So Do You Like Seafood?

Let's be honest. I'm female and I'm single. OF COURSE I've tried Internet dating.

Of course I've tried it.

And I probably will try it again. I have to, don't I?

But I'm on hiatus right now. Have been for a few years. Because--and look, I'm not going to blame anyone here but myself--my expectations for Internet dates are always way too high. Like way too high.

In Chicago, I met up for sushi with a guy from the Internet who was lovely online. His photos were all black and white and artsy and deep. He loved music and Japanese food and his e-mails were thoughtful and displayed a proper understanding of the semicolon. I like music and Japanese food; I also like the semicolon.

Loving music translated into loving VERY LARGE HEADPHONES, which he wore throughout dinner. Also droning on and on endlessly about how New Order was the GREATEST BAND OF ALL TIME.

When there was a spare second between bites of my chirashi and the full concert history of Bernard Summer and Company, I squeaked in, "Now Bizarre Love Triangle. That was a good song."

And loving Japanese food? During our date at one of Chicago's pre-eminent Japanese establishments--I had been very thoughtful about where our first date should be given that we were both lovers of Japanese food--he admitted to not liking raw fish.

Um. Okay. "So what sorts of Japanese food do you like then?" I wanted him to say Katsu-don. Katsu-don! I love Katsu-don. In my head, I begged him, desperately, to say Katsu-don.

He was still wearing his headphones; they were VERY LARGE and pulled down around his neck now.

"I like California rolls. And those Philadelphia rolls, you know, with the cream cheese."

I am that girl. Yes, I rejected him not only because he couldn't take his headphones off at the dinner table, but also because he professed a love of Japanese food that turned out to be nothing more than a love of cucumber, imitation crab, and white rice. And Philadelphia cream cheese.

Less than a year later, I moved to London. My first Internet date was with a strapping, handsome dark-haired Norwegian who professed a love of seafood and international travel AND PJ Harvey. Who doesn't love a man who loves PJ Harvey? Even my mother says that PJ Harvey is angry-woman music. (Not even "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea" can persuade her otherwise.)

Me and the Norwegian met up for a coffee and a walk around town. It was very awkward, but I was used to Internet-dating- awkwardness by this point. "So you like seafood?" I asked, as we passed The Ten Bells in Spitalfields. He didn't want to stop in for a beer, even though it was the Jack the Ripper pub and everything.

"Well, not really. I mean, I like salmon."

"Oh, salmon is nice. I like smoked salmon. I'm from New York. We eat a lot of smoked salmon with our bagels. With cream cheese and capers. You probably eat a lot of smoked salmon, being Norwegian."

"Yes."

"Um, so what other sorts of seafood to you like? Your profile said you liked seafood?"

"I just really like salmon. I don't like crabs or prawns and I don't really like other sorts of fish. I don't like mussels or clams. I just like salmon."

"Oh. So I guess we won't be having oysters then today will we? I love oysters. Champagne and oysters. Guinness and oysters. Mmmm oysters." I laughed awkwardly. He put his hands in his pockets and said nothing. It was a ridiculously bright Sunday in London. All the hipsters were out and about, wearing tight jeans and groovy sunglasses. A few wore jaunty hats. I wanted to sit outside a pub, have a couple of pints, and people-watch and gossip about celebrities and complain about planned engineering works.

We went for Chinese food instead.

He had never had Chinese food before.

He didn't like it either.

A few years later, another Internet date, another London restaurant. It's an eHarmony man this time so I have high hopes. If their advertising is right, this is supposed to be my soul mate. My soul mate!

He was affable. Good looking, and he obviously spent a lot of time in the gym.

"My mates told me not to tell you things," he says to me, in the basement of a Thai restaurant in Soho. "But wow, you're just so easy to talk to.

"My wife--my ex-wife--she has agoraphobia. We got married young and obviously didn't leave the house much. You're my first date since the divorce last month. Since I was like 17 actually. I wanted to wait until the kids were teenagers to leave her. It's been hard for them."

"I'm so sorry," I say. "I don't know what to say. I hope everything's okay."

"Everything's great! This is great! I'm 37 years old and I had never had Thai food before today and I was nervous about it but now I've had it and it's great! I'm going to eat Pad See Ew with prawns all the time now!"

