Legs

When I was about 10 years-old, it occurred to me that I didn't like my legs. It happened as I was shooting them a sideways glance in a department store mirror and was horror-struck thinking that I had no kneecaps. 

Legs in the Skirt, copyright Teece Aronin. Available on
products at Redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter. 

In that place where my knees were supposed to bow gracefully outward, they didn't; it was as if my “knee yeast” never rose. I pointed this out to my mother who replied with that time-honored retort of mothers everywhere: "You're fine."

Of course, that experience in the department store wasn't enough to deter me from saying you're fine when my own kids complained. Karma bit me for it when I said, "You're fine" to my son minutes before he threw up all over his suit, his shoes, and the interior of my new car on the way to my aunt's funeral.

But that day in the department store did inspire me to buy my swimsuits online as soon as the technology became available.

The other thing is that I have big legs and "cankles," the seamless merge of ankles and calves. My biggest complaint about my cankles is that they make it hard to buy comfortable ankle socks. I'll bet there are enough women with cankles that if someone were to design the cankle sock, that person would make a fortune. I think the biggest argument for cankle socks is that they would be big enough to never get lost in the dryer. 

I haven't worn a dress, pantyhose, and heels at the same time in ages, but I remember that those three items, worn together, did great things for my legs. I still had big legs, but they were big, SEXY legs. Even the cankles stopped being cankles and transformed into the legs’ equivalent to great cleavage.  

My mother's legs were a lot like mine, and my father was crazy about her legs all their lives together. He loved to tell the story about the day he was following her up a steep stairway on his way to meet my grandmother and aunts for the first time. He said my mother kept nervously glancing down at him and clutching the hem of her skirt tight around her legs. He found her bashfulness endearing. 

A while back I was dating a man who said to me, "Your legs are perfectly fine."  

"True," I said, "They move, and they manage to support my weight."

 And I wonder why I'm single. 

He rolled his eyes. "You have what I think of as rich legs, and they're beautiful." When he said that, I got weak in my nonexistent knees. 

So, I'm going to rewrite that old song, When a Man Loves a Woman to sing to myself as needed. I'm calling it, When a Woman Loves Herself and Her Cankles.  

A String of Saliva and a Nose Full of Nickels

Since the departure of Sweet John, a man I met online and dated for almost a year, I've been wondering: Am I willing, much less ready, to return to online dating, to pull on the wet swimsuit of ridiculous usernames and perfunctory communications with men who for all I know are 20-year-old women calling themselves Roger and plotting to swindle me? Or worse, 40-something men actually named Roger and plotting to kill me?

I have always had mixed feelings about online dating, part of it stemming from being born toward the end of the Baby Boom. It set me up to embrace much of what the Information Age has brought but be baffled by the rest. And I'm ambivalent about online dating. Through it, I have crossed paths with some very weird people and credit gut instinct, a modicum of smarts, and an army of angels for the fact that nothing seriously harmful has happened to me. Then again, online dating is the reason I have some of my closest male friends, because that's what becomes of love interests when you don't become a couple but the next best thing happens.   

I had a knee-jerk reaction after Sweet John, resulting in a message to some man on Match.com whose hobbies included trumpet-playing. What he'd written about himself was neither intriguing to me nor off-putting. Judging from his picture, he wasn't handsome but seemed likable.

Oh, why not?  I thought, and typed:

Hello, TootingMan:

I enjoyed reading your profile. If you'd like to communicate further, please let me know. 

Hoping to hear from you -

SickOfThis

The next day there was a message from TootingMan saying that sure, he’d be happy to become better acquainted. He included his name (real, I assume) and a phone number in case I’d like to chat, which at that point I would not. I messaged back, ignoring the chat part, and we shared a brief, dull exchange of about four messages ending, by some weirdo miracle, in a date for coffee that next Wednesday. 

Wednesday found me pondering what business I had using an online dating site. I really should take a break from it until I've adjusted to the new me. You see, life has just plopped me at a scary and confusing crossroads. About to turn sixty, I have changed so radically and so recently that my head spins from it. Not long ago, I let my gray hair grow in, a decision for which I have no regrets. But to borrow from Leonard Cohen, suddenly "I ache in the places where I used to play." I'm finding that weight gain lurks in the bushes ready to jump me if I eat so much as a candy bar, and will cling to my wobbling frame unless I work out for five hours a day over the course of the next three weeks while eating only kale. Overnight my feet became drier than the BBC News Hour. 

