When sexless = single

Finished off 2017 with a date with...another David. Shout out to the bores who became parents of boys in the 60's.

David was a single man on a married website. I suspected he wasn't really single when he told me that he was semi-retired but unable to meet until after 8pm any night of the week. First warning sign. Didn't ignore it. Acknowledged it and changed the first date to a night that suited me. Not mid-week. These days I refuse to fit into anyone's schedule other than my own. Limits the men available but generally sifts out the dickheads...like David.

Met David. Instead of waiting on the steps of the library, he was waiting on the footpath in front of the steps. He was hunched over scanning the crowd, obviously nervous, umbrella in his hand. Very sensible. Groaned. Introduced myself.

He explained his status a few minutes after we met. "My wife had a stroke 3 years ago and she is in a nursing home. I've just come from there actually. I go and see her every day and stay with her until she goes to sleep."

Awwww how sweet. What a lovely introduction.

I had already sized David up as conventional, uninteresting and depressed...or more likely, depressing. The hunched shoulders were a giveaway. Dressed in running shoes it was obvious he wasn't particularly interested in making a huge first impression. Maybe he had an ace up his sleeve that he'd reveal a bit later on? He was plain and bearded, with a mouth, like all bearded men, resembling a gaping red-lipped vagina covered in pubic hair. Men with beards revolt me.

Beards aside, David looked like one of those men who would have his own personal 'stank'. You know the type. You walk into his house and you think "oh geez it stanks like Dave in here." Washed shirt from 2 days ago - still stanks like Dave.  Most people get a stank later in life - old women smell like bum, and old men smell like greasy unwashed hair...but David, he looked liked he stanked now.

David talked incessantly about his infirm wife as we searched for somewhere to grab a drink. She'd been in a nursing home for 3 years, the last year of which she'd been unable to communicate. That second stroke a year ago had rendered her unable to talk or eat and she was now being fed through a tube. I groaned quietly to myself again. I just didn't care about him or his wife and I kinda wanted to leave...but the date was on a conveyer belt and there was no way to get off without being rude. I casually mentioned that he might like to go lightly on the antibiotics next time she got a chest infection. Gasp! He was deeply offended. That wasn't the response he was searching for.

Things went downhill from there.

Although David found me on a married dating website, he thought a long explanation about how much he loved his wife made him different from all the other married men on there. He wasn't. David was in the unique position of being able to put his stoke-affected wife on a pedestal - similar to someone whose wife had died. Who was going to argue with him ffs? As the night wore on it was obvious that no-one had dared.

He was strangely open about his search for sex (his right after all), his experience with prostitutes and his brief dabble (I suspected not-so-brief) with a website called SeekingArrangement.com which he later referred to as a website where a sugar-daddy could find a partner. Fuck I hate that term. David who had just referred to himself as a sugar-daddy was obviously anything but. Payment for sex? Maybe. Put a woman up in a penthouse? Hardly. He claimed this website was cheaper than a prostitute if one was savvy enough to haggle or search around long enough for the right price. He boasted to me of his recent 1 month relationship with a 25yo Italian university student. Yes I actually think this was his attempt at wooing me. David, close-to-ugly, 56, obviously not wealthy, claimed this attractive 25yo lady had set him back $300 for the first date. Thankfully, perhaps due to the ace he was still hiding from me, she wouldn't accept payment for next the 10 times (more like 2 times) he met with her over the next month . Let's put that in context. That's like me not wanting money for sleeping with a 79yo man I find on a website where I am specifically requesting money for sex.  David explained that the only reason they stopped seeing each other was that she had to suddenly return to Italy.  I asked if he'd ever considered that this lady might still be sitting at home and not in Italy.

He was getting pretty cocky, and a little angry by this stage. The date wasn't going as smoothly as the ones he'd experienced on SeekingArrangement.com. Granted, money wasn't exchanging hands, but David still had an expectation that wasn't being met. He didn't like me questioning his bullshit stories - the one about the neurosurgeons recommending brain surgery on the bedridden, nursing-homed wife following her 2nd stroke, or when I questioned his decision to actively fight to keep his wife alive.

About an hour into the date, David smirked and asked me why my marriage ended. I knew he was fishing for confirmation that I was the freak, not him. I refused to answer him and told him it was none of his business. That's when he informed me that he knew what I was. "You're a man-hater." It usually takes a few dates before men gets around to calling me that. It's either man-hater or crazy. Most men who are subjected to questions about their behaviour stoop to name calling. In the words of Germaine Greer: "We get accused as feminists as being man-haters, our problem is not that, our problem is that we love men, we really love them, we want to be with them, we want to be close to them, what we can't handle is the fact that they don't love US. But it's typical of the backward rhetoric. That those of us who struggle against the poor esteem in which we're held by men, will be told that WE are the haters."

Men enjoy being with women who smile and faun, stroke and encourage, gasp and pet. Not those who question.

David's man-hater comment was in part a reaction to my comment earlier in the night when I expressed a deep satisfaction with men paying for everything on the married dating website. If society chooses to treat women who seek sex as sluts, the fallout is that few women will join a website that caters for married men looking for an affair. The consequence, we get to use the website for free, while men pay.

Not all men said David. He informed me that he didn't see women as sexual objects.

Anyway, once David fired that initial insult I felt free to fire back. I informed David that he had a syndrome. Had he ever considered that he might have a creepy case of Munchausen by proxy.  The fact that he literally couldn't shut the fuck up about his wife's incapacity while simultaneously getting a deep satisfaction from his role as spouse of the protractedly ill. David had given up work 3 years ago when his wife had her first stroke, to become what he referred to as his wife's carer. I corrected him - the nurses in the home were her carers, he was the husband who visited. He was outraged and told me I'd be hard pressed to find a man alive who had done as much as he had for his wife. I responded that I'd be hard pressed to find a man alive who was so scared of going back to work that he kept his vegetable-wife alive to avoid it.

I don't often leave an unfinished wine on the table when I leave a bar, but I did that night. I interrupted David on his final rant about his sacrifices, and something about pure love, and I got up and walked out of the bar. And that my friends is officially the first time in 7 years that a man has paid in entirety for my first date drinks.

Post marriage dating - the only place in the world where men feel strongly about equality.




"Do what you want. And don't be ashamed of it and don't deny it. Make sure though, that it's what you really want." (Germaine Greer again)

Think I'm going to call it quits for a while. These men are foul. All inadequate. A waste of my time.



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