Here We Go A Caroling

Where We Left Our Noble Hero

I was pointing out to my wife that we lived separate lives, hardly saying 100 words to each other, nothing typically more than "where's the sugar" and certainly nothing profound or personal.  Nope, profound left us behind.  She would eat at different times.  Actually, she brought in restaurant food almost daily for her and the kids.  This pinged me a bit, its true, as I am a frugal sort.  A way frugal sort.  And here she is bringing in non-cheap restaurant food maybe 8 or 9 days a week?  Ouch.  AND not talking to me.  MUCH LESS no physical contact.

I thought I would be really scientific (did I say before that I'm a REAL scientist, and own a slide rule?) and make a list of the issues that were befronting us.  So I made that darned list, you betcha, and showed her.  No reaction.  She can be very cold.  And things went on.  I would work all day, then exercise, eat by myself, and then go upstairs and watch "The Wire" or something (what an excellent show).  I wouldn't say much to the rest of my family.  My daughter might bounce in, like Tigger, and say "hi" and "I love you", and then bounce away.  But nothing from the step-kids per se, and nothing much from my wife.

Sooooo.... Eventually she points out that we should get a divorce and I burst out in tears.  And I cry and cry.  But she doesn't care.  I go to bed feeling like crap.  Over the next few weeks I beg and I beg and I cry and I cry but she doesn't care.  Cold as a rock.

Oh, did I say that she had an old high school friend living with us?  He apparently was having money problems, so she invited him to live with us (I don't recall if I was part of the discussion on this.  Maybe).  Of course, they were thick as thieves, and made a little clique that I wasn't part of.  They both love guns, so they would take assault rifles apart on the dinner table to clean them, to the delight of the step-kids, who were also gun nuts.  And go on shooting rampages at the local ranges.

There it was.  She asked for a divorce.  She wouldn't change her mind, no matter what.  I begged her.  I actually said I would become a Republican if that would heal things (she laughed at that).  Finally, in early November 2016, I started looking for a new place.  I looked at cheap condos, not knowing what my income flow would be, and came home in tears.  After pissing off one realtor, I finally found an acceptable 1 bedroom condo for me to live in.  I had plans for building a loft for my daughter, when she would come to visit me.  

And here I am right now in the condo, typing away madly.

No Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving week I moved out of my loveless house, into my empty condominium.  Geez, I thought I had it bad at home.  In the condo, I was all alone.  Nobody around.  Just me and my thoughts, and they weren't happy thoughts.  Going from a full family life to being absolutely alone is kind of horrifying, even when your full family life totally and completely sucks.

But my wife was kind.  She invited me to Thanksgiving.  She said it was for the kids, notably my 13 year old daughter.  I had WANTED to go to Norm's restaurant, because it never closes, and it looks like a great place for the lonely to hang out, but I went to her house instead.  AND IT WAS WEIRD.  It was my old family, plus the mooch and a NEW GUY who was an old high school friend of hers and was a sniper or something, that was teaching her how to shoot.  Boy oh boy, was THAT a crappy Thanksgiving.  My step-kids were already disassociating me.  I lived with them for 15 years, and they were imitating mommy and shutting down communication.  My daughter, sweet as ever, bounced around like Tigger and didn't seem to notice anything was amiss.  And the two old high school friends of my wife occupied all of her fancies.  I was like a ghost at a party.  Or I felt like my father, who was always treated like crap by my wife (he was a liberal after all), or my mother, who was also treated like crap by my wife (my mother was VERY liberal).  Yes, I had become my parents at this holiday party, at least I was treated like crap, just like they were, by my wife.

It's a hard rain, gonna fall.

Single, 64 and Definitely Not Sexy

This Dude is Single, 64 and Definitely Not Sexy

In Which We Define The Now

AT the ripe old age of 63, my wife of 14 years kicked me out of the house.  This blog is a tale of recovery.  This blog is the story of a man, now 64, trying to get back into a social world.  Uhh.  I'm the man, of course, or was that obvious? This is a story about a man (me, again!) who wants to be with a woman he loves, any woman, but now he has to find one.  Or two.   And a couple of bro's would be good, too.  Beer buddies. This is a story about an admittedly elderly man (me, again!), seeking to find  relationships in the year of our Lord 2017, after being totally unaware of what has been going on for the past 15 years, of all the new dating sites, and geez, doing this now while you are gray and kind of gross looking.  This is a story about an old dude fighting his way back into the social world after being totally away from it.

And this dude, me, is subject to all sorts of CRAPPY HELP from younger people who say things like "my 79 year old grandma just got a boyfriend."  And I'm.... what?  You are lumping me with your 79 year old grandma?  Geez.

Of Ions and Anions

One of the woman I will end up dating in this story, but that comes later, Sue, told me that once you a married, you are like ions as part of an ionic bond. Like sodium ions mix with chlorine ions to make table salt.  Gosh, think of how different sodium, a nasty poisonous metal, and chlorine, a nasty poisonous gas are, but together they add flavor to your fries, to you baked potato.  Or for God's sake, tortilla chips!  Where would we be without tortilla chips!  With melted cheese on them! And beer!

When you are in an ionic bond, you become dependent on your anion.  That's assuming you are the cation.  Hmmm I feel the need for a "cat vs dog" joke here, but none come to mind.  You are joined at the hip.  You are part and parcel.   BUT once separated, you float, cluelessly, in aqueous solution, absolutely lost.  "ohhh where is my anion?" you wail, pathetically.  Nobody listens, because all the other ions are wailing about that too.  What to do, you clueless floating ion?  Only one path.  You need to re-bond!  Become part of another ionic bond!  Think of it!