That, of course, is not true; nothing could be drier than the BBC News Hour. 

As the date loomed, I found myself willing to go, but lacking the happy little jump in my stomach I've often felt when meeting someone new. I checked my messages at noon, saw that he was canceling because a trumpet gig had come along and was surprised by how relieved I felt.  

Then I looked at his picture again. In it he was laughing, and a string of saliva stretched from the roof of his mouth to his tongue. The string was obvious, so why didn't I notice it before? And his nose was huge; it was splayed across his face, resembling the underside of a shovel. 

I thought of the W.C. Fields movie The Bank Dick where a little boy looks at Fields then asks his mother, "Mommy, doesn't that man have a funny nose?" The mother replies, "You mustn't make fun of the gentleman, Clifford. You'd like to have a nose like that full of nickels, wouldn't you?" 

Please understand, I don't put a lot of stock in "attractiveness," whatever that is. But what made me look at that picture, read a profile that wasn't interesting to me, share four messages that did nothing to spark my interest, and arrive at the conclusion that I should reach out? 

Maybe subconsciously I wanted someplace warm to keep my nickels.

Brown Shoes

According to the Cole Porter song, Miss Otis Regrets, the lady is saddened that she's unable to lunch because she's just gotten hauled off to the hoosegow for shooting her lover. On Saturday I regretted that I was able to lunch - and even then, it was just barely. 

Brown Shoes by Teece Aronin. Available on products at
redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter.

I have a friend I'll call F. F and I have known each other almost two years and met through the miracle of social media. Because we live roughly two hours from one another, we have communicated mostly via the Face Book game Words with Friends and texting. We did manage to meet a couple of times, one of them for dinner. Maybe you've found yourself with the same problem: you like someone, but you live so far apart that it's difficult to date like other couples. 

So back to F. One or the other of us was always dating someone else or recovering from some star-crossed stupidity into which we'd gotten sucked. 

Anyway, there we were last week, messaging back and forth, and ended up planning a date with each other. It was for yesterday. Then, in one of those, "I-have-no-idea-why-we're-texting-about-this" moments, it was decided we'd share our first kiss. He seemed enthused about the kiss and so was I. I was to drive to his house and we would go from there to a wedding reception. 

Now, I was rear-ended a few weeks ago, and my back and knees waited until recently to start collectively killing me. I've been limping, playing phone tag with my medical claims rep and having a rough time getting things done at work because of the pain. The day before the date it was almost unbearable, so I went to my doctor. I had told F that I would dance with him, but could barely get out of my car. 

"I'm going to a wedding tomorrow!" I told my doctor who wrote me a prescription for a steroid. And then it hit me that I had nothing to wear. Actually, I have very few clothes period. I think some of them are still packed from when we moved last spring. Even at work I dress very casually. So I went straight from the doctor to Marshall's where I limped my way among the racks until I came up with something nice enough for a wedding but not too dressy for work. Then I went home and collapsed. 

Three hours later, F texted to say the couple getting married hadn't received his RSVP so would I like to just meet for lunch? I was disappointed but relieved. I'd had mixed feelings about getting all dressed up and mingling with a lot of people I don't know while walking like Walter Brennan. So lunch it would be. 

That night I was feeling a little giddy about the next day, and the idea of the kiss - which in my mind had become not just the kiss, but the KISS. 

We met at the restaurant, oohed and ahhd over the pot stickers and each had a sandwich and a beer. When the bill came I asked if I could help and he said I could cover the tip if I liked, so I did that. He walked me to my car where I instantly regretted not getting to my mints beforehand. 

It occurred to me that we'd each driven more than an hour just for lunch and that maybe a first kiss in a parking lot wasn't what he'd had in mind, so I said, "I don't know what your schedule's like, but would you like to go do something else?" I was thinking a movie or a park might be a good idea.

