COMING TO AMERICA…

Or a SATIRICAL TALE ABOUT THE PITFALLS OF MATURE DATING

Does anybody recall Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall’s funny movie, “COMING TO AMERICA”? It was an Encyclopedia on who NOT to date, definitely aimed at scaring off romantic fools who had yet to rip off the bandages of a previous dating disaster and were still thirsty for more. 

Remember that naive, cheerful, and overly confident young prince with his loyal know-it-all servant? Lacking the street survival skills and hands-on experience of foreign cultural quirks, they came to the craziest place on Earth - New York. Do you know that being able to even breathe in NYC is like surviving inside Stephen King’s brain during the episode of a ruptured aneurysm? Never mind that! These two amorous buffoons, unaware of the pitfalls of dating, just embarked on the craziest adventure to find The Perfect Queen! 

Let me tell you something! Being single in America does a number on you, regardless of age, place, or mindset! I am a single gal, and mature dating is my next thing. Mature, by the way, is not the age, but rather the state of mind! Don’t get me wrong, I love my single life and all the quirks and perks that come with it, and so do my two dear friends, Cindy and Mindy! Being single, the three of us can do so much. We can rule the World, right?! Yeeehhhh-ish….

Not exactly! Because here they come, the pitfalls of dating! Cindy, Mindy, and I probably were triplets in our previous lives! We are like magnets with misaligned properties because we always attract towards ourselves all sorts of counter-polarized elements of the rarely seen and, at times, crazy, abnormal male species. Have you ever dated before?! Then you know - It is a full-time JOB: to find a date, to get ready for a date, to go on an actual date, and then to sift through the various debris before and after the date! It’s like Hurricane Katrina, leaving no survivors in its wake! 

Living in LA is not just about the Sun, smoothies, and strolling down Rodeo Drive. Everyone here wants to be a movie star, trying hard to make it in the local, famous LaLaLand and forgetting the clashing, harsh realities surrounding us. Understanding the mindset of dating in LA is like dealing with the intricate abyss between reality and warped LaLa/ZooLander idiosyncrasy; it all becomes excruciatingly complicated nowadays. Even Ryan Gosling and Ben Stiller, who shone through this LaLa/Zoolander warped mind-twist, won’t help you here!

I’ve never dated in this country when I was young and stupid because I wasn't even here. I’m an immigrant!  I came to America, too! ... Do you know what that means? … For the very first time, I am discovering the ins and outs of mature dating in the US! All I want to do is to have some fun, right?! However, dating is far from fun because it’s a full-time job with double shifts, no lunch breaks, and no sick pay! 

The competition is tough! Do you know what we, ladies, do once the next discovered species of amorous nature gets under our radar? We may barely have chatted even once on Messenger with the person in question, but we girls already get excited; we plan, role-play, and endlessly try to guess what it all may mean. We analyze, research, collaborate, guesstimate, compare notes, create pro-and-con charts, and share our projections not just between ourselves, our trusted chit-chatting confidants, and randomly selected coworkers. We get excited! We eagerly share all the excitement of the upcoming first date with the next-door ex-neighbors of our everlasting frenemies! But even that is not enough! It goes bigger! Next step: we broadcast it on Facebook Live and tag everyone we know! Why? Because Facebook is helping us to spread this insanity with fancy features! Facebook will notify for free all the five thousand strangers we’ve never met and who yet somehow populated our friends’ list that we are broadcasting live! Have you seen those tiny pop-ups in the bottom left corner of your laptop? They are designed to interrupt whatever else you may do at this point. Imagine you may be watching some illicit hot blonde with gorgeous, huge plastic water bags screaming on a joyride, and that notification will still pop up right in the moment of utmost importance. It’s like the GLOBAL BREAKING NEWS! “Tatiana is Live right now!” What? Was I dead before?!!! The spiral goes higher: we create polls and then adjust true results to our liking to feed and satisfy our egos! Does it all make the process of dating as fake as some of our politics in its entirety?

Dating is exhausting! Now, after all these activities, I’m truly wiped out and need a vacay somewhere in the Bahamas where I’ll be sipping endless mojitos, taking selfies of my freshly manicured toes in front of the ocean waterline, rapidly posting them on Instagram and Snapchat, and then counting “likes” on my iPhone while ghosting the failed ex-date on my laptop because in reality he just never showed up! Hmmm, I wonder why? I need more Mojitos! Refill, please! Crrrazyyy! And you didn’t believe me when I said dating is a full-time job?! Somebody should check resumes and post job openings on the “Indeed”, the virtual job posting board, when it comes to dating! 

I love to reminisce about the movie COMING TO AMERICA and the naivete of a prince, who found his happy-ever-after right in time for the closing credits. Dating in real life is so much harder. I’m trying to share the ingenuity of my naivete without breaking a few hearts in the process and show some gents what gals look for and what they expect from the next guy they consider dating.

We all have dating horror stories of our own! One of these days, there will be a decent guy for each of us. However, until then, I'll keep talking about the pitfalls of mature dating.