Have I Got A Guy For You

As nature abhors a vacuum, I abhor an unattached male.

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I don't know if it's inherited or what, but some of us seem to have a mutant gene that drives us to fix people  up, even against their wills.  It seems to be an ethnic trait that crops up in the chromosomes of people who talk with their hands.

I am divorced, old, and have no interest in the opposite sex myself anymore, but my matchmaker compulsion lingers. I  rebel against the notion that people can find love on their own—or through a dating app.   Swiping right and finding Mr. Right is like winning the lottery. 

Whether they realize it or not, friends need me to find love for them. Just tell me someone's available and my mind starts sorting through my singles data bank. No possible match, however farfetched, is dismissed.

This rather aberrant personality trait might be more winning if I was actually any good at fix-ups. But I’m as ineffective as Sima Taparia on Indian Matchmaker whose clients never seem to get married  At least not to each other.  My fix-ups tend to end similarly, if less politely, with an irate phone call,  “What were you thinking? How could you think I’d ever be interested in that loser?”

 Sadly, I can't count the times I've had to eat the words have I got a guy for you.

Fix ups used to be easier back in high school and college when I was young--in the Pleistocene era.  We made out in cars, and there were lots of  boys who wanted to meet girls.  Remember those double dates that happened when you and your boyfriend were going out and he had a friend and you had a friend and you both dragged those hapless friends along under the misapprehension that just because you liked each other, so would they.   You could spot these arrangements immediately by looking at who was sitting where in the car.  One couple would be crawling all over each other while the other was glued to opposite doors.

Instigating a fix-up, of course, has become a whole lot tougher since the advent of the internet and the perennial older man shortage.  Older women realize that too many men their age just want a nurse with a purse and that they’re better off on their own.  A matchmaker today has to be willing to take on some hardship cases. I only know about four single men, and there’s a good reason they’re all single.  Harry is seventy-five, has multiple health problems,  and still hasn't found himself.  He also hasn’t found a steady income or a place to live, and is looking for a nurse not only with a purse but with a house,     Peter looks like a schmoo and tends to communicate in lecture mode.  The words “tell me about yourself,” have never passed his lips.  Yves is in his sixties and sexy in a French sort of way but prefers women 30 years his junior. And David is balding with wisps of hair in a ponytail, which wouldn’t be so bad if he also wasn’t also sporting a MAGA hat. This is the material I have to work with.

My women friends don't make my job any easier. Most of them haven't had a date in this century,  so if I propose to fix them up, they get overwrought and demand specifics—his job history, relationship with his mother, why he divorced his three previous wives. I  usually end up saying something like, "Well, he may not have the greatest track record, but he's terribly interesting, because he's done so many interesting things in his life." Interesting covers a multitude of sins.

I get so obsessed, no one is immune.  I’m ashamed to admit I even tried to fix up Len, my ex-husband’s ex-roommate, who was so brain-damaged in a car accident he found it hard to remember who and where he was at any given moment.  Stuck in a ‘60s time warp, he spent his days listening to the Grateful Dead and smoking weed.  I had Tara in mind for him, a schizophrenic friend of a friend, but first I had to figure out how to get Len to take a  bath.  The plan backfired when my friend Jenny, through whom I’d met Tara, saw Len at a party.  His eyeballs were bugging out and you could smell him at ten paces.  She refused to give me Tara’s number, saying the poor woman had had enough tragedy in her life. 

I bided my time until I ran into Tara in one of her lucid periods at Jenny’s wedding.  I sidled up to her and said, “Have I got a guy for you.”  She looked as if I’d suggested a vacation in downtown Detroit and said she was taking time off from destructive relationships.  I noticed that her eyes also bugged out and thought disappointedly how she and Len would be perfect for each other. 

She said, “Actually, I’m writing a book.  Do you know a literary agent?”  I was tempted to strike a bargain that if she went out with Len, I’d introduce her to my agent, but fixing people up with literary agents doesn’t give me the same frisson, I don’t know why, so I sidled off.

I should have learned from the experience of my own dear departed mother, who never fixed people up because of her generally low opinion of the male sex, but once did so inadvertently, with dire consequences.  

  Her good friend Rachel had been unhappily married for years to an extremely obnoxious blowhard, Artie, who was cordially hated by Rachel and all her friends.  In those days, however, hatred was not grounds for divorce, and Rachel went to her grave despising her husband.  The grieving widower glommed on to my widowed mom and her circle of friends for company, and, since in that generation hatred was no reason to be impolite either, my mom put up with him.  One night he had an extra ticket to a concert and asked my mom if she knew someone who’d like to go.  Without thinking she sent her dear friend and favorite traveling companion, Tillie.  The next thing she knew Tillie and Artie were an item, a pairing which ended up in marriage, dooming my mom to Artie’s company forever.  Tillie didn’t like him either, she admitted to my mom, but he had a lot of money and she was sick of poverty.  Why not divorce him my mom asked?   She’d get a settlement.   No way said Tillie,   That generation took “till death do us part” seriously.

I’ve often wondered where my matchmaking compulsion comes from, but my best guess is that I love stories.   I  want to create a situation with an open ending and then hear how it all turned out. I am riveted by advice columns and matchmaking shows.   I avidly read posts on Facebook groups for older women which often have long, convoluted stories of cheating spouses, larcenous relatives and hateful adult children.  I give my best advice and eagerly tune in to the site again hoping to find out what happened,   If I can create drama myself through matchmaking, so much the better. 

 Right now I’m trying to find a date for my visiting nurse, Carol (not her real name) who is 50, tall, blonde, charming and gorgeous. And fussy.  Know anyone.