It’s a goddamn comedy, our age. You dive into those dating apps, and there they are: women chirping about “slow love,” wanting some knight in shining armor to rescue them from their forty-hour-a-week grind and playing mommy on the weekends. This, of course, after years of tangling with every “bad boy” who wasn’t a carbon copy of the ex-husband they’d already wasted twenty years on.
Now, suddenly, they want the fairytale – some gentle prince from yesteryear, expecting you to lay your jacket over a goddamn puddle so their royal feet don’t get damp. “You’re such a gentleman,” they’ll coo. It’s all a game, a transparent power trip. Funny how that “slow love” bullshit evaporates by the end of the first night. Then they’re sprawled out on your sheets, whispering, “I never do this.” Yeah, right. And I’m collecting stamps.
You hear the numbers, too. Fourteen, they said about one. Fourteen before me punched that same, tired ticket. And that’s just the ones who stuck around long enough for a second cup of stale coffee, never mind the one-night stands, the shadows slipping out before dawn. After all that, I’m supposed to play the fool? Wine and dine her like it’s some goddamn high school prom, all sweaty palms and borrowed corsages? “Courtship,” she calls it. Paying for dinners, pretending I just want to be friends first. Christ. Every man with blood in his veins knows that game. Sure. Just like every kid’s got a poster of some fifty-year-old blob tacked above his bunk, dreaming of that prize. The whole damn thing’s a joke, and I’m supposed to laugh and pick up the check.
Or you get the one with a four-year degree in something like trauma counseling, makes thirty grand a year, and still brags about it like she’s got options. Meanwhile, she’s slow-rolling you for hand-holding on the third date while her “friend” with benefits is on speed dial just in case she drinks too much wine and needs a familiar port in the storm. Then there’s the type who hadn’t crawled out from under the rock of her divorce for years, only to spend the next five getting stomped on by some ‘bad boy’ she invited in. Let him drag her through the mud, boost her car, rough her up a time or two, then fade like a cheap tattoo – leaving her with a little something for the pharmacy to handle, a daily pill reminder of his particular charm. And here’s the kicker: this hero was supposedly a prize compared to the ex-husband, the one who never coughed up a goddamn cent for his own kids. After that history, I’m supposed to break out the party hats? Feel lucky to even get a ticket to this three-ring circus? Like I won some kind of fucked-up lottery. Yeah, lucky me.
And God forbid you mention sex before date number five – you’re a “creep.” That’s the script they read from. Then she’ll sigh, all world-weary, “I’m just so tired of opening my legs. Men, that’s all they ever want.” Every damn time. Dumbest line in the book. Especially when she’s sitting there, tits pushed up to her chin by some miracle of engineering, lips painted blood-red, hair that ain’t all hers, and you know she just got the undercarriage waxed smooth as a baby’s ass, smelling like a goddamn flower shop in a whorehouse.
Yeah, all that trouble because she just wants to be friends. Sure. And I’m the Pope.”Let’s not rush into anything,” she says. Right. Like fifty years of wreckage and a litter of kids named after faded tattoos and bad Saturday nights screams “take it slow.” Swear to Christ, I saw one on those dating apps the other day: fifty-plus, looked like she’d been ridden hard and put away wet, hooked up to an oxygen tank in a damn wheelchair.
Profile starts with: “Not interested in hook ups.” Holy hell. What else is left on the menu at that point, lady? A quiet game of checkers and a race to the grave? Your good looks and the “best years to come”? They’re not “ahead of you,” honey; they’re in the rearview with that old prom dress still in the moth box. You want sunsets and slow walks now that the value’s dropped, but you sold all your stock years ago. Now you’re just marking it up like it’s organic.
Then there’s me. Mr. Stud, they call me, with a working-man’s cock and the know-how to use it. But this bitterness, it ain’t just about the women anymore. It’s this whole damn rotting society, sinking deeper into the muck every year. I’m standing there, shaving the gray out of my pubes, my man-tits bouncing, looking in the mirror like some busted sideshow act. What the fuck am I even doing here? My God, what have we all done?
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Are we really supposed to be running this same old hamster wheel at our age? Shaving, preening, chasing some flicker of what used to be. What’s the alternative? That’s the kicker. Sit in some goddamn sexless marriage, a joyless truce where you sandpaper yourself down to nothing just to keep the peace? Slap on a happy face for the Facebook crowd, pretend it’s all sunshine and roses at those family gatherings while you’re dying inside? Use the damn TV screen to get your rocks off because the bed’s gone cold as a tomb? Status on one hand, that hollow “look at us, we made it.” Freedom on the other, with all its own particular brands of hell. Both got their price, their own kind of chains. You just pick your poison, I guess.
“The devil you know,” they say. But what if the devil you don’t know is just the same damn devil in a different cheap suit? That’s the game, isn’t it? Fact is, at this age, they’re all the devil, one way or another. We shouldn’t be doing this. Fifty years old, chasing ghosts on the Wi-Fi. Hopping from Facebook to those goddamn dating apps – Grinder, Bumble, Tinder – like a flea on a hot griddle. It’s too much. Too much noise, too much flashing light, too much goddamn stimulation. Burns a man out, leaves him hollowed out and twitching for something that ain’t even real.
So here we are, picking through the rubble. Fifty years in, and the whole damn dating game feels like rummaging through that garage sale where all the good stuff’s long gone, marked with “SOLD” tags from husbands, lovers, and bad decisions past. You’re left squinting at the chipped china and the moth-eaten sweaters, trying to convince yourself there’s a treasure buried under the junk. We’re all out here, aren’t we? Men and women, a parade of the slightly used, the palpably damaged, hauling our baggage behind us like a string of tin cans rattling on a stray dog. They want the fairytale, the rescue, after a lifetime of burning their own castles down. We want something that doesn’t taste like ash and regret.
Everyone’s got their script, their angle, their carefully constructed facade of “not interested in hookups” while the desperation practically sweats through their clothes. The best years? They’re in the rearview mirror, fading faster than cheap dye in a summer sun. Now it’s all about “slow love” and “not rushing,” when all that’s left is a sprint to the finish line. We shave our grays, suck in our guts, and scroll through faces on a glowing screen, wondering what the hell happened.
Wondering if this frantic dance is any better than the quiet suffocation of a dead marriage or the echoing silence of an empty room. It’s a grimy, pathetic, hilarious circus. And we’re all clowns, painting on smiles, juggling our neuroses, hoping for a flicker of something real in the dimming light. Maybe there is no grand prize, no final answer.
Just the next dingy bar, the next awkward date, the next morning staring at the ceiling, wondering if it’s all worth the goddamn effort. Or maybe, just maybe, that’s all there is – the effort itself, the stubborn refusal to just lie down and die. You pick your poison, you play your hand, and you hope for a decent goddamn drink before the lights go out for good.
