Does the rock hard loser come à la mode?

Submitted by Lynn, Age 36, Atlanta, GA

It was an evening of firsts. The first date since my divorce, the first with a gentleman I’d met online, and the first with a man over forty. He seemed great on paper: tall, chiseled face, a banker. But from the moment we said hello, I could tell there was something not quite right about him. When browsing his online profile one last time before our date, I wondered: how does a man like this get to be forty-three without ever being married? I soon found out.

He was awkward, uncomfortable in his own skin. He was good looking, just like his picture, but everything he said seemed forced, as if he’d just read a manual on how grown up men are supposed to behave. He laughed just a beat too late when something funny happened, and then he laughed too loud, like someone who didn’t get the joke but was eager to prove how funny he thought it was all the same.

We had dinner at one of my favorite Italian restaurants, and the more we talked, the less interested I became. He agreed with me way too much. He ran at the mouth on certain topics (banking, his family), but was suspiciously evasive on others (his dating past).

He started to get unnaturally chummy toward the end of dinner, but nothing could have prepared me for what he did next. The busboys had just cleared our table, and the waiter handed us desert menus. My date leaned into me and whispered:

“You may not want to fill up too much on dessert because there’s more dessert to come, if you know what I mean.”

As he said the “more desert to come” phrase, he opened his palm, revealing, not one, but TWO (!) tablets of Viagra.

I was completely shocked. I said, “Wow. I guess I have been out of the dating world for awhile.”

He smiled a wicked and stupid grin and said, “I guess you have.”

Was this the only sort of eligible male on the market after a gal hits thirty-five? Thankfully not. I met my current boyfriend only two months later. But this first date was one for the books. I went home after dinner and cried into my pillow for several hours straight.