ABOUT THAT CUP OF COFFEE...A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT...

And I thought the weekend was difficult. As I may have said before, I thought I had been very clear in my profile, posted as an elderly fright looking to meet other unattached men of a certain age, that I was not interested in anything more than friendship at this time. So I thought.

Enter the Professor. What he read in my profile, and was handily able to make me see once he pointed it out, was all sorts of detail that tended to cast another light on almost everything I said, if you happened to pay more attention to the fine print than to the headline. And that's how things really got ugly.

Even I could tell I was as nervous as the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof at the beginning, but after half an hour or so I had relaxed. I had stopped wondering or caring whether I was holding myself "like a man," had almost stopped wondering what the other people sitting so very close made of the sudden appearance in the Professor's conversation of words like "anal". I even decided that I didn't really care who saw me out with this guy and drew the correct conclusions about both of us. There is the famous saying: "nobody knows I'm gay until they see me with him..." OK: to start off, there was the problem of my finding myself quite willing to be flattered; let's call it the beginning of a slippery slope.

By the time dinner arrived I had decided that I didn't really care that he was older than he had said he was, or that he obviously dyed his hair and beard, or that he wore "too much" gold jewelry. I managed to get past the fact that he paraded the size and quality of his lakeside home, his powerboat, his house in town. When we parted, I discovered he drove a gigantic SUV, which he "needed" for the drive up from the south. So what? he was a witty guy, a great find, a new friend. And so attentive...

And yet... sometime in the course of the evening, probably around the third time he said that he had expected to be there about half an hour, or maybe when he suggested that we go back to the coffee bar, or when he suggested that we walk back by a more circuitous route -- at some point it began to get quiet enough in my head for me to hear that little voice: This guy has been buttering you up for three hours, why on earth do you think he is telling you all this stuff about how wonderful his living arrangements are, why does he keep coming back to the fact that I should destroy the photo of myself I posted with my profile? It's one thing to say you think someone is better-looking than his photograph once, and it's another thing to return to it... well, like a dog to his vomit, to coin a phrase.

All this really began to percolate once I had gotten into my own car and headed "home". By the time I got there I was painfully aware of how much it felt like cheating, how much it was cheating, how much I had let myself in for something I was not in the least ready for. I expressed my doubts to my hostess, and she tried gently to point out some of the inconsistencies in my behavior I had been inclined to overlook. And the next day the e-mails began, and the Professor really laid them all out for me. In spades.

It was shocking. We had definitely been at the same three tables in two places of public accommodation, but we had not been present at the same event. My stated reluctance to "connect" brought me accusations of being a tease [OK, in some sense that's true, but not in connection with any particular body parts], of leading him on, of constantly introducing new levels of ambiguity. Everything that I had found surprising and oddly pleasant and only disturbing in retrospect did in fact all mean exactly what that still, small voice had been trying to tell me: this is not just a "date", this is a date. This is what seduction feels like. This guy is expecting you to do the deed, if not on the first date [quelle delicatesse!], then in the near future. In fact, he thinks that you went looking for him with precisely that in mind.

I will admit that I am almost professionally clueless, and more inhibited than the average bear about many things. But it was only in retrospect that the ambiguities of my behavior became clear to me, and they started with the very act of posting a profile. It's all very well to say you are only looking for friendship, but once you start talking about what you would look for in a mate [which of course you are required to do by the service], you are in past that, and nitwits who think they are not busy paving the road to hell at full tilt are fooling themselves. I think I have become personally responsible for a six-lane, limited-access highway in that direction in the last couple of weeks.

Because what strikes me in retrospect is the extreme ambiguity of everything that took place: depending on your set of assumptions, it all looks entirely different. As I said at the beginning, once confronted with the other point of view, I could see it quite clearly. And I could see just as clearly that the more I stated what seemed perfectly clear to me, the more confused and angry he became. And I was the one who had been afraid of the old "bait-and-switch" trick; it was a bit of a shock to be accused of performing it. Every single thing I said was taken to mean more or less than I had intended to say; the things he extrapolated about my wife simply curled my hair. I had never said or implied anything even remotely resembling that: this was his set of assumptions, his experience, talking -- certainly not mine.

Well, you may officially consider me older and wiser, unless you think that that will keep me from doing something equally stupid in future. But I can see that if I really don't mean to act on the logical conclusions of leaving home in the near future, I am going to have to be a lot more careful of where I go and what I do and what I say. None of which comes naturally to me, as you have probably figured out by now.

Well, I have always intended to let that decent interval go by; I guess now I have to start making sure that I act like I mean it. Because I do.

Sorry, guys. I know this will be a big downer for the cheerleaders. But it's me talking, and it comes with the territory. I can't do it any other way than the way that seems right to me. And while I realize that the widows are all correct that there is no comparison, for me the "third thing" that our life together called into being is just as real as a human one. I can't help feeling that the best way for me to deal with this Little Death is to treat it like a real one. I just can't expect anyone else to understand. Why should they? They can't read my mind. Can you? By now you probably can. Well, it's all in the eye of the beholder, you know.

Hang in there.
Wish me luck.
I have a feeling I'll need it.