This book came to me through my girlfriend network. Recent divorcee, Darlene, regaled my married friend, Susie, with tales of the contents of the book, Getting Naked Again. The book gave Darlene the impetus to hop on a plane for a weekend of adventure with a single male acquaintance of hers. Her goal was to get over her fear of sex with someone other than the man to whom she’d been married for 25 years.
Memories
By Spector & Cohen
From the album, Death Of A Ladies Man
Frankie Lane, he was singing Jezebel
I pinned an Iron Cross to my lapel
I walked up to the tallest
and the blondest girl
I said, Look, you don’t know me now
but very soon you will
So won’t you let me see
Won’t you let me see
Won’t you let me see
Your naked body?
Listen to Leonard Cohen sing this, with all that boy anguish, desire, impatience pouring from his raspy voice. I’m sitting on my bedroom floor, eyes closed, listening to the CD and seeing the 16-year-old boy cross the gym floor, struggling to control his body, his throat tight with a thousand inchoate needs and thoughts. I see the girl, controlling the moment.
Time for another male voice in The Diary of the Vixen Divorcee, don’t you think? My divorced friend, Mick, is here to provide it for us, with his tale of online dating. The brave man has gone where I haven’t dared to tread, yet.
After two years I’d moved on. I’d survived a public divorce, in which I had played a costarring role, the person who didn’t want it in the first place. I’d been the cuckolded husband, the last one in town to know, apparently the very last one. But that had been two years ago, and from what I’d eventually learned the extracurricular activities had maybe gone on two or three years before that.
I made a conscious decision not to date within my existing social network. That decision, and the intervening twenty-four months, had taught me bars and clubs weren’t the place to meet women, at least not for me. Maybe it was the sort of bars or clubs I went to, maybe it was the type of woman I was attracted to. I really don’t know, I only knew it wasn’t working.
Enter unsolicited advice from my friend, Wendy. “Give the online dating thingy a shot. You get to see what they look like, they get to check you out. You can explore mutual interests, see if you’d actually enjoy each other’s company beyond a glass of wine. Besides, if she thinks you’re a creep, she can just block your emails and move on. Look on the bright side, you can save whatever money you were spending trying to get women drunk on dollar shots.”
I hit the wrong button on Sunday evening, but didn’t know it until I logged onto email Monday morning. I found 200 messages from people who are now connected to me on LinkedIn.
My life might be saner if we still communicated this way.
My friend, Marlys, sets down her latte, turns her most penetrating gaze on me and asks, “What do you think of Jerome Simmons?”
“Never met the man. Why do you ask?” I’ve heard of him, for sure; patron of the arts, successful entrepreneur, etc. Just never met him.”
“ I sat next to him at a dinner party last weekend. I gather he’s lonely. His wife died four years ago. He implied he’s getting weary of going out on his own.”
“Hum,” I say. “How old is Mr. Simmons?”
“Oh, he might be around 70. But a young 70. Tall, slim and straight, silver hair. Think Ted Turner.”
“Hum,” I think. “I could see being the younger girlfriend to a Ted Turner,” I think.
Are you reading my mind?
Take lessons from Chet, my suitor. (Remember him from Addled by a Drug and The Poetry of Seduction?) He’s mastered the art of how not to impress me.
His problem? He allows one false premise guide him during our courtship; that he needs to impress me. Who wants to be impressed? Not me.
Why did he tell me that he got a perfect score on his SATs? At our age, who cares? Who even remembers their score? Maybe if mine had been perfect I’d remember. But still, all these years later that’s hardly something I’d be chatting about.