Randy’s post about the dating game in later life, threw me back in time to the period after Jay’s death when I was looking for male company.

It was late fall 1993. Jay had died in June after three years of debilitating illness during which I passed through most of the stages of mourning. Some months after his death, a space in a bereavement group was available and I grabbed it. I did have some private sessions with a woman who was billed as a grief therapist. She was young and pregnant and didn’t have a clue. After several sessions, I told her I wanted out … her understanding of mature love and grief was next to nil. She insisted we have one more session to find out why I was “avoiding” therapy. I am thinking, not at these prices. I said no.

I had wanted a group from the start, but no groups were meeting during the summer because, as one clerk explained it to me, “the bereaved were visiting their children and grandchildren and would be back in the fall.” Oh. How about the rest of us, I thought? What are we, non people?

It was a smallish group, about 10 of us, 8 women and two men. Ed was one of the guys. When the formal meetings ended, we all exchanged numbers and continued to meet for dinner once a month or so. From time to time Ed would walk me home and we started dating. Because he wasn’t being exclusive with me, I thought I had to develop other friendships as well.

Some friends set me up with a blind date. They and I were sitting in a bar-restaurant waiting for their friend. Every time the revolving door moved, I’d look up. This one fellow came in and my instant reaction was please, no, no, no, don’t let him be the one. He was the one.

He felt the same way and totally ignored me during dinner, although I tried to do the mannerly thing and draw him out. We parted on the sidewalk outside the restaurant and I don’t know if he knew how relieved I was, as well. Turns out, this fellow, 50ish, had a crush on a young co-worker, 20ish, who looked up to him and considered him her mentor. So, of course, he wasn’t looking for anyone who was anywhere near him in age. Good riddance.

Answered an ad and went to the fellow’s digs in an upper East side condo building. He was disappointed that I didn’t have long, red fingernails and lacquered hair. His late wife had, apparently, been the epitome of fashion as practiced in Miyami. His apartment was decorated by the management in late Disney. He seemed happy with it. We left together as he was on his way to visit a friend in a hospital. He didn’t pretend he was going to call me.

Another date: I answered an ad in the Village Voice from a fellow who said he was looking for an older woman. We had drinks and dinner. He was 30ish, handsome, a sculptor, and financially needy. As the evening wore on, I became convinced he was looking for a sugar mommy. He said he would call me. Meanwhile, I was dating Edward. I wouldn’t have been looking but Edward was DIFFICULT and I thought I had to protect myself by becoming interested in other people.

I also got a response to an ad I placed in New York Magazine – its classified section was very graceful and I thought, perhaps, that responses from New York Mag readers would be more interesting. This fellow phoned and we had dinner. He couldn’t stop talking about his ex girlfriend. But he was determined to forget her, and then continued to talk about her. He walked me to my loft on 2nd Ave from the West Village and called me when he got back to his place. Something in my voice tipped him off and he never called again. Whew.

The needy sculptor called a year later saying he had come across my number in a winter jacket he hadn’t worn since he’d seen me, and was la de da sorry. I told him I was in a relationship. I am guessing he ran through some other “relationships” with older women of more or less monied backgrounds and none of them had worked out, so … back to one of the undeveloped ones. As for the excuse that he had misplaced my phone no., I fully expect he had a well annotated card file with exhausting descriptions of each date and a rating system.

Well, a year went by, I outlasted all the other lovelies Ed was wining and dining, etc. On a cold February evening, after a one-day excursion to an antique gun show in upstate New York (it should have been two days, considering the driving), we came back to his apartment and he collapsed from exhaustion. Got a doctor’s appointment for him the next morning, and cabbed in to Manhattan from Queens, and the result was he had pneumonia. I never left.

I rented out my loft and soon we got my two kitties, Scratch and Sniff, to come live with us. I got a 6 foot two Mason-Hamlin to replace my 7 foot two Baldwin and moved that in. No getting rid of me now.

xx, Teal