Dr. G. (Named after that famous search engine.)

Text message: “Hi, Mary! This is Dr. Alexei (Alex). We met at the networking event at STK [the trendy steakhouse] last Thursday. I was a bit clumsy and spilled whiskey on your foot! Sorry again! I was really pleased to meet you. I will be glad to cultivate our acquaintance. [Dear reader, English is his second language and if you’ve read enough of my stories by now, you know I’m a damn sucker for a guy with an accent.] I will be happy to invite you for dinner! Let me know when you’re available! Sincerely, Alex.”

In my head: “Yes! Going to all of these healthcare networking events has finally paid off. I finally met an eligible doctor and even better I didn’t meet him on a dating site!”

He was a half an hour late picking me up. But hey, a guy with a car in the city is hard to come by, right? I normally wouldn’t agree to go out to dinner at 9:30 pm on a work night but I made an exception for Alex. I figured he had to close down his offices, but Alex said he was late because he and his brother were at synagogue paying tribute to their late mother and how could I question that? Plus, he is a very busy doctor who owns his own practices. Had it been another Tinder date I would have rescheduled for another day.

Then I saw it across Second Avenue: A soccer-mom-van-sized Benz. Alex was a gentleman and opened the door for me and as I slipped into the passenger seat I casually glanced into the back to make sure there were no child car seats. To my relief, there weren’t any. Phewwww! But why would he need such a huge car?

“So where do you live?” I asked Alex, following a gut feeling in my belly that he may live in the outer boroughs.

“New Jersey,” he replied.

I thought to myself, “Mary, don’t judge. New Jersey could be okay! He has a car and seems like a good catch… So far. Break your I-don’t-date-guys-from-the-outer-boroughs rule just once and go with the flow.”

I joked around with Alex and then said, “New Jersey. Are you married?”

What came out of his mouth goes down in the books!

“Yes,” he said. “I’m married and have three kids. One of them is in college. I’ve been married twenty-five years. We got married very young.”

“Excuse me? But you don’t have a ring on and you invited me out to dinner. I thought this was a date!” I “casually” spat out.

“I have never worn my ring and I’m sorry if I disappointed you. If you feel uncomfortable look at tonight as a business dinner. I take people out all the time for business.”

In my head: “You pick women up at 9:30 pm for a business dinner when you have a wife and kids at home across the Hudson?!”

At this point he tried to redirect the conversation and told me that he looked me up online earlier in the week. Alex said he knew all about the marathon I was training for and how he really liked the younger pictures of me that are forever stuck in Google Images.

By the time we made it to the Russian Vodka Room, he told me how he knew every address I had ever lived at and my phone numbers, and even saw pictures of my sister online! I don’t know WTF was wrong with me for not doing a tuck and roll out of the mom van but I think his accent made all of the shit coming out of his mouth somewhat bearable and the three drinks I had waiting for him to pick me up also rendered me stupid. I have googled dates before, but I just never tell them! Who hasn’t googled at least one person before? I know, I know, it was totally bizarre for me to stay but I do love the blue-cheese stuffed olives at the Russian Vodka Room.

I felt like I was in the scene from the movie Goodfellas when Henry takes Karen to the Copacabana. Everyone knew Alex. I don’t speak Russian but Alex was clearly a regular at the RVR and the whole time I kept hoping that no one would think I was the “other woman.” I really did try and look at it as a business dinner. We both work in healthcare and could possibly refer clients to each other, maybe. So I tried very hard to convince myself that this was in fact a biz dinner but I knew damn well it wasn’t.

We both ordered borscht. I love beats. I had never had borscht before and he was excited that I was going to experience a new food. He ordered the cold soupy beets and I ordered the hot. Then we shared this slimy mushroom dish with huge chunks of beef in it. I pushed my beef to the side as I’m not very carnivorous. Alex said that in Russia people eat a lot of meat to stay warm. Well, I guess the night wasn’t a total loss—I did learn something.

Knowing that I love a good vodka (probably from all of the Google stalking he did on me), Alex ordered me a spicy vodka drink that went straight to my head and convinced me that maybe he roofied me while I was in the bathroom. My imagination started to get the best of me—it’s quite vivid at times.

I was getting really fuzzy and said I was going to call it a night and cab the whole three blocks and two avenues home. How convenient of Alex to choose a place so close to my apartment. He insisted on driving me home—how gentlemanly of him.

I asked Alex if had I not known he was married would he have tried to put the moves on me and he was very frank and said something along the lines of, “You only live once and I like to live in the moment.” So the answer was clearly that he cheats on his wife. Not that two wrongs make a right but I was hoping that she was out cheating with a Jon Hamm look alike. Preferably someone with more hair than Alex. During the short drive he told me that I can call him anytime I want to go out to dinner and he will pick me up. “This is not how you treat a ‘business acquaintance,’” I thought.

I wonder what his wife would think of that. I didn’t want to find out!