Are You Sure You Haven't Used ANY Cocaine?

Friends of mine used to have this friend that really, truly disliked me for no particular reason--that we could determine--other than the fact that I existed and walked the earth and was friends with some of the same people she was friends with. I had been friends with these friends for much longer, so there was that. Perhaps maybe I had a better job or something. And this one time, I mistakenly mentioned that my aunt had given me a tidy sum of money, so I was going to buy an apartment with it, and wouldn't that be a good thing, as a 24 year old, to be a homeowner?

I had never been on the receiving end of such dislike before. Such virulence. At bars and restaurants and at friends' homes, when the torrent was being unleashed, I would sit there and wonder, "But really now...what have I done except come out for cheeseburgers and a Bud Light or four and won at Trivial Pursuit?"

I made a mistake once in that I kissed a handsome man who liked me. HE LIKED ME. She liked him. She did not (obviously) like me. I was fairly indifferent to everyone really, but I was not one to turn down a make out session with a handsome, older man (divorced even!) at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night with four Bud Lights in me. The evening ended in tears on a sidewalk in Lincoln Park, Chicago, in front of a karaoke bar. My taxi driver drove me home for free that night.

But despite the animosity, and despite not being much of a sports fan, I continued to find myself out for $2 burgers and $1 Bud Lights with her and our shared friends, all around the City of Chicago. Safety in numbers, really.

The months went on. It became more uncomfortable. I started having odd chest pains, just thinking about social outings where I'd have to see her, have her talk at me and about me. I woke up at 2 a.m. one night after a particularly uncomfortable evening out, sweating and seeing stars. (Who knew you could hyperventilate in your sleep?) I went to the hospital. They attached me to many wires.

"Do you use any drugs?" they asked me, six of them, starting at me. Three doctors, three nurses. It was a quiet evening in the emergency room. And this was a teaching hospital so two of those doctors were those doctors that are technically doctors but you probably wouldn't want them cutting you open or anything.

"Nope, not a drug user. Just say no, right?"

Blank stares all around.

"You know. Child of the 80s. Nancy Reagan?"

More blank stares. And frowns this time. Frowns all around.

"Are you sure you haven't used any drugs tonight? No methamphetamines? No cocaine?"

"Um, positive. Not a drugs person. I like Bud Light though. I had some earlier. OK, I had four. That was probably two too many. But it's a Saturday. And were were watching the game. Is everything okay?"

"There is something wrong with your heart. You're not going to drop dead like Flo Jo or anything. But we need you to tell us about your drug use."

Six sets of eyes stared down at me, practically naked in my hospital gown, attached to many wires.

"Now be honest with us...how much cocaine have you used today?"

"I swear to God, NONE! I am not a drug user! I swear! What do you mean that I'm not going to drop dead like Flo Jo? Does that mean death is really a possibility here? What are you talking about?"

They ran more tests. I peed in a paper cup. And then the next day I went for more tests. And then some more tests the day after that. And I was fine, really, it was just a heart murmur and no one was really sure why it was causing me pain, but if it happened again, I should come back and they'd run more tests. "But stay away from any sorts of drugs," they told me. "Particularly cocaine. And by the way, have you had a pap smear recently because we can do that for you while you're here."

And then I bought my condo on the other side of town and I joined a nice gym and started running, and then I got promoted at work and didn't have time for $2 burgers and $1 Bud Lights anymore and I never really saw her again, except maybe in passing.

Apple Pear Umbrella

My mother is funny. She's retired. A nurse. She went to nursing school in the days when there were nursing schools and nurses wore those hats. You know, the white ones. (St. Clare's. In the city. New York City. You know.)

She says her father--George the German--gave her a choice when she was in her late teens growing up in the Irish part of Brooklyn:

You can be a teacher or you can be a nurse.

She chose nurse.

My mother was "older" when she had me and my brother. Older like in her early 30s. But she was a modern woman, and she went back to work once we were in school and everything was fine and I wasn't blind and didn't suffer from dwarfism, and my brother wasn't deaf.

