{"id":4589,"date":"2016-05-17T19:19:21","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T23:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/06\/13\/speed-dating\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T21:04:37","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T02:04:37","slug":"speed-dating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/speed-dating\/","title":{"rendered":"Speed Dating"},"content":{"rendered":"

This short story appeared in the book, “The Final Days of Great American Shopping,” by Gilbert Allen. \u00a0It is reprinted with the permission of the author.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Speed Dating”<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Gilbert Allen<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019re in the biggest conference room of the best hotel in Charleston, South Carolina\u2014the one named after the Revolutionary War hero who\u2019s recently served as a positive role model for Yasir Arafat and the PLO.\u00a0 The chandeliers are rheostated to moonlight level.\u00a0 The air conditioning gently ruffles the valances of dark, substantial curtains that render unwanted curiosity unimaginable.\u00a0 Kenny G\u2019s Concerto for Polyester and Elevator<\/em> is coming down from some of the holes in the acoustical-tile ceiling\u2014I can\u2019t tell which ones, not for sure, and I\u2019ve been looking.<\/p>\n

I check my watch.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been looking for the past four minutes and thirty-five seconds.\u00a0 The woman on the other side of the tiny caf\u00e9 table has her elbows at the base of an isosceles triangle\u2014a triangle that has, unfortunately, her mouth perched on top.\u00a0 It is moving.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think of myself as a Ford Explorer.\u201d\u00a0 This is the fourth Revealing Metaphor she has provided me with tonight, so she must at least suspect she\u2019s overdoing a good thing.\u00a0 \u201cStrong.\u00a0 Assertive.\u00a0 Aggressive, even.\u00a0 Willing to try anything.\u00a0 Go anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe road not taken,\u201d I offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019ve been listening,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m totally off-road.\u00a0 Full-time four-wheel drive.\u00a0 I mean, if you\u2019re a pavement<\/em> kind of person, I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll have much in common.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d\u00a0 I stare deep into the openings beneath her tattooed eyeliner.\u00a0 \u201cI can see you\u2019re a real SUV.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the session ends, she stands up briskly and shoves in her wrought-iron chair like a grappling hook.\u00a0 When the flukes hit the edge of the table, the obligatory Candle of Romance wobbles in its puddle of wax.\u00a0 \u201cI like meeting people in bite-size pieces,\u201d she tells me.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

********<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Speed Dating was invented in Los Angeles by Rabbi Yaacov Deyo in the 1990s.\u00a0 It was expressly designed to help young Jewish singles overcome the awkwardness of blind dates orchestrated by overzealous Bubbies who were often half-blind themselves and, shall we say, oblivious to the vagaries of the human heart.\u00a0 Even now, I can almost hear them shouting into the shell-shocked ears of beautiful young women\u2014\u201cMein Gott<\/em>!\u00a0 He\u2019s a dentist already!\u00a0 What from me do you want, George Clooney with a mezuzah maybe?\u201d\u00a0 So it took a Tinseltown rabbi to figure out that America was full of twenty-, thirty-, and even forty-somethings who longed to meet eight persons in a fifty-six-minute hour on Friday nights.\u00a0 And, if nothing else, cut their losses.<\/p>\n

As my limited imagination might suggest, I am not Jewish.\u00a0 Although I\u2019ve gotten a late start\u2014the idea only went mainstream a few years ago\u2014I honestly believe I am the Undefeated Speed Dating Champion of the World.\u00a0 I\u2019ve gone to seventy-three sessions, in thirty-nine different cities, and spoken to five hundred and sixty-two women in my Preferred Thirty to Forty Age Group.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also taken twenty-two bathroom breaks\u2014all of which, I\u2019m proud to say, I\u2019ve signed up for in advance.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never dodged anybody.<\/p>\n

For Date Number Two, I\u2019ve drawn a frizzy blond with a blue parakeet on the shoulder of her blouse.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never even heard of a session that allows pets, so I figure she\u2019s smuggled it past the sign-up table in her handbag.\u00a0 The bird is untethered, but extraordinarily well behaved.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t squawk.\u00a0 Or talk.\u00a0 When it raises its tail, there are no visible droppings.\u00a0 It preens quietly, while the woman talks about hummingbirds.<\/p>\n

