When my mom died in February, it was such a shock, everything came to a halt. It even put a temporary damper on my libido. In fact, it briefly made me forget just how bitter I am about being divorced. But time passed, and eventually the old urges kicked back in. These urges were perhaps best articulated by the Jimmy Castor Bunch in the song Troglodyte: Gotta Find A Woman, Gotta Find A Woman, Gotta Find A Woman...
Ah, but how?
Well-meaning friends offer improbable suggestions. There's lots of nice girls at church, they'll say. Okay, first of all, I'm agnostic, and second, attending an institution that I consequently don't fully embrace for the sole purpose of hooking up would be, I'm pretty sure, a sin. Or at least morally dicey.
Grocery stores, book stores, clubs, the places people usually mention--feh. It might work if I had any talent for flirting, but since I have yet to meet a woman immediately impressed with my killer Phil Silvers impression, I get nowhere in situations like these. (And seriously, why wouldn't a woman be impressed with an impression of a great but largely forgotten comedian? It also modifies easily into a passable Woody Allen impression--and no, chicks don't dig that, either.)
Anyway, the point is, I have fallen to the level of trying an on-line dating service. I'll probably go on about the process and humiliations of this at greater length sometime, but the point is, I thought I was on the verge of some kind of success on this thing (success, in my extremely limited definition, means getting a date) when I ran straight into my own haplessness.
I started exchanging e-mails with someone on the system, and our e-mails became longer and increasingly personal. We exchanged phone numbers. The first time we talked, the conversation lasted nearly five hours--a good sign. I got most of her obscure references and she got most of mine--an even better sign.
She attended classes during the week, she said, so if she called again it might be kind of late. No problem, I said. Call anytime.
The only problem is, my sleep patterns are seiously screwed up. So the next time she called, it was fairly late and I was asleep. I mean, snoring, dreaming, deep, deep sleep.
I don't even remember the phone ringing. Literally, one second I was in a dream state, the next second I was talking to her. Small talk doesn't flow well when you're semi-conscious. Nothing flows at all. I tried to sound earnest and contemplative, but I'm sure I sounded whiny and self-important. She responded in a rather snide manner, I got defensive and the whole thing turned awkward. We finally agreed to at least "touch base" at some point in the future, but that hasn't happened and probably won't.
Which is too bad, because she really seemed pretty cool, and yet I'm not as bummed out as I thought I'd be. Maybe after a divorce and several deaths, you learn to put things in perspective. She's just one person. There are plenty more out there.
And when I find a woman who responds immediately to a Phil Silvers impression, I'll be in Heaven, or wherever agnostics go.
