When Friday arrived and I hadn’t heard from him in three days, I texted to touch base. I read his reply silently while sitting in a meeting with a friend at the PR firm where I worked at the time.
“When I came out of the restroom the other night, I saw that my phone had been moved. I had taken the passcode off and could tell someone had looked at my texts. I have tried to think of any possible explanation for this but can only come to the conclusion that you were snooping through my life.”
I wanted to throw up. My throat started swelling. My eyelids were sweating.
“What’s wrong?” my co-worker, Leah, asked.
“I’m so embarrassed to even tell you. But I looked at the phone of the man I’ve been dating the other night but then put it down before I saw anything. I even went to sleep that night thinking how glad I was that I hadn’t read anything. Now he’s saying he knows I looked at it.”
“Well,” she said, with a long pause as her PR crisis management skills surveyed the situation. “Have you ever done this to anyone else?”
“No. I don’t even read my kids’ phones, even though that seems to be standard parenting procedure these days.”
“Then tell him that. Tell him exactly what you just told me,” she advised. “He’ll believe you. He knows what kind of person you are.”
I texted my explanation but still hadn’t heard back several hours later when I Ubered to Ferg’s sports bar where friends were gathering to watch UNC play Auburn in the 2019 NCAA Basketball Tournament. I called a friend in Raleigh on the way to the bar and tearfully told her what happened.
“He was testing you,” the young Uber driver wearing a bikini said when I ended my call.
“What do you mean,” I asked.
“Guys do that to see if we’re crazy. It’s a test. They think all women are crazy.”
These were such wise words coming from a young girl wearing a bikini and driving strangers around in her car.
“You know, you might be right. Because I’ve seen him type in his passcode to open his phone plenty times. Why would he suddenly take it off and leave it at the bar?”
“Exactly, honey.”
“And how did he know his phone had been moved?” I continued. “It may have been one inch further from his wine glass, but it’s not like I put it in his seat, on the other side of his plate or stuck it in the shrimp tacos.”
“He set you up, girl. Women may be crazy, but men are just cruel.”
When I met my friend Whitney at Ferg’s, I shared the Uber driver’s theory. She thought it seemed far-fetched and assured me he was just disappointed but would get past this. At the end of the third quarter, when the Heels were starting to falter, I received a reply to the text I’d sent five hours earlier.
“This isn’t working for me. We had some fun. We should go our separate ways.”
I showed it to Whitney while the crowd around us erupted in cheers and moans as Auburn pulled ahead of UNC. Her big blue eyes got even bigger.
“I think the Uber driver is right,” she yelled into my ear so I could hear her over the crowd as she squeezed my hand. “It’s a good thing you looked at his phone because it brought this to a close sooner than later.”
One of the perks of being divorced with mostly married friends is I can get their husbands’ male perspectives. By 11:00 a.m. the next morning, my friends were offering up wise words from their menfolk.
Julian said he’d be more flattered than annoyed if a younger, good-looking woman liked him enough to look on his phone to find out what he was thinking.
Jimmy thought the professor was overacting, and I shouldn’t try to explain myself anymore. This guy needed to think about how he treated me.
Emery’s reaction: “Are you kidding me? Moveon.org.”
Another friend compared the man to Kathy Bates in Misery. “Remember when James Caan is trying to escape and he knocks over this little china figurine on the table, then he puts it back as he hears her coming in the door,” she recounted. “Kathy Bates notices it’s moved like half a millimeter and freaks out.”
I shared the Phonegate fiasco with a friend in North Carolina who is a few years ahead of me in the world of divorce.
“The phone is an excuse,” Sam said. “He’d already decided what he was doing. He wanted to end things.”
“Well, what if I hadn’t looked at it?”
“He’d have found some other reason, but I’m guessing it still would have been your fault,” he said. “Good riddance.”
A few days later, I ran into a friend who had a hand in getting the professor and me together and told her how things had played out.
“What night was it that you looked at his phone,” she asked.
“Tuesday.”
“Katherine, we saw him at a Rays game with a date the next night. They seemed pretty cozy. She was a lot younger.”
“Younger than me?” asked the 51-year-old who saw herself as arm candy to a 63-year-old.
“Uh, yeah. Like late-twenties or early-thirties.”
I updated Sam on the latest development.
“Damn. That’s not even close to the rule of half,” he replied, then explained the litmus test he and his single male friends follow as a guideline for dating younger women.
“Say you are twenty-six years older than your oldest child, divide that in half and you get thirteen. That means you don’t date anyone more than thirteen years younger,” he explained. “The rule makes sure anyone you date is closer to your age than your children’s age.”
I went from remorseful to riled. Damn riled.
Yeah, I was hurt that he chose some young thing over me, but more than that I was mad that he acted as though I was such a menace to society while he set me up and didn’t have the nerve to just end things honestly.
I emailed the good professor and suggested we have a quick call or meet for coffee to clear the air. He agreed he didn’t feel good about how things played out and opted for coffee the next day.
