My Grandma Set Me Up With a Fake Doctor Named Kyle

My grandmother set me up. That is the first thing you need to know, because it explains why I could not simply leave.

She met a woman at her water aerobics class whose grandson, Kyle, was a doctor, single, tall, a real catch. Grandma showed me a photo the woman had sent -- Kyle in scrubs, genuinely handsome, leaning against a hospital wall like a magazine ad. I was skeptical, because grandmothers grade on a curve, but the photo was undeniable. I agreed to one dinner. For her.

Kyle and I texted to arrange it and the texts were a little off -- stiff, oddly formal, a lot of "It will be my pleasure to make your acquaintance" -- but I told myself doctors are busy and maybe weird. We set a date at a nice steakhouse. I wore the dress. I curled my hair. I walked in and gave the host Kyle's name.

He led me to a table where a man was waiting who was, conservatively, seventy years old.

I assumed it was Kyle's father. Waiting to vet me, maybe, like some kind of medical dynasty. I said, "Oh, hi, is Kyle -- " and the man stood up, beaming, and said, "I am Kyle."

Reader. He was not thirty. He was not a doctor. The scrubs photo was, he later admitted, from a costume, for a party, years ago. Many years ago. The handsome hospital man was Kyle in the way that a yearbook photo is you -- technically, once, under good lighting, in another era entirely.

I should have walked out. But my grandmother. My grandmother would hear about it at water aerobics. Kyle's grandmother would report back. There were stakes. So I sat, and I ordered a very expensive steak out of pure spite, and I tried to understand what exactly had happened here.

It turned out Kyle was a retired dentist, not a doctor -- close enough, he said -- and he was lonely, and his own grandmother had entered him into this arrangement, and he had panicked about the photo. "I didn't think you'd come if you saw a recent one," he said, cutting his chicken. "And I was right, wasn't I? You made a face just now."

I had made a face. He caught me making the face. And the honesty of that, weirdly, defused about half my anger, because at least he saw the situation clearly, which was more than I could say for the scrubs.

The dinner was, against all odds, not terrible. Kyle was funny in an old-man way, full of stories, and he insisted on paying, which I let him do out of a complicated mix of guilt and expensive-steak-related obligation. He told me about his late wife. He told me about his boat, which, unlike every other man's boat in my dating history, actually existed, because he showed me the registration in his wallet like a proud child.

At the end he said, kindly, "You're not going to call me, are you." And I said, honestly, no. And he nodded and said, "That's alright. Tell your grandmother I was a perfect gentleman." Which he had been.

So I told her. And the water aerobics ladies, I am informed, consider the whole thing a great success, because at least I got a nice dinner and met a lovely man. Kyle, if the ladies read these to you at the pool: the steak was worth it, and next time, use a photo from this decade. You have a good face. You did not need the scrubs.