This story is a fantasy based on actual events and real people. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
My marriage was a means to an end for me. It's probably why it didn't work out. I started out believing in true love and soul mates and all that bullshit, but once my age started with a 3, I started to realize that it wasn't going to happen the way that I'd hoped. I decided that I needed a wife in order to buy a house and get on with my life, and because that's the way that I was looking at things, that's what I eventually found.
By the time I'd settled down and gotten a respectable job I was 25 and it was the turn of the millennium. As you probably know it was a boom time in the United States, in real estate in particular. I started a house hunt to finally get out of my parents house, and found that all I could afford were dingy two bedroom condos. I passed. I figured that any day now I would meet "the one" and we would be able to afford a wonderful home together. More years passed and "the one" never materialized. Forget about doing anything on my own now, those dingy two bedroom condos had now doubled in price! I certainly wasn't going to buy one of those things now if I wasn't going to buy it a few years ago for half the price! I knew the only way I was going to get the kind of place that I wanted was to find someone to share it with.
Finally somebody came along that appeared to fit the bill. We were set up on a blind date. We hit it off and got along well enough that we were engaged within eight months and living together within a year. My life was a blur for a few years. The wedding, the gorgeous townhouse that I always dreamed of, then the baby arrived. Unfortunately by then it was also obvious that my wife and I had no business being together. We didn't agree on anything. My wife lost her job and refused to go back. Her dream was to stay home and raise a child. My goal was to have a nice house and financial security. I lost the battle. My life became miserable, full of anxiety about what was going to happen when the money ran out. I did my best, giving up a job that I liked to find a job that I didn't for an extra ten thousand dollars a year, but it barely made a dent. By the time our savings was gone our marriage was over. Next thing I knew I was broke and back living in my parents' spare bedroom, saddled with huge alimony and child support payments, and wondering if it was all worth it.
To my credit, I guess, romantically I never looked back. I was back on the online dating sites almost as soon as the divorce papers were filed. I had had very little success with them the first time around, but nowadays it was a much more acceptable way of meeting people. I put up a profile on just about any free dating site I could find, my smiling face plastered all over the internet. Divorced male with young daughter, enjoys bowling and mini golf, long walks on the beach, romantic evenings by the fire. I enjoy going out as much as I enjoy staying in (this redundant bit of nonsense was a requirement on every profile for some reason.) I spent hours fine-tuning my profiles and searching the sites. I knew I had a much better idea of the type of woman I was looking for this time around. I browsed through hundreds of profiles. Sometimes I even found somebody I was excited about, and I would write them thoughtful, witty messages and never hear back from them. I had second-hand knowledge that some of the profiles on the sites were faked, and I assumed I was very good at picking those out.
Despite my frustrating experiences, I did get my share of attention. After all, I'm 5'11 and physically fit, with hazel eyes, wavy brown hair, and a killer smile. And to my surprise, the women that I confided in that I was flat broke and living with my parents didn't seem to mind. Before my divorce was final a woman struck up a conversation with me. We talked for two months. I found that I was ready to meet people but not ready to meet people, if you know what I mean. She didn't seem to mind, but by the time I was ready to meet her in person she balked. She was a teacher and it was August. She was going away to Florida, she said, and then to Maine for the rest of her summer vacation. She would be gone for two weeks. I was in no hurry, I replied, we could get together when she got back.
I was lucky to have friends who were going through their own divorces. A close friend of mine was having almost the same experience, just a year or so ahead of me. He went through the marriage, the child, the disagreements, and finally the divorce. He committed himself to helping me through the divorce and the aftermath. He had just started dating someone who had been divorced for several years and had been on the dating sites. She filled him in on all of the awful things that women did.
When I told him that this woman told me she went on vacation, Rich told his new girlfriend and she reported back that it was all a lie. She said she was actually seeing other men and putting me on the back burner. I couldn't wrap my mind around it. Why lie about that? What if we did end up together? How would you account for the fact that you weren't actually doing what you said you were doing? I was an honest person, and the thought of someone concocting an elaborate lie like that was beyond my imagination.
Whether she was lying or not, in the end it didn't matter. The woman suddenly stopped writing me while she was still "on vacation." A week after that her profile disappeared. Disgusted, I swore off online dating for... an hour. A good hour.
