The BACHELORETTE Project (The Project: LESLEE Series) (15 page)

“Here we are!" I say as we pull up to Bruschelli's Restaurant of Springfield, just outside of Philadelphia. As Annie searches for a parking spot, I look around to see the people that are walking in the restaurant and they actually look a bit more …
mature
than us.
Oh
, great! F
reakin' oldies night!
I think to myself. I must've assumed that all the singles are around my age, but apparently they’re not. Some of the men entering the restaurant look like they’re the in-their-50s-divorced-with-four-children type.
Gross.
Old, saggy balls.
It would be just like I was dating my own father or something. I can imagine that they all smell of Old Spice and own corduroy suits at home. I just … can’t.

"You sure you want to do this, Annie?" I ask and she shoots me that
are you freakin’ serious
look. "It's never too late to go somewhere else."

"Why?” she asks. “Because of all the oldheads in the parking lot?"

"Umm, yeah," I say, nodding my head.

"Hell yeah I wanna do this!" Annie says. "Not only do I have on my special 'menstrual cycle' shirt on, but some of these oldheads have money. That’s one foot in a large banking account and one foot in the grave. Besides, you're the one that convinced me to come to this joyous event.”

"All right, all right, no backing out," I sigh.
Joyous event, indeed.

"Ooh, there's a spot!" Annie parks next to a black Mercedes Benz then points to it. "See what I mean by money?" she says and climbs out of the car. I roll my eyes and climb out as well.

"Annie," I say, "it's not always about money. What about love and compassion? What about affection?"

“Says the woman with no job, no man, and who continues to mooch off of her college friends.”

“Um, ouch,” I say rolling my eyes.
I am almost offended by this comment of hers. Almost.

“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Les, but I gotta be honest with you. Love and compassion don't mean a thing to me anymore. When's the last time love, compassion, and affection has paid my bills or for my daughter to go to private school? Love is what got me a child in the first place, and look at her father: a classless loser that doesn't see my daughter or pay child support. If you ask me, I'd tell you that love is dead along with compassion and affection.  Money is the only thing that we have left to look forward to. So with that said, let’s go.” Annie practically pulls me toward the restaurant and I’m lightly resisting … and thinking at the same time. Is what Annie said wrong? Is the love of the world just gone and replaced by money? Would I be truly happy with a regular blue-collar man with a low five-figure income? Hmmm. Maybe I should dissect that theory as well, for my experiment of course.

As Annie and I enter the restaurant, I’m blown away at how incredibly gorgeous it is. It’s an actual Golden Palace. I notice the beautiful ivory marble tiled floor with tints of gold and the exquisite glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling that very much resembles the ceiling of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. It’s classy, sophisticated, and romantic. I wouldn’t expect anything less of Candace’s restaurant.

Feeling a little underdressed and uncomfortable, Annie and I follow the sign to the banquet room where the event is being held. "I can't believe how upscale this place is!” Annie says. “How come you didn't tell me? I would've dressed better!" 

"Well, I didn't know!” I exclaim. “At least you're wearing black pants! I have on
jeans
!" 

We walk into a banquet hall full of men in business suits and women in cocktail dresses. This is what I like to call Hell. "I'm really starting to feel a little out o
f place if you know what I mean,
" Annie tells me.

"Oh, I definitely can relate," I reply as we w
alk over to the registry table.
We sign in, get our 'Hello, my name is ...' tags to put on our shirt, our table numbers, and we make our payment of fifty dollars (yeah I know,
fifty dollars
, crazy right?
I'm really trying to discourage myself from thinking “budget.” I more so want to think of this as an experimental investment, a life investment, maybe even a sex investment, but all in all, an investment). 

Eyeballing the room, I can predict the type of people that are here. The men look like professional business tycoons (
not
all elderly), and the women, well, the women actually look like headstrong lawyer types: beautiful, outgoing, professional, dressed for success. Annie and
I don't compare to these women.
We look like we just came from a club that plays entirely too much David Guetta. S
o s
ad.

An older man rings a bell that's sitting in the middle of the floor. "Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention please?" Everyone halts their conversations and devotes all of their attention to the center of the room. "My name is Dale Fields, founder of Matchmakers Philadelphia. How are you all doing tonight?" The crowd just nods their heads and claps a little. "OK, so let me tell you about our company." Mr. Fields goes on and on about how many couples his company has set up, how many have gotten married, how many different ways to meet a person, blah, blah, blah. I just want to get on with this thing. I wanna see if this technique actually works.
Shut up, Fields, so we can do this damn thing!

"Anyway, tonight we are going to experience some of the fastest dates that you'll ever be on in your life,” he tells us. “We like to call it 'Faster Than the Speed of
Light
' dating,” he chuckles to himself and the crowd does nothing. Just awkward silence. “So the premise of it all is that you will go on fifteen different dates with fifteen different people and each date will last five minutes.”

“Isn’t this great, Annie?” I whisper to her. “Fifteen different opportunities to meet fifteen eligible bachelors.”

“Or fifteen different ways to get rejected,” she says coldly. I hate to admit it, but she does have a point.

Mr. Fields continues with his drawn out speech. I yawn. “The women, who I must say are extremely ravishing tonight, will be sitting at their assigned tables, and the men, well too bad for the men, they have to do all the physical work tonight making sure that they stop at every single one of the tables provided and give these women a taste of their personality. You must spend the full five minutes at each table. It can be Heaven for you, or it can be complete Hell.”

“He can say that again,” Annie mutters underneath her breath.

