Insulin Pump Guy and I met on the Internet dating website I joined to find the man of my dreams (still at large). We started with emails, and within a week, graduated to phone calls. I liked him alright;  he was only the second man I’d met through the dating site, so I didn’t have much to compare him to.  He seemed safe and predictable, and if he was a bit on the  conventional side,  he had a good career as a high school history teacher, and he was well-read, worldly and sometimes almost funny.  When we learned we had a friend in common, we skipped the requisite daytime look-over coffee meeting, and agreed on dinner instead.

This was our first mistake. Even if you like each other so much the daytime look-over seems excessive or insulting, don’t give it up.  Use it as a practical exercise: Don’t you want to take a gander at those teeth, and suss out manners and mode of dress? If you are female, odds are good that your serial-killer-detector operates more reliably in the light of day over coffee, than at night over wine.

We met at  Q, a small restaurant known for its fusion cuisine and interesting wine list. Spotting one another right away,  we share the awkward nice-to-meet-you half-hug, a risky venture that once resulted in my earring getting tangled in my date’s fashionably long hair, requiring us to lurch in unison into the bar, like partners in a three-legged race, so the bartender could separate us.

Stepping apart, Guy and I discreetly assess one another’s height, face, eyes, legs, and hair, mentally comparing them to our expectations. Then we are seated at our table. And there we sit for a full minute. In silence. A full minute of silence between two people is a very long minute indeed.  Waiting it out, I become fascinated by a single thread that hangs off the tablecloth. Try as I might, and I did, I cannot devise a single way to use this this thread as a conversation starter.

When our server approaches with  menus, we grab them thankfully, as though they are life preservers. We study those menus more intently and more comprehensively than most people proofread their own wills. As these captivating documents are just one and a half pages long, we read them over and over again.  I am sure Guy had his menu memorized; I know I did. This exercise is a noteworthy accomplishment, yet one so lacking in any practical application – unless you know of a menu-memorizing competition somewhere – that its novelty wears off very quickly.

We then resort to desultory conversation about the sole dinner special (“sole”meaning “only”,  not the fish).  That topic is exhausted in mere seconds, after which we embark on a strained discussion about the difference in color between cherry and mahogany woods.  At last, we hit bottom with a surreally trivial dialogue about why the traffic cones outside are both orange and yellow.

There being no place to go after hitting  bottom, we’re silent again. We’ve run out of dating gas – the small talk that enables two on a first date to limp from the first stage to the next.  Rookie mistake, and lesson learned (do write this down):  a larger restaurant would have resulted in a faster experience overall. The waiting times before and after ordering would have been shorter, and we would not have run out of fuel so quickly.

Finally showing some initiative (or desperation),  Guy flags down a waiter. Gratefully, we order. Our wine arrives promptly. We expend 10 minutes swirling, examining, peering, sniffing, rolling, discussing, and sipping appreciatively. Then somewhat more relaxed, each of us sits back, finally enjoying an amiable silence.

When. When…. Yes, when. When with no warning, no introduction and no wind-up, Guy unbuttons the top two buttons of his shirt and inserts his right hand down through its neck South toward his stomach, causing the shirt to bulge.  I watch his shirt move as his hand behind it slides onto his stomach. Now his hand and forearm are invisible underneath his shirt. His shoulder jerks a bit as his right arm, still groping around  behind his shirt,  makes a small, efficient wrenching motion, as though he were pulling a electrical cord out of a wall socket. Then, his hand reappears at the neck of his shirt.

It holds a little black box about the size of a pager. From the box protrudes a small, thin, glistening tube a bit less than half an inch long.

As my brain struggles to make sense of this turn of events – did somebody slip this box down into his shirt when he wasn’t watching? –   Guy suddenly, like a barfly playing dice, smacks the little box down onto the table between us. I gaze at it stupidly, my mouth hanging open and my eyes crossed. I have no idea whatsoever what I am looking at.

“Insulin pump!”,  he declares in a proud tone, gesturing toward the box. “Inventor ought get the Nobel prize for this thing!”

“Insulin pump?”, I repeat.

“It’s a marvel”, he enthuses, “the best thing that ever happened in the last….ohhh…two decades of diabetes management.   I just got it.”

I wonder whether he just got the device or the disease, but I don’t ask.  I’m still processing  the fact that that this little box that was reportedly plugged into his stomach now sits on the tablecloth perilously close to my water glass. Airborne germs,  I remember, are the most contagious kind.

Gazing fondly at the insulin pump, he explains that the tube-like thing is not really a tube. “Think of it more like a catheter”, he suggests, though why he assumes I will think of it at all is anyone’s guess. “It holds a tiny needle in place in my stomach”.

There is only one answer to such a revelation, and I give it. “Oh”.

“This baby right here basically does the job of my pancreas,”  he explains earnestly.  “It’s really revolutionized  diabetes treatment!”