At a hospital on Long Island, my mother turned up on her first day of work--she was in her early 40s at this point--in her old nurse's kit. The white dress, the hat, the everything. I believe the hat had a brown velvet stripe. And I would not be surprised if she were wearing some sort of scapular on that first day. With saints' cards in her pocket(s). Her fellow nurses laughed at her. Because this was the 80s and no one wore the outfit anymore. Unless you were religious of course.

Personally, I think she should have kept the outfit thing going.

Fast-forward many years later and I'm older and doing my own thing. My mother--now retired--goes on vacation somewhere in the southwest of America with a group of folks from her "active adult retirement community." (I call it The Boca Vista. Seinfeld fans will know what I mean.) In her heart and in her mind, my mother is still a nurse. Today, yesterday, every day of her life. She tells her fellow travelers about The Alzheimer's test. How you say to an older person, "I'm going to give you three words. Repeat them to me. And then I'm going to ask you about them later...

...Apple pear umbrella...

Repeat them to me."

She is the life of the trip. And anyone--old or not--will repeat the words. "Apple, pear, umbrella." Then ten minutes from then, a day from then, a week from then. "Apple, pear, umbrella! Yes! I'm fine! I don't have Alzheimer's!"

It goes on for days and days and then weeks and months and then many active adults in South Florida declare themselves free from everything.

Unless you're me. And you're somewhere in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and it's Christmas but sunny and gorgeous and you think this whole "Apple, pear, umbrella" thing is just so very, very funny. So you tell this whole story to your dad. Your tall, strapping Irish dad who--family rumor says--is descended from the Spanish Armada even though that happened like 400+ years ago. So at a stoplight, you say "Apple, pear, umbrella. Repeat this to me." And he does, and it's funny, and you drive along the beach and you think about nothing in particular but the beach and the sun and maybe later you'll stop for some blackened grouper sandwiches somewhere. With some Arnold Palmers.

And then later at another restaurant, and then at another stop light, you think it will be funny if you ask him again.

So you ask him to repeat the phrase. That one time. And then another. But you don't give him the nouns.

And your 72 year old father laughs and laughs and laughs and looks at you funny and then finally, eventually, he looks at you--like straight at you, really straight at you--and he says, calmly and without emotion, "Umbrella?"

The Things We Say to Each Other

When I was very young, I went away for a while, to a foreign land where everything was ridiculously inexpensive. Because of this, I stayed in a lovely place where everyone knew my name and where handsome waiters escorted me to my table each evening, a table where chardonnay and assorted canapes lay in wait. At night, I would meet people--fascinating people from all over the world--and they would talk to me about New York and London and Tokyo and glamorous international locales. They would tell me where to go and what to eat and what to buy and why. (Sometimes, the men would offer to escort me back to my lodgings, to make sure I was safe, or to talk more about how their family escaped from Somalia with no shoes on and how hard things were. Or maybe they just wanted to compare frequent flyer programs and the best airline credit cards on offer.)

When I wasn't at the local bar, I went shopping on weekends and because of the strength of my currency relative to theirs, I stocked up on all sorts of expensive things that were ridiculously inexpensive. Lovely frivolous things. Like underwear. Reams and reams of underwear.

I do not regularly wear what one would define as lingerie. Most usually, I am a functional sort. But this particular year, I did purchase lingerie. In all sorts of colors. My favorite, a snappy set in turquoise and teal that felt strong and durable and long-lasting. A set because when everything is inexpensive, sets are important. I bought all sorts of sets in all sorts of colors. Maybe 20 in all. Maybe 25. For the few men that met me that year in the dark, I was a surprise every time.

I felt good during my time away. Tan and strong and happy. Sunshine spoke to me daily, if not hourly. I think I may have even felt TALL during my time away. Verrrrry very tall.

But then eventually it came time to leave this paradise of complimentary cocktails, free bar snacks and inexpensive sexy lingerie (a good name for a band if there ever was one), and I found myself once again in wool and corduroy in the arctic tundra of middle-America."I bought a lot of nice lingerie while I was away," I said one day, to some people who had asked how things had been. "It was very inexpensive there. And of good quality."

"Let's hope you don't gain any more weight," said one of the some, over their shoulder, as they walked away, down a long and dark and narrow hallway. And I sat there, covered up in my winter-y turtleneck yet still strong and tan and happy and tall. And I wondered out loud, "Who says these things?"