If the Abercombies Fit ...

Is it me? Or is it the Abercrombies. I’m 50+. (No, no, not my Abercrombie jeans, they’re size zero. My age!) After years married to a dear but obese man decimated by diabetes, I seek youth in all its hunky chunky healthy glowing glory. I want to be in the presence of perfect chiseldom. The Abercrombie ad model— six-pack abs, come-hither stare, store-front lure.

It’s a phase. Picking up where I left off. Bear with me.

So here I was, shivering in front of a dance club waiting for Julian to show. I watched couple after couple sashay up the steps, looking at me. Other guys flirted. I was still there, waiting stupidly, when some left hand in hand an hour later, looking at me again, grinning wildly.

Humiliated, I didn’t even go inside to dance. I just left, angry and foolish and feeling old. The whole way home I heard my mom’s fave phrase, “The girl always gets egg on her face.” That ticked me off more than getting stood up. Although she was wildly popular in college, it’s possible my mother had sex only twice in her life (I have an older sister, so it couldn’t have been that bad). Why I should have believed her maxim, I don’t know.

Julian never showed. He never called. That still doesn’t make her right.

Still, getting stood up was better than my date with Eel Man. This was a guy so good on paper. OK, online. He was into health and spirituality. He was interested in me, intelligent, and we seemed to share interests. What could it hurt to go dancing.

But when I met him in person, what a creep. I went anyway; I was desperate. When Fred hooked up with another woman, I left (relieved) and walked 2 miles in the dark to a bus stop. Explained I had walked away from a bad date; driver let me on without paying. An elderly woman on board heard, and asked me for dating advice. Say what?

Gals, listen up: When a guy takes 100 supplements a day and thinks a cool dinner date is sharing a can of eel while he drives a ratty Honda, pay attention. We do not want this. We can do better. We do not have to follow through with a commitment just because we were raised to be polite.

Eel Man wasn’t even an Abercrombie. Maybe my relationship to my own body is the reason I crave the musculature. I love myself when I’m physically active. I am complete. I know who I am, and I am happy.

Maybe it’s the sports connection I’m really after. In the interim between dates, I’ve taken up indoor rock climbing. At first it was a way to meet guys but ho, the joke’s on me: I’m so addicted to the sport, and apparently rather good at it, I forget to look around.

Who knows, maybe one of ‘em’s already looking at me. I am in rather Abercrombie shape.