“HER” and Other Extremes
A Guide for Older Men Who Fall
in Love With Younger Women
Non-fiction by Jack Turley
Published by Gentle Heart, an
imprint of The Fiction Works
Smashwords edition
Copyright 2010 by Jack Turley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Chapter 1
About this business of “May-December” love, I can only speak for the “December” side of the connection. You see, I was a robust and virile “older” male who suddenly found himself mumbling unexpected commitment to this flashy little heart-crusher still in her twenties. I was twice her age, forcrissakes.
When a man like me has reached a place of supposed enlightenment and suddenly finds himself in a candy store with a license to steal, believe me, there’s trouble ahead. No matter how strong his resistance, how prudent and cautious his intentions, he’s still going to reach for the sweet goods. I did. When that young and beautiful temptress gazed deeply into my world-weary eyes and convinced me she had spent her tender years searching only for me, I was a fool without hope. All the supposed smarts which had taken so long to wedge into the space behind my age-dated forehead seemed to disintegrate. I became, under the hot-bodied domination of this nubile invader into my well-ordered life, a rubber ball bounced to the max.
~
HER. I don’t think I could have ever conceived that such an improbable relationship would happen to me. No, not ever. Falling in love with her, a malady that might aptly be described as the “Lolita Syndrome,” is simply not my style. I’m a plodder, a thinker, a wary hesitator not known for plunging headlong into chancy endeavors; let alone, forcrissakes, serious romance. I simply wasn’t prepared—my own fail-safe system didn’t emit one lousy warning blip. There I was, minding my own celibate business, sort of in a state of romantic disconnection so to speak when, with silken finesse, she plunged herself into the workings of my life. She zapped me with full phaser power while I was still bent over picking up the soap.
We’re talking world-class female here, Captain. HER was a beguiling butterfly, a neon charisma of devastating charm and personality who had, for all her adult life, fluttered from flower to flower seeking the nectar of love. She was sexy and gorgeous and totally irresistible—and I was amazed by how it could all be packaged in such a neat container. And if that wasn’t enough to ensure my surrender, there was that cascading bouquet of honey blond curls spilled ever so carelessly around HER’s damnably-perfect face. I was convinced I had discovered the jewel of creation; all that is desirably female and wonderful in this world.
Now the smoke has cleared from the battlefield and there is time to look inward to the twisted debris. I was the only prisoner taken in this war which raged over nearly four years of ecstasy, bewilderment, castration and despair. I speak of it in the past tense now, like a wounded soldier lying flat on his back as he recites uncertain words for the nurse to write down and mail home. After “Dear Mom—” what do I say? Where do I start the story?
At first, I perceived this child/woman as nothing more than a harmless and momentary intrusion into my life. I was fascinated, oh yes indeed, but not that fascinated. In the deep-down marrow of my rusted bones, I knew I could dismiss this tantalizing nymphet whenever I chose. I also knew that once I decided to take an honest look at the hard reality of it—the vast difference in our ages was the hardest of all hard realities—I would kiss off the whole business as a hopeless fantasy.
You see, Captain, I had deluded myself with the immutable certainty that I could handle whatever she dished out. Just go with the flow, that would be the wisest and safest course. And above all, don’t get into any emotional complications—don’t let HER get inside where I keep the soft stuff. She would thrust, I would parry. Forever the unchallenged master of my own fate, I knew I would ultimately retreat from this young and ravishing thing and leave her in a heap of heartbreak.
Somehow, I made a slight miscalculation. HER hit me with everything in her arsenal—brains, beauty, personality, guile, and an infinite appetite for all that is erotic and/or illegal. An unfamiliar exhilaration began to overwhelm me; I recklessly convinced myself that this was finally the real thing. I had found the woman of my dreams—or rather she had found me. This glorious young prize had materialized smack in the middle of my bachelorhood as if Zeus himself had shot her down to me on one of his private thunderbolts.
A wide gap in the ages between a man and a woman, no matter how much they may think they love each other, can be an impossible dream. I knew right up front that the years separating HER and I were a balloon payment that would have to be paid somewhere down the line. This is the guaranteed price for temporary togetherness; it was the one provision in our love contract which could not be X’d out. Someday, we’d simply have to pay up. In spite of my lunatic impulse to abandon all sanity and go blindly and giddily into an unconditional state of bliss with HER, a wiser part of me kept saying, “Forget it, not a chance . . . not even a maybe.”