No, he said. He had to let the dog out and a buddy was taking him out for his birthday (I had wrapped up a small birthday present for him, but forgot it at home). Then he said, "Well, I'll be seeing you," and started for his car. 

"F, would you like to kiss goodbye?" I asked.

"No, that's okay," he said, and kept walking.

I sat there for a second, a little perplexed then went after him.

"F?"

He didn't seem to have heard me and kept walking,

"Excuse me, F!" 

He turned and saw me and continued getting into his car. When I caught up to him, his car door was still open. I bent over and looked in.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"No, nothing's wrong."

"But you wouldn't like to kiss goodbye?"

"It's not imperative," he said, not moving except to look at me.

I straightened up, walked back to my car and got in. He was long gone before I'd even managed to get my keys in the ignition. 

I tried to keep an open mind about what just happened. We'd met before, and he had been open about his attraction to me and wanting to kiss me someday, so I didn't think it was an attraction problem. Then again, maybe it was. I started that losing battle so many of us wage in these situations, trying to think what I'd said or done to offend him. There was nothing stuck between my teeth and nothing up my nose. There were no lulls in the conversation and a lot of laughing. What happened?

Then I just felt bad and drove home. 

It's probably not fair to write about this when F and I've not talked about what happened, but for all I know, he doesn't intend to and might have no plans to discuss anything with me again. And besides, if I don't write about things like this, they pile up inside and who needs that? 

Also, F deserves the benefit of the doubt. For all I know, he chipped a tooth on a pot sticker and was too self-conscious to kiss. Or maybe he really does still like me, but didn't want the kiss to happen over his doggie bag. Or maybe the woman he'd just started dating who so far was two for three on date cancellations, texted him while I was in the ladies' room and proposed marriage. I joke, but truly, some very good reason might have occurred to him that made him change his mind.  

And like women, men have the right to change their minds and they also have the right to say no to unwanted advances. 

Imagine all the times Donald Trump must have fought women off. 

O Don't Let Me Sext When I'm Sleezy

I'm a little like the drunk who thinks he's fine to drive except that I'm the out-of-it girlfriend who thinks she's fine to text. 

Image, copyright Teece Aronin

I have a history of this kind of thing. Let's say I'm seeing a man who's on the road a lot. Invariably I'll say something like: "Text me when you get to your hotel - even if you think I'm asleep." The next day I see the text he sent at 1 a.m. then read my reply. I am absolutely mortified. 

About a year ago I was in bed with the flu when a man I was dating texted.

"What can I do to help you?" he asked - from Duluth. 

I'd been napping, was high on over-the-counter flu meds and wasn't wearing my glasses. I wrote back: "Just come on me once in a while." 

I have no idea how that happened when what I thought I wrote was, "Just check on me once in a while." Notice that some of the accidental letters in that text aren't anywhere near the intentional letters. 

There was another time when I was sleepy and sick and trying to talk to a boyfriend on the phone. Suddenly he wasn't there so I groped for the wall socket then texted to explain. I wrote: "My O just died." 

No it hadn't. My phone had just died. I was far too out of it to have had an O at that moment, but if I had, it would have just died, too. 

I'm often struck by what lovely gentlemen I've dated as not one of them pretended to notice any of the misfires including those described above. Then again, they probably wept with laughter, waved over every guy in the bar and wheezed out the words, "Look at what my passed out girlfriend just texted!" 

You know, that whole texting while sleepy thing used to embarrass me but I'm past all that. I just do my best to tap the right letter and if I happen to land anywhere within three letters of the right letter, I'm happy. 

Let men play Alan Turing to my Enigma. Let them struggle to understand me for once.

And by the way, the title of this essay is actually: Oh, Don't Let Me Text When I'm Sleepy.

I shouldn't be allowed to blog either. 

For Al-John and All the Others Like Her

For a while I did a lot of online dating. Many days as an online dater were an adventure in cat and mouse except the cats were usually VERY stupid. And most of the cats who weren't stupid were VERY creepy.

Graphic design: Teece Aronin

One day a man "liked" my profile (meaning he clicked something to indicate his interest), and when I took a closer look, he'd posted no photo of himself, listed nothing by way of personal information, and his username was AlmostNormalNow.

