Just My Luck: A Date with a Forty Year Old

By Paulina Pinsky
Originally published on P.S. I Love You, Dec 20, 2019.

“I think the Trout Puff special looks good,” he said.

I nodded and said, “Yeah, sounds really good!” even though I did not think it sounded really good.

This was the first date, so I asked, “What’s it like to be forty?” At the age of twenty-six, I was genuinely curious.

The waiter came up, my date didn’t answer my question. My timing was not quite right.

Fifty-fifty chance, we had matched on Tinder. I don’t remember swiping on him, which happens often after I have settled into the rhythm of swiping right and left for hours on end. But I do remember expanding my age-range to 50+ because I had run out of men in my area: the entirety of Brooklyn.

I had a Tinder fixation because of the elusive promise and possibility of meeting The One. Within the radius and age-range I choose, I am exposed to more people at the click of a button than I would be during a night at a dive bar with bad music and sticky floors. So I swipe on the toilet, I swipe in bed. I swipe until my hands get tired, or, more realistically, I swipe until I reach the daily limit. After swiping right or left on probably 300 people, the app puts a cap on it and starts asking for money. Pride is the only thing that keeps me from paying $4.99 a month.

The week before I sat at Greenpoint Fish & Lobster co. with this forty year-old man I had gotten my hopes up about someone else. We had matched a few days before, we had a drink, then another drink, then we made out in front of a juke box before I eventually took him home. But he had just gotten out of a long-term relationship and even though I got my hopes up (read: the sex was good), he was very clearly was not eager to jump into anything new. I went back to Tinder and got to swiping.

“We’ll have the Trout Puff,” he told the waiter. “And she’ll have the — ”

“The lobster roll,” I said, uncomfortable that someone was trying to order for me. A man taking control — was sexy? I felt overshadowed, but I let it slide.

He wore oversized frames that would have been a bad look except for the fact that he was very handsome. Laugh lines and strong hands. It was weird to think about whether or not I was attracted to him because he had been born in 1978. When I was born, he was fourteen.

But that didn’t keep me from flirting with him or liking him.

After dinner, we walked down Manhattan Ave. “I live here, would you like to come up for a drink?”

I was open to the potential of love so I said yes. When I entered his apartment, I was blown away: double sinks in the bathroom with Aesop soap; vintage furniture; one room just for a day bed. Since I’m in my mid-twenties, It is rare to enter a date’s apartment without the risk of hitting my head on an exposed pipe.

“Want something to drink? A mixed drink?”

“Mixed drink — because I like the idea of you making one for me.”

And so he pulled out an industrial sized blender out of his dishwasher, which impressed me even more. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a standing Kitchen Aid mixer.

I looked up and spotted two blurred fist-sized blobs through the translucent IKEA cabinets. He followed my gaze: “Oh, those? English pheasants.” He opened the cabinet. “You can touch them if you would like.”

“No, thank you,” I said, holding back a grimace at the thought of touching dead stuffed birds.

He pulled down a piece of birch wood that had been sliced diagonally. On the flat surface of the birch, a New England landscape had been hand painted on it by hand. The back of a small figure looked out onto the horizon.

“You want this? From the look of it, it was done by an amateur. Probably an early 19th century mourning portrait. I like to go to auctions and buy American art, but now I have too much.”

Stunned, I like to think I replied, “No, I couldn’t!” But instead I said, “Are you sure?” because I wanted it. I am interested in American History and it felt serendipitous to share the interest. It also felt like a symbol of his affection: he liked me enough to give me something.

“Now that I think of it, you could have this or a globe of the moon.”

“I’m sorry?”

He walked out of the room and walked back with a gray sphere the size of a beach ball and handed it to me. “It’s from the 1960’s. It has Soviet lakes on it and everything.”

I had never had a man propose to give me not only one, but two gifts on the first date.

“But, you have to choose one.”

My bubble burst. It only slightly hindered our future that I was planning in my head.

“Easy. The Moon. I love the freaking moon.”

He smiled as he handed me my mixed drink and walked me through the day-bed room, through his bed room, to the room with the huge window, only to reveal that it was filled with thriving plants.

“I’ve seen your apartment from the street,” I said. “I’ve always wondered who lived here.”

