Women of a Certain Age - jd Seamus

As part of his blog tour for Pump Up Your Book Promotions Virtual Book Tours, jd Seamus, author of LAST CALL is guest blogging here today.

Seamus has lived and worked among some of the most amazing characters ever to have walked the Earth. After decades of working in the world of retail finance, e-commerce, and venture capital, Seamus began writing a series of novels based in Manhattan. Today, Seamus is happily at work on his sixth book in South Florida and dividing his time between his family and Braves and Jaguar games. You can visit his website at http://www.jdseamusbooks.com/.

A friend from the past called out of the blue the other day and the conversation reminded me of my recent past.

I was living in midtown Manhattan and ran my own venture capital firm. I was successful which meant sixty to eighty hour work weeks. Naturally my schedule left absolutely no time for a social life. As the firm grew and I was able to bring in a supporting cast, I decided to live a little and discovered I didn't have a clue regarding where to go to meet women. There were lots of women at work but you never do that. Most functions I was invited to were art or business related. I didn't know enough about art to start a conversation and business is business. On my own, I came up with using the Internet and that was a joke. Most of the ads were prostitutes, married women looking to fool around or couples interested in threesomes. Okay if you're horny (and I was) but dangerous. I hit bottom when my friends discovered I was looking. I was bombarded by myriads of suggestions. I quickly discovered that almost all were either trying to unload female relatives with extraordinary amounts of baggage or live their lives vicariously through me. That's scary. And if it's that way for me, imagine how tough it is for women as most men tend to really load up on baggage.

Oddly, all tended to lean toward younger women for me. I actually was attracted to women my age but was intrigued by visions of young hard bodies. I liked that idea. I'm mid fifties, somewhat athletic with anti jogger abs that I blame on my Irish inheritance. But what the hell, I can hold my breath for a long period of time.

One friend did suggest an ad in the New Yorker. Seemed reasonable so I gave it a try. WRONG! There is an underground language in using ads that I was unaware of. Petite means short. Good shape means round. Looks younger than my age means really old. Most lied and provided a very old picture or a picture of another person (so did I- I used Robert Redford). There were a lot of pictures of the really good looking actress in the Butch Cassidy movie, Katherine Ross. Another favorite picture was the girl that got dumped in Friends. The magazine didn't work. I didn't like the women that responded to my ad. Owners of the ads I responded to didn't like me. It wasn't working but I was dating a lot. Sort of dating a lot. Almost all of the one date variety but I was getting out at night.

Soon I grew tired of gum popping and having to explain 1950's television. I mean jeez, you don't know who Howdy friggin' Doody is? They stare vacantly when you mention a Slinky and don't laugh at the fact that you've learned the words from the Alka Seltzer commercial. I was forlorn and giving up. What was the point. I didn't want to spend time with a thirty year old. Nice to look at. Ego boost. I didn't understand them and they didn't understand me. And I'm SIMPLE. Then one day, sitting in a bar at West 43rd and Sixth Avenue, I laughed at an old Hula Hoop commercial on Fox for some news story. The person next to me laughed also. A feminine laugh. I dared to look over and a beautiful woman was sitting next to me. She was close enough to smell her exquisite perfume. She was in my age group and wearing a business suit that I found incredibly sexy. And we talked. And she knew Howdy Doody. She even knew Buffalo Bob. We had dinner. We went to her apartment. We didn't make wild, passionate love. We made slow, comfortable, sensual love. AND WE TALKED. And I'll never go back to the silliness of getting away from what I like and what I want again. Women of a certain age............