“Either way, you have five minutes with each other,” Mr. Fields says. “Once you hear the bell ring, you must move onto the next table and continue on with the speed dating process. After the event, we’ll be having a small mixer at the bar. Are there any questions?"

“Are there any questions?” Annie says mockingly. “We’re not idiots.”

“OK, so if the women could go to their designated tables,” he says and we find our seats and sit down. “Is everybody ready?”
Yes, I’m ready!
I think to myself.
I’ve been ready!

“On your mark,” Mr. Fields start
s, “get set … DATE!” The men
scurry to find tables
to sit at
. I smile … and smile … and smile … then frown. An elderly man with khakis, a baby blue button down shirt, and thinning grey hair sits in front of me.
Fuck!
I think to myself.
Why, oh, why did Captain Saggy Balls have to sit at my table?

“Hello,” he says to me as his smile exposes the dental work that is past due. His teeth are narrow and greatly tinted. “I’m Howard,” he says introducing himself as he puts out his hand to shake mine.

“I’m Leslee,” I say trying to be as polite as possible. What in the world would we have in common? What can we talk about, World War II perhaps? Donna Reed? He’s not even in my own age group, let alone my own realm.
Think, Leslee, think…
” So, um, what do you do for a living?”

“Oh, I’m retired now,” he says. What a fuckin’ shocker. “What do you do?”

“I’m a freelance paralegal,” I reply. Well, I can’t just tell people that I’m unemployed. What would
that
look like?

“So I’d better be careful then,” he says jokingly. “You must know a lot of lawyers.”

“Yeah, actually, I do,” I say. I really don’t though, not in this area anyway. “So, where do you live?”

“I live in Springfield.”

“Oh that’s nice,” I say.

“And I own a house in Florida,” he says. Well, that figures. That’s where all the senior citizens migrate.

“Great.”

“And I have three children, all grown up with families of their own,” he tells me. He’s a nice guy, a very nice elderly guy, but I must cut the losses where I can as soon as I can. This would never work out.

“I’m sorry, Howard,” I say. “I just want to be straightforward with you. We could never go out past this point.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, becaus
e you’re old enough to be my father
, that’s why,” I sa
y. “Maybe even older than him
.”

“Well, I always say that age is a number,” he tells me. “Once I take the Viagra, it’s like I’m twenty years old again.” His leathery skin up against my body? His saggy balls banging against my youthful vagina? I think I just threw up in my mouth. “But, maybe you’re right,” he says. “It would be a little weird.”

“Yeah, just a little bit,
” I agree.

“I have to say though that you look a lot like my daughter.” OK, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the official and final deal breaker for me. There is obviously some mental work that needs to be done with this old geezer.
Ring bell, ring!
I think to myself.
Ring bell, ring!

Speed dating is a dupe and a rip-off. For just fifty dollars you can meet fifteen potential mates who end up being fifteen potential losers and you can sit with these fifteen potential losers for five torturous minutes each and develop fifteen different types of migraines in only one night. All in all, I’ve wasted 75 minutes of my life with people that I don’t know that I do not necessarily like. But, on the positive side, I was able to meet and mingle with two potential suitors (or subjects if you are looking at it from a scientific perspective) at the restaurant’s bar after my 75 minutes of Hell. So maybe it wasn’t such a fluke after all, but then again, maybe not.

“Hey, Leslee,” Karen says as she walks into the kitchen with a stack of pastry boxes. She grins at me as I depressingly gorge on my pathetic bowl of cereal. “Look, it’s cake!” she says excitedly. “Lots and lots of wedding cake to taste. I’m so greedy!”

“Great,” I say unenthusiastically.

“Not only is it cake, but it’s
free
cake,” she says as she pulls out a fork from the drawer. “I swear the best word in the world is ‘free.’” She pulls open a box and begins to stuff her face. “I went to all the best bakeries in Philadelphia and they gave me free samples so I can see exactly what cake I want at my wedding.”

“Awesome,” I reply. “Just friggin’ awesome.”

“So, how’d your speed dating experiment go?” she asks.

“Inconclusive and unresponsive.”

“Oh,” she says. “That sucks.”

“Yeah, it kinda does, but I should’ve realized that speed dating wasn’t the best idea in the first place,” I tell her. “You can’t have a quality date in five minutes’ time.”

“Well then that’s your conclusion,” she says through a mouthful of food. “Duh!”

“It was like this speed dating nightmare,” I tell her. “There we
re all sorts of men from the sl
eazy
, slimy types to the perverted pedophiles …”

Karen laughs. “How do you know they were pedos? Did they have a sex offender list at the door?”

“You know what I’m talking about, the funny looking guys with the creepy eyes, and the funny looking hair, and that trademark pedo-smile,” I explain.

“Oh, yeah, the
smile
. It’s like the chills just run right down your spine.”

“Yeah, and then there were these old guys with their stinky breath and their comb-over hair,” I tell her. “You’d be surprised at exactly how many elderly men in the Philadelphia area resemble Larry King.”

“Aww, that’s not fair,” Karen says as she hands me a fork. “Old guys need love, too. That’s why they invented Viagra.”

I sigh. “I have absolutely no interest in dating a man that’s old enough to be my father or that resembles an ancient, shriveled up corpse. I would say that the night was a complete bust, but I did meet a few men after the event was over.”

Karen pushes a cake box toward me.
Hmmm…wedding cake or cereal?
I ask myself. Which one will make me feel better? I open up the cake box only to discover … Death by Chocolate! I’m feeling better already.

“So, tell me about the few eligible men,” Karen says as she opens up another box.

“Well, there are two that I met,” I tell her. “One is a teacher. He’s average height, great complexion, great smile, a complete gentleman …”