I decided not to mention the other woman because I didn’t want him to think that was my problem. It was more about how he reacted after I had a momentary lapse of judgment.
“I hate that all of this happened,” I said, after a bit of small talk.
“It’s okay. I think it’s best we’re just friends,” he said from his high horse.
“Well, I made a mistake, I explained what happened and apologized for it. What’s your explanation for casting me off in a text like I was some one-night stand?”
“I probably had that coming,” he said with a nervous smile. “I guess I was just trying to save both of us from an awkward conversation. You definitely deserved more than that. I’m sorry.”
“I think things were running their course anyway, but I’m glad we don’t have this thing hanging out there and it won’t be awkward when we run into each other again,” I said.
“Me too,” he said, motioning for the check.
“So, you don’t think I’m some crazy, stalker, right,” I said.
“No, I don’t think you are a crazy stalker. Don’t worry,” he said with a laugh, followed by no attempt to acknowledge he made any mistakes.
“Okay, and I guess I don’t think you’re an asshole,” I added.
I decided to take a break from dating for the next seventeen years or so, until Harry Connick Jr. crossed my path one night.
I was walking to the Vinoy hotel on St. Petersburg’s waterfront, with my laptop in hand to work on this very book, when our eyes met.
“Sorry about all this,” the Cajun crooner said, as he stepped out of an RV and motioned to about 100 people under spotlights shining on a little Florida bungalow. I suddenly remembered reading that he was filming a Hallmark movie with Katherine Heigl in the fair city of St. Petersburg.
“Oh, it’s fine, as long as I get a cameo,” I managed to say. He laughed as he walked up to the front porch for his next scene. I joined the crowd of gawkers gathered on the sidewalk.
“I heard Harry i
s staying at the Vinoy, but I think Katherine is staying out at the beach,” one bystander informed the rest of us.
Exit Katherine Heigl, enter Katherine Snow Smith.
I pictured the scene playing out like a Nora Ephron romantic comedy. Harry stops at the bar on the Vinoy porch for one nightcap after a long day of filming and notices me a few seats away with my computer.
“Is this why you missed your cameo? Because you had to work?,” he says to me with a half-smile as he takes a sip of his Brandy Milk Punch. (You can take the man out of NOLA, but you can’t take the NOLA out of the man.)
“I’m not working, I’m writing a book. You’re not the only creative genius at the bar,” I reply dryly.
I put my extremely realistic vision on hold just long enough to Google: How old is Harry Connick Jr.?
Bingo! We were the exact same age. It had to be me!
I rushed to the Vinoy to set the scene. Then I had a terrible thought and stopped in my tracks to Google another question.
“Is Harry Connick Jr. married? Please God, no.”
Google didn’t hold anything back to let me down easy.
“Jill Goodacre Connick is an American actress and former model. She was one of Victoria’s Secret’s main models in the 1980s and early 1990s. She is married to Harry Connick, Jr. The couple has three children.”
If it’s not an ax thrower, it’s a super model.
21. Always Know Your Date’s Pedigree
After numerous nudges from friends, I finally tried online dating. I posted and messaged, swiped left and swiped right, and kept reminding myself of people who met their life partners on these sites, but it wasn’t as easy as it looks in the commercials.
It did start out fun, at least, when I was creating my profile with three friends on my fifty-first birthday. We scrolled through my phone to find flattering photos for my profile. The one of me wearing jeans and a Brooklyn T-shirt said I was low key. The one of me in an embroidered tunic, laughing with my head back holding a glass of wine showed I was fun. The photo of me in my long, black, suede boots and an off-the-shoulder short dress was declared the sexy shot. We added my column photo from when I was editor of a magazine in which I’m wearing a dress with a Piet Mondrionish print to show I was artsy and smart. (Little did I know, I might as well have posted four photos sporting a nun’s habit.)
As we began crafting the profile, I reminded my friends I had no hobbies, played no sports, and had traveled nowhere exotic in the past decade besides Columbia. (Columbia, S.C.)
“Come on, haven’t you been hiking?” one asked me.
“Maybe I’ve been four times if you count walking down a dirt road to that keg party on somebody’s ranch.”
“Well, then, you are a hiker.”
“And didn’t you volunteer at that urban farm that grows vegetables for the food bank,” somebody else reminded me.
“I did that twice.”
“That’s more than I’ve ever done. Put that down.”
Finally, we crafted a few lines that we thought came off as smart, humorous, and interesting.
I’m a newspaper reporter turned public relations account executive. (Doesn’t that sound corporate and impressive?) I’m a North Carolina native (Go Heels) but have been in Tampa Bay more than twenty years. (Yet, l still call the gulf the ocean.) I love hiking and volunteering at an urban farm that grows vegetables for food banks. I like old movies at Tampa Theatre, and new ones, too. I’m always up for a glass of wine on the Vinoy porch with friends, a music festival, estate sale or strolling Central Avenue’s eclectic shops.
I started with Bumble, which supposedly puts women in control because we choose who we want to be in our queue, then those lucky men are notified they can contact us. I set my parameters for an age range that included men ten years older or five years younger and started scrolling to add prospects to my queue.