“Well, now you know,” he said, before taking a seat and taking a sip of his cider. I took a seat on his mohair coach. I admired the large paddles of his Monstera and the different offshoots of his Dracaena Tarzan bush and all of the green that popped against the exposed red brick wall. I sipped my mixed cocktail as he played me his band’s new music, no one else had heard it. I made him smell my wrist: “Do you think this smells like me?” I was testing out a new expensive perfume. His nose hovered over my skin. He pulled away, then came close again. Air swirled against my skin. “No,” he replied. “You need something cheaper. Something from CVS.” And I laughed because I could tell he made the joke because we were comfortable with each other. He told me that I was funny. We continued to talk about nothing and everything. I complimented myself and he said, “Right, it’s been five minutes since I last complimented you so you were due for another.” I laughed, again. I felt like he understood what I was about.

I relaxed into the idea of seeing him again. I decided to give this older guy a shot.

Before I left that night, I changed my mind: I didn’t want the moon, I wanted the mourning portrait.

***

“Lets walk up Manhattan Ave so I can show you his apartment,” I told my friend Alley after we had volunteered to be nude models for a figure drawing class. Channeling Manet’s “Olympia,” I had stood confidently in the middle of a crowded room. But Instead of a flower tucked behind my ear and a thin black ribbon tied around my neck, I wore pink eye shadow, thick black eye liner, and fluffy white pom-pom earrings. We turned onto the street and passed a market that exclusively sold products imported from Poland. I was filling her in on yet another failed dating experience in a single breath: “After I left his apartment, I messaged him on Tinder and said something like ‘Thank you for dinner, and for all of the other things you gave me.’ And he said, ‘You made quite an exit.’ Because we made out and he grabbed my butt. So he asked ‘What’s your number?’ And so I gave him my number, but he never texted me. And so I sent him a message a few days later asking for his number. But nothing. Nothing happened.”

The old Polish man who usually sits outside and hands out newspapers, gone for the night. “Yeah, I get it, man,” she said. “There’s nothing sexier than a man who has transcended. Who is confident in who he is and has his life together. A grown man.”

I kept my eyes on the opposite side of the street, stalking every window of every apartment I could spot: “I was very into the room in his apartment filled with plants and I was very into the idea of jumping into his life.” The idea of not having to build my own life from the ground up was very appealing.

“He could probably smell the codependence,” Alley said, tucking hair behind her ear.

“I would have married him next week and gotten knocked up if he had wanted me to. I’d make a great trophy wife.”

“See, that’s the thing! He could probably sense that!”

A couple spilled out of a bar ahead of us, hand in hand.

“I already did that with my ex boyfriend.”

“Exactly! And some women are still stuck in those relationships — the relationships where they make their boyfriend 75% of their life — ”

We walked past Cherry Point, we slowed down in front of the closed down Bejeweled.

“Wait. This is it,” I said, as I pointed to the floor to ceiling windows across the street. The light on, the plants undisturbed. The door to the next room — his bedroom — was open, exposing a bare back. Then, a head of long hair.

“Holy shit,” Alley whispered under her breath.

We stood from across the street and continued to watch him. It was around the same time at night that he had started kissing me. He turned, his face in profile — part of me wanted him to see me. He turned back and kissed the woman with the long hair before he threw her down onto the bed, in the room I fantasized about making mine.

“Well,” I said as I looked at Alley, “he’s clearly busy!”

Gobsmacked, giggles threatened to erupt into full-blown laughter just as we started to run down the street. After two blocks, we caught our breath and I couldn’t stop saying, “Wow, I can’t believe we actually saw it. I can’t believe what we just saw.” Shortly after, we parted ways. I turned right onto my street. His back, her hair. I needed to shake them from my thoughts. Once I got into my apartment, I covered my face in Cleansing Oil. Olympia dissolved before my eyes. Looking in the mirror, only the faint memory of hot pink remained.

Back to my skin, I took a second to stand in front of my new piece of art sitting on my mantel before I let it go. The mourner did not take notice to my presence. She continued to look out on the horizon. I looked at her until I decided she really was staying put. In the forest and on my mantel.

So I got into bed. I picked up my phone, and started swiping again.