Once Again Looking for a Partner in the Dating Dance

It was his first pass through a singles bar in 15 years, and a sight that would have thrilled him last time around--wall-to-wall young women, wearing tight dresses and tall shoes--sent him fleeing in a cold sweat to the bathroom to hide.

He had no lines, no rap this time. . . . Gone was the confidence of youth that had let him swagger over to the prettiest woman in the place. That was how he’d met his wife--the woman from whom he’d just been divorced--two kids and a lifetime ago.

Now he felt bewildered and out of place, uncertain of his commercial appeal in this vast new market of available babes.

“Then I figured,” he told me later, “just hit on the ugly ones first . . . somebody who wouldn’t turn me down. I get a couple of those under my belt, and I’ll be back in

action.”

Crass, maybe. But those first tentative steps toward midlife romance often are.

Nursing heartbreak or failure, battling embarrassment and uncertainty, the newly single confront today’s dating roulette hopeful but confused, willing but unarmed.

Still, we plunge ahead in search of true love--through blind dates and personal ads, to singles bars and church socials--guided only by naive romantic notions. And the irresistible lure of a future that holds . . . possibilities.

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It was almost enough to make her turn and run--the sight of all those middle-aged bachelors lined up against the wall, eyeing the women like testosterone-stoked boys at a junior high dance.

“I thought, ‘What a bunch of losers.’ But then, I figured, I’d paid my $12, and the buffet looked pretty good. I oughta eat, at least, and then I’d leave.”

So, Cheryl plastered on her stick-on name tag, piled mostaccioli on a plate and staked out a corner table festooned with “Happy Valentine’s Day” balloons. There she could scout the dance floor for prospects, but stay out of sight of those “old geezer types,” who always seemed to think a perky young blond like her was just their type.

She was beginning to wonder which was worse--spending Valentine’s Day alone or joining 200 other losers at this “gala dance party” sponsored by a group that bills itself “the educated singles connection.”

But before the night was over, she found her answer. His name was Ed. They danced, spent hours talking and laughing at a dimly lit table, then exchanged phone numbers and headed for the door.

He wasn’t the handsomest guy in the room, but “nice . . . very nice,” she said later, touching up her makeup in the bathroom, before Ed walked her to her car. “You meet one guy, and if it’s the right guy, it makes the night worthwhile.”

It’s a romantic crap shoot, the singles dance circuit. Some nights, the room is flooded with good-looking, vibrant women and men. Others times, it’s more like Night of the Living Dead.

Saturday night, the crowd was heavily male--perhaps, said Pete, who’s been there before, because “the guys figure the women here tonight are really kind of desperate, you know . . . Valentine’s Day and all.”

He was feeling kind of desperate himself, he said. Divorced, he’s tired of singles bars, where “you ask if you can call her and she gives you a phony number.”

Here, at least, people deal straight. “These folks are older, all here for the same thing. We’re not looking for the best-looking guy or the sexiest women. We’re just looking for a chance. . . .” A possibility.

*

To those of you who spent Saturday night arranging your roses or cuddling in front of a fireplace, it may seem mildly amusing--the awkward way the middle-aged navigate the courtship maze.

But don’t tell that to my friend Vicky, who met her husband at a “Learn to Flirt” class 10 years ago.

He was 46, coming out of a 20-year marriage without a clue about how to attract the opposite sex. She was nearing 40, divorced for years and ready for remarriage and kids.

She liked his smile, his sense of humor. So she suggested they have coffee sometime. “How about tonight?” he blurted out.

Two months later, they were engaged.

Ah . . . those possibilities.

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Sandy Banks’ column is published Mondays and Fridays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.