That was nice...

Cosmo and I were walking down the street tonight and passed a younger couple.

As they approached the front steps of her apartment building, she turned and faced him, several feet from the door. She squared her shoulders, kept her hands in her pocket and said:

“That was nice, we should hang out again some time.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “No, really.”

“Yeah, it was fun… mmm… ok.”

Then she jutted her chin out to the left, opened her arms and lightly hugged the guy.

First date, last date.


Right after my divorce was final, every one of my parents’ friends declared they had found the perfect woman for me. I’d never been on a blind date in my life and it sounded like fun. So many of my parents’ friends had known me for decades, they surely knew what they were doing.

The most interesting of the offers was Woman X. She had been described to me as gorgeous, smart, funny and successful.

Holy crap. That’s the perfect woman. What on earth could go wrong?!

I picked up her up at her office and we went to a quiet restaurant in the city. Perhaps the quiet atmosphere was contagious, because she didn’t talk much. And that’s ok. There is nothing wrong with quiet. I asked a lot of questions, got a lot of one or two word answers, but I figured she was just shy.

As the silence continued we both drank more. And as I drank more through the silence, I guess I started talking more.

I was only aware of my alleged conversation domination when she brought it up over desert. Slurringly she declared, “you sure do talk a lot.”

“I’m sorry. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

“Yeah… yeah there is.” She was beginning to sound like the angry drunk at a saloon in a western, right before he tries unsuccessfully to pull a gun on our hero.

“Great… what is it?”

“Let’s talk about masturbation!”

Just a note about me. I am very WASPy. We don’t talk about those things.

I don’t think I answered, but if I did it sounded like the noise Scooby-Do would make when he was surprised.

“You’re a guy. How often do you do it?”

That time I did answer. “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

“Well let me ask you this,” she challenged. “Do you ever do it in your car on the way home from work?”

This was a question I could answer quickly and truthfully. “No. No, I never have.”

“Really? It’s a great way to let off steam. Of course, it’s embarrassing when the truckers drive by.”

I drank more wine. Much more. I don’t remember any more of the dinner conversation. How could I? A woman I’d known for 2 hours wanted to know my masturbation habits and told me hers. What else could there be to remember?

Oh… this. I do remember this. We shared a taxi that dropped her off first.

I gave her a light hug.

“That was nice, we should hang out again some time.”