I became deaf to the shouts of truth that ricocheted through my head: “Listen up, dummy! Your version of Dolce Vita is headed straight down the toilet.” It was simple arithmetic, very plain and very obvious. We wouldn’t have a chance in hell for the long run because I was already too many miles down the road ahead of her. I was walking to slow it down; she was running to speed it up.
This realization of how it was, how it really was, made such clear and logical sense. Forget HER’s fervent pronouncements that she loved me and wanted me forever—and all those other tasty bonbons she so deftly stuffed down my willing throat. I knew our relationship was only a loaner while our separate lives were in the shop being repaired.
Both of us were fairly fresh from broken affairs, both of us needed healing. So what better way to heal than with a new and temporary love? After all, wasn’t I the wiser member of this improbable teaming? Wasn’t I the more experienced in matters of the heart? Still, I refused to listen to that little inner voice which harps at me in times of parlous decision. Love is where you find it, I reminded myself, let the inner voice choke. I had stumbled into paradise, shout it from the rooftops. A beautiful young creature had fallen in love with me and there was nothing to do but capitulate to the tender joy of it. Okay, call me a pushover—but come on, Captain, admit it. What “older man” among us would not feel a flush of runaway male ego at such incredible fortune?
The trouble was, when I met HER, I was a superannuated misfit. I never did completely belong to the age group I was in; I always gave the physical impression of being younger. For years, this was a bragging point for me—and no small consternation to my male friends. I simply didn’t seem to age as rapidly as everyone else. I used to say it was my “clean living and good genes.” In truth, it was luck. I didn’t live any “cleaner” than anybody else. I could drink and party with the best of them, and I didn’t know “good genes” from apple butter. Things just worked out easier for me in the aging process, and I’m not altogether sure why.
As the years passed, most of the guys I knew got a little fatter around the middle and a little thinner on top. Not me, I was beating the rap. Dorian Grey wasn’t the only one with a portrait in the closet.
I like to think that when I met HER, I looked pretty good for my age. I was tall and lean and didn’t have any wildly bad habits. Maybe that was the problem. Without a few bad habits to keep life in balance, I was also acutely bored. There was no special woman in my life at the time, no one who cared when I had a cold. I remember I used to say that particular statement with a profound resonance to all my bachelor friends who chased around enjoying themselves in loveless abandon.
“Don’t you see what an empty life it is, not having anybody who cares when you have a cold?”
It was a comment about life which I thought had a lot of impact—and it did. My friends got where they didn’t like to be around me very much. Not only did I look younger than they did, I was also a bore.
There was another problem too. The women of my era, that is to say the ones closer to my own age, somehow didn’t measure up to my Procrustean standards. They were, like me, no longer qualified to compete on a younger and faster track. Maybe this is why the old bulls mosey closer to the fence to gaze over at the greener grass where the young heifers romp and prance.
Let me say this right out, Captain, let’s not have any misunderstandings here. This isn’t a whiney lament about getting lost in wonderland. This is serious stuff I’m trying to explain here; it’s about anguish and stupefying hurt. Locking heartbeats with a woman half your age is like, well, let me put it another way: You’d be better off contracting a nice terminal disease. At least you’d know where you’re heading and there wouldn’t be any surprises when you get there.
No, I’m not claiming innocence; I saw the trap before I stepped in it. It was laid right there in the middle of my traffic pattern. I could have walked around it on that warm summer afternoon when HER came into my life, but I didn’t. You see, I was just finishing the second act of a TV episode, I’m a writer by profession, and the script was going pretty well; I liked the words I was putting on the paper. Then that fateful knock at the door.
Normally, interruptions annoy the hell out of me when I’m writing. But since the second act was only a few lines from being finished, I didn’t much mind getting up from my desk to answer what I assumed would be nothing more than a summons from a salesman.
When I opened the door, there she was—HER—my gift from the Devil. This ultimate creature of the universe was standing there smiling at me with her dazzling array of radiantly white teeth and in my mind’s sudden and reckless fantasy, beckoning me to fly away with her to heaven. Yeah, fly now, pay later.
