L A Affairs The secret to ending my lonely nights I’ve started dating

TVNET3 November 4, 2021 4:04 pm

I’m not normally the kind of guy who brags, but for the record, I have now aced this whole dating business. I’ve discovered the answer to all those lonely weekends and empty Saturday nights. (The worst are when the cleaning service has come and the apartment is tidy and the bed made, for that one day out of every two weeks, and there’s nobody but me and the neighbor’s cat to appreciate it. )Anyway, I’ll admit that I was, like most divorced men I know, doing everything the old-fashioned way. Spotting an interesting prospect online and then after 26 text exchanges and maybe a phone call or two, meeting her in a public place. But more often than not, something proved incompatible. The frequent conundrum was, if I was interested in her she wasn’t interested in me and vice versa. Three or four times, women wrote me afterward to tell me — no kidding — that I was runner-up and that they’d keep me in mind if things didn’t work out with the current winner. I’m still waiting. Sometimes I managed to meet someone in the wild, my preferred method. Free-range women are always a better bet. My last relationship was with a woman I met, right after the pandemic took off, in Palisades Park — when I was wearing shorts! (These knobby, sixtysomething knees are the stuff of nightmares. ) But how quaint is that? Together we were able to weather the pandemic in our own little bubble — though it burst once the world opened up. She was considerably younger, ready to lead a life of drama and renewed adventure, and I just needed a nap. Though our timing was off, I miss her still. Then, I was back to square one — reading and writing all day, as I did before the plague and during the plague and will probably continue to do until the publishing industry sends me a cease-and-desist order. That is, until I hit upon a new, successful technique for getting out there: I call it “Couples Dating. ” No, not “double dating. ” I mean me and a couple, out on a date. Just the three of us (though not to be confused with the tired, old ménage a trois. )Here’s how it worked on a recent Saturday night. I asked out a couple I know from college, Sue and Jim, and offered to take them to Guido’s, my favorite old-school Italian restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard. They drove up from the South Bay on their own — so I never had to pick anyone up — and we were all glad to see each other. The conversation flowed, as did the wine, and at no point was there any tension in the air, no wondering where the evening was going, how it would end, who might have an undisclosed sexually transmitted disease or insane ex-lover still stalking his prey. When we were done dining, I picked up the check, only nominally greater than if I’d taken out a single woman. And back in the parking lot, we did that air-hugging thing. But who was Sue going home with? Her husband, of course! And who was I going home to? Watson the cat. (My neighbor travels so much the cat treats our adjoining units as one. All data is taken from the source: http://latimes.com Article Link: https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/sto… #cat #newspaper #newsworldnow #newsworldwide #newstodaylocal #newstodayabc #

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