Tag Archives: marriage

And the Winner Is……….

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Coco Chanel said, “A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.”

As of this Valentine’s Day, at least one American woman can be guaranteed a future, because she’ll celebrate Valentine’s Day wearing Ubar, the perfume from Oman.

I know this because I started my Friday off early by knocking on the door of my friend Peter’s home.  Remember Peter from Ah Have Always Depended Upon…..?   He’s the man who carried my 9-foot-tall Norfolk Island Pine up three flights of stairs as if he were carrying a tea cup.

Drawing the winner of the bottle of exotic perfumeThis morning he turned all that strength to the delicate task of tenderly picking one heart out of a bowl filled to the brim with pink and red hearts.  Each heart represented one new subscriber to The Diary of the Vixen Divorcee, or one previous subscriber who had recruited a new subscriber.

I wish I had the resources to give a bottle of perfume to everyone who qualified for the

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Valentine’s Day

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The last Valentine’s Day I celebrated with my former husband, Alan, surpassed any dream I could ever have.  None of the Hallmark writers or designers could have come up with this scenario.

Alan had been travelling excessively for business.  He missed his birthday, my birthday, our wedding anniversary.  But it’s Valentine’s Day, he’s home and

 

we’re going to make it special.

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The Poetry of Seduction

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Andrew Marvell said it best back in the 17th century.  I have never come across anything written before or since that more convincingly and beautifully expresses the compelling reasons to indulge in passion.

Alan, my ex-husband, the scientist, would never have come across this poem before meeting me.  I wouldn’t have expected him to know it.  But bless his romantic heart, he learned To His Coy Mistress, and would, when the moment was ripe, pull out a few select lines.   Always with the desired results.

But my own romantic heart hungered for more.  I wanted what he could never have done.  I longed for the man who, in a moment with stillness hanging heavily around us, would recite, unbidden, those lines for me.

I teased Alan that I would give myself, body and soul, to the man who did that.

August Rodin sculpture, the Kiss

French sculptor Auguste Rodin captured how I anticipated responding to an impromptu recitation of “To His Coy Mistress”.

 

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The Men of Paris

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Digging through my desk recently I came across a long-forgotten folder of sketches I’d written when Alan and I were living in Paris in the mid 1980’s.  Here’s one of them.

Contented marriage to a handsome American man hasn’t keep me from observing the beauty of Parisian men.

I started observing my first day in Paris, one of those rare bright February days when everyone strolls the boulevards to get reacquainted with the sun.  The Champs-Elysees  was packed.  Our taxi was stuck in traffic.  He jogged up to the corner from Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, hesitated a bit, then thread his way in front of us, through the honking jam of buses, cars and taxis.   Light brown hair blown back from his face, except for the comma that fell over his forehead.  Strong square jaw, high cheek bones and heavy-lidded eyes.  He must be a movie star or at least a male model, I thought then.  Now I know he was probably an architect, bank clerk or accountant.  Handsome men aren’t that uncommon in Paris.  I see at least one a day.

Here we are, stuck in traffic. Can you pick out the man I spotted?

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50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

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Alan, my former husband, and I concocted our fantasy business while idling in coffee shops and wine bars.  The mission of this company was to help broken-hearted lovers bring closure, dramatic and final, to their relationships.  We were inspired by Paul Simon to help people in pain with their struggle to be free.  We, of course, were never going to be in pain, never struggling to be free.

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I’ve Been Addled Before

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I touched his knee, that’s all.  It happened accidentally, quite innocently.  I leaned forward toward the driver, Trevor, to make a suggestion, he spun the steering wheel, the tiny Fiat swerved and I reached out to get my balance.

My hand landed on the knee of the tall, blonde, handsome executive crammed in the back seat next to me.  That’s how it started.

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The Other Side of Me

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By Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

What did I write for Alan that wasn’t meant for anyone else’s eyes?  What am I willing to share with you, now that he and I are divorced?

The other side of me, the side you don’t know.   The erotic side.

Before the birth of The Diary (and of the Vixen Divorcee), I wrote stories intended for Alan’s eyes only.  Stories of sexually explicit fantasies based on places he and I visited during our days of marital bliss.  Stories the likes of which will never appear in the pages of The Diary.  Stories I’m willing to share with you privately, now that he and I are divorced.

 Yours could be the first eyes other than his to read one of these elegant fantasies.

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Another French Take on Exercise

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One sunny morning in Paris, as my ex-husband Alan waited on the landing outside our apartment for the elevator, our neighbor, Mariele, joined him.  He was dressed in a t-shirt, running shorts and running shoes, so she said the obvious.  “You’re going running, aren’t you?”

He said, “Yes.”  That was that.

A week later, they shared the elevator as he headed upstairs after his run, all
sweaty and stinky.

“You run a lot, don’t you?” she said.

“Almost every day,” he answered.

This was in the late 1980’s and we were spending 4 years living in the French
capitol, thanks to Alan’s employer.

The next week, out on the landing, she said, “My husband Gérard runs, too.  Almost daily.”

The following week she said, “You and Gérard should run together.  He doesn’t get as sweaty as you do.  Maybe you could get him to work harder.”

Alan running the streets of our quartier of Paris.

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Solace for a Grieving Heart

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The Last Day of Our  Acquaintance

By
Sinead O’Connor from her album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got

 

 

 

 

Alan kept this CD in his car. When we drove long distances, he’d slip  it in the  player.  We’d sing along,  loudly and off key, glorying in the passionate imagery of the lyrics and the  pain and purity of Sinead O’Connor’s voice.   We’d sing happily, united in our love of the song.  Her pain wasn’t ours and would never touch  us.  Or so we thought.

Until the day arrived when we sat together in  the office of a marriage counselor.  The
day when I knew our marriage was beyond repair.  The day when he was still in denial.

We were living apart, hadn’t seen each other  for a week.  I turned to him and said,
“This is the last day of our acquaintance.  I’ll meet you later in somebody’s office.”

That was it.  We met later in somebody’s office to finalize the details, but those two
sentences marked the death of our marriage.

I never imagined until that afternoon how  perfectly Sinead O’Connor expressed the end of my love, or what solace I would  get from blasting out those lyrics in the home where I now live alone.

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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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