Category Archives: Dating

Kissed by Hundreds of Men

Posted on by

The night hundreds of men kissed me was also the night I slept in the bed of one of the wealthiest men in the world.

Both adventures descended upon me as a college student from the American heartland.  Far from home for the first time, my long legs, barely covered by tiny skirts and black tights, carried me confidently through the streets and into the lecture halls of Cambridge University.  For my short life, my family’s love and the courtesy of Midwesterners protected me.  Now, while my open gaze, wide gestures and long strides may have bemused the residents of this university town, their sense of class consciousness and button-downed reserve protected me just as effectively.

Continue reading →

The Subject Was Tattoos

Posted on by

That’s what we were talking about, sitting at the bar, sipping our beer, Ben, my suitor of the moment, and me.   But, as conversations often do, it veered unexpectedly.

The bartender was the catalyst.  Of course, he was tattooed.  Aren’t they all?  Our waitresses, waiters, bartenders, don’t they all sport permanent body art?

This bartender’s right arm was branded with a single word spreading down its length.  Surrounding it in random patterns were cross hatches, as if he were keeping score; sets of four vertical parallel lines,

 

each set with one diagonal line crossing over it.

Continue reading →

Coming Back to Me

Posted on by

The year is 1968.  I’m late for a date, hurrying down a long line of people waiting outside the civic center.  This is the teenage virgin ice princess Georgia, searching all these faces for the one belonging to my escort.  He’s older than I am, a college boy who holds out the promise of initiation into mysterious secrets of adulthood.

The people in the crowd are between 16 and 25 years old.  They wear broadly flared jeans with brilliantly colored patches, woven headbands holding back their long hair, peasant dresses, beaded necklaces, feather earrings and bells. I wear a canary yellow mini dress, high-heeled sandals, pink toe nails, and giant gold hoop earrings bobbing out from my long hair.

As I scan the faces, seeking the familiar eyes and smile of my young man, I’m met with glances of unsettling hunger.  Although I don’t fully understand the desire in the eyes of these men, I read it as one of the mysterious secrets of adulthood.

Continue reading →

What Does Georgia Want?

Posted on by

After a lifetime of poking into the cobwebby, secret corners of the human heart, Sigmund Freud had this to say about women:  “The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’”

Too bad he died before he and I could explore this question over cups of coffee at Café Central  in Vienna.  I’d have some answers for him.  Pretty simple ones at that.

Continue reading →

Internet Dating: First Contact

Posted on by

My first experience with internet dating began and ended with a phone call.  The same call.

This was a short relationship.

He (name soon lost in the cobwebs of my memory) described himself as an engineer, in his late 50’s, recently retired from a long and successful career at one of our major manufacturing firms.

That sounded promising.

He named the suburb in which he lived, one of the more affluent addresses in my town.

Also promising.

He said he loved going to art museums and told me a sweet tale of being moved as an adolescent, almost to the point of tears, by a painting of a beautiful woman.  I thought I knew the painting he meant.  Alan, my ex, grew watery eyed as we sat on a bench looking at it, our first visit to the museum.

Both men were moved by the beauty of Lucretia and the tragedy of her plight.

  Continue reading →

Time to Take Your Own Advice, Georgia

Posted on by

“Time to take your own advice, Georgia”.  That’s what Brenda said when she showed up at my door one recent Sunday morning.

Eons ago – well, make that six years ago – I showed up at her door with the latest issue of The Atlantic Monthly clutched in my hot little hand. )  A foolish, weak man had tromped on her aorta big time.  That wound needed major suturing.

Why did I think The Atlantic Monthly held the cure?  Because the cover article was one of their  thoroughly researched delvings into a topic, this one being the science and psychology behind the matchmaking processes of Match.com  and EHarmony.

I handed the magazine to her and said, “ I’ve read this article.  If I were single, this is what I’d do.  How about giving it a try?”

Continue reading →

Bennett Bites the Dust

Posted on by

Picture him lying on his back on a dusty road, naked from the waist up.  I’m standing over him, in a short, tight black dress and black shoes with monstrously thin high heels.  One of those stilettos is on his chest, pressing into his heart.  A drop of blood seeps from his chest and rolls down to the heel of my shoe.

His head is turned toward you.  His expression pleads

with you. “Make it stop.  What did I do to deserve this?”

Continue reading →

Night at the Opera

Posted on by
men are always handsome in a tuxedo
Have you ever met a man who didn’t look great in a tux? I haven’t.

I live in a city where the opening night of the opera season is still an Event.  Men pull their tuxedoes from the back of their closets, practice tying their bow ties and search out the studs for their dress shirts.  Some of them even polish their patent leather shoes to their glossiest shine.

 Women visit their hairdressers and their manicurists.  They plan their ensemble for the evening weeks in advance.  Some of them, like me, put in extra hours at the gym to fit perfectly in that favorite gown.

 

Despite all this forethought, I experienced wardrobe malfunction Saturday night as I readied myself for Bennett to ring my doorbell.  I pulled on my flesh-colored sheer pantyhose.  I looked with dismay at my feet with reinforced toes.  Wrong.  My dress calls for my open-toed black sandals with glass beads decorating the straps.  Reinforced toes would destroy the whole outfit.

Continue reading →

Close Encounter at the State Fair

Posted on by

Only when I’m with Bennett.  I swear these things only happen when Bennett and I are together.  First, we stumbled on a John Philip Sousa concert in small town America.  That’s when he decided things happen around me (see Adventures Happen).  He also decided he wanted to stick close.  To experience more, I guess.

Now it’s the State Fair.  Our State Fair is the best state fair in our state.

State Fair movie

No, this is not Bennett and me. He’s not quite this good looking. This is Ann Margaret and Pat Boone in the 1962 movie, State Fair.

Continue reading →

In the Circle of His Arms

Posted on by

The door opens into an almost empty room.  Wednesday night at the Rec Room (remember this spot from The Cougar Pack?), and only a few drinkers are seated under the fluorescent light of the bar.  The dance floor is empty; truly empty with  bare board walls, scratched and dented tables pulled together in the center of the room and a lonely deejay lost behind  his equipment, spinning his discs out into the void.

We head toward the deejay, and my companion asks, “Do you have any swing music?”

“Swing?  What’s that?” the deejay asks.

“Oh, you know, you must know, ‘50’s and 60’s rock and roll.”

“Like Elvis Presley?”

I say, “Yep, you got it, Elvis Presley.”

My companion looks at me, scrunches his face up and says, “I hate Elvis Presley.”

“I don’t like him, either, but if it gets us danceable music, who cares if it’s that silly old Jailhouse Rock.”

“I’ll look,” says the master of the music, while he puts on a tune by The Byrds.

It’s a cheek-to-cheek number, so I head for a table and pull out a chair.  After all, the rule with this companion is that we never touch each other (You met him in Toying).  He’s married, so this is the deal.  No swaying slowly to the music, no cheeks or anything else pressed together.  Not with this guy.  Not about to happen.

Continue reading →