Tag Archives: middle-aged single life

Coming Back to Me

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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.

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What Does Georgia Want?

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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.

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Internet Dating: First Contact

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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.

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Walking His Dog

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His dog greets me first, one of those leaping, tail wagging, friendly animals, golden retriever, I think.  Oscar is his name.  Happy as can be, wants everyone to like him.  What is it they say about dogs and their owners, they’re a lot alike?  Couldn’t be truer in this case.

His owner stands at some distance, by the river bank, phone to his ear.  Doesn’t smile, doesn’t wave, doesn’t acknowledge me at all.  “This isn’t a good start.  Not like him at all,” I think as Oscar and I while away an uncomfortably long time

The phone finally goes into his pocket as he heads in my direction.  He stops further away from me than normal social convention dictates.  No welcoming hug or kiss on the cheek or even a hand shake.  Totally out of keeping with the way I’ve seen him greet other women, the safe ones; the beaming smile, the warm embrace.  But this has been the unspoken rule between us, no physical contact.  (Read Toying and In the Circle of His Arms.)

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In the Circle of His Arms

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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.

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Not So Humiliated

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Guess who I called Monday morning after Sunday night at The Comedy Club? (read Public Humiliation)  Marlys, of course.

“You won’t believe the mess you got me into last night!” was how the conversation started.

She, of course, found it hugely entertaining.  Had way too much fun laughing at my public humiliation.

Thursday evening she called me.  “Hey, I talked to my friend who works at The Comedy Club.  They loved you!  She said, ‘That woman was your friend?  She was great.  The other guy on stage was a jerk, but your friend was hilarious.  We loved her.  We wanted to bring her back up on stage.  We were so disappointed when she and her date left.’”

Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin

I could go either way. Become a comic like Lily Tomlin, or an actress like Meryl Streep.

 

Public Humiliation

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It was all Marlys’ fault.  The idea was hers; a double date, Marlys and her husband Peter, and my date, Bennett, and me at The Comedy Club.  A young friend of hers had just gotten her first acting job as a member of the troupe.  A Sunday evening of improvisational comedy and beer sounded like fun.

Then Marlys and Peter cancelled at the last minute.  Bennett and I went anyway, only to find out that Sunday wasn’t just improv night.  It was also trivia quiz night.   Almost everyone was in teams of four to eight, except for the two of us.

The improvised skits are clever and Bennett and I laugh heartedly.  That is, until the topic for the quiz segment is announced:  Movies and Television, topics about which we know little.  When the questions are read, we know few answers.

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Lying in the Arms of Morpheus

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Lying in the Arms of Morpheus

Carrie planned thoughtfully for her first night lying in the arms of Morpheus, the god of dreams.  Her husband moved out that day, so she knew the only arms waiting for her in that big brass bed upstairs would be those she conjured up in her dreams.

She covered the bed with fresh sheets.  She sprayed those sheets with her favorite perfume, Escape, by Calvin Klein.  Drew a hot bath and luxuriated in the old claw foot tub until the water turned chill.  Rummaged through her grandmother’s wooden hope chest to find the tissue paper packet enclosing the nightgown she wore on her wedding night ten years ago.  Slipped it on.  Climbed in between the crisp sheets, inhaled the scent redolent of sensuality and love.

She made love to herself.  Made love to herself because she knew she deserved it, even though she and love had been strangers for quite some time.  Made love to herself because she was determined to keep that spark alive in herself, ready for when the time was right to invite someone else besides Morpheus to lie in bed with her.

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Getting Naked Again

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Getting Naked Again

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.

 

 

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Your Naked Body

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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.

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