“Are you married?” this random middle-aged dude we just met in the town square at midnight asked Shoshana as I walked up with our water.
She informed him she was. He looked at me expectantly.
“I’m not,” I said, politely playing my role.
“I may have a shidduch for you,” he told me. A shidduch is a match, as in an arranged blind date in order to marry.
Very, very Israeli. I cannot count the number of times I have heard this.
“Oh, I’m not interested,” I responded, “but thank you.”
“No, I do,” he said, as though I’d instead replied, with a delighted but disbelieving gasp, “Me? No, but truly, meeee?? You cannot be speaking the truth. My life’s dream: you can fulfill it???”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“You know what you need? If you lost some weight, you’d do great.”
My eyebrows raised.
“Really,” he insisted, “it will make all the difference.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference,” I said, “because I’m not–”
“No, it would,” he interrupted, his voice rising. “It really would. A big difference. You should get the surgery. Lose the weight and a very very big difference. I promise you.”
Honestly at this point I was struggling not to burst out laughing.
“I’m not interested in meeting someone right now,” I told him. Or if I am, this is not something I’d share with Random Middle-Aged Dude I Just Met in the Town Square at Midnight.
He rambled a while longer about how much more attractive I would be to The Mens if I lost weight. I honestly don’t remember what caused him to shut up because it seemed endless, his confident assertions about my life and weight issues.
I don’t know how long it took, I don’t remember what else I said, I just remember laughing like hell as soon as he left.
Dear Random Middle-Aged Dude I Just Met in the Town Square at Midnight,
When a woman explicitly tells you she’s not interested in your setting her up, this means she’s not interested.
She isn’t playing coy.
It doesn’t mean she’s been wandering aimlessly through her life, despairing as to why she’s not married, worrying maybe it’s her haircut and hoping that some caring, random man will have mercy on her and inform her that all her woes are due to the fact she weighs too much.
And thank you: I wasn’t ever aware of the fact I have weight I could lose.
Thank goodness I have you to be my hero less than one minute after we first meet.
Dear Random Middle-Aged Dude I Just Met in the Town Square at Midnight,
You can get a date even if you are not a size 2, or a size 8, or a size 16. It is easy for most women to get a date.
Rest assured, whenever I want a date, I can get one.
Rest assured, if I don’t have a date, it’s because I do not want one.
Rest assured, if I wanted to be married, I would be.
It is not complicated to get into relationships.
It is very complicated to keep them longterm, especially if you didn’t want to be in one in the first place.
Dear Random Middle-Aged Dude I Just Met in the Town Square at Midnight,
Not that I judge based on looks but you have quite the beer belly and were you a female, you’d be telling yourself to get weight loss surgery.
Dear Random Middle-Aged Dude I Just Met in the Town Square at Midnight,
It may surprise you to hear, to the point where you block out her disinterest entirely, that some women are able to lead fulfilling and successful lives WITHOUT BEING MARRIED.
It’s a fact that at least twenty women in this world are intentionally unmarried and still somehow support themselves and get through the day without killing themselves from misery and rejection (if only they’d been matched up by a kind and giving soul they just met who had the perfect shidduch for them!).
Dear Random Middle-Aged Dude I Just Met in the Town Square at Midnight,
The day I base my self-worth and my health decisions on whether or not I am married and what some random middle-aged dude I just met in the town square at midnight thinks I should do about it is the day I punch you in the frickin face because I will be much more unbalanced than I actually was tonight.
I was so much more rational than you deserved. I thought, “He is not worth the fight” and afterwards, laughed with my dear friend about how ridiculous life is and how horrid he was.
Dear Random Middle-Aged Dude I Just Met in the Town Square at Midnight,
After you left, I raised my eyes to the heavens and thanked THE LORD out loud for this moment, because it brought me such an excess of joy and entertainment.
Anyone who claimed it happened to them I’d think made it up from too much reliance on stereotypical clichés.
Who actually says this shit?
Dear Random Middle-Aged Dude I Just Met in the Town Square at Midnight,
Look: It’s not that I’m opposed to marriage or longterm relationships.
I just know how much I am worth and I know I’m difficult and I know I won’t be happy settling.
If the right person comes, great.
If not, great.
And you can bet the right person won’t be anyone who respects your fine opinion.
I’m much more complicated than you expect and cannot be properly paired with some man you know because you do not know ME in the slightest.
Maybe some women are simple.
I have never been simple.
I do not expect any match of mine to be simple.
I am not happy to know someone just to know them, to date someone just to date them, to marry someone just to be married.
I am more than that and I expect more of anyone else who would be with me.
As the character Bast says in one of my favorite books:
You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared. You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
I know what I want and I know what I do not want and what I want most is myself, more than anyone else.
And if I extend myself to someone else, they better know a lot more than the first note.
