I was at dinner with a friend of mine, a few months ago. She is also divorced, vaguely 30 and dating. We split oysters and a burger. The conversation turned, as it so often does, to men and relationships.
“Are you seeing anyone?” I asked her.
“I just met a guy, Ryan, and I think it’s going somewhere. Are you seeing anyone?” She took a sip of her martini.
“I’m seeing everyone, none of it’s going anywhere. Nothing serious. Tell me about your man.”
She said he was of reasonable height and average build, brown hair. Attractive but not handsome, worked in a creative field. He was into the kind of music she did not like and into the kind of restaurants she did. He was very interested in her.
“He said absolutely no games and he hasn’t been playing them. He texts me every day, he wants to see me all the time.” He said he would wait for her to be ready to be exclusive but that he was not seeing anyone else.
“And what do you like about him?” I asked her.
“Honestly? I like that it’s easy.”
“But good things about him?”
“He’s a nice guy, there is nothing wrong with him.”
“Does he make you laugh?”
“He thinks I am funny.” She agreed to exclusivity the next day. He called her “my girlfriend” she called him, “pick me Ryan.” Because she could not stand him and because he had an irritating, nice guy who felt the world is against him because he was from a middle class suburb and not an upper middle class one.
She told me he was on the keto diet, then added “There is nothing more disgusting to me than a straight man on a diet.”