My daughter, Elizabeth, knew how disappointed I was when David ghosted me. She took pity and invited me to join her and two friends, Kristen, and Courtney, for dinner. The girls are in their twenties to early thirties, and I was flattered that they didn’t mind the old lady tagging along. 

We met at a local eatery called “Abigail’s.” It’s one of my favorites, and I was thrilled to be with young people and listen to their constant banter. As soon as we were seated, Elizabeth explained to her friends my unfortunate situation.  Courtney listened carefully to my story and followed it with one of her own.

“I’m on a dating app, too,” she explained.  Her tone was empathetic, and I found it endearing to have such a young person counsel me on handling rejection. I’d already had my share of it for over 70 years.

“Recently,” Courtney told us, “I got a message from a guy whose photo looked normal—a white-collared shirt, no dead fish pics, gainfully employed, and a nice smile. We started chatting pretty regularly,” she explained, “until some of his comments and questions started to seem like red flags.  I decided to go back to his profile and read it. I judged him by his photo alone, but that was a mistake.”

Courtney was a great storyteller, and Elizabeth and Kristen were as eager as I was to hear more. The three of us leaned in, all eyes on Courtney. 

“The first thing I noticed under the heading ‘Preference’ was that he said ‘Poly-Non-monogamous.’ I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I looked it up in the Urban Dictionary.  Bi/Poly or polyamorous means that he is attracted to multiple genders.”

Listening to Courtney made me feel less sorry about being older and dealing with the men I’d encountered. The dead fish guys were beginning to look much more attractive.

Courtney continued.  “He’d also entered ‘No Unicorns’.”

“What did he mean by that?” I asked her. “The only unicorn I know of is a magical creature from the enchanted forest?”  Courtney had had to look that up, too. The Urban Dictionary described a unicorn as “a person who joins a couple as their third partner for sex.”

With this, yours truly was willing to kiss a dead fish. This was way beyond anything I could handle gracefully.  

Elizabeth and Kristen were in hysterics laughing. They found it all quite funny. They knew Courtney had already deleted this guy. But I found it awful. The worst thing I’d ever seen under the “looking for” column on Zotsky was “hookups.” Even that made me shudder.

I thought I’d heard it all.  But there was more.

“There was one more acronym listed,” Courtney told us.  “ENM.”  None of us knew what that meant, either.  Courtney enlightened us by referring to the knowledge she had gleaned from the Urban Dictionary.

“ENM stands for Ethical Non-Monogamy,” she said.  “That means he accepts a committed romantic relationship where all partners consent to sexual and romantic encounters with other consenting individuals.”

My daughter gave me a nudge which meant: close my mouth. I was so shocked by everything I’d heard that I didn’t realize I was sitting at the table looking like a hippo that just came up for air. I’d rather be ghosted by David than contacted by a man like the one Courtney encountered. Admirably, she wasn’t fazed. She’d experienced this guy almost a week ago and was now on to the next prospect.

I returned home that evening feeling much better than when I left. If Courtney could move on, so could I. My image of David and me as Jackie O and Ari was not to be. So… no big deal. I’d find another. I opened my laptop to Zotsky and read all my messages, carefully checking out the “Preference” columns to avoid surprises. That’s when I saw a Jewish guy whose screen name was Good Fellow. I checked for acronyms. There were none. And so, I sent Good Fellow a smiley face. And then, I waited.