It was a far cry from People’s Sexiest Men of the Year or even the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s weekly roundup of promotions and new hires. Actually, a number of men were attractive, it was what they said or the pictures they posted that were the red flags. I scrolled past hundreds of photos of guys at the gym pumping iron or reclining on their bed holding a glass of bourbon with a come-hither smile. Bumble offers probing questions to answer when creating your profile such as: “Do you like the color red or orange more?”, “Do you prefer salt or pepper?”, and “If you bought a book, what would you do with it?”
Some men couldn’t be bothered to answer the questions or write a two-sentence profile. They just post three pictures at the gym in a muscle-T that reads “Property of Daytona Beach Correctional Facility,” and think that’s all they need to do to get in a woman’s queue, as well as other places I’m sure.
I wasn’t looking for my soulmate, but I was interested in someone for more than their looks. Though I’m not going to pretend I’m so righteous, looks did matter, and I felt guilty every time I swiped left because of a beer gut, prematurely white hair or a balding head. In real life, many of my male friends have one or all of the above, yet are great husbands, great fathers, and loads of fun. Because I know them, I think of them as perfectly handsome. But when you know nothing about a person except that he prefers the beach to the mountains and would choose steak as his last meal, looks are a more discriminating factor.
I set the criteria men had to meet to land a coveted spot in my Bumble queue.
No photos at the gym.
No photos in bed.
No shirtless photos.
No visible tattoos.
No millennial-wanna-be beards.
A college degree.
And they had to have more than just photos in their profile.
After realizing every man between the ages of twelve and ninety is dabbling in some kind of facial hair these days, I took that one off the list. Finally, I had assembled ten men in my queue. Of those, only two “buzzed” me back to show their interest. That hurt. But I thought of more than fifty men I had discarded, so why shouldn’t I be discarded, too.
After bolstering my confidence, I started a conversation with one of my potential dates. I learned where he worked and where his kids went to school and with a few clicks on Facebook saw that we had several mutual friends. I texted one of them to ask her what he was like and she quickly replied. “NO. NO. NO. He cheated on his first and second wife. DO NOT GO OUT WITH HIM.”
Are you kidding me? The first guy I’m matched with is a repeat cheater.
I messaged the other guy in my queue who lived across the bay.
“So, are you from Tampa or did you move here like most people?”
“I moved here five years ago for work.”
“Where do you work?”
“In Tampa.”
Duh.
“I meant what is the job that brought you here?”
“Sounds like you are only into how much money I make. Sorry, this conversation is over.”
Whaaattt? I started to defend myself then decided I didn’t want to converse with somebody so ready to hate on me.
A few days later, I put another five men in my queue and only one “buzzed” me back, saying: “A journalist. Your smart and pretty. I can’t wait to find out if we can go bumbling together.” Even if I wasn’t cringing at his misuse of “your,” I couldn’t overcome the “bumbling” comment. What did that even mean?
A few days later, I shared my depressing online debut with Sam, my friend from college who is a few years ahead of me in the world of divorce. He asked me to send him my profile.
“Wow. You like old movies? And new ones, too? That’s shocking,” he said sarcastically when he called with his critique. “And you like wine with friends? That’s unlike any other woman I’ve ever met. Let me guess, you are just as comfortable in heels at a cocktail party as you are in boots at a bar?”
“Shut up. What am I supposed to say?”
“And your photos. You look pretty, but they are all from the waist up. Guy are scrolling right past
those. Even where I live, which has no beach, women post bikini shots. In Florida, I’m sure that’s all they post.”
“Women my age are posting bikini shots?”
“Women your grandmother’s age.”
“Well I’m not doing that.”
“Okay. Then you have to make your profile really stand out. Let me take a shot at it.”
Later that night he texted this:
I want to go to dinner with someone who appreciates wits over fake tits. I still drink Chardonnay, even though it’s out and Rose is in. I work out but am not posting a photo to prove it. Don’t need to see your gym pics either. I’ve been known to go on a hike but won’t be climbing Everest anytime soon. I like indie movies at Tampa Theatre, but can also quote The Hangover.
I posted my jazzed-up profile on another site called Hinge, because I didn’t like making the first move on Bumble. I got quite a few reactions within an hour, and several men wanted to meet me that night, but they weren’t my type.
One potential date started out sounding great. “I live in Florida but was raised in Louisiana, so I hope you don’t mind if I open doors for you and insist on paying the bill. I’m a Cajun gentleman, but I still appreciate a strong, independent woman who speaks her mind. Full confession: I have Herpes.” His admission was punctuated with a frownie-face emoji.
I read it aloud to a friend and her husband later that night, and they were smiling encouragingly until I got to the disclaimer.
“Well, Katherine, you told us your list of criteria,” my friend’s husband said. “And I don’t remember hearing anything about you having a problem with venereal diseases.” I genuinely respected the gentleman from Louisiana for being honest but ruled him out as my first match.
Rules for the Southern Rule Breaker Page 11
