Hi, I’m Marvin
“Hi. I’m Marvin.”
“Barbara.”
“Okay I’ve googled, and now we’ve met. Let’s eat.’’
So we sit down at this wobbly table. He’s giant size with a huge tumble of faded brown curly hair that looks like it hasn’t been combed in a year and a small head. He’s a “therapist,” he says.
“What kind of therapist?” I smooth the paper napkin on my lap.
“Family and marriage.” He tucks the napkin into his collar. He wears an old tweed coat over a nubby worn thick sweater. He smells of mothballs.
The restaurant is this hole in the wall with wobbly Formica tables and a huge fish tank with few sickly looking crabs floating in it. I feel so sorry for the crabs I can hardly breathe. We have to stop placing live creatures in fish tanks and vats of boiling water, I rant.
He doesn’t look up from the the jumbo size menu. He makes a big deal about ordering the #7, a potpourri of Thai food. “You’ll love it,” he says, as if to no one. I didn’t tell him on the phone that I hate Thai food. That I have diverticulitis and it makes me sick. Barely did I tell him anything. He was a blind date and I didn’t bother to google him. I trusted my neighbor Joyce who said he was “interesting,” and that we should meet.
After a moment of small talk, our soup arrives. I’m trying not to gag at the hideous fish eyes floating in the soup, while he rants that he read and hated my recent novel and that he wants his Amazon money back. “It’s all about this age crap,” he says, smacking his frog like lips. “Age is the pits,” he says, dabbing at his watery goiter-type eyes with the napkin.
“Well, everything is possible at every age,” I say. “You have the typical sexist male negative age attitude. Age is who you are. It’s about life. Hope.”
“Hope for what!” he shouts, glaring at me. “That you’re incontinent, can’t see, feel shitty? Have IBS and wear diapers? You don’t know what you’re talking about. You need therapy. Joyce said you were a little …out there.”His eyes bulge like ping-pong balls. He rants about how he married a girl thirty years younger and how she took him to the cleaners. “The bitch took me for every dime — and my house and then took me to court on top of it.”
‘Shame.” I say, picking at a lump of soggy rice.
“And you preach love in your novel. No wonder it’s a dog. Love is hard enough for the young and the beautiful, but who wants love when your teeth hurt and you can’t lift your legs to fuck?”
“Well, I’m sorry,” I say, thinking I have to get out of here.
“You need sex. I can always tell.”
“Don’t we all,” I say.
He looks reflective, blinks several times. “The woman I’m in love with — -we finally had sex and I couldn’t get an erection…couldn’t get it to work. She left me an email that she isn’t sexually attracted to me.”
“I’m …sorry,” I whisper.
“I wish I had ten inches.”
He blows his nose with the paper napkin. Tears roll down his face. Feeling sorry for him, furious at myself for always thinking the next man I meet is the “Penile implant probably. Half the oldies are popping ExtenZe like candy, and they walk around with weenies the size of trees.”
On the phone later with Moo Moo, I tell her about the date. That I’ve had it. “I don’t need it. I need myself.
“You need a youngie. She rants that she’s had it with the boomer oldies. She’s a hottie seventy-one year old real estate developer. Her three husbands have all died. “These boomer plus guys are schlumps. Look what happened to the retired furrier who wined and dined you. A big article about him in the San Francisco Chronicle, about his ex-wife and how she died.”
“How?”
“She fell out a window. They think he pushed her. These oldies are useless.”
BarbaraRose is an author. Her latest novel, podcasts and TV appearances are on you tube and on www.barbararosebrooker.com
