THE BIG FOUR OOOOOOOOOOOOH
June 25, 2007
John has grown feral. Missy found his profile on an online dating site she joined. A picture of John, as well as his profile came to her attached in her e-mail. John was one of five potential matches for Missy in October. He was listed as one of the best in Texas. What the e-mail didn’t mention was that John paid the site something like two hundred dollars to have his profile spotlighted. So then it wasn’t that he was voted the best in Texas, but rather that he paid for his label.
It was Missy’s October match list that showed us how John still lies about his being 35, in addition to his waving a series of other warning signs compressed into phrases like “done playing games,” “No Drama Queens.” Funny thing is that John told me he was thirty-five when we met five years ago, and he wasn’t thirty-five then either. John turned thirty-six a couple months before I knew him. At first I just assumed I’d heard him wrong, or that maybe I’d rounded down, since I never pay close attention to things like birth dates, or other things with numbers. I just remember thinking that John was younger when we met than his driver’s license indicated. If he’d been a teen parent, I would have been old enough to be his daughter. Seeing that he lies now makes me thing he probably lied then too. In many ways it makes me glad that it wasn’t just me that John suckered.
According to our calculations, John must be forty now. While age is just a number, there is something creepy about a guy who lies about it. Just because John doesn’t look his age, doesn’t mean he should leave it open to his own interpretation. While women do it all the time too, they tend to get dumped when the truth comes out. I think I understand why John feels compelled to lie, though. The New York Times wrote an article on feral men like John. Its what happens to men who base their faith in a forever playboy image. Fortunately for women, but unfortunately for these men, they now have a shelf life too. The journalist referred to these self-proclaimed playboys turning forty in the dating world, as their hitting the big “Four Ohhhhh.” The “ohhhh” refers to what younger women say – or think – when they learn a guy that’s been talking them up at the local twenty-somethings bar, wearing the latest trends, is really acting half his age. In other words, women realize these feral men are no longer interested in changing, or it’s clear they have grown desperate, realizing their current predicament. Their lost sense of home, of what it means to share. The very fact that they lie about age is more telling about them, since I’m sure guys like John would be the first to blow off a woman because of her age.
Today’s Mood:
Tired.