HER’s excuse for the unexpected visit was flimsy; but never mind, who needed a reason. I was already boxed and wrapped by this young vision of forgotten ecstasies. In the course of the afternoon which followed her appearance, she convinced me that “older men” were so much more interesting, so much more “alive.” Being of mortal cloth, and perhaps a tad more susceptible than most to these kind of honeyed words, I recklessly placed my foot squarely on the trigger of the trap and it instantly sprang shut—and stayed that way for almost four hurricane years.
But before I get to that colorful experience, let me tell you how HER happened to be in my neighborhood in the first place. You see, Captain, she was living with this guy down the street—uh-huh, sharing his bed and board. I understand the guy was once a well-known jock and he had big muscles, which she could understand. Unfortunately, fame is a fragile thing. The ex-jock was no longer living in glory, but grinding out a modest living as a real estate agent.
HER was into her gypsy period at the time, bumming her way around the world, dropping off herself and her toothbrush with friends and ex-lovers; anyone who could supply the necessary accommodations at the moment of need. This was only part of her eternal charm. She could instantly adapt to any circumstance . . . anywhere . . . any bed. It’s called “living in the passing lane.”
When she first knocked on my door, that was actually the second time I had seen her. The first time had been several months earlier, when a lady writer friend of mine—who is somehow vaguely related to her, I never did figure out exactly how—coerced me into an introduction. I was working on a script at the time and I didn’t want to meet anybody; but my writer friend was insistent. Leaving my computer in neutral—I wasn’t planning to be gone that long—we journeyed down the street to the ex-jock’s house where HER was currently in residence. I was to learn that she and the ex-jock had had an affair back in their mutually-shared hometown. This was merely a loosely-interpreted continuance of that affair.
Well, I met HER and truth will out, I was knocked senseless by this smiling Goddess who told me she did glamorous things like modeling and TV commercials. “I’m an actress.”
“Really?”
“That’s why I’m here in Los Angeles. Thought I’d try my luck.”
My writer friend and I stood there in the ex-jock’s living room—he was off working—watching her flit around barefooted in her tight jeans searching for keys she had misplaced. I had recovered my equilibrium enough to convince myself I was being very cool and conversational:
“You shouldn’t have any trouble at all, I mean getting into commercials.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Yeah, no trouble at all . . .”
My gaze fumbled over to a grouping of photos on a nearby table. (HER, I would later learn, was very fond of grouping photos on tables.) There were poses of her taken at the beach and at parties, a living Venus with the ex-jock at her side. She saw my attention riveted on the pictures and moved closer, cranking that laser smile of hers up to maximum power.
“You’re a writer?”
“Sort of.”
I had picked up one of the photos, a candid shot of her at the beach. It could have been an ad for suntan lotion. “This is you—?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And this guy next to you, uh . . . he’s, uh—?”
She turned to resume the search for her keys, the answer to my question tossed carelessly over a soft and supple shoulder: “He’s just a friend. This is his house.”
It was a summary of her present romantic situation delivered in one powerfully-succinct phrase: His house, as in “look but do not touch.” Hastily, I put the photo back on the table. “Big, isn’t he?”
She found her keys and reactivated that blinding smile again:
“He used to play professional football.”
“Oh. That’s nice . . .” Another one of my spectacular ad-libs.
~
HER had a marvelous go-to-hell vitality which seemed to energize everything she did and said. In that initial meeting, I remember, I was aware of a constant halo of light shimmering around her wherever she stood; a kind of glow conceived in the mind. It was disorienting for me to say the least, trying to maintain an appropriate detachment. But being the naturally wise and prudent male that I was, what better reason did I need to squelch any thoughts of her as potential romance material? She was, after all, a mere youngster. And if that wasn’t enough to deter me, and it should have been, she was also living with another man—a very large and muscular man. I quickly dismissed any thoughts of hope. What chance could I possibly have with a woman like this? Besides, it would be pure insanity to even consider that she might have any interest in me. Having thus turned off my internal impulses, I pleaded the urgency of a waiting script and mumbled a hurried goodbye. At that point, it was still a relatively painless matter to dismiss this incredible woman I had just met.
I tend to work tricks on my mind like this. If I can’t have something, or presume I can’t, then I don’t think about it. I shut it out of my mind. With only this brief introduction to HER and the exchange of what I later reviewed as my own less-than-sparkling dialogue, it was no special hardship for me to discard her as a contender and return to my work.
