Say No To Dirty Old Men
There are these psychologists who share an office on the floor of our building. I see them occasionally, and while one guy is cool and I like him, most of them seem like your standard crazyass LA therapists. Like the woman who looks like Tracy Ullman playing a crazy therapist, complete with the random ponytail at the TOP of her head that she’s dyed purple. What’s that about?
Anyway, the bathrooms are right by their exit door so you end up running into them a lot. There’s this one older guy who looks more like an asshole lawyer than a therapist. He has collar-length hair that he slicks straight back, he wears crisp shirts tucked into his pants that sit a little on the high side, and he walks with posture so extreme, I swear there’s a rod up his ass and he gets off on it. This guy has a black lab that he brings to work every once in a while and always ties up outside our door. My coworker once noted that he’ll leave this poor dog out there for the entire day with no water, so we usually bring a dish of water out there. Once, his dog kept barking and I was watching it from our window. All of a sudden, this dude comes slamming out of his door with his notebook in hand, and starts screaming at his dog, “Max, SHUT UP! We talked about this! SHUT UP!” It was really sad but I thought it was funny, because this guy was clearly in the middle of a session. I imagined some poor patient spilling his heart out about how he was molested by his next door neighbor, and meanwhile, there’s this barking in the background and his therapist is totally not listening before he just gets up and says, “I’m sorry, can you excuse me for a second?” Then ten seconds later, he’s outside screaming at his dog. That’s just so absurdly unprofessional.
Anyway, I ran into him in front of the bathrooms once and he was asking me what my name was and which company on the floor I worked for. I was at a trade show in Atlanta the next week and one day, the week after I get back, Eddie transfers me this caller who specifically asked for me. So I pick up and the guy says, “It’s Dan with the black lab.” I’m like, what? He’s like, “Dan with the black lab. I work on your floor.” I’m like, uh, okay. He says, “I heard you were out of town.” I think, that’s creepy, because that means he must have tried calling last week and someone told him I was out of the office. He says, “I understand jetlag, I just got back from Asia myself.” This is a huge red flag, because by throwing out that he’s been to Asia, he’s basically letting me know he’s down with the yellow. Then he said that he’s going to have his dog at the office on Wednesday, and he doesn’t know if I mix business with pleasure dog walking (what is pleasure dog walking? does it involve fondling?), but he wanted to know if I’d be interested in walking his dog with him. I said, I have a boyfriend. He gets flustered and he’s like, “Oh…oh you’re quick. You cut this right down to what this is. Uh, okay. Well…I’m sure that the next time I see you, it’s not going to be awkward.” I’m like, dude, whatever. You’re a stalker.
Later I found out from my coworker that the reason he drives a Mercedes is because he did one of those radio contests where he married someone he never met, then quickly took the prize and got divorced. Gross. This is just the type of guy I would look for in a therapist.
So I don’t know what’s wrong with these fucking therapists because there’s another guy who always hits on me. And this guy’s in his 50’s. He’ll stop me by the bathrooms because he wants to tell me how beautiful I am. Once I left my office and went to the elevator banks and he must have seen me heading for the elevators from his window, because all of a sudden, he comes running out of his office, then acts like he’s gotta go down to his car. So I’ve gotta ride the elevator with him, and he’s telling me how beautiful I am and trying to get information out of me. Then we get to the garage and here’s the thing. He didn’t even have his keys on him, so he just kinda pretended like he was going to his car but then changed his mind.
So yesterday, I’m coming back from lunch and he steps out of the elevator. Every time I see him, I kind of roll my eyes on the inside, but then I have to gather up my armor and play a coy defense. Guys like these are sharks and you have to dance with them just right, or they think you’re egging them on with a challenge. So I make a joke about going up or down, then get in the elevator. As the doors are about to close, he puts his hand in to hold the door and asks me if I would be interested in getting together for dinner or coffee sometime. I’m like, yo reality check –you’re old and dirty. But instead, I ask, “In what sense?” He says, “In the sense that maybe one coffee will lead to another coffee.” Coffee? Is that what we’re calling mad, inappropriate old man boning these days? He asks me, “Would you be interested?” I said, “Not in a romantic sense.” He said, “Oh, not romantically?” I said, “No.” He said, “What about as friends?” Because a 20-something year old woman can never have enough 50+ year old male friends who hit on ’em. I told him I would think about it. He said he would buy me coffee as a friend and I told him again, I would think about it, then hit the Door Close button.
What’s the deal with dirty old men? What makes them think that hitting on a girl half their age is appropriate, you might ask? The problem is that they honestly don’t realize it’s inappropriate because emotionally, they hit this point when they said, you know what? I refuse to acknowledge that aging happens. So in their minds, they still see themselves as young, robust, virile men of 25. So you see, this dude thinks he’s younger than me, so therefore, he can’t see why I would recoil in disgust at the promise of his saggy, saggy man parts.
I talked with Rie last night about how we need better men in our lives…men who are emotionally mature. I told her that it’s a waiting game for us, so we’re just dabbling while we pass the time. If you’re a strong woman and you’ve got good internal integrity and a sense of who you are, you basically need a man who is also strong and solid inside. Men don’t achieve internal integrity until they earn their confidence through being successful in life and having gone through serious emotional experiences, the reflections of which allow them to open up and become more at home with their emotional lives. When they get older, there’s this point where they decide either, I refuse to acknowledge that I age and evolve so I’m gonna ignore reality and never grow up, or they embrace each new chapter of their life and embrace aging gracefully. In another sense, some men with serious baggage will decide, I’m so against letting anyone in to touch my hurt that I have decided the area of neglect in my life is going to be love, that they will decide to live out the rest of their lives in emotional solitude. They can still get married, but you will see, it will be a marriage filled with the echoes of silence, because she’s married a ghost. A man who has made this decision will never be a partner. I think it’s when men fully embrace aging and their evolution and their emotional lives in their entirety, that they become very good partners. They realize that no one person is perfect, neither themselves or their partner, but the difference is that both people try their hardest, and both people ALWAYS come to the table to TRY. Unfortunately, this almost never happens until they’re older and life challenges them until they wisen up. You can always recognize someone who has reached this point. You can see it in their eyes. There’s an inner peace, they’ve integrated their insides and though they may not fully know what’s in there, they’re willing to explore it and they’re not afraid of it. And this energy and inner confidence is radiant. These are the good partners. It goes the same for women as well. Look into their eyes. You’ll know.
I’m con
vinced that my life partner is going to be older. Not necessarily significantly older than me, but I won’t meet him until he’s older. I wonder if sometimes my parents are disappointed that they didn’t get to see that, to see me bring home a nice young man filled with potential, but if you look at me, my spiritual depth as a result of my life journey, my level of awareness and intelligence…I need someone stronger and smarter than me, or at least as strong and smart as me, and I think most men need to have had a certain level of life experience and awakening before they get to this point.
I definitely don’t want a dirty old man. Or anyone who’s an emotional child. These guys just want women who adore them and affirm their Peter Pan Syndrome, and they will have fits when I start running intellectual circles around them and calling them on their shit. But I do want someone strong, balanced and confident in expressing every facet of himself. I want someone I can share all of my crayons with.