She wants, she reassures me, to be totally honest about her ornithological interests.\u00a0 They reflect her truest feelings, her deepest self.\u00a0 Her yard is full of hummingbird feeders, and she\u2019s named every visitor.\u00a0 Some of them have been coming to her property for years.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s Humdinger,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u201cThe big male.\u00a0 He\u2019ll chase everyone<\/em> away from every <\/em>feeder if you don\u2019t stop him.\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t ask how she stops him.\u00a0 \u201cThen there\u2019s Humbelina.\u201d\u00a0 Her sigh is worthy of Puccini\u2019s Madama Butterfly<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cMy little princess.\u00a0 She nested in the cedar tree this year.\u00a0 I saw her babies while they were still in their shells.\u00a0 Not much bigger than peas.\u00a0 Humlet and Humdrum.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking Humquat?\u00a0 Humbug?\u00a0 Humbugger?\u00a0 Humunculus?\u00a0 But what I ask her is how much they weigh.<\/p>\n

\u201cFull grown?\u00a0 About half an ounce.\u00a0 Maybe three-quarters for a Humdinger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time, ladies and gentlemen<\/em>.\u00a0 The referee for tonight is British, so he makes it sound like a changeover at Wimbledon.\u00a0 New balls, please.\u00a0 I\u2019m relieved, until the bird screeches that he loves me.<\/p>\n

She shakes my hand politely.\u00a0 \u201cHe doesn\u2019t say that to just anyone, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time, ladies and gentlemen.\u00a0 Time.<\/em><\/p>\n

********<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve done sports-oriented Speed Dates in Buffalo, Cleveland, Sacramento, Charlotte, and Tampa Bay.\u00a0 You find them mostly in markets just big enough to have a major-league franchise.\u00a0 Everybody wears caps from their favorite teams.\u00a0 A good ice-breaker.\u00a0 A lot of the bald guys love the caps, because they figure it puts them on the same playing field with those of us who still have hair.\u00a0 And you can read the women better\u2014she\u2019s really<\/em> desperate if she\u2019s bought the home-team facsimile jersey from Starter or from some knockoff dot-com.\u00a0 In Buffalo I sat down for my third session with a woman who looked like she\u2019d broken into Doug Flutie\u2019s locker.\u00a0 Helmet, shoulder pads, non-reflective greasepaint under both eyes\u2014the whole ten yards.\u00a0 \u201cLife,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s not what most women think.\u00a0 You watch baseball.\u00a0 You watch football.\u00a0 You watch NASCAR.\u00a0 And then you die.\u201d\u00a0 Well, it needed a little work before it\u2019d be ready for The Journal of Feminist Teleology<\/em>, but it was a start.\u00a0 That night was one of those rare occasions on which I was tempted to expound upon my own considerable experience with the self-help publishing industry.\u00a0 But since my divorce correlated directly with my eight-figure entrepreneurial adventure, I spent the last of our seven minutes in silence.<\/p>\n

Tonight\u2019s Number Three reminds me of my ex-wife.\u00a0 I mean this as a compliment, I tell her.\u00a0 And it is, but she isn\u2019t buying.\u00a0 So I fib a little, and tell her I\u2019m a widower, and vow to keep my mouth shut for a while.<\/p>\n

Keeping my mouth shut isn\u2019t difficult, though, because she\u2019s beautiful in that pale, porcelain, pre-Raphaelite way that drives me nuts.\u00a0 Auburn hair, disheveled to perfection, green eyes that you can envision in an R-rated fairy tale. \u00a0She\u2019s in Therapy, of course.\u00a0 She pronounces the word as if it deserves a capital letter.\u00a0 She\u2019s learning how not to be taken advantage of, and she\u2019s starting tonight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know the feeling,\u201d I say.\u00a0 \u201cI used to be a teacher.\u00a0 I ended up taking an unpaid leave of absence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat sounds familiar,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cA student threatened to kill me.\u00a0 After I phoned his parents and told them he wasn\u2019t doing his homework.\u201d\u00a0 I laugh, and continue telling the truth.\u00a0 \u201cWhen I asked the principal when I could come back to work, he told me, \u2018Whenever the kid changes his mind.\u2019\u00a0 I swear to God.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re asking the wrong person,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u201cMy Therapist tells me I have to get in touch with my Validated Siren.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much is your therapist?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo hundred an hour.\u201d\u00a0 She seems to find this a depressing thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you ever considered him as two words?\u00a0 It might help validate your siren.\u201d<\/p>\n

