Another unexpected first in my mature middle age: Telling a suitor that I don’t want to see him again.
I’m such a coward. I told Chet over the phone. (You last read about him in How Not to Impress a Woman.)
I had the best intentions to do it in person. Truly I did. I set off to meet him for brunch Sunday morning fully intending to tell him that he was wasting his time with me.
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.
When Alan loved me, his love wrapped around me like velvet; tender, caressing, sensual. I moved through the world as if I were always enfolded in the black velvet cape he gave me for my 50th birthday.
He remained infatuated with me at the time of this birthday. After knowing each other for 20 years, he still beamed like a boy as I pushed aside the white tissue paper and unfolded the long, hooded cape from its box. He knew me well, knew I’d be delighted with this gift. Still, I could see in his eyes that bit of doubt. “Maybe she won’t like it, maybe it’s all wrong,” he was thinking.
I threw it over my shoulders, pulled the hood over my head, admired myself in the mirror as I stroked the soft fabric, then twirled to enjoy the feel of it billowing out around me. I looked at him, at the happiness in his eyes now that he was sure of my pleasure at his gift.
Perfection. My 50th birthday was perfect.
Not only in the age of Jane Austen was it universally acknowledged that a single man possessed of a good position is in need of a wife. In this age and this city, the belief still holds strong.
Since our orchestra hired as its concertmaster a divorced man, serious note has been taken. Society matrons sit transfixed in their seats, watching the passion of his playing, the way he sways as his bow caresses and plucks the strings of his violin, the way his gray locks fall over his brow.
The unmarried among us fantasize about what those strong strokes and practiced technique would be like applied to us. The married women sublimate by plotting matchmaking strategies for their single friends.
Detail of The Kiss by Gustav Klimt
Slow down for a moment. Forget all those things that you absolutely have to do in the next 30 minutes. Allow yourself the pleasure of getting lost in this painting.
Why is it so widely loved? Is it the complexity of pattern, the way that the background flows into his garment, which flows into hers without clear demarcations? Is it the abundance of rich gold, contrasted against the traces of bright blue, red and green? Is it the slightness of her body pressed against the dominating mass of his body? Is it the precise molding of her face, the glimpse of her shoulder?
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.
French sculptor Auguste Rodin captured how I anticipated responding to an impromptu recitation of “To His Coy Mistress”.
Before I included the post about him in the Diary of the Vixen Divorcee (see The Toy Boy), I emailed it to Guy. This is his response. What a gift to any woman to have her youth remembered like this, and to be told of those memories.
Blondie,
How much fun is that?
“Once upon a time…” – you’re so cute. What a kick to read the private thoughts of such a special former lover. The realization that I had achieved an erection half way through the story made me smile and shake my head (Some things never change 
)
Before starting The Diary of the Vixen Divorcee, I emailed my friend, Reggie, to check out what he thought of my idea of a blog about life as a single woman. Typical man, he translated it into a blog about sex. This is his response, except that I edited his choice of a photo; his was too racy for my diary.
The perfect morning to sit down and answer your mail. It’s heavenly outside. A balmy, wet, warm front is in the area. Very feminine, this kind of weather. Warm, wet, still, mysterious, close and yet the essence of it standing at a remove. You know something’s coming. A good day to sit in the window early in the morning with the clothes line strung with pearls.
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.
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?