This was when I should have started the journal, the one I have now been writing for a year. I should have started it right then, right at the beginning when I first met HER. It was only later after she was gone that I could find the courage—perhaps I should call it sanity—to look in the rear-view mirror, so to speak; to step back from the scene of destruction and survey it with some kind of honest assessment:
October 17—Thursday. A bleak and grey day, good for the starting of projects such as this. A journal of my assorted miseries seems appropriate for a presently down-at-the-heels writer. Actually, I should have started this thing on my last birthday, the day I told (HER) to pack her clothes and find quarters elsewhere. She did too, and oh Lord, has life been sad for me ever since.
~
Maybe two months passed before I saw HER the second time, when she came knocking at my door. It was in a period of my life which could be described as an in-residence malaise. I remember I had vaguely tightened a romance with an older woman, one of those previously mentioned as being from my own “era.” I had resigned myself to the hard conclusion that I needed a mature, no-nonsense relationship. Even my inner voice was getting in on the act. It told me I had to stop this dumb behavior of dating around and posing as the eternal make-out artist. I needed to attach myself to something permanent, or at least semi-permanent. Besides, the inner voice reminded me, an “older” woman always cares when you have a cold.
In the past, I had gone into romantic endeavors with a more or less pre-ordained attitude. The woman of the moment and I would make a grand coupling in a flash of love’s brilliant light—which, of course, usually extinguished our affair and ourselves in a desperate fatigue. Or we would approach the relationship in orderly fashion, like standing in line at the check-out counter, seeking the practical values of togetherness as we nurtured a sane approach to commitment.
I have tried just about everything I can think of to find some sort of workable truce with (HER). No deal. She has rediscovered the glories of the single life, and she’s apparently up to her dimpled knees in male admirers. So much for self-inflicted wounds.
I know also that I’ve been the culprit in many, if not most of my past relationships. It’s as if I’ve always set up the affairs to self-destruct. It has something to do, I think, with my last wife (I’ve had two of those). SHE, my second wife, was another HER of devastating capability. I came away from the divorce with a crippling sense of loss and I knew in my heart of hearts that there would never be another woman who could possibly fill the void. Boy, was I giving myself a hand job.
In truth—and truth is the purpose of this dubious memoir—I’ve always felt more in control with younger women; in control of myself, that is, as well as the relationship. I thought it seemed to be an equitable arrangement, me being the older one. The women I knew and loved usually thought so too. After all, we both agreed that my added years gave me an aura of maturity and special insight; qualities that, as I now flash back to those times, I possessed more in fantasy than in fact. But the “smartening up” had to come. Retribution for my chauvinist leanings descended as an avenging angel—and HER was wearing the wings.
November 1—Tuesday. Funny about (HER), she won’t respond to my letters pleading for honest and straight talk, what she wants, what she intends to have, etc. But after a month of no contact, she showed up last night at my door wearing a leotard with a gossamer apron over it, witch’s hat and carrying a bottle of Mumm’s Champagne.
She identified herself as a good witch of the Halloween season, said she missed me, wanted to see me. We drank champagne, I fed her dinner, then we went to bed for some glorious and unfettered sex.
The pattern for my life’s future was finally forged, I thought. I had long since nearly forgotten about that brief encounter two months earlier with the young live-in beauty down the street. HER was nothing more than a faded memory of what I could never hope to have anyway, so why should I cling to an impossible dream? I had decided I would submit to the beckoning of seniority and go peacefully into my dotage, an “older” woman at my side waiting for me to catch a cold so she could care. This was, as I perceived it at that particular dolorous time in my life, the aging process sticking it to me and then breaking it off at the hilt.
November 2—Wednesday. (HER) was most responsive to me and stayed the night. We made love again the next morning, then went out to the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena for lunch, took a walk around the grounds, came home and made love again. Delicious. Somewhere in the course of this nearly 24 hour experience, she said she wanted to see me again later in the week. I did my usual fast mumble, asked for her to call.
I have to admit that it seems pretty well over. I mean she’s discovered that being attached to me is not nearly as invigorating as bedding down the multitude of younger, stronger studs who ride the singles fast-track out there.
And there I was, typing away when I heard the front gate open and close and that fateful knock. It was HER, the essence of female perfection who lived with the ex-jock down the street. This fascinating young Aphrodite had delivered herself hot to my door; explaining that she took the chance I would be home and thought she’d “just drop by and say hello.” She was beautiful in a warm summer afternoon’s casual way, even more beautiful than I had remembered. And there was that soft hint of light glowing around her again, that magical nimbus shining ever so brightly.
