Daily Excerpt: A Movie Lover's Search for Romance (Charnas): The New Guy

 

Excerpt from A Movie Lover's Search for Romance (Joanna Charnas)

THE NEW GUY 

You don’t always know when you’re experiencing burnout until you’re hip deep in its muck. You also don’t comprehend how completely addicting Internet dating is until you’re hooked. So if you find yourself burned out from Internet dating, as I did, the prudent thing is to give it a rest. Although I planned to take a break from Internet dating, I’d become too addicted to stop. It didn’t matter that I was emotionally exhausted from too many blind dates. Which is when Simon entered my life. 

I met Simon on an Internet dating site. When we first spoke on the phone, he asked if I’d meet him that evening at a party given in honor of a couple of his friends. Simon explained that his schedule was booked for the rest of the week, but he wanted to meet me right away. The party started in mid-afternoon, and assuming I wouldn’t be enslaved and forced into the sex trade, I agreed to rendezvous at his friends’ house late in the afternoon. I planned to stay for an hour, two at most—just long enough to get acquainted with Simon. Instead, I remained at the party five and a half hours and didn’t leave until after 10:00 p.m. 

Simon’s friends were down to earth, easy to talk to, and lovely. I spent my time at this party alternately chatting with Simon and talking to his buddies, who were mostly social service providers or teachers. 

To my surprise, Simon didn’t look remotely like the photograph he’d posted on his personal ad. I could have plowed into him in the supermarket and never guessed he was the person whose ad I’d answered, but I didn’t care. Simon was warm, bright, and seemed caring. Similarly entranced by his great group of friends, I would have happily dated every man at the party.

Simon’s parting words on Saturday night had been about his desire to see me the next weekend. He e-mailed me twice after the party but never actually asked me out. I tried to keep my responses light and positive although I couldn’t understand why he never made plans with me. I thought to myself, Just pick up the damn phone and ask me out! Instead, he seemed to slip into the cyber void.

When I thought I’d never see Simon again, I became unglued. Many sugary substances were consumed. I came home from work every night, went to bed, pulled the covers up to my nose, summoned the cat, and watched hours of mindless television. So, disappointed that he hadn’t called by Friday, I spent forty-five minutes answering a phone survey simply to have a focused human interaction.

By Saturday, after I’d given up on hearing from him, Simon called to ask me out that night. Our date started at 6:00 p.m. in a cheap restaurant that served great sushi and ended at 2:00 a.m. down the block at a coffee shop with deep couches. Partway through the evening, Simon confessed, “This is one of the best dates I’ve ever had.”

Burned out, jaded, and generally insensitive from too much dating, I responded, “Is that a line?”

Not fazed by my rudeness, he answered, “If it is, it’s true.”

I had become unaccustomed to sincere, complimentary men in the past year. I didn’t want the date to end. It didn’t until the coffee shop closed and Simon kissed me goodnight on the sidewalk.

All year, I’d been pining for some old-fashioned wooing. The ups and downs of months of whirlwind dating had left me yearning for sincere validation that didn’t include immediately trying to get into my underwear. I found myself happily spaced out the next day. That afternoon, Simon called to say he’d had a great time the night before. This would have been more than enough validation for me. Finally—someone who liked me and had good manners. But then he surprised me by suggesting we meet for dinner again that night. I’d hoped this was the start of something good, and I got my wish.

For weeks after we began dating, I refused to call Simon by his name when I talked about him to my friends and family. Instead I referred to him exclusively as “the new guy.” I only revealed his name, at their insistence, after a month of avoidance. Superstitious, I feared if I released his name to anyone, I’d doom the relationship. Pretending he was an anonymous male specimen made me feel less likely to tempt fate into jerking him away from me.

Simon’s personal ad stated that he wanted to do “fun things,” and we embarked on a series of them with gusto. He took me all over San Diego County on adventures. We went to community fairs, music festivals, open-air theater, and free movies in the park. We enjoyed meandering walks together and explored different dives where I tried foods I’d never eaten before. He even taught me how to boogie board. It was heaven.  

He took me on my second trip to Disneyland. After my first trip a couple of years earlier, I’d thought, “Well that was interesting, but I never need to do it again.” I’d purposely screened out all the men whose personal ads said they loved Disneyland. When six months into the relationship Simon asked me to spend a day there with him, I thought, why not? I hoped he could make the experience fresh and exciting. I had so much fun, at the end of the visit I bought a season’s pass.

I knew Simon was a keeper when he told me he had seen the film Guernica. This movie is about the infamous bombing during the Spanish Civil War, memorialized forever by Picasso’s masterpiece depicting the same event. No one I’d met before had seen the movie. His familiarity with this mostly unknown film gave me hope that we shared similar sensibilities. Maybe I’d finally met a man who might enjoy some of the obscure independent films I loved and that were a vital part of my life. I told him my hero since adolescence—the great Life photographer, all around Renaissance man, and director of Shaft—had died shortly after we began dating. Simon admired Gordon Parks’ photographs and also knew he’d directed Shaft. His familiarity with my beloved hero was deeply meaningful to me.

