Assisted Loving: True Tales of
Double Dating with My Dad by Bob
Morris
This Book Changed The Way I Think About My Own Parents!
What would you do if your eighty-year-old father dragged you into his hell-
bent hunt for new love? Bob Morris, a seriously single son, tells you all
about it in this warm, witty, and wacky chronicle of a year of dating
dangerously.
A few months after the death of his wife, Joe Morris, an affable, eccentric,
bridge-obsessed octogenarian, starts flapping about for a replacement. If
he can get a new hip, he figures, why not a new wife? At first, his son Bob
is appalled, but suspicion quickly turns to enthusiasm as he finds himself
trolling the personals, screening prospects, and offering etiquette tips,
chaperoning services, and post-date assessments to his needy father.

Bob hopes that Joe will find a well-heeled lady—or at least one who is
very patient—to get him out of his hair. But soon they discover that finding
a new mate will not be as easy as they think: one date is too morose,
another too liberal; ones a three-timer, another just needs an escort until
Mr. Right comes along. Dad persists and son assists. Am I pimping for my
father? he begins to wonder.
Meanwhile, Bob suffers similar frustrations; trying to find love isnt easy in
a big-city market that has little use for a middle-aged gay man with an
attitude and a paunch. But with the encouragement of his father (his
biggest fan and the worlds most democratic Republican) he prevails. In the
end, this memoir becomes a twin love story and a soulful lesson about
giving and receiving affection with an open heart.
With wicked humor and a dollop of compassion, Bob Morris gleefully
explores the impact of senior parents on their boomer kids and the perils of
dating at any age.
Personal Review: Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating
with My Dad by Bob Morris
Bob Morris's father (not the guy on the book's cover!) is pushing eighty
when Assisted Loving opens. He's a youthful eighty, though, and newly
widowed, a retired traffic judge, so he's a hot commodity among senior
singles. Not one to mourn over-much, he is ready only months after his
wife of fifty-plus years died (in 2002) to start the search for a new mate. He
enlists his son to help him, and the younger Morris chronicles his fathers
re-emergence on the dating scenes of Palm Beach and New York. That's
the plot of the book, but the dates merely serve as the framework onto
which Morris packs a meatier story about his relationship with his father
and about growing up. At book's end, Joe Morris remains the man he was
at the beginning: happy-go-lucky, exasperating, utterly devoted to his son.
It's Bob Morris who emerges from the experience a changed (to a degree)
man.
It's difficult to like Bob Morris for the first third of his book. His father may
be legitimately annoying--most parents are--but at forty-four the younger
Morris still acts like a teenager around him: pouting and saying just the
wrong thing and not having much patience for the eccentricities of an old
man. Worse, Morris is a superficial, elitist jerk. He's embarrassed by his old
neighborhood, turns up his nose at his father's kitsch. He's irritated that
visits with his father take him away from his usual party-hopping. Morris's
mother had been very ill for years before her death. Morris was
disappointed during that period because she lost interest in her
appearance. He was ashamed to be seen with a dying woman who wasn't
fashionable: "It was hard, watching her in her hopelessness. It was even
harder seeing her thin, bruised arms and neck because she dressed in the
most unflattering T-shirts." He dragged her out to Macy's to buy her new

clothes--blouses, and hats to cover her thinning hair. He claims it made her
happy, but it sure sounds like the new wardrobe was for him more than
her.
Morris may be a jerk, but he's also self-aware. He is, after all, drawing
attention to his bad behavior and, largely, condemning it. In the course of
hanging out with his father during the dating period, the younger Morris
becomes a better man--still, it seems, someone whose instinct is to be
impressed by the superficial, but a better man. It is impressive that Morris
is able to alienate the reader at the beginning of his book yet still bring us
around by the end so that he seems likable. Also impressive is the portrait
Morris paints of his father. The initial image we get of Joe Morris is a
negative one, a man as seen through the eyes of a son who has little
sympathy for him and is still harboring adolescent resentments. But as the
book progresses we are given more insight into the older Morris, who turns
out to be more supportive than many parents are and wiser than we might
at first have supposed. It's a powerful portrait. And Assisted Loving is a
well-written, funny, and surprisingly affecting book.
-- Debra Hamel
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