For the next couple of months I slogged my way through online dating without any success. The few profiles that I found interesting enough to respond to never responded back to me. The women that tried to contact me were unattractive, incoherent troglodytes. One conversation fell apart after a few days because one day she told me she was on only child, and the next day she mentioned having a brother-in-law. Really. After that I swore off online dating for two hours. I never enjoyed being single, but I comforted myself with the thought that being single was better than being with anybody I had met up to that point. I rather enjoyed masturbating, anyway. I was good at it. I had years of being single and being in a bad marriage to practice. I knew my way around the internet. I knew the sites that offered free x-rated videos, and where the best erotic stories were. I knew how to find what I wanted, as long as it wasn't an actual woman.
In the middle of October a woman contacted me. She seemed nice enough and attractive enough. I decided I was going to meet her. I asked her and she agreed to meet me at a coffee house near her. I didn't drink coffee, but I didn't drink alcohol, either, so I decided a quiet Starbucks was much better than a bar to get to know someone.
We said we would meet at six o'clock and I was there at six o'clock. Did I mention I was obsessively punctual? It was obvious that this woman wasn't. There was no sign of her. I texted Rich after ten minutes. "Still waiting," I said. "No way," he replied. I wasn't too nervous when I arrived, considering it was my first post-divorce date and I really didn't know what to expect, but as the minutes dragged on and the thought of being stood up crept into my mind, I started to get anxious. I looked around the Starbucks. Customers were drifting in and out. There was a man with a baby in a detachable car seat sitting by the door, drinking a coffee while the baby napped. A woman had come in at almost the same time as me. She didn't quite match the photos of the woman I was expecting to meet, but after a few minutes ticked by I started to wonder about her. She took her coffee and sat at a table facing the door, and cracked open a laptop in front of her. I began to think that maybe I should just go over and make sure that it wasn't my date, when she suddenly put her phone to her ear and started jabbering away in Spanish. No, that wasn't her. I continued to pace around the little storefront, trying not to look like I was waiting for somebody and getting increasingly worried that she wasn't coming.
After fifteen minutes I decided I would try to call her. Mind you our entire correspondence up to that point had been on the dating site. We had exchanged phone numbers when we agreed to meet in case of emergency, but we hadn't even spoken on the phone yet. I had stepped outside and dialed the number when I finally saw her approaching. She was 5'3 with waist-length brown hair, a slim figure and pretty brown eyes. She apologized for being late and I followed her into the Starbucks. We sat down at a table near the door and she talked for the next fifteen minutes. No, really. I don't think I said more than two words the entire time. She suddenly excused herself to go to the bathroom. I sat there, practically shell shocked, and expecting that when she came back she would feign an emergency and leave. Instead when she came back she said she wanted some coffee, so we went over to the counter.
Here is the other thing that Rich had told me through his new girlfriend. There are women out there who will date you pretty much just for the free stuff. Free drinks, free meals, whatever. Food whores was the term that he used. The idea had stayed in the back of my mind. Mary ordered a coffee and I ordered a hot chocolate. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. She didn't even budge when the cashier totaled up our order. Whatever, it was barely seven bucks total.
We sat back down and she started talking again. Every once in a while she would ask me a question and I would answer her, which would send her off talking about another topic. I found myself just staring at her, following what she was saying but also letting my thoughts drift. I stared at her lips and wondered what it would be like to kiss them. Her gray top left her collarbone exposed, and I imagined myself kissing it, then throwing her down somewhere and tearing all of her clothes off. I was never a man who let his sexual urges run his life, but this was a fresh start, right? Maybe this time around I could find it in myself to date women just to try to get them into bed. It could happen, right?
After a while she excused herself to go to the restroom again. As soon as she was gone I pulled out my phone. 8:05? We were sitting there for two hours? No wonder my stomach was rumbling. I texted Rich that I was still there at the Starbucks with her. I didn't have time to wait for his reply. Mary came back and started talking again. I wondered if I should ask her if she wanted to go to the Appleby's next door for dinner, but she just kept plugging along. Finally an hour later she said we should probably go before the Starbucks closed. We stood up and walked outside.
