McDreamy, Esq.?

I thought my CL adventures would come to an end after that awful and awfully expensive dinner with "Jean Chan," the busted guy who I thought would be a girl because his name was Jean (and the only reason I agreed to meet was because I thought he would be a girl. Call me crazy.).

 

But actually, fate threw me another curveball. One day a few weeks ago, I received this email:

 

From: CL potential

To: me

Subject: language practising partner

 

Hi Vivian,
 
It seems that I sent the email to a wrong email box on August 7, 2008. I wonder whether you are still interested in meeting for a conversation.
 
Thanks & best regards,
CL Guy

 

It turned out that someone meant to respond to my ad in August, but didn't actually email me until September. By which time, my beef with Craig had cooled to a point that made me think: "Well...why not?"

 

So I had lunch with this guy, and it turned out that not only was he not so busted that I couldn't look him in the eye, but he was actually intelligent and accomplished.

During the course of our conversation, he revealed that he worked for a prestigious law firm (a law firm that I have heard of before, and if you know anything about corporate law, you know that the firm names are not household names even if their clients are. Which means his firm is really legit). That was a plus.

Then, it turned out that he also used to be a doctor, and had practiced medicine (surgery!!! on cancer patients!!) for over four years before becoming a lawyer.

 

Ummmm...WHAT?? A doctor AND a lawyer?

For many mothers...and many single women too, I think...that would be enough to qualify as very, very eligible.

 

But, as Carrie Bradshaw would say, I couldn't help but wonder--how old was this guy? I tried to do some mental math.

 

Well, he was from mainland China. He didn't look very young, but he didn't look terribly old. (Accursed tendency of Asian people to age well!!)

In China, medical school is undergrad, not grad. So, if he graduated in five years, say at 23, then practiced for several years, and then began law school, say at 27, and then came out of law school just around 30, and then he had mentioned he worked for this law firm since 2004...maybe add a year or so as a buffer...So maybe he was 35 years old.

 

Later I got to thinking: I don't dig older men THAT much so I didn't have a good benchmark in my own experience. So I gched a girl friend with extensive experience with older men to ask her opinion:  How old is too old? Like, STRICT upper limit?

 

"I would say 50."

 

"Um...really?!?!"

 

"Honey, 35 is fine!"

 

Maybe she wasn't the most representative person to ask.

 

But intelligent conversation doesn't hurt, and he was certainly very intelligent and interesting to talk to, so I decided to invite him with me and some work friends to the beach during one of the public holidays. He accepted.

 

When we all met at the bus stop the next day, things got off to a bad start despite my dank planning skills (bringing an insulated freezer bag of cold brewskies and watermelon). Because he was wearing plaid shorts, black socks, and leather shoes.

 

OK, so he didn't know fashion, or maybe he didn't know that "golf attire" plus "business casual" does NOT equal "beach casual" or even "resort casual." But that doesn't preclude more intelligent conversation, which I had particularly been missing from too many dead-end conversations with fobs.

 

We finally got to the beach, and of course everybody took off their clothes to be in their swimsuits. Except Dr. Lawyer. He kept his purple polo shirt on.

 

I thought this was kind of unfair, since obviously my body was in plain view, since even conservative bikinis (and I had worn my MOST conservative one) don't leave THAT much to the imagination.

 

But it was ok. I actually enjoyed talking to him very much at the beach. He taught me some more Chinese so I practiced a lot that day, true to the "language practising partner" premise.

 

Something else happened at the beach too: I finally found out how old he was. I didn't feel comfortable exactly asking straight up how old he was, but I was dying to know. Plus, from our conversation, he mentioned even more graduate school education and work experience than I had known before...which could only increase my original estimate.

 

As I was pondering this in my mind, Dr. Lawyer mentioned that if mainland Chinese citizens work full-time in Hong Kong, they can get a special ID card that lets them travel across the border without fuss. I finally saw an opportunity, and grabbed it.

 

"Hey, can I see that card?" I asked cheerfully. "What does it look like?"

 

He took it out from his wallet and handed it to me. I scanned quickly for the DOB. The first four numbers would be meaningless. The final four were key.

 

1965.

 

He was born in 1965.

 

HE WAS BORN IN 1965!

 

I tore my eyes away and handed back the card. "Cool," I squeaked.

 

When I first saw "1965," all I could think of was, well that is unfathomably old, and too close to the year of my parents' birthdays. It was only after I brought my brain back into focus that I did the arithmetic.

Subtract 5 from 8...carry the 1...Fuck, he was 43 years old.

 

But intelligent conversation doesn't hurt, and so I tried to push that inconvenient truth to the far recesses of my mind. We had a good time at the beach, and he seemed harmless. Also, one thing I have learned is that 99% of Chinese guys never make the first move. In fact, many of them NEVER make a move. At least, not on me. The laws of probability were on my side.

 

And so it was that, when he invited me to meet again during the weekend, I said: "Sure...why not?"