Over drinks while waiting for our table, he offered to jet me to his family’s summer home in the south of France.
While walking to our table, he offered to take me to the Lake District in England.
Before appetizers, he was setting up a time for us to a have a romantic get-away weekend in New York.
And during the entrée, he proposed:
If I signed a prenuptial, I could marry him, have his children (one girl and one boy), and he would pay for liposuction to return my body to a pre-baby shape. What an honor.
Within 20 minutes, things had gone from ordinary to very out of the ordinary.
During these propositions in the name of romance, love and perpetuation of the human race, I sat across from him with a wrinkled brow, quite stunned to be hearing just what I was hearing, just what was being said in earnest.
Questions began swarming my head: Was he serious? Did he think that this kind of banter was what I wanted to hear? Were these the kinds of lines he used on unsuspecting, hopeful and perhaps naïve women? Had they worked before? Or, did he honestly want to sweep me – a virtual stranger to him – off my feet and make me his wife?
So many things about his proposal had me reeling – and not because I was charmed by his straight-forwardness. More so, I was surprised that he thought I was the type of person who wanted to have things handed to me on a silver platter; the type of person who would take the benefits of a wealthy husband over true love, hard work and dedication; or the type of woman who would want to be a trophy wife. It all sounds very archaic to me.
After we finished dinner, I requested to end the night early and he dropped me off at home. I went upstairs to my apartment (alone) and no sooner had I walked in the door than my phone rang: “How about brunch tomorrow?” I politely declined.
On Monday, he e-mailed me.
On Wednesday, he called me.
On Friday, he called to tell me that I am “marriage material.”
In less than a week, I had gone from single and dating to being ferociously stalked by a lion in a man’s clothing. This man struck me as so desperate to leave his seed behind that he forgot to give a girl an inch.
To break it down: Here was a 42 year old man proposing to me, someone he hardly knew, after one date. And to make matters worse, he was only separated from his wife; the divorce was not yet finalized (a fact I did not learn until this first date or I doubt I would have gone out with him). What was his hurry to marry again? Where was the fire?
It was then that I started to hear this strange tick-tock sound through the phone’s receiver. This man’s biological alarm clock was buzzing in my ear. And it hurt my delicate ear drum. So I hung up.
With the predicted life-expectancy of children born today clocking in at right around 100, why are people in such a hurry to get married, have children and ultimately, grow up so fast?
When I consulted my friend Mikey for advice (the wise sage that he is), he told me, “Since the sexual revolution, let’s face it: everyone’s biological clocks have been set back a few metaphorical hours.” There’s some truth in that. An eighth grade teacher told me today that her students are having sex.
Frankly speaking though, if more and more people are going to make dating and the pursuit of love into an urgent business negotiation rather than a fun game of cat-and-mouse, I think I’ll set my biological clock back a few extra hours. Call it daylight savings.
• "A Single Serving" appears the 1st and 15th of every month, exclusively in Lumino Magazine. E-mail Melissa at m.koss@yahoo.com.