HER already knew—but I didn’t, not then—that it wasn’t an impulse which had brought her to my door; it was manipulated destiny. When she leveled that armor-piercing smile at me, her golden brown eyes glistening, my senses were instantly strip-searched. I listened enraptured as she told me the first of what would prove to be a remarkable and infinite collection of lies which followed me relentlessly through all the days of our togetherness.
Without excessive elaboration, she explained that she’d been traveling around a bit after we first met, visiting friends here and there (she had a lot of those); and she had somehow lost contact with the lady writer I knew—the one who was related to her and who had first introduced us—and would I happen to have the lady writer’s phone number?
It was an electric surprise, having this lovely baby woman standing there being so, well, familiar . . . as if we had been in constant touch since our first meeting.
November 15—Tuesday. Woke up very early this morning, back into the heavy thinking and feeling miserable over the loss of (HER). I’m quite sure this is a residuum of seeing her and taking her to bed—and knowing that she views it all as just another orgasm. Will I ever glue it back together for myself? So what now? I can’t force myself to hit the bars—mainly because I’ve had to acknowledge that I’m not exactly primo male material for the kind of ladies I find interesting.
Did I stop to think that I never told HER where I lived— so how did she know? Did I stop to think that losing the lady writer’s number might possibly be a contrived excuse? No, forget all that. My mind was already sorting through forgotten strategies which might help me get this nubile temptress into bed. I knew I was woefully short of expertise with younger women. It had been a long, long while since I had made love to a woman who didn’t need to wear a bra for support. But what the hell, I figured that if she didn’t know another way to contact her own relative, then who knows; she might have chosen me because she was—well, it could be possible—actually interested.
Of course I had my lady writer friend’s number someplace and I invited this beguiling vision into my house while I did the obligatory fumble through the Rolodex.
Chapter 2
The script I was working on remained unfinished in the computer for the rest of that afternoon. HER had come on a mission, and I was that mission—I was to be the ex-jock’s replacement. Although she explained that she was back in town accepting temporary room and board from him, things had turned dull. The ex-jock wasn’t taking her places and doing all the fun things she wanted to do. She was bored, very bored, and in need of some fun and adventure. “We’re just good friends, that’s all.”
“Does he know you’re here?” A question I thought of prudent necessity.
She gave it an airy shrug. “He’s at work. Besides, we go our separate ways.”
The whereabouts of the ex-jock bothered me, I was already writing a scenario in my head:
There I was, in a fevered clinch with this writhing creature, my hands groping hungrily for her ripe young breasts. Suddenly, the killer of the neighborhood, a gargantuan beast with great hairy muscles and wearing a ragged football jersey, came crashing through the bolted door, his screams of jealous rage echoing in my ears as he lunged for my throat.
I quickly discarded the scenario; it needed a serious rewrite anyway. The part about “lunging for my throat” did not, as they say in my trade, “sing and dance.”
HER and I got cozy that afternoon. There was hugging and kissing, all lightly executed and accompanied by glib jokes—most of which were mine. This maneuvering, understand, was taking place in my upstairs bedroom. I had explained, rather casually I thought, that this intimate setting would offer us access onto my deck where we could enjoy the day’s warm breezes in rustic solitude. She was more than willing to be lured into my lair. It was all part of a master plan—HER’s, not mine.
I tried vigorously to get her into bed that afternoon, since I didn’t know how long the candy store was going to be open; or for that matter, why this delectable beauty had even made herself available to me. She was so-o-o sexy and she seemed so ready to bond our re-acquaintance in bed. But HER knew exactly how she was going to play the game—and it wasn’t the same game I had in mind.
We must’ve frolicked for several hours, clothes on forcrissakes, but there was to be no ecstasy. As she put it to me with a sigh of breathless regret, it was a matter of “loyalty” to the ex-jock down the street. After all, she was still with him, so to speak—so how could she possibly be with me? How indeed.
It was a time of decision. Should I be gallant or should I go for the gold? For a moment, I considered a more aggressive hands-on approach as a way of persuasion. Since HER and I had already participated in several hours of high energy grope and clutch, it didn’t seem too far amiss to continue this approach. Perhaps I could wear her down. I knew I was certainly worn down.