Then there was Seekingonereal. It took me half an hour to figure out that he was seeking one real. I couldn't imagine why he'd want to date a woman with an STD unless maybe he worked for the Health Department.

The parade continued when I spent almost a week messaging with a man before he wrote that he really wasn't ready to date someone after all. 

'Well, it was great while it never lasted,' I sighed. Two days later he texted: "Hi, Terri! How are you, gorgeous?"

"How am I?" I wrote back, "I'm not Terri, for one thing." 

There are a lot of scammers on these sites too, and most of them aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, but they are tools. Case in point: the man who messaged me whose profile said he was a "guy seeking girls." At one point, he listed his name as John, and at another time he was Al. And on top of all that, his profile said, "I'd love to meet a really great guy and settle down; some man who knows how to treat a real and honest woman like me."

Our exchange went like this:

Me: "Why does your profile say your name is Al?"

Al-John: "Because that happens to be my name, sweetheart."

Me: "Then why does it also list your name as John?"

Al-John: "Oh, because my name is Al but I sometimes go by John."

Me: "And why did your profile say you're a woman?"

Al-John: "I think I typed that without my glasses. Maybe I should wear them more often."

Me: "Maybe you should, girlfriend."

To be fair, there were times I'd stretch out on the bed in ratty sweats, my hair in rollers with three or four candy bars and a party size bag of chips. I'd be tucked into bed all cozy, messaging something like this:

"Well thank you. You seem interesting, too. And yes, of course I think you're cute. Thank you for thinking I'm cute, too. Yup, I do try to take care of myself. I feel so much healthier when I eat right."

One of the online dating hopefuls messaged me one day, and when I looked at his photos, there was one of him posing in front of the Washington Monument so that it appeared to be rising out of his trouser-fronts. 

Things finally got so bad that when a ruggedly handsome guy who had two college degrees and was working on a Masters in Divinity asked me out, my friend, Tina shouted, "Praise God!" It turned out that, in addition to worshiping God, he wanted to worship me too, just not in church. 

Sometimes I'd get a little discouraged. So many men out there did not seem to be looking for what I was. I mean, I thought I knew what I was looking for. Well, let's put it this way: I knew what I wasn't looking for; I wasn't looking for a man like Al-John.

And I definitely wasn't seekingonereal. 

To a Few of the Gentlemen on OKCupid

Dear Gentlemen:

Man with the Twitchy Mustache by 

Teece Aronin. Available on products at

redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter. 

Thank you all so very much for taking the time to "view," "like," "favorite," etcetera my profile and for all your lovely messages.

Since each of you was memorable in your own way, I am writing this letter in an effort to acknowledge the unique impression each of you made on me.

First, to God'sGift, no, Heaven isn't missing an angel, but I'm flattered that you thought it might be. Hell might be short one little devil, though, you little devil, you. ;-D

And Iamblessed451, thank you for saying that if there was anything in this world that God took His time creating, it was the perfection of my beauty. Actually, I think He spent no more than a few minutes whipping me up and if you saw me first thing in the morning, you'd think so, too.

To CarnivoreYum who wrote: "Oh yes, you are meaty where I like it," believe it or not, I wasn't thinking of you when I threw all that junk in my trunk mindlessly eating my way through last winter. But if it works for you, it works for me. 

Howfine69: I liked the way you didn't beat around the bush when all your message said was: "have sex with me?" You didn't even waste time capitalizing the H. Very swift, bold move, 69, but I'm afraid it still missed because, well, your message kind of creeped me out.  

And speaking of creeped out . . .

KittyLiquor - While it would be mice to meet you, too, I really must pass. My cat gets crazy jealous, and whenever that happens, she throws up in my shoes. But thank you.

James: While your message was charming, I was a little confused when your picture was of a beautiful young woman. I think that in your rush to scam me, you neglected to switch out the female profile photo with one of a man. But don't be embarrassed, James; that kind of thing happens to scammers all the time. It must be hard keeping track of all the little details, like if your scam target is a man or a woman. If I'm wrong, and you really are a beautiful young woman named James, please accept my apology, and know that if I were wired a little differently, I would definitely go out with you. In other words, it's not you, it's me.

