Picture him lying on his back on a dusty road, naked from the waist up. I’m standing over him, in a short, tight black dress and black shoes with monstrously thin high heels. One of those stilettos is on his chest, pressing into his heart. A drop of blood seeps from his chest and rolls down to the heel of my shoe.
His head is turned toward you. His expression pleads
with you. “Make it stop. What did I do to deserve this?”
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.
“Adventures happen when you’re around, don’t they? Bennett asked. “Some people, nothing ever happens when you’re with them. With you, things happen.”
This scene played out over dinner on our second date. Something amusing did just happen. Little did either of us know this would be the theme of our relationship.
A beautiful Sunday in early spring. We headed out in his vintage Jaguar sportster for a drive in the country, ending up at a charming old hotel for dinner.
Great fun driving down country roads in this. Must say, I liked the attention we drew.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qBWvoUzWtw
This was produced with a little help from my friends. One of them has a website of vaudiotexts. If you’re interested in hearing more, or making one yourself, go to www.vaudiotext.com.
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.”
Fifty-six percent of men say the words, “I love you,” for the first time by accident. According to a study published in March in Britain’s Daily Mail, for over half of men the words just slip out of their mouths.
Twenty-three percent of those surveyed blamed alcohol. Thirteen percent said it because of sex. Eight percent reported saying these three words, “Because she was crying.”
Like Joan Baez sang, this makes love sound like just another four-letter word.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqVGjS6o2R8
You’d think that fact would be obvious. You’d think the countless reminders with which I’m presented daily would permanently implant the message in my thick skull that I’m not in my twenties anymore.
Still, I forget. Still, I sometimes engage in the behavior of a young woman.
Take the evening I met Brenda and Alexandra at a busy bar on a busy Friday night right after work. This was when both my job and my separation from Alan were new and I was exhausted.
This made it much like the Friday nights straight out of college when, fatigued from my new world of 9 to 5 career building, I’d head straight from the office to home to collapse in a heap. The alternative, and this was a 50/50 equation, was that I’d go out drinking pitchers of cheap beer with my colleagues and then head home drunk as a skunk to collapse in a heap.
That’s what she is. No better words to describe her. She’s all sweetness and sexiness. When we walk together along the river all eyes go right to her. They take in her tight rear twitching from side to side, the jaunty angle of her head, her amiable expression, her elegant carriage, her carefully brushed raven hair gleaming softly in the sun.
No one can resist her. Old ladies, young girls, they all look at her. But, above all, she’s a guy magnet. Marlys warned me of this the first time she sent us off for a walk together.
My front doorbell rang late in the afternoon. An uncommon occurrence when unexpected, as this was. I almost didn’t answer. No one drops by unannounced these days, especially on Saturday afternoon. I figured, probably some kid selling candy bars for the school trip or members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints hoping to save my vixen soul.
But I did go to the door, to find Liz, my dependable representative from the United States Postal Service, package in one hand, pen in the other.
“Hi, Georgia. Got a package you need to sign for,” she said.
“Wonder what it is,” I said as I signed.
He smiles at me, shrugs his shoulders and says, “Ah, even when we were in college she was buttoned down. My best buddy said, ‘Your girlfriend makes my old grannie look wild.’ That’s what she was then, and that’s sure what my wife is now.’”
That’s what makes me do it, makes me break my rule. Never be provocative, never flirt, never cross that boundary. He’s married, I’m not. My rule is to absolutely ignore the chemistry between us.
But he’s laid down a challenge. I can’t help myself. His wife is conventional, unadventurous. I’m anything but. He just doesn’t know it. Yet.