But something prodded me to straighten up and fly right. That damned inner voice was muttering again, calling me cheap names and laying on guilt. I began to feel something strangely unfamiliar that I hadn’t expected to feel. I found myself submerging helplessly into the innocent gaze of this sweet young prize sprawled so delectably upon my bed; disheveled to be sure, but still so chastely intact.
November 22—Tuesday. The reflexes have softened and diffused. The eyes no longer have it, at least not without reading glasses. The musculature, that lean, taut, youthful body I mis-used so well, has retired to memory lane. What’s left is the essence, not the original. And we all know that “essence” in this age of zipless sex and eternal youth, does not pay the rent. I often find myself in these moments of quiet desperation, saying that if brains were brawn, I would be Godzilla on roller skates. Is this the bottom line of the aging process? Is this what I have left, a premature dotage shoved down my shrieking throat?
Look, I’m still a man, I still have these vital, lusty feelings. I want to reach out and touch and take and have. But when I reach out, there’s nobody there. I am last year’s model in this year’s wrappings. Used to be sure, and there were those times I was rode hard and put away wet; but still, I like to think there’s lots of good mileage left.
Normally, my ego takes a firm stand at times like these— I mean whenever there comes a moment of truth in the pursuit of lovemaking. I tell myself that if the woman doesn’t want to do it, then I don’t want to do it either. But HER was throwing the heavy stuff at me, she was tying on my blindfold and lighting my last cigarette. I looked at this exquisite female poised so permissively on my rumpled bed and smiling so warmly and saying all the exact right things a man like me wants to hear. Her words were so . . . uh . . . sincere and meaningful as she told me how she felt so close to me; how she wanted me so much. But there was this one problem: how could she ignore her sense of respect for him, the ex-jock down the street?
God almighty, Captain, how could I argue with that?
November 24—Thursday. Thanksgiving day, grey and gloomy. Had a bad night, back to my agony over (HER). Woke up at 3:00 a.m., mind whirling with thoughts and words I wanted to say to her—of things I wish I could change. It’s all so hopeless, such wasted energy, so much self-inflicted pain.
No question about it, I’m obsessed by that woman. Next, I’ll be going through her trash can scrounging for bits of her life to cling to . . .
Our afternoon, vivid as it was with coitus non participus, ended over a leisurely cup of tea. I brewed it, HER drank it alone because I hate tea—yes, hate it.
DISSOLVE TO A FLASHBACK: I was once a back-east advertising executive, you see, and I worked for an agency that devised ad campaigns for the tea industry. Tea drinking in that lofty venue was akin to communing with God—or so the two clients I had to work with tried to convince me. They were drunkards of uncertain sexual persuasion, and artfully sadistic in the bargain. As a new and ambitious executive working on the account, I often had to visit these clients at their offices where they were usually recovering from a previous night of heavy boozing. They made their recovery by consuming large quantities of hot tea, which was custom-brewed by a woman who was hired to do nothing else. The tea had been grown especially for these two, presumably because of their exalted status, on the lower slopes of the Himalayas and carefully hand-picked.
They took great delight in bringing me down a notch at every opportunity because I was young and obnoxiously efficient; which is, I finally figured out, why they insisted I drink tea with them—lots of tea. After all, they were clients and I had no choice but to pretend I was enchanted with the idea. So I drank the stuff, cup after cup after cup, somehow managing to choke it down with a smile. “More tea, Jack?”
Sadist One was pondering me from behind his massive desk, his yellowed gaze narrowed in disguised contempt. “No, thanks. I’m finished, I’ve had enough.” I said it almost too cheerfully as I placed my genuine Spode cup and saucer on the edge of his desk with reverent care, then leaned back in my chair as if to savor the warm glow of the inhuman amount of liquid I had consumed. It was an act calculated to deceive; but Sadist One was not deceived, hangover to the contrary:
“Come on, Jack, if you’re going to work on this account, you ought to use the product . . .”
“No thanks, really. I’ve had four cups.”
“Who’s counting?”
Sadist Two, in the meantime, was sorting through the advertising storyboards for a TV commercial I had brought for client approval. He gave them a frown and a reluctant “tsk, tsk.”
“I don’t know, this campaign still troubles me. It seems too tacit . . .”
“Tacit?”
