RAD: The Surgeon in These Foolish Things

Special Note: I would ask that you not scold me for various things I’m about to tell you. I’m not stupid and I KNOW better, but it’s done and it’s my diary. Still, you’re gonna comment what you’re gonna comment, I know.

Name: The Surgeon

Introduction Platform: Maria introduced us at a restaurant while I was out with her on Saturday night. She knew him from Bumble. They had sent texts to each other but never had met in person. She wanted me to go out with him since they never connected. She thought that he was a good catch and showed me all kinds of articles and press and TV appearances where he’s been featured. I almost think she wanted to date him vicariously.

Age: Well, he said he was 57 on Saturday, but last night he told me he was 58…and he looks every bit of 67 or 68.

Relationship Status: Divorced twice. Told me that his first wife was a starter marriage while he was in med school. The second was years later. And he most recently was in a 5 year relationship. He has three daughters who are still with him 50% of the time.

Job: Very highly regarded surgeon from what I could find out through the Google Machine.

Lives: Fancy Neighborhood where all the doctors, lawyers and professional sports team owners live.

Length of Date: 2.5 hours

We Did: Well. We’d established he’d pick me up and we’d be going to dinner, and we also established that it would be sushi. He asked me if I had a particular place in mind and I told him to surprise me. What we DIDN’T establish was the exact time he’d be coming (see previous entry for the text exchange and my annoyance). Once we had that figured out, he was 20 minutes LATE(R)! This, after all my concern about getting home by 10. I was literally about to cancel on him when I saw him walking towards my building’s front door. I walked outside and he said he’d gotten lost trying to find my place. He also had alcohol on his breath!! I mentioned it and he told me that he needed some red wine during his conference call. I was about to call it off again, but he appeared completely sober, so I got in the car with him (I know - don’t yell at me). We ended up going to a new, super trendy and very expensive sushi place, and I’d been wanting to try this place so that was cool. We didn’t have reservations so we had to wait at the bar for a little bit. He ordered me the best champagne in the house and stood way, waaaay too close to me…touching me with his torso and legs…like, leaning against me and brushing my hair back from my eyes with his fingers and tucking it behind my ear. Normally I would love this from someone I’m attracted to, but this bothered me (felt too familiar), so I untucked it. He then kind of grabbed the back of my hair and gave it a tug…said I bet I love getting my hair pulled.

OK. WTF.

We were seated at a booth - thankfully he did not try to sit next to me! He then did all of the ordering, asking me for input, which I gave, but truly he did an impressive job with the ordering. The sushi, hot rock, all of the tastings were BEYOND! The food experience had me forgetting all of the other shit swirling around and I was very happy with that part of the night. He was pleased that I was pleased and after one particularly delicious piece of special torched wagyu beef sushi, I expressed so much pleasure that he swooned. I could see the look in his eyes.

He Looked: Older than I’d remembered on Saturday. He was dressed very casually with a lightweight knit kind of tee shirt and khaki pants.

I Looked: I wore what I had on at work: gray sheath dress and my neutral colored Loubies.

Convo: I’ll give him credit for this - he wanted to know allllll about me. I think it was actually nice of him to want to get to know me and my background and what I do and how I got to where I am right now. I kept trying to ask him all about himself, and he’d give me tidbits here and there but kept bringing the convo back to me. He’s a good listener and has a lot of input to give. He did tell me about his past relationships and his med school days and a bit about what his days are like in surgery, but he wouldn’t tell me much about his personal life and his daughters except for the fact that their mom is a really good mom and they co-parent very well.

In the end, he told me that he was trying to figure me out - we’d talked on Saturday about the dating world and the fact that I’ve had about 30 first dates this year that have never led to 2nd or 3rd dates and he wanted to understand WHY (and believe me, so did I!), so his assessment is that I’m gorgeous and I’m smart and I’m super personable, but that I have a super hard exterior…I put a wall up, etc. and that I need to let down my guard. But guys, I think a lot of that is the fact that I was trying to fend off his hands and not to let his stinging words get to me!

He is also a firm believer in the 3 date rule - the one where you’re supposed to have sex on the 3rd date. I don’t subscribe to this way of thinking and told him so. I told him that I want to be in a monogamous relationship and he told me that he’d agree to that immediately. But guys, I have more dates this week!

High Point: The sushi…OH MY GOD the sushi. And the Ruinart Champagne.

Low Point: As we were leaving and I was walking in front of him he put his hands all over my ass. And told me that he loved my ass.

How It Ended: It was about 10:20 or so and we were done with dinner and HE called it a night, thankfully. He got up to use the restroom and while he was gone I noticed I had a text on my phone. It was from Bachelor Party Marty! It said, “I saw you at [trendy sushi restaurant where I was still sitting] ;)” I looked around but he wasn’t there anymore. He must have just left! After the hands on the ass incident we had to walk down a flight of stairs to get to the street level. My shoes sounded like horseshoes and I said so and it made me laugh and the guy behind me said, “those are the sexiest horseshoes I’ve ever seen” and I turned around at the guy was smokin’ and I wished at that moment that I was with him and not the surgeon. The surgeon drove me home and walked me to my door. I knew he wanted to stand there and French me all over the stoop, but I actually took his head into my hands and planted a big peck on his lips. I wanted him gone. We said goodbye.

Chances Are: I just can’t with this one.

Date Rating: Look. I thought maybe he’d be different (than he was on Saturday) on a proper date where he asked me out and did all the date-y stuff. It wasn’t a disaster, but it certainly wasn’t something I’d repeat. I’m glad I went if for nothing else but to know I can be polite while a guy acts mostly inappropriate with me. And I know you wonder why I’d even put up with this. I’m chalking this up to the experience and to learning to have grace under pressure. I wanted to see if I could manage myself without exploding while he pushed buttons. In that respect I was successful. In this day of #metoo, this was a giant failure on his part, and you could say that I’m a failure in the name of feminism and it was my fault for going in knowing it was probably going to be like this. However, I give the date a D, not an F.