Anyone who has ever been single in New York knows that it can be a particularly cruel place to date.  If that weren’t true there would be no Sex and The City.  Absolutely 4th wouldn’t have a speed-dating night.  Melania wouldn’t have married the Donald. 

So I will offer it up that I have had my low points, and on one particularly low night I found myself on a blind date with an overweight gynecologist from the Upper East Side.

Truth be told, I almost didn’t go when I found out that he was an OBGYN.  In case that’s shocking, I’ve come to know that a lot of women are split on this issue.  I’ve talked to many women who react just as extremely as I did and say, “Hell, I wouldn’t have gone”.  For the most part the only women who don’t seem to mind say things to assuage the repulsion such as, “But he delivers babies!”  Well, that’s not my bag.  No sir.  And no amount of baby-cooing would keep me from being grossed out by the idea of my lover/boyfriend/husband coming home, knowing that he spent the whole day looking at pussy.

But New York has a way of keeping you humble and… desperate.  For the purposes of this article we’ll call it “open”.  I decided to give the man I’ll call Dr. Schussy a try, and I hoped to be pleasantly surprised.

The night kicked off well enough when he suggested that we meet at Angel’s Share, a hip and somewhat well hidden bar on Stuyvesant St.  I got there first and staked out a nice piece of “real estate” – a secluded section by a window where we could have some privacy.  When he showed up I was a little disappointed – while not unattractive, Dr. Schussy was definitely battling the bulge, but I was disappointed mostly when he suggested that we leave the private section I had procured in favor of a two-person table that was shoved between two other, occupied, two-person tables.  It wouldn’t have been my choice but I decided to pick my battles, which turned out to be the right move.

Things started to go downhill pretty quickly when, just after we sat down, he picked up the small appetizer menu that was on the table and started to look for food to order.  When it seemed like he was done, I asked if I could see it.  He told me he would “take care of it,” and before I could even think of what to say our waiter came over to take our order.  In a bold gesture that I have heard about and seen in movies but never personally experienced, he ordered for me, and the joke doesn’t end there because he ordered three meat appetizers without bothering to ask if I eat meat!  I do, sort of, but I don’t really like it - and the shish kebabs certainly weren’t what I would have ordered for myself.  I strapped on a pair just in time to ask him and our waiter if it would be ok to switch one of the appetizers.  He paused just long enough to give me a dirty look before acquiescing.

So, I tried my best to make decent conversation.  After several stalled attempts it turned to this:

Me: “What do your parents do”?

Dr. S: “My mother was a home-maker and my father works in the music industry”.

Me: (Ecstatic to find common ground)  “Oh wow – so do I.  What’s your father’s name – Where does he work exactly”?

Dr. S: (Slightly snarled, attempting-to-be-mysterious expression) “I’ll tell you on the second date”.

Me: (Laughs the you’re-a-fucking-moron laugh)

Dr. S: “What’s so funny”?

Me: “I’ll tell you on the second date”.

The whole event hit its nadir when he somehow worked it into the conversation that he wished that women had never left the kitchen.  Having already decided that this was a sociology experiment and not a date, I went for it.  I mean, come on – I wasn’t going to change his views.  So I asked why.  His response was that he sees all of these women in his practice who are in their 40s who want to have children and can’t because they were off “imitating Working Girl” during their child-bearing years.  (Yes, that’s a direct quote.)  I couldn’t help but respond by saying, “but what about the women who don’t want to have children?”  I agree as much as the next person that we have a problem in this country because in trying to “have it all” women really just “do” it all – but is the answer really that we shouldn’t have the choice?  To have a child and to stay home and raise it is a gift to that child and to the world.  To be forced to have a child and to stay home and raise it is slavery.

His answer?  There’s no such thing as a woman who doesn’t want to have children.

OH MY GOD.  This is why they should check passports at 72nd Street. 

As I guffawed at the preposterousness, he got visibly angry.  I’m not sure if I want to have children, and I know many women who are very sure that they don’t, but wild horses couldn’t have dragged my personal life into this conversation.  Still, he pushed.  “Who?  Who do you know that doesn’t want to have children?”  Umm, a lot of people, but that’s not the point.  The point is that I’m sitting in front of gynecologist who has never conceived of a woman who doesn’t.

Ladies:  Can we all please get on the same page about one thing?  People don’t use auto-mechanics who have never owned a car.

While I found D. Schussy to be repugnant in many ways, and while I feel a deep sense of sympathy for any woman who has paid (with the benefit of managed care or not) to have him stick his chubby fingers into her vagina, I have to admit that my one-time meeting with Dr. S was enlightening.  There just aren’t enough opportunities in daily New York life to meet someone who thinks this way, and I sort of liked the idea of being forced to face the reality that, it being 2005 – in some ways we haven’t come such a long way, baby.

The other upside of an encounter this uncomfortable is that it really can’t get any worse.  In fact, the very next date I went on rocked in comparison.  I knew we were off to a good start when, towards the end of our first phone conversation, this sensitive new-age guy told me he was going to pick a restaurant and asked the question that is music to any semi-vegetarian’s ears: