Category Archives: Single Life

Party Like It’s Christmas 2011

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I want to take you someplace with me.  This journey is neither far, nor exotic.  Depending on your mindset, you might call it banal.  Or tacky.

I call it fun.

You and I, we’re driving down a back street in an industrial corner of my town on a Saturday night.  Make that last Saturday night, to be precise.

We pass factories, warehouses and cross railroad tracks before we come to a parking lot loaded with Harleys, pickups and SUVs.  We find one spot left for our little car.  We cross the street toward a cinder-block, windowless building.  Smokers crowd around the door.  The temperature tonight is freezing, but the men wear t-shirts or cotton shirts with the sleeves rolled up high on their tattooed arms.  The women’s arms are bare, as are their thighs, below their short skirts.

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Ah Have Always Depended Upon…

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I lied to that man on the airplane to Zihauntenajo (see Birth of the Vixen Divorcee).  I told a blatant lie when I pretended to be Blanche Dubois in Streetcar Named Desire.  “Ah have always  depended on the kindness of strangers,” I said.

What a disastrous way to live a life that would be.  What a sad, frail, ineffectual creature Blanche was.

No, my truth is far different.  I have always depended on the kindness of friends.

How about starting with my recent run-in with the nine-foot-tall Norfolk Island Pine sitting in my kitchen.   The plant grew so big in the summer that no one could sit at my table except me.  My upstairs sitting room would give it more space and light.

I carried it inside from the patio by myself at the end of the summer.  Surely with all my weight lifting and yoga I could get it up 32 stairs.  Of course I could.

This is my Norfolk Island Pine this summer, out on my patio. It’s a beauty, isn’t it?

  

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Addled By A Drug

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Chet leaned across the restaurant table, looked deeply – and of course longingly – into my eyes and said, “I want to be your lover.”  Then he kissed me.

This was our second date.

I knew from the moment I met him earlier in the evening that this was his intention, without his having to say a word.

Did I know it consciously?  Could I have articulated this knowledge?  Probably not.

But my body knew it.  That carefully calibrated tuning fork made up of my skin, my blood and my nerves started vibrating as soon as I greeted him where he stood, waiting for me in the theater lobby.

What caused all that commotion, that furious vibrating?  Waves.  Waves of
testosterone.  Aimed at me.  Rolling over me, seeping into my pores.  Addling my brain.

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The Cougar Pack

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Brenda and I are standing on the edge of the dance floor, close to the band.  Our friends are gathered in a knot around a table, off to the side of the bar.  They’re the senior citizen contingent in The Rec Room, this group of 55 – 70-year-olds eating the cake Ellen brought to celebrate her husband Gary’s  birthday.  They want to chat with each other, rehash the old days and catch up on the new.  We’re all here because Gary
loves music, especially the blues, and a good local blues band is playing.

 But Brenda and I want to dance.  We always want to dance.  I’m thinking opportunities tonight are bleak.  None of our old codger friends want to do anything more active than move their mouths to talk and lift their plastic cups to their lips to drink beer.

Everyone else in the place looks to be well under 30.  They’re playing drinking games that involve flipping empty plastic cups or passing full ones boy to girl, girl to boy, without using any hands.

So here we stand, nodding our heads and shaking our hips to the rhythms of these young musicians.  I can’t read Brenda’s mind, but I’m guessing she expects some young blade to ask her to dance.  After all, she’s light-bulb-bright charismatic, confidant and has a history of affairs with younger men.  Guess that makes her a cougar.

How I hate that word.  Makes her sound like a predator.  She’s not.  She’s attractive, successful and fun.

Brenda and me, just hanging out around the dance floor.

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On the Operating Table

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Ryan lay on the operating table, partially sedated and dazed from rushing across
town in an ambulance.  His problem was heart failure brought on by a congenital heart defect.  The surgeon touched him gently on the arm and said, deep compassion in her voice, “I never operate on anyone I don’t know.  My name is Mary.  Pleased to meet you.”

Ryan looked in her warm, caring eyes and said, “We’ve already met.  I’ve held you in my arms.”

The expression on her face shifted, the compassion replaced with distaste.

He added, “We’ve danced together.  At the
Arthur Murray studio. My best dance is the mambo.”

 

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Vixen Divorcee’s First Blind Date

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My friend, Marlys, set me up on my first blind date.  Her description of the guy sounded intriguing and I was ripe to test the waters of the dating world, so I said, “Give him my phone number.”

Our first contact should have prepared me for what followed.

He suggested dinner and a movie.  Okay by me.

He suggested The King’s Speech.  Again, okay by me.

Then he suggested that we meet at the theater and go out to dinner afterwards.

Not okay by me.

I suggested, tactfully as I could, that since we’d never met, I’d be more comfortable dining first, then going to the movie.

He wouldn’t budge.

That’s how I found myself in the lobby of a movie theater, walking up to a strange man, hoping he was my date.

Try finding your blind date in this crowd

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On My Own

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Anna wore protective armor her first night out without her husband.

Since she’s a woman of means and position in my town, by the time the Fine Arts Ball rolled around, everyone knew the messy story of how Pat dumped her for his secretary. Who would get the Tuscan villa, which top divorce lawyer would have the guts to incur Pat’s wrath by taking her case, how big would the settlement be; these were the questions occupying the minds of the Vanity Fair folks that night. Would she even show, wondered the men and women gathered in the ballroom.

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Where There’s Smoke

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When Alan, my ex-husband, fell off the roof, I called 911. What happened next  planted the seeds for my first vixen divorcee fantasy.

 He struggled into the house as far as the living room, where he collapsed on the couch. There he stayed, unmoving, complaining of pain, for the next three hours, refusing to let me do anything, until I took matters in my own hands and made that call.

Within minutes, fifteen at most, our living room burst with big, muscular, handsome men.  All sporting the uniform of our local fire department.  All take-charge men who knew just how to shift my suffering husband off the couch, onto a stretcher, down
the steps of our house and into their emergency vehicle.

All the while flashing me magnetic smiles, reassuring me that everything was going to be just fine, charming me with their masculine confidence.  Of course I was worried  about Alan, but a corner of my psyche reeled with enchantment for these men.

Here they are, the firemen converging on our front door. Well, in my dreams this is how they looked as they converged on our front door.

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The Vixen Divorcee’s First Kiss

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Why is a kiss on the lips so intimate?  What about that contact of lips on lips raises goose bumps up and down my arms, while a kiss on the cheek is a mere nothing at all?  Why can a kiss on the lips be laden with more meaning than the full-fledged sex act?

I don’t know.  Don’t have a clue.

 What I do know is that my first kiss as a divorced woman was delivered by a cab driver. Juan Carlos was his name.  I met him when he picked up Ellen, Gary and me outside our hotel in Zihuatanejo, Mexico.  Our destination was an elegant bar high above
the town.  We could have walked, but in our dresses and high-heeled sandals, Ellen and I would have been awkward and uncomfortable.

So we flagged down Juan Carlos, who drove us up the hill.  He waited while we sipped margaritas and watched the sun slide down the sky and slip behind the hills on the opposite side of the bay.

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The Birth of the Vixen Divorcee

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My first vacation as a divorced woman.  A woman, I’ll put this kindly, of mature middle age.  A woman, mind you, of reserve and discretion, the furthest from a vixen you could imagine, whose dear friends invited her to join them on their annual winter trek to Zihuatenejo, Mexico.  A little sun, good cheap drinks and food, beach and ocean time, laughs and fun.  Tonic for a grieving heart.

My legs are long and my hair is blonde. Is this me?

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