I felt a sinking feeling in my bloated stomach as I turned in my chair to face the disbeliever.
“But I thought we agreed the woman would not wake up her husband to ask him if he liked tea.”
Sadist Two nodded culpably. “I know.”
“She would just let him sleep and talk to herself in the mirror while she brushed her hair.”
Sadist Two nodded again.
“Yes, it sounded good at the time, but—”
While his conspirator diverted my attention, Sadist One had signaled the lady with the teacart to descend on my empty cup. It was refilled in the blink of a bloodshot eye.
“Let’s talk about it, Jack. Here, go ahead, have some more tea.”
In that office, a filled cup of tea could not be ignored. To not drink it was considered an insult; and insulting a client was a guarantee that any advertising materials needing approval would not get approved. This part of the day, this marathon tea-drinking orgy, was a major pit stop for these two dilettantes and they did it with leisurely panache; chain-smoking and snickering at their own jokes, sharing what they thought was literate conversation as they searched for new ways to punish me for my annoying efficiency.
On unluckier occasions, I was sometimes coerced into taking them to lunch—on the agency’s tab—to some incredibly expensive and snooty place. We’re talking about New York City here, Captain. I remember one extravaganza where they insisted we take a cab to an elegant restaurant all the way across the city. I asked for a menu but that was shoved aside and a bottle of Aquavit was ordered. It was frozen in a twenty-five pound block of ice and delivered to the table with ice tongs. By the time the ice had melted, so had I. The two clients poured me into a taxi and sent me back to the hotel; smugly certain they had brought me down another notch.
At these client encounters, I invariably became ill from swilling at their bottomless tea cup and I would have to excuse myself on a pretense and race down the hall to the restroom and throw up. I didn’t know it then but the two Boozers had somewhere along the way perceived that I wasn’t fond of tea to begin with—let alone cup after cup of it. So I became an amusing target for them, a diversion from their morning hangovers.
While I was off down the hall heaving my guts out, they must have been giggling in triumph. It was a no-win situation for me and I knew it. After several months of this hopeless charade, I developed such a loathing for tea—and for these two button-down freaks who made me drink it— that I had to resign from the account. To this day, I almost wince when somebody offers me a cup of tea.
(HER) says I keep myself bottled up, that I hide a rebellious and kicky side behind my proper decorum. She told me she fell in love with that hidden part; it’s what attracted her to me in the first place. It’s all a simple matter of self confidence, I know this. She’s such a crazy mixture of child and woman, so in pursuit of the gusto. Let somebody else worry about paying the bills and solving the problems. That’s not her job.
~
It was a bewildering afternoon during that first visit from HER. We came back downstairs from our energetic bedroom encounter to relax and make small talk while she sipped her tea and I had a good stiff drink. We talked in neutral terms as we tried to get to know each other, this time without the sexual acrobatics. That’s when I noticed her making a casual survey of the furnishings around the house. Later I would come to realize that she was already deciding that my couch had to go, along with the curtains.
As we talked and exchanged soft words at the end of this almost perfect afternoon, I caught her sneaking thoughtful looks at me—speculative looks. My inner voice explained to me what was going on here. HER was obviously smitten by my charm, the voice assured me. She also seemed impressed by my gentlemanly retreat from lust. As I felt the glow of her warm and curious smile, it was gratifying to think I was being assessed with such a keen and perceptive interest. “You really live here all alone?”
“Yes I do.”
“Have you always lived alone?”
“Not when I was married.”
I was wise to these kinds of questions. I knew what she was doing. This was the standard female appraisal of a potential male; I had heard questions like this before. They were a woman’s not-so-subtle way of determining if the man is: (a) Gay; or (b) lives with a woman who is out of town for the week and he’s hidden her clothes.
I’ve decided, as sort of a farewell gift to (HER) to give her Seymour, the stuffed doll I loaned her while she was still living at her parent’s home in (CITY) during our “courtship” days. He’s always been special to both of us.
Here’s the note I’m enclosing with the doll: “Seymour and I had a long talk because we’re old buddies and we’ve been through a lot of happy times together, and sad ones too. He told me he liked me but he said if it would be okay, if I wouldn’t mind, he’d like to go live with (HER). I said sure, it’s okay, I understand— and I’d like to live with (HER) too. You two take very good care of each other . . .”