She starts whispering Therapist<\/em>, Therapist<\/em>, over and over, until she gets it right.\u00a0 The<\/em> Rapist<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m warning you,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I say.\u00a0 \u201cI used to teach English.\u201d<\/p>\n

********<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Now I\u2019m in the men\u2019s room, at a urinal next to a guy who\u2019s relieving himself and talking on his cell phone at the same time.\u00a0 He\u2019s one of those geezers who does a few hundred sit-ups every morning to make himself look like a skinny, overcooked chicken.\u00a0 I think he\u2019s Goodnighting his grandkids on the phone, cooing and babytalking in front of the porcelain, until he says, \u201cSleep tight, Adolph.\u00a0 Sleep tight, Eva.\u201d<\/p>\n

I must look surprised, because after he zips himself he tells me, \u201cIt\u2019s a joke, for God\u2019s sake.\u00a0 They\u2019re German<\/em> shepherds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat explains it,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

Now he\u2019s rubbing his hands under the spout of the marble lavatory.\u00a0 \u201cYou still want to be here when you\u2019re my age?\u00a0 Have a prostate exam.\u00a0 Every month.\u201d<\/p>\n

********<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve dressed down tonight\u2014an old Golden Bear golf shirt, faded Dockers slacks, cheap shoes.\u00a0 Your regular Knight in Shining Loafers.\u00a0 My next date is explaining to me how she usually relies upon escort services for her company functions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call it masterdating,\u201d she giggles\u2014which surprises me, because I wouldn\u2019t have guessed a woman wearing a CEO necklace could<\/em> giggle.\u00a0 \u201cOne and done.\u00a0 Use \u2019em and lose \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSounds pretty homophobic to me,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

She says, \u201cI don\u2019t stick with women, either.\u201d\u00a0 She hasn\u2019t told me the name of her company, or even her line of work, and I haven\u2019t asked.\u00a0 From the way she\u2019s sizing me up, though, I figure she\u2019s either in fashion design or liability insurance.\u00a0 Someone who\u2019s gone through the Five Stages of Greed and made it all the way to Acceptance.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d clean up pretty well,\u201d she squints.\u00a0 \u201cWould you like to go on a corporate retreat next month?\u00a0 As my tax deduction?\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t tell her I could probably buy her corporation.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I squint back.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t stick with women, either.\u201d<\/p>\n

********<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Which is, more or less, the case.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never filled out a Follow-Up Card for any of my seventy-three sessions.\u00a0 I regard Speed Dating as a hobby\u2014at two hundred dollars a hit, plus transportation, it\u2019s less expensive than golf.\u00a0 Or yachting.\u00a0 Or thoroughbred racing.<\/p>\n

My wife and I were happily married for eleven years.\u00a0 But after my enforced leave of\u00a0absence, after adolescent-proofing the locks on our condominium\u2019s exterior doors, after getting tired of asking Joy about her day as the executive assistant to the bachelor president of Up And Coming University, I felt like a mental defective.<\/p>\n

That was the beginning.\u00a0 And, alas, the end.<\/p>\n

I trademarked the Mental Defectives<\/em> series of self-help books, starting with computers, opera, and (of course) grammar.\u00a0 I wrote the first few myself, set up an independent division within a major publishing firm, and then started farming out projects by the dozen.\u00a0 Within five years, I was worth eight figures, I was working eighty hours a week, and I supposed I was supremely happy.\u00a0 That\u2019s when Joy left me.\u00a0 For Guess Who.\u00a0 I got him back, though, in the second edition of Higher Education for Mental Defectives<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Joy was maddeningly dignified.\u00a0 She wouldn\u2019t even accept my alimony.\u00a0 \u201cTime wounds all heels,\u201d she calmly announced, looking up from the half-packed suitcase on our bed.\u00a0 \u201cSome day, you\u2019ll get yours.\u00a0 But it won\u2019t be from me<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Number Six (\u201ca stylish widow with a special child\u201d) never shows.\u00a0 My seventh date is a ruddy, round-faced Assistant Professor of Ancient History.\u00a0 I talk about my previous incarnation as a public-school teacher as if it were still the Real Me.\u00a0 I tell her that it\u2019s dignified work, that I believe in it, that without decent public education our military personnel would be pushing LAUNCH buttons to order pastrami on rye.\u00a0 \u201cThink about it,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s looking at me strangely.\u00a0 \u201cDid you ever teach in Columbia?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I lie.\u00a0 I have come to lie very well.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou bear an astonishing resemblance to my ninth-grade English teacher.\u00a0 Mister Dickey.\u201d\u00a0 She snickers.\u00a0 \u201cA total jerk.\u00a0 He acted like he was forcing himself to read our papers. \u00a0Like he already knew everything.\u00a0 Like it wasn\u2019t any fun to learn about what we<\/em> thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess that\u2019s why they call it a job.\u201d\u00a0 I try to remember her, but I can\u2019t.\u00a0 Three minutes and twenty-two seconds.\u00a0 I say, \u201cBut I taught Latin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo way!\u201d\u00a0 She tries staring me down.\u00a0 \u201cFiat Lux<\/em>.\u00a0 What does that <\/em>mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAn Italian subcompact with leather seats?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTry again, jerk.\u00a0 You don\u2019t know Latin.\u201d<\/p>\n