Meeting Simon’s family sealed the deal. When I’d trolled for men on the Internet, I’d hoped to find a mate who had children since there’s a long, successful history of stepmothers in my family. Simon didn’t have children—he had an entire clan. Simon’s mother was one of seven siblings in a Jewish family who moved from Alabama in the early 1960s. His mother’s generation all had southern drawls and charm, embodying the best of both Jewish and southern cultures. Once you met a family member, from that point on he or she always hugged and kissed you in greeting.

I met Simon’s entire family for the first time a couple of months after we began dating. I’d been invited to their annual Passover gathering. By this time, I’d stopped going to New York for Passover because my great aunt and uncle, increasingly frail, had downsized their Seder to immediate family, mostly children and grandchildren. Even though we’d only been dating briefly, Simon’s family embraced me and treated me like one of their own. Several of his first cousins approached me at the dinner break and inquired if I felt overwhelmed. To the contrary, I felt relaxed and was completely smitten. It was all so much better than what I’d wanted. I realized I’d been dreaming small.

After our fifth date, I informed Simon that I have a chronic illness. I told him the truth—that I lead a normal life, but I have limitations and need a lot of down time. He barely blinked, saying if I became sick, he’d come to my home and feed me. True to his word, two months later when I contracted food poisoning and couldn’t keep anything down, he brought me rice, chicken, and meringue cookies—the latter, he explained, was so I’d have something sweet.

Within a few months of dating, our friends, family, and colleagues began to ask each of us if we were thinking about getting married. This seemed premature, but I understood that implicit in their questions was their recognition of the growing seriousness of our relationship. I felt ambivalent about marriage. I’d been married before and didn’t need to marry again. The questions freaked Simon out. I reassured him that I didn’t care if we got married, but my reassurances didn’t calm him. By his mid-twenties, Simon’s mother had married his third stepfather, and I assumed all of those marriages left him wary of the institution. I didn’t take Simon’s response to the idea of marriage personally. I didn’t need to marry him. We lived fewer than two miles apart, which allowed for spontaneity without constraint.

Looking back on my year of whirlwind dating that preceded meeting Simon, I sometimes question my judgment. I often think I shouldn’t have become involved with Lama Gensho. Despite our initial intense connection, the relationship was never going to last, even if he hadn’t gotten grumpy and dumped me. And despite my faith and love for my orthodox congregation, I’m probably not capable of maintaining an orthodox home, which Saul, whom I dated three times, needed. I’ve struggled to understand the swells and drifts of my psyche that led me to believe those relationships might work. 

Now, I think I understand. When I divorced my husband, I believed with absolute certainty there would be at least one more significant love in my future. I refused to think my love life was completely over despite the multi-year dry spell that immediately followed the divorce. Even when profoundly discouraged, I never relinquished this belief. I might view my year of dating choices as unrealistic and naïve if I were a more negative person, but I prefer to look back on the year and believe all that hope was born of optimism as much as naiveté. Every time I met someone with the qualities I sought, I applied my optimistic nature to each situation, regardless of the larger realities.

At a former employer’s request, I once took a lengthy and expensive test to identify my strengths in the workplace. Of over one hundred sixty options, one of my identified, top five strengths was “positivity.” One of my colleagues recently told me she liked working with me because I’m “so positive.” If I hadn’t been inherently optimistic while dating, the emotional strain of meeting numerous men and laying myself bare for repeated evaluation and rejection or acceptance would have been too hard on me. Instead, I saw the best in every situation. 

My widowed aunt once told me that she thinks relationships “last as long as they last.” Sometimes they last twenty-five years, like her marriage to my uncle, and sometimes they last six months, like the relationship she’d just ended. I saw the wisdom of her philosophy. When I first met Simon, like many of the guys I’d dated in the previous year, he inquired what I wanted from a relationship. I told him I wanted a long-term, committed relationship, but that I didn’t care if we lived together or were married.

Simon liked to spot older couples in public and point them out to me. Sometimes it was a set-up for a joke. He’d see a stooped, gray-haired couple and say, “That’s us in three years.” More often, he’d see an elderly couple and whisper, “That’s us in thirty years.” I hope so, but as my aunt advised, it lasts as long as it lasts. I can live with that.

 

A Movie Lover's Search for Romance has placed as finalist in the Hollywood Book Festival and the Book Excellence Award competitions.

The book is available as an e-book, paper back, and hard cover.

For more posts about Joanna and her books, click HERE. 
Joanna's other books include award winners, as well: 100 Tips and Tools for Managing Chronic Illness, Living Well with Chronic Illness, Tips, Tools, and Anecdotes to Help during a Pandemic.

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