Introducing Eligible Bachelor #5

Last night a guy told me that I was ‘quite attractive’ and it was not my father or anyone related to me/working for me and looking for a pay rise/a Moroccan man trying to sell me a carpet.

Now, before you go rolling your eyes and thinking that I’ve gone all up-myself by blogging about this, or getting concerned that my head is going to be so big I won't be able to get it through the office doors tomorrow, let me just tell you that it was nearly midnight, the man in question (who, following my last blog post, I will simply refer to as Eligible Bachelor #5) had clearly had a few too many rumbos, and there was some very dim lighting involved. But what I really want to share with you to make clear that this has in no way gone to my head is what his pre-cursor to this statement was:

‘For an older lady, you’re quite attractive.’

Yes. That’s right. An older lady.

I have been under no illusions that I am getting older. My lovely Doctor in fact brought this to my attention a couple of years ago when he told me that the problems I was having with my neck were ‘general wear and tear’ and there was nothing he could do about it. Being likened to some well trodden carpet kind of has the effect of making you realise you’re not a teenager anymore. But still, I really don’t feel that different in a lot of ways to what I did 10 years ago. The fact that I am in a bar at midnight on a Saturday night is probably testament to this.

Until now. Because now I am an officially certified older lady.

Granted Eligible Bachelor #5 was about 21, so arguably anyone over the age of 22 would fall into his older lady bracket. But I doubt he uses this line on too many 22 year olds. Or looks at them in a way that implies they could well be his mother.

It was certainly a sobering experience. And I was already sober, so that’s really telling you something. I think I laughed – but not too hard, because I didn’t want to further define my obviously already visible crows feet. He wandered off and I was left to contemplate whether I should take his remark as a compliment or an insult. I’m still not quite sure. I guess I’ll think about that a little more today while I peruse some zimmer frame catalogues.

I will say, though, that all of these encounters in the last few weeks  makes me wonder whether I shouldn’t just rename this blog ‘When Corporate Girl met Brisbane’s Most Eligible Bachelors’ and be done with the whole fiction writing thing altogether. Because I honestly don’t think I could make up half of this stuff even if I tried.