“Hmmm”.

“The amazing thing is”,  he exclaims, leaning in toward me and tapping two fingers affectionately on top of the little box, “it not only does all the work of a pancreas,  you know  – delivers insulin at a steady rate, all day long, twenty four-seven, but I can program it on my laptop,  and I can also  get the carbohydrate count for every single piece of food I put in my mouth!” Tap, tap, tap. He sits back, beaming. ” “Before I put it in my  mouth”.  But there’s one more thing”, he says, holding up a finger.  Expectantly, he waits.  Am I supposed to guess what it is? Does it play music, or light up or something?

I choose the safer route. “Umm…..what?”

He leans forward again and gushes, “It’s got a remote!”

We are interrupted by the arrival of our entrees – my salad, his chicken. The food seems fine until I sneak a close look at the chicken. Bones and skin intact, and seasoned with yellow herbs, it bears an unmistakable resemblance to the moist-looking catheter sticking out of the insulin pump, which still squats mutely on the table between us. Probably, I think, as I fight the nausea, the tube is still warm, having only minutes earlier been yanked from its mooring inside this man’s flesh, inside his stomach.

Why, oh why are we producing our Insulin Pump 25 minutes into a first date? I do appreciate a potential suitor’s timely disclosure of a chronic illness…but is that not what long, confessional night time car rides are for? And emails and letters, and telephone conversations? By this sleight-of-hand production of specialized medical equipment did Guy hope to impress me?  Did he have other magic tricks? Would he suddenly produce a thermometer from his baked potato or a blood pressure cuff from his shoe?

What did this event say about our potential as a couple? The “event”, of course, was not the existence of an illness, no. It was the his choice to produce a personal medical device at this unusual time and place,  in this extraordinary manner. I like surprises as much as the next girl, but balloons and chocolate are more my speed. A definite check mark on the “incompatible” column of my dating flow chart.

As I grazed on my salad, I pondered what Insulin Pump Guy was trying to achieve.  Was this his way of signaling he was seeking a woman who would nurse him, who would become involved  – over-involved, more likely – in the care and  maintenance of his disease? Cause if he was, he needed to keep looking. I’m sympathetic, empathetic, caring, compassionate, generous, and not squeamish.  I  took care of both my parents in the last year of their lives, and considered it an honor and a privilege.

But I’m not looking for a man to caretake. I’m looking for a partner.  And though I am a sucker for scrubs,  I’m not into any  fantasy-doctor-nurse-patient sex scenes, not even if I get the doctor role.  I’m just a regular chick looking for a regular boyfriend. If I wanted to provide medical care, I’d go to medical school, not to OK Cupid dot com.

As the waiter refreshes our water,  my imagination takes flight, as it always does when I am anxious or stressed.  I see myself accompanying Guy to his doctor,  to whom I am expected to provide records of Guy’s blood sugar numbers, or whatever they’re called, levels, I suppose; but I know my scatter-brained self won’t have the numbers organized properly and I’ll give out the wrong ones and Guy will suffer!

And – horrors – I imagine I might have to…cook! Don’t diabetics have to cook carefully? I know they must exert rigorous control over  their diet, but that’s all I know.  I put down my fork; I can’t eat one more a bite of my salad. And now I envision myself again,  this time with what looks like my TV remote in my hand, clicking various combinations of numbers as Guy reads them off his pump, which appears in my imagination to be attached to his stomach by a long, thick yellow tube.  Gross. I am making myself sick!

I don’t particularly enjoy cooking, and I have no idea how to cook special meals. I can cook a chicken, pasta, rice, salad, brownies, a hamburger, and cereal. I don’t know how to cook meals designed for ill people. I can’t make food involving complicated calculations for which I do not have the necessary tools  (measuring cups); I don’t know anything about the esoteric ingredients I suspect might be required (Splenda); and I know none of the  tricks of precision timing and perfect portioning I suspect are necessary for this specialized cooking. It’s all much too far afield for my freewheeling, improvisational, shake- of-this-pinch-of-that cooking style.

Not,  of course, that anyone has asked me to cook for them.

This event tanked any hope I may have had for Guy and me.  I just didn’t want to see him again after our evening at Q—-.   And lest you think me shallow – you’re right. I know how shallow this sounds, deciding not to date a perfectly nice man again just because he yanked a pump out of his stomach at the dinner table on our first date. I admit it. And I know that inside every shallow person a coward is hiding, and I’ll own that too. I probably am afraid of what my future might hold if I hitched my wagon to Guy’s star. Or to the star of anyone offering a chronic, serious illness.

Nevertheless, there is a lesson here, one that transcends these character flaws of mine. (Jot this down, do): “Keep your shirt buttoned”,  I hope you’ll agree, is  a sound rule to live by, at least on the first date, and possibly, also on the second.