I Was Glowing Like a Girl Who Had Properly Got Plowed, or…. MY BEST FIRST DATE EVER!

I want to share with you my best first date story EVER! As a sexy, (I’m trying to own it) single woman over fifty, this date didn’t end with white picket fences, a Golden Retriever puppy and happily ever after. Hell, there wasn’t even a second date. The reason it was my best first date ever was it gave me an important answer to a question I frequently asked myself in the mirror, “how the fuck did I get here, and more importantly, who can I blame”?

It changed, in part, how I felt about myself, my age and the silent struggles adhered to the stigma of being a woman over fifty. Or in other words, it reflected a new mature stage in my female existence.

As a woman who came of age in the '80s, I nostalgically pined for the days when copious amounts of alcohol in smokey bars decided my man future.

Thus, I was not immediately lured into this modern online dating thing. Nope, this was not for me, I thought with heavy conviction laced with middle-aged judgement.

But after being thoroughly worn down by a few well-meaning coupled girlfriends who used that annoying word "soulmate" ad nauseam, I thought, fuck it, and signed up to Hinge.

Immediately I began to browse the Man Menu on my iPhone, and not unlike Uber Eats, best not to do when you're ravenous.

I won't get into the variety of men that littered my screen. Their bathroom selfies, honking fat cigars clasped tightly between their yellowing lips or the sad sacks euphorically holding up a freshly caught fish from the end of their fingers. That is a blog for another time, but I did meet someone. For concealment purposes, let's call him Nigel.

Nigel was an attractive, gentlemanly man who was the Head of Gynaecology at a major London hospital. Hmm, I thought with equal parts intrigue and horror…a gynaecologist. We met at a local pub. Nigel entered, and I immediately thought, what a sweet, looking gynie. He was not very tall, looking a little older and softer than his profile photos would suggest.

While downloading our condensed life stories to each other, I mentioned I had broken my pelvis in three places after a trip a few years earlier to Burning Man. (Click here to read that story). Right there, the date shifted. It immediately went from a Hinge date to a private medical consult. It was magic.

To give you a point of reference, do you remember the scene in Field Of Dreams when a young Doc Archibald "Moonlight" Graham is living out his childhood dream of being a baseball player? But when young Doc Graham sees this girl choking, his medical instincts kick in, and he walks off the baseball field to save her and thus, he can never return to that magical baseball diamond in the Iowa cornfield. It was kinda like that.

Delicately, Nigel started talking about menopause, puberty's evil older sister (my description, not his), never once directly referring to me or my age. He discussed the "magic" of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). Telling me, "if your pancreas stopped producing insulin, you don't just leave it at that. You'd start taking insulin. Same as your ovaries and hormones", he continued, further explaining that as we are living longer, our hormones need to be replaced, replenished or topped up. I asked question after question. I was captivated.

I was glowing like a girl who had properly got plowed. This was better than sex…and less disappointing.

I knew that this gentleman who had seen the insides of thousands of women had crossed over. He had walked off the baseball pitch and into reality, never to return. But here is where it got interesting.

Nigel rifled off the benefits of HRT. He said with great conviction; it's amazing for the skin, for bone density, mood swings, sleeping, hot flashes, an uptick in libido, and slows down collagen loss, etc. He even added if he were a post-menopausal woman he’d be on it. Now had this evening maintained the "real date" status, with romantic, naked potential, this would have been the exact moment of climax where Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire would have swept Renee Zellweger off her feet.

Nigel didn’t have to say anything more. The Field Of Dreams magic had done its job.

I gently placed my hand on top of Nigel’s, smiled and softly whispered, “STOP... you had me at skin."

When I think back to Nigel, that date, and the smell of split beer surrounding us, I will forever, and with tremendous fondness, simply refer to it as the night that Stella got her groove back.