The Toy Boy

Once upon a time a woman sat alone in her apartment, sipping wine, reading a book, nursing a broken heart.  She heard a knock on her door.

“Who can that be?” she wondered.  “No one buzzed to be let in the building.  I don’t know any of my neighbors, except the little old lady next door.  Maybe it’s her.”

She opened the door and looked straight into the friendliest, freshest eyes she’d ever seen on a man.  Well, more of a boy, really.  Curly, messy hair, a big smile to match the eyes, an empty bowl held in his hands.

Guy’s hair was curlier, and I never saw him wear sun glasses. Otherwise…….

That was you, Guy.  Twenty-year-old you.  Facing 28-year-old me for the first time.    I wonder how scared you were, that moment.  Actually asking me for some sugar.  That was the best ruse you could come up with to meet me.

 

Decades later you told me that you and your next-door-neighbor bet on who would meet me first.  You’d watch for me from the living room window of your apartment.  The best days were when I’d park my car right

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One Man’s Viewpoint

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.

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Party Like It’s Christmas 2011

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.

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Ah Have Always Depended Upon…

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?

  

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Addled By A Drug

Chet leaned across the restaurant table, looked deeply – and of course longingly – into my eyes and said, “I want to be your lover.”  Then he kissed me.

This was our second date.

I knew from the moment I met him earlier in the evening that this was his intention, without his having to say a word.

Did I know it consciously?  Could I have articulated this knowledge?  Probably not.

But my body knew it.  That carefully calibrated tuning fork made up of my skin, my blood and my nerves started vibrating as soon as I greeted him where he stood, waiting for me in the theater lobby.

What caused all that commotion, that furious vibrating?  Waves.  Waves of
testosterone.  Aimed at me.  Rolling over me, seeping into my pores.  Addling my brain.

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On My Own

Anna wore protective armor her first night out without her husband.

Since she’s a woman of means and position in my town, by the time the Fine Arts Ball rolled around, everyone knew the messy story of how Pat dumped her for his secretary. Who would get the Tuscan villa, which top divorce lawyer would have the guts to incur Pat’s wrath by taking her case, how big would the settlement be; these were the questions occupying the minds of the Vanity Fair folks that night. Would she even show, wondered the men and women gathered in the ballroom.

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Where There’s Smoke

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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The Vixen Divorcee’s First Kiss

Why is a kiss on the lips so intimate?  What about that contact of lips on lips raises goose bumps up and down my arms, while a kiss on the cheek is a mere nothing at all?  Why can a kiss on the lips be laden with more meaning than the full-fledged sex act?

I don’t know.  Don’t have a clue.

 What I do know is that my first kiss as a divorced woman was delivered by a cab driver. Juan Carlos was his name.  I met him when he picked up Ellen, Gary and me outside our hotel in Zihuatanejo, Mexico.  Our destination was an elegant bar high above
the town.  We could have walked, but in our dresses and high-heeled sandals, Ellen and I would have been awkward and uncomfortable.

So we flagged down Juan Carlos, who drove us up the hill.  He waited while we sipped margaritas and watched the sun slide down the sky and slip behind the hills on the opposite side of the bay.

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The Birth of the Vixen Divorcee

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My first vacation as a divorced woman.  A woman, I’ll put this kindly, of mature middle age.  A woman, mind you, of reserve and discretion, the furthest from a vixen you could imagine, whose dear friends invited her to join them on their annual winter trek to Zihuatenejo, Mexico.  A little sun, good cheap drinks and food, beach and ocean time, laughs and fun.  Tonic for a grieving heart.

My legs are long and my hair is blonde. Is this me?

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