Or I guess you could become a covalent bond with yourself.  That takes strength, to fight the world all by yourself, as you grow old.  It is really useful to be part of an ionic bound, that is, part of a couple.  During the years of my marriage, when I became sick, my wife was WONDERFUL supporting me, asking doctors the right questions, and helping me recover.  What a wonderful thing it is to be married!  The support!  The closeness!  Planning for the future!  That old ionic bond.

Now I guess with the ionic bond comes a bit of isolation.  I was just so happy to be with my family.  I didn't really need friends, and most of my friends were colleagues at work, or friends from decades past.  My love and satisfaction was in my family. It was everything I needed.  BUT... guess what? That's gone.  Now I see my daughter just one night a week: she is fourteen, and a sweetheart.  She is happy to come over to my crappy little one-bedroom condo, eat her favorite Trader Joe's frozen dinner, then we watch old "Hannah Montana" re-runs, that we loved in the past, and she goes to bed.  That's my entire social calender for the week.  Unless she has to see her friends, and then I don't see her.

But I need more.  I need to develop a social network, a social framework, levels of social interaction from highly personal, to more general.  I need it all.  But I don't know how to get there.  I don't want just an ionic bond, dammit, I want a whole molecule.

This here book is about how I, a 64 year old doofus, will proudly enter the world of social engagements, and fight to create some meaningful social order in my pathetic life.  And maybe go on a date or two.

History

Why did she, my evil wife, kick me out of the house you might ask?  The reason?  What lead her to say "Green Dave, we can no longer co-exist.  You must leave and take your possessions.  I suggest a crappy little one bedroom condo will fit your needs."  Well she didn't really say that, but that's what happened.

My wife and I: we are of different races.  Sometimes the specter of races is so large that it can not be undone.  Race can be more important than shared experience, shared visions or shared history.  Yes, having a mixed marriage of different races just immediately starts problems, insidious as they start out.  Tiny germs of problems and sprout and grow.  Yes, my wife and I are of different races.  That is not to say "ethnic backgrounds," as we are both Caucasian European.  She is a hot blond, now 57, and I am a once nice -looking but now very invisible and bland 64 year old.  Her name is German, mine French.  That's pretty European, right?   But we were different.  Different, yes: she is a very conservative Republican, and I a very liberal Democrat.  When our love was young, we were very much soul mates, and political parties did not seem to matter.  She was escaping from a angry husband who berated and verbally abused her, and I was a goofy surfer dude with a Ph.D.  She has a Ph.D. too.  My father was the one who introduced us.  He has a Th.D.  Lots of degrees.  He was her professor when she was much younger, like 20 years before we got married.  He was not only her professor, but her close mentor.  She kept in touch with him over the years.  When she told him about the troubles she was facing with her then husband, my father launched in the selling of his 49 year old vagrant son.

The Vagrant Son (Me!)

Why do I describe myself as a vagrant son?  Hear the tales of my woes.  I was a happy go lucky teenager back in the 1960's, totally oblivious to essentially everything, and clueless to boot.  My father at the time was a swingin' liberal professor.  That's right, bless his heart, he was a liberal swingin' professor in the 1960's.  My mom didn't have a chance.  Now my dad, bless his heart, who died at age 98, did the following.  Hold on to your hat:  when my DAD was 64, he married, I swear to God a 20 year old woman who was prettier than any woman I've ever dated (more or less).  So here he is a guy, 64, NOT invisible, NOT desperate, NOT a loser, like current son.  WHY?  Because in the 1960's, that's what was done.  Actually, it's still be done.  More professors I know are married to their graduate students than... I don't know, Hollywood stars to starlets?  But I digress.

So here I am, clueless teenager, and dad is a swinger, marrying a 20 year old, hurting my mom terribly.  They both ended up okay, but the hurt I saw derived from the divorce made me swear that when I got married, it would be permanent.  Oops.

When I was in my 20's I dated numerous wonderful women, for months and years at a time, but nothing ever stuck.  In my 30's, same thing, but the women started to talk about their "clocks."  Then my 40's.  I was getting desperate.  In my late 40's, when I eventually met my wife-to-be, I was dating four women simultaneously, trying to figure out what to do.  And my dad solved it for me, introducing me.  Total babe, had two young kids, but really smart, loved the beach like I do, and we just seemed so compatible.  We were talking marriage almost immediately.  

I remember when she first talked about being a Republican.  I remember thinking "hey, now THIS is something I can talk an educated soul mate out of very quickly and easily."  As you might surmise, didn't happen.  But it sowed that impending seed of DOOM.

So blah blah blah... We got married, she actually got pregnant and I got my wonderful daughter, I got along fine with her two kids, her ex-husband marginalized himself by marrying a woman who liked fine things (he just died from pneumonia a few years ago).  But then, with the rise of the alt-right, I found myself in a crappy little one bedroom condo.

The Current Situation

So after that long history, we find ME, alone and clueless, eagerly setting out to build a social infrastructure.  Eagerly setting out to buoy the sinking ship.  Willfully going where numerous people have gone before, but haven't told me, leaving me to figure things out for myself.   

I figure that essentially in old age, EVERYONE ends up alone, so why not write a book about my struggles?  I could call it "Mein Kampf."  But I am not German, so that wouldn't work.  Also someone told me that title was taken.  Anyway, it sounds more like a noodle dish.

HOW DOES an invisible 64 year old, absolutely unsexy man build a social infrastructure, a network?  Hell if I know!  But that's what we will discuss in this book.