I still have more of you to thank and in the meantime, I'm sure others of you will step forward with your own unique ways of sweeping a girl off her feet.

But until then, buzz off -

T

A Most Reluctant Cougar

Online dating is downright surreal when you're middle-aged, especially when you're a little on the shy side.

One of the biggest shockers is my appeal to certain men in their upper teens and early twenties. Actually, these aren't men at all; they're unsupervised Boy Scouts with Internet access.

Occasionally the messages they write me are sweet, almost innocent and I imagine Ron Howard in Happy Days asking a girl to the prom. I send them on their way with a "Thank you and I'm very flattered but . . ."

Sometimes this is enough to redirect their attention to the flat-tummied twenty-somethings with whom they belong, or on to other women old enough to be their mothers. But often they return, more aggressive, asking if I'm afraid I can't handle them. Then I write back, "Oh, don't worry about little old me. Run along now."

Some of my friends (and I like these friends), offer a flattering theory as to why this happens; that these young men have had some experience with girls and want to know what a woman is like. Sometimes these friends even call me a cougar. I like that. Cougar.

Of course we all know I'm about as cougar-y as a house cat - a timid, spayed and lazy one. I'm more likely to crawl into a man's lap and fall asleep than to use my claws for anything other than scratching dried smutch off a kid's face. 

Other friends (the ones I don't particularly like because they're honest), shoot me this jaded look that says, "Seriously?" And then words like kept and credit card and sugar momma float by my wounded self. 

At least twice now these kids were med students at the local university (possibly on the fence about geriatrics as a specialty) and another of them was in law school. 

The law student kept writing back, obviously amused by my rejections, and trying to trip me into agreeing to "date" him. I wrote and explained that first of all, NO, and second, that I was going through a divorce and didn't want to have to explain him in court.

He came back with, "Well, don't tell them about me."

"And if they ask?" 

"Then just lie." 

"But I might be under oath." 

"So?"

I wrote, "I'm shocked to think that you, a law student, would suggest I lie under oath."

He wrote back, "Hah-hah!"

He'd obviously been in law school a while because he had a firm grasp on how our legal system works. 

Eventually he gave up, concluding that by the time he managed to talk me into anything, both of us would have teeth in a glass by the motel bed.

But what do I really do when a 22-year-old asks me out? 

I politely decline while addressing him as dude, call up all my friends (except my honest ones) and flaunt it like hell. 

Emile, Are You There? It's Me, Nellie!

When my marriage ended and the dust finally settled, my kids told me I should try online dating. Inwardly I groaned, but I have to admit, I was curious. It had been nearly 20 years since I'd last dated; my mind, face, body, my very psyche for that matter were different now - in some ways better and in some ways not. What kind of men would I attract? Would I attract any? Who might be out there who would make sense as the other half of a couple with me?

When I met my ex-husband, my weight was a healthy 140 pounds or so and I was in my late thirties. But during my second pregnancy at age 43, I developed gestational diabetes, a condition which resolved itself after the birth of the baby, but which had left my metabolism so wildly out of control, that my weight ballooned to over 250 pounds. Despite consulting an endocrinologist, and doing everything she told me to do, including exercise, the most weight I ever lost at any given time was six pounds - honest: six pounds. And every time I lost those six pounds, they would fly back and wrap themselves around me faster than you can say, "big mama."

I'm sure the life stressors we all cope with were part of the problem, too, and that I sought too much solace at the bottom of a bag of chips, but overall, I tried very hard to eat in a way which should have landed me at a healthy weight but just couldn't seem to succeed.

Eventually, I opted for bariatric surgery and my weight dropped to something somewhere in the chunky range. Then divorce stressors replaced family stressors and I lost about thirty pounds without even meaning to. So when my kids started nudging me towards online dating, I was thinner than I could ever remember being as an adult; about a size eight. But that weight fluctuation had led to a confused self-image, so I often stared in hard-blinking amazement at pictures of the handsome men approaching me on the dating sites I'd chosen. Why were they attracted to me, I wondered. I won't mention the sites by name, but they rhyme with Scratch.com and No Way, Stupid.

