I hurriedly arrived on time to my date with Cancer Boy last Tuesday to find an attractive yet slightly balding man waiting for me at the cramped bar at the dimly lit trattoria in midtown. I was just relieved because he wasn't unattractive. In retrospect, why was I relieved that he wasn't unattractive? He wasn't really attractive, but he wasn't unattractive. But, that didn't necessarily mean that he was attractive. Was I just justifying the weirdness that I felt by being set up by a matchmaker?
Me and Cancer Boy talked and talked and talked about everything including the dreaded infamous Religion and Politics, and I couldn't help but getting the vibe that I was being over analyzed, like I wasn't Stepford Wife-ish enough. I managed to blurt out my strong leftist flaming liberal views after the second glass of wine and Limoncello.
Cancer Boy was nice and engaging, but I started to pick up the vibe that he had a closet dose of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Moi: "So, do you like animals? Have you ever had any?"
Cancer Boy: "No, I've never had any animals, but a friend of mine has a dog and it smells. I don't know about animals, it's just...you know...they smell...and...aren't they messy?"
Moi: "Well, you know, you like... bathe them."
Cancer Boy: "Yeah, but still...they seem...so...so...messy!"
Moi: "Well...isn't...life messy?"
Cancer Boy: Silence.
After the comment about animals being smelly and messy, I knew I wasn't dealing with the "average" man. Here he was, almost 40 years old, lonely and paying thousands and thousands of dollars to a matchmaker to date...me.
Here he was, a leader in the field of the latest complex, dizzying cancer treatment, "very very very" successful by the world's standards yet he had never been around...a dog? A cat? A hamster? A fish? A snake? A rabbit? A bird? Something that would imply he had some sort of beating heart inside his body, some sort of connection with the frivolity of a playful, messy, smelly being other than a human?
I had just recently moved into my friend's apartment with her 12 year old diabetic cat.
Yes, there is now cat hair all over my clothes.
Yes, occasionally the cat throws up sticky, gooey chunky chunks on the carpet.
Yes, the chalky odor of a pissy litter box wafts through the apartment.
Yes, it is messy.
But, when I look into the kitty's eyes, I know he knows something that I don't. He's in tune with some higher realm that we, as jaded cynical humans, can't comprehend.
The kitty makes me feel something deeper than shopping and sex and men and wine and parties and hair appointments and bank accounts.
As Cancer Boy and I were leaving the trattoria, I started to feel sorry for him, like I needed to have a little compassion for this man who had never experienced being messy, as if everything in his life was carefully planned and scheduled and sterile and nothing was smelly. I mean, did he even know how to have sex? I realized he hadn't touched me once during the entire evening.
The thought of a bacteria free, carefully planned existence made me want to roll naked in a field of dirt, exposing all of my seemingly vulnerable imperfections.
*****
On Thursday, I met the founder of HotEnough. He wore a Yankees t-shirt, jeans and running shoes. I was in an evening dress and stilettos, bubbly on champagne, fresh from an event at the Waldorf.
Although t-shirts and jeans and running shoes on men usually create the most vile distaste in my mouth, a sort of pungent vomiting sensation if you will, I was a bit relieved to see him dressed so...so...casually New Jersey.
After the date with Cancer Boy, a big foaming beer, a NJ boy and a dive bar sounded well, more real, more messy.
We ended up taking the subway (gasp!) to the shitty Upper East Side to some dark wooden hole-in-the-wall-bar. Mr. HotEnough turned out to be rather funny, a bit goofy and quirky, even though he loved loved loved to talk about his business model for his website and how he was getting loads of advertising offers and how he was genius for thinking up the idea for the site and blah blah blah.
I was really drunk.
After the bar and beer and nachos and more beer, we took a walk at 4 in the morning on the outskirts of Central Park.
He said he loved cats and he pulled out his phone chalked full of photos of his aging, sick female cat named Bella.
"She's my baby," he said.
I told him I was caring for my friend's diabetic cat for the summer. He paused and looked into my eyes...
"That's, that's... like, the sweetest thing I've ever heard," he said smiling.
Such a huge gaping contrast to stiff Cancer Boy.
Mr.HotEnough hailed me a cab and I quickly jumped in. He had to take the subway (gasp!) all the way back to Nutley, New Jersey, wherever the hell that is.
I then got a text from him that said, "You know you were supposed to invite me over so I could have bought you breakfast tomorrow!"
Um...he was mad because I didn't have sex with him?
He has yet to call me after our drunken night.
Let's see... A rich oncologist who hates animals and thinks sex is dirty or, a sex addict poor Jersey boy with his own shallow website who loves animals?
I think it would be safe to say...neither.
