens to be my favorite sitcom. But he repeated it multiple times throughout the remainder of the date. What 20-year-old wants to be reminded that she resembles a 50 (though fabulous looking for her age) year old woman? His ship was sinking fast, and at the end of the date, I decided that we most likely would not go out again.
It wasn’t that the date went poorly – on the contrary, I had a much better time than I had thought I would. But there are different expectations when dating older men,
a novelty that most women glorify. What I realized is that I was more than mature enough to handle it, and if anything, his nerves surpassed mine by a long shot. There was no reason for him to continually assert that I seemed so much older than 20, and that I was more mature than a lot of the girls he had been with – that just m
After a busy weekend, I was looking forward to Monday night when I was planning on seeing a play with two good friends. Courteously, I turned my phone off before the show started, and whipped it out to check for messages during intermission. Act I had only last about 40 minutes, so I wasn’t expecting much. However, what was there waiting for me during the interval? 3 text messages, one missed call and a voicemail. All from my date. They now read (in order):
“Hey how was your weekend?”“Hey how are you?”
“Do you just want me to delete your number?”
This was not after several days of not responding to him – it was a very short period of time. And the final text was quite abrasive. Why jump to such harsh conclusions? Though after receiving these text messages, his deleting of my number is exactly what I wanted. He may be nearing 30, but his actions were that of a child. And that is what a told him.
I can go flaunt my Julia Louis-Dreyfus hairdo for someone else. And he can go obsess over someone his own size, and age.