But it's funny (and not in the hah-hah way) that I could learn so much about the mysteries of physical attraction at such a late stage of life; sometimes more than I wanted to. Some men who reached out to me online seemed to think the heavens had opened up to deposit me in front of them. Then again, one man I dated struggled with his lack of physical attraction to me while feeling very connected to me "emotionally and intellectually."

Hearing this hurt, so when he finally managed to articulate this concern, I grappled for my dignity, sat up straight in my pen and demurely folded my hooves atop my udder. And it was a herculean effort to limit my weeping to only one set of my six eyes.

Then, one night he and I had dinner with his sister who was chatting me up as we waited for a table. "So you met my brother on Scratch.com?"

"That's right," I smiled.

"I never had any luck on Scratch," she mused.

"Neither did I," I said. 

And then we all laughed and laughed and laughed. I was joking - mostly, but zinging him a little felt good. I have to say, though, that knowing him was very much worth the jab to my ego and he proved himself a wonderful friend. And one of my most honest, damn him.

But really . . . Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons; wise men never try. Oh, wait, that was Emile De Becque serenading Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. Some Enchanted Evening was the song. And that was physical attraction the way it should be.

Now, if I could just find my Emile De Becque, I might even be willing to change my name to Nellie Forbush. Then again, maybe just Nellie.

Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Some people say that when God closes a door, He opens a window. Now an atheist will tell you there is no God which would mean that if a door shuts, don't look at God. And for God sakes don't look at God to open any windows. 

So if there is no God, who does close our metaphorical doors and open our metaphorical windows? Beats me, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's one of those pesky gnats dive-bombing the human psyche - the gnats known as free will and fate. I'm not here to weigh in on either one other than to say I doubt both can exist - at least not simultaneously - and I have no idea which one does.

Anyway, one night I was out on a date with a man who was an atheist to his core. The very idea of God or religion filled him not just with disdain but with disgust. Even though we didn't see entirely eye to eye, he was such a bright man that I was enjoying his company just the same. 

He was tall, handsome, urbane and flawlessly articulate. He was as perfectly polished as the President's shoes except for the colorful discourse pouring from him on the topics of God and religion. Despite the fact that he was beginning to surmise I was too much of  a "believer," we were very much enjoying our talk. 

He turned to me where we were seated at the bar of a pricey little watering hole, pulled out his cell phone and asked if I'd like to see pictures of the renovations he was performing on his house. As he swiped through the photos, he explained the details as he went, finally stopping at a picture of beautiful mahogany-stained doors lying atop sawhorses.

     
"I'm installing these doors throughout the house," he said. As soon as I saw the picture, an evil troll banged a gong in my head.

    
"Did you know those are 'Christian doors?'" I asked, an innocent expression faked upon my face.

"I don't know what you mean," he said, gravely. Now, he was 6'2" and I'm 5'4", so one could say he really was looking down on me. 

"The doors you're installing; they're 'Christian doors,'" I repeated.

"No they are not," he replied emphatically.

"Oh, but they are," I chirped.

"No," he informed me as though addressing a well-meaning moron, "the correct term is 'six-panel doors.'"

"That may very well be, but they're also referred to as 'Christian doors,'" I explained. I honestly did like him and don't know why I wasn't behaving better. 

     
"Here, I'll show you," I offered. At this point I whipped out my own phone and Googled Christian doors.

     
"See? Look here," I invited. "Christian doors date back to the 1700s and are also known as 'frame and panel' or 'cross and bible doors.'"

     
I didn't even know they were called cross and bible doors until I read it to him and was practically giddy over it as I did. I could see him physically pull back and his posture grow stiff so I stuck my nose back into my phone - but continued:

"Okay, look. It says here that the configuration of the four panels on the bottom of the door creates the illusion of a cross. See? It's right there. It's so obvious when you know what you're looking for. And then, the two panels at the top represent an open bible, but actually, they make another cross too, don't they? Imagine that - two crosses on one door."

     
I looked up at him with the expression of an angel, which wasn't easy as it doesn't come naturally.   

"Well?" I asked, "Isn't that interesting?"

There was a long pause before he dryly remarked, "I am not going to let you ruin them for me."

     
And did I mention that his name was Christopher? It was, and may I be struck dead if I'm lying. 

Hand to God.