Know Thy Elusive Self

There are some things I think I can do for myself.  This is what I say to Telly when he asks if I need a wingman next time I go to a bar.

“I went with my own date.  Actually, I met her there.”

“Dorah,” my ninety-two-year-old neighbor says, still practicing social-distancing on his side of the porch screen. 

“Right.  So I didn’t need a wingman to get the girl.  I already had a girl.”

“So, where is she now?”  His brows go out of their way to suggest I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I hold up my hand.  “Don’t go there.”   

“Go where?”  He laughs.  His brows cartwheel in place. “I don’t even know where she is.”

“Her geographical coordinates are unimportant, unless you just want to make certain you don’t run into her.”

“Was it that bad?”

“She made the border collie glare.”

“Whatever.  If you had taken a wingman, all of this could have been avoided.”

“I had a wingman.  I had Toby.”

When Telly laughs the cat puffs out his chest. 

“He finally did what my efforts to be gentlemanly were keeping me from doing.”

“Are you saying you should have bitten her?”

“I’m saying that despite the three of us being buckled, together, into a rapidly falling hand-basket, I wanted her to like me.”

Telly’s eyebrows try to turn their backs on me.

“Not because I wanted to see her again.  I just wanted to know if I was doing it right and, if I wasn’t, what I needed to change so that the next time, with the next woman, would be better.  I believe strongly that there is something to be learned in every experience.”

“So, what did you learn from your experience with Dorah?”

“I wasn’t certain.  So I called her.”

“You called Dorah?  After the date?”

“Yes, I called her.  Who better to ask?  She was there.  Besides, I don’t have to see her again.  What did I have to lose?”

“Very presidential of you.”

“So I asked her, aside from bringing the cat with me to a cat-friendly bar that she chose to meet at, what did she think of our time together and was there anything I could have done differently to make it a better experience for her.”

Head in hand, Telly mutters, “Unbelievable.  You called out your own dating survey.”                                                          

“Hey, the survey’s we send out at work have resulted in measurable increases in customer satisfaction.”

Profoundly quiet, Telly stares right through me at the cat. 

“She said everything was great. Up until Toby bit her.”

“She lied,” Telly says.

“I don’t think so.  Her shriek-in-the-moment seemed rather heart-felt.”

“She lied on her profile.  She lied when she said she likes animals.  You know that.  That’s what is behind your anthropomorphic border collie’s glare.  She probably likes the idea of being the tender-hearted kind of person who would like an animal because that’s what she figures a guy would like to find in her.  When, really, what she wants is something still and stuffed.”

“Yeah.”  I try to make my eyebrows do what the veteran expression artist is able to do with his.  But I can’t begin.  “Belle is nice,” I say, recalling a more positive survey response.  “She likes cats.  She said she really wants to get together again.”

Well? the expressive lifeforms on his upper face all but ask.

“She’s not really my type.”

“We’ve heard that before,” Telly says grandly.  “What is your type?  Do you spell that out in your profile?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Here.”  Telly reaches into his pocket and produces a legal-size clipboard with paper and pen.  He cracks open the screen door to hand it to me. “Here,” he repeats when I am slow to respond.  I still can’t get over the whole clipboard-from-the-pocket trick.  “Now, make a list.”

“Of what?”

“The things you’re looking for in a woman.  If you’re going to look for someone online, part of your profile should reflect what you’re looking for in a woman.”

“The ‘ol looking-for-in-a-woman list.”

“Yep.”

I look beyond the porch screen at the birds in the bushes, squirrels scampering in the trees, neighbors yanking their dogs after them.  The order of the universe is two-by-two. 

“You’re not writing,” Telly says.

Quickly, I make a list.  He asks me to read it to him.  He mulls it over.

“That sounds like an academic checklist for testing the veracity of a good woman.”

“Like Cinderella and her glass slipper. Pretty good, huh?”

The cat hops onto the table without warning and sticks a perfect three-foot landing on the clipboard, grooming the fourth leg/arm even as he touches down.

“Bravo,” Telly says and laughs.

“Toby, I can’t see my list.”  

“Forget that list.  Here.”  Telly hands me a small notepad the size of pack of cards.  “Make a new list.  A list of things you can’t see. Using only one- and two-syllable words.”

“Of things I can’t see?  In a woman?”

He gives me a look.  “Are you looking for another cat?”

I close my eyes and consider what I cannot see.  Once I write down the first invisible attribute, the list of classics practically writes itself.

“Okay,” Telly says.  “Read it to me.”

“Good sense of humor.  Compassionate—four-syllables, I know.  Likes movies, kittens and puppies, walks on the beach, Candy Crush.”

Toby swipes at the pad and knocks it out of my hand.

“That’s better,” my nonagenarian friend says.

“How is that better?  Now I have no list.”

“That’s not your list.  That’s some generic wish-list you’ve seen in a hundred other profiles and then adopted as your own because you think that’s what a woman expects a man to be looking for in a woman.”

Using my fingers, I try to follow the logic. The thinking I…the expecting woman…the looking man…the woman-in-which-to-be-found. Nearly a whole hand of subjects and direct-objects and other objects is staring me in the face.

My friend looks beside himself with disgust.  “Do you even know how to play Candy Crush?”   

“If that’s not me—or, I mean, if that’s not what a woman expects me to be looking for in her—I don’t know what is.” I look at the fingers deployed in my defense. I seemed to be missing one. “Maybe I should just say I’m looking for someone who likes a good mystery.”

“I like that.”

“I’m kidding.”

But Telly isn’t.  He asks for my laptop, which Toby is all too willing to provide him.  Immediately, the old guy proceeds to update my profile, suggesting that the man behind it is looking for himself and looking for a woman who is doing likewise.  Maybe, he concludes, they could compare notes and discuss their findings over coffee cups at six feet.  He hits the submit button.

“You do understand I am going to delete that the moment you leave.”

“One of my great joys while Alexi was living, was learning new things about her and sharing new things about me.”

“Telly, I like that but—”

Ding!  The laptop dings.

“I think it’s great you are still a romantic at ninety-two, but—”

Ding!

“I swear.  What was I saying?”

Ding!  The computer won’t shut up.

“What is that?” I ask and take back my laptop.  The dater’s dashboard is still pulled up and my mailbox—Ding!—is filling up.  I open it and find four—Ding!—five new queries from women who are each on a quest for the elusive self.  Their pictures look recent.  Their profiles are cute.  And they are down for sharing and comparing over sugar and cream. 

“Telly, this is even better than lying.  Look at this.”

He smiles to himself.  “You just have to know yourself.  Or, in your case, know that you don’t fully know yourself.  Once you do that, you open the door to a wonderful lifelong adventure. And if you can find a woman whose foot will fit into that, you’ll have your Cinderella.”

My wingmen, ages ten and ninety-two.