I pick up the Candle of Romance and hold it just beneath her decidedly un-Roman nose.\u00a0 \u201cLet there be light.\u201d\u00a0 Embarrassing her, I happily decide, has just become morally defensible.\u00a0 \u201cIn the original text, I believe it was a demonstration rather than a lecture.\u201d<\/p>\n

********<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I look for flaws.\u00a0 Usually, I don\u2019t have to look very hard.\u00a0 Date Eight is one of those women who could pass for a teenager across a crowded room, but across a twenty-four-inch caf\u00e9 table looks like she\u2019s in the first stages of progeria.\u00a0 The forehead visible through her wispy bangs is lined like notebook paper.\u00a0 Eyelids sagging with two sleepless nights, maybe three.\u00a0 Her bracelet tells me her name is Jackie.<\/p>\n

\u201cHi Jackie,\u201d I say, determined to trash every rule of Speed Dating.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m Ted.\u00a0 Ted Dickey.\u201d<\/p>\n

She smiles, and it\u2019s the saddest smile I\u2019ve ever seen, sadder even than Joy\u2019s.\u00a0 \u201cHi Ted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I tell her I\u2019m broke, I\u2019m desperate, I\u2019ve driven away the only woman I\u2019ve ever loved, and I want to die.\u00a0 As I look at her, I realize that most of what I\u2019ve said is the truth, even if the truth can\u2019t be what she\u2019s hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy name\u2019s not Jackie.\u201d\u00a0 Then she steals a glance at her cheap plastic watch and says, “Quick, listen up, because this is going to happen fast.\u00a0 She tells me that each one of us is hopeless, but when God or whatever it is up there bumps some of us together, those bruises are the only things that can tell us we\u2019re still alive.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m thirty-five years old, and I wear this bracelet to remind me what I am,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u00a0 You don\u2019t deserve this.\u201d\u00a0 Jackie is the name of her daughter, and as I listen to the urgency in her voice, I still hear words: leukemia<\/em>, agony<\/em>, hopelessness<\/em>, applesauce<\/em>, morphine<\/em>.\u00a0 Because, after all, I am a man of words.\u00a0 \u201cSix months.\u00a0 I killed my own baby, and they sent me to jail for six months.\u00a0 What kind of justice is that?\u201d<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t help it, I\u2019m thinking of a new title, Justice for Mental Defectives<\/em>, one copy, just for me.<\/p>\n

For the last session, they ring a bell.\u00a0 But I stay in my chair and fill out my Follow-Up Card\u2014Table Seventeen, Date Eight, along with my own name and telephone number, for verification by the proper authorities.<\/p>\n

I look for her in the lobby, outside the rest rooms, by the water fountain, alongside the drop box\u2014but she\u2019s gone, of course.\u00a0 I think of my new home in Columbia, with its digital hearth\u2014a flat screen TV in a stone mantel, with a default DVD setting of the crackle and flicker of burning pine. She\u2019s right.\u00a0 I don\u2019t deserve this.\u00a0 But as I hear my card, my very first card, come to rest at the bottom of my future with its hushed whisper, I see her there with me.\u00a0 Inside that box.\u00a0 In front of that hopeless fire.\u00a0 And what I\u2019m wondering is not if, but how.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This short story appeared in the book, “The Final Days of Great American Shopping,” by Gilbert Allen. \u00a0It is reprinted with the permission of the author.   “Speed Dating” By […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":4590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}