Dating...according to Noelle C.

Good afternoon!

Sorry for the long absence my friends, but I've been slaving away to get my newest novel, "Fresh Ice" out to the formatters so you all can BUY IT AND READ IT AND I CAN RETIRE FROM MY JOB AS AN OFFICE DRONE and write for a living.

But until THAT happens, I have this to share with you:

So most of you know that my female coworker, Noelle C, is a lady in her mid fiffties.  She's not, what one would call, a young mid fifties.  She's pretty much me, ten years from now...only with a way more ancient and dim view on everything  (except for Lumbergh, whom she loves) and a whackadoo mental capacity.  She already thinks we're twins, so if you see her, do not mention that I said we're in any way the same.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago she strolled into the office on a Monday looking all, I don't know, happy in a normal way. Not the usual giddy, can't-wait-to-be-in-the-presence-of-Lumbergh happy she usually is. No, this was something different.  So I said, "You seem chipper."

I should have just kept my mouth shut.  When will I learn?  See, yes, my work life gives me great material for this blog and ultimately a few books down the road.  But what I print here is sifted through and boiled down.  I don't bore you with the endless, endless, endless analysis and details of something like...a date with Noelle C.

The story goes like this:  Apparently Noelle C has a new upstairs neighbor.  They were out on their respective patios watering their plant boxes. Now I can only imagine that he struck up a conversation with her because he was blown away by the fact that a women in her shape would have the guts to reveal so much cleavage on a chilly Saturday afternoon, or maybe the guy just didn't know what he was in for.

Poor soul. He knows now.

Anyway, they struck up a conversation, and he invited her to dinner at his apartment the next night. 

"He pulled out all the stops," she told me, "he grilled steak and there was shrimp and he made a really nice salad and there was some wine."

Oh boy, here we go.

"I of course didn't have any wine because, you know back in my modeling days  (right modeling days.  I've seen the pictures.) I drank too much and the cult I was in that wouldn't let me go to college (are you still with me)  didn't seem to care if I drank too much so I smoked and I drank and I modeled.  So I didn't have his wine."  (There's a logic there if you really think about it.)

And now wait for the next thing she said.

"And I didn't have sex with him either.  I told him that right away.  I wasn't going to have sex with him."

Now, granted, I haven't had to date anyone in a very long time.  But I watch enough television to know that just because you share a meal and watch a movie, that doesn't mean sex is going to happen.  Not one the first date.  Well, maybe if the two people are super attractive and one of them is a spy and won't be alive the next day...wait, I digress.  Dinner and a movie is sometimes just dinner and a movie and sometimes it's more than that, but it's not always the direct route to the bedroom.  Am I wrong about this?

Well, in case her mission statement at the start of the evening wasn't clear enough, Noelle C told me that while they watched the movie, she stayed at the very far end of the couch..."as far as I could possibly be from him."

Ya know, I'll bet he just wanted to get to know his neighbors.  And she's a chatty sort of person as long as you don't chat with her more than a few minutes and you realize she never STOPS talking.  I can see why he'd want to spend an evening with what he thought was a normal, outgoing, nice neighbor lady.

At the end of the evening, she said, "I didn't kiss him or anything.  I just thanked him for dinner and walked away."

If upstairs dude hadn't gotten the message by then, he's a moron.

She told me also that he has money problems, and that she's just not equipped to take on someone with money.  All I wanted to do was say, "Hey, he wasn't asking you to marry him.  He was asking you to share a meal with him."  But then I realized, if he was sharing his money woes with her, then he might just be as nuts as she is.

So I guess that's the dating guide according to Noelle C.  Be sure, no matter what you do, that the person who asked you on the date is very clear about whether you are, or are not, going to have sex with him/her.

And who knows?  Maybe this sort of brutal honesty is just what the older generation needs as we chemically prolong our sex drives.  Maybe she's on the cutting edge of something here.

Or maybe she's just whackadoodledoo and left yet another person shell shocked in her wake of whacky destruction. 

Oh boy...I may have just stumbled onto a book title!