I’m no longer trying to reach (HER) via words. She doesn’t respond to them.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that this was HER’s moment of hard appraisal, her process of decision. She was deciding whether or not I was worth further pursuit. And I had mistakenly assumed that this afternoon’s final minutes (the ex-jock was due home from work soon) would be the end of it. I figured we would finish off our time together with a goodbye kiss and then the beautiful young stranger would wander back down the street to her ex-jock and I would return to my waiting computer.
~
Wait a minute, Captain, that isn’t how it worked out at all. This is only the beginning, have another cup of tea.
Chapter 3
It was some time before I was to learn what happened at the ex-jock’s house down the street. He had apparently tired of his live-in arrangement with HER and requested she vacate the premises. This left her in a quandary, and also without accommodations—at least in the local area. She told friends at one point that she had come to town determined to marry the ex-jock; but apparently he wasn’t in on the gag since he proposed not marriage, but separate maintenance.
Given her eviction notice, she was forced to make alternate living arrangements—which she did by taking a lease on an apartment back in her own home city several thousand miles away. She had been goaded into this decision by the insistence of long-suffering parents who pleaded with her to settle down and proceed with her life in more practical ways. They wanted her to stop the gypsy roaming and drop anchor in the protective cove of home and family.
To this point in time, HER had never given too much thought to the bliss of domestic life, aside from a brief and stormy marriage several years prior to our meeting. She much preferred living in a disconnected state of perpetual motion.
November 26—Saturday. Well, I done did it. (HER) called last night about nine, playing on her excuse of a “cold,” which was her excuse last week too. We talked briefly, she mentioned that her parents had really been putting on the pressure for her to come home for Christmas, but she told them she had “promised” to spend the holiday with me.
So I found my opening, told her she’s off the hook, I didn’t want to spend the holiday with her, or see her again. I went on to explain that she flitted in and out of my life like a will o’ the wisp and I didn’t want to be a non-person anymore.
When HER visited me on that fateful day, she told me her departure for home and family was imminent; that she had only several more days left to tie up all the loose ends. I assumed the obvious, which was so obviously wrong. She was going to be geographically impossible very shortly, so why hang on to any foolish hopes? Again, I discarded her as offering any romantic potential. A roll in the hay perhaps—but not even that had materialized. She would be gone within a few more days and I’d never see her again.
I guess the cord is finally cut. I’m quite certain she won’t bend and step across the gap now, she’s not able to do that. She’ll give it a shrug and a sigh and find herself a new relationship. She goes for the momentary pleasure, that’s the whole game— the only game.
And then came another knock on my door, exactly four days after the first one. Like General MacArthur, HER had returned. The invasion plan was now complete. All that remained was for her to execute the invasion itself.
Surprised, and being the densely unperceptive person I am when I’m concentrating on a writing project, I offered to fix her the ritualistic cup of tea. Her answer—I’ll never forget it for as long as I live—was probably the most delicious throwaway line I’ll ever hear from a woman. But first, let me fill in a few of the details, Captain; a moment like this should be savored:
HER was standing at the base of the stairs, and I had moved on to the kitchen to prepare the tea I was certain she wanted. Lost hope of any sexual union had convinced me to be cordial and almost overly-polite. At least offering a hospitable cup of tea would be a comfortable ice-breaker; and nice feelings would be encouraged if nothing else. Besides, it was certainly pleasant enough being the recipient of such a devastating smile in what I assumed (again) would probably be the last time I would ever see her.
I was determined not to be aggressive, none of that physical stuff. I was going to show her that I could restrain myself from resuming my previous overt lechery. I would play it straight because a script was waiting in the computer and I intended to be back at the keyboard within oh, say, half an hour at most. So there we were on another warm summer afternoon, with all the ingredients for romance and no prospects of having one.
HER was freshly-scrubbed to a sun-bronzed glow and she was wearing a potent and exotic fragrance. And I couldn’t help but feel that same familiar rush when I opened the door and saw her standing there in all her youthful perfection. It was another one of those I-was-taking-a-walk-up-the-street-and-thought-I’d-say-hello excuses.
As her words spun their gossamer web, I could see that magic aura still surrounding her perfect features; it almost seemed to outshine the sunlight. Yes, there was definitely something special about this young woman, I had conceded that much to myself in our first encounter. But since I had already discarded any thought of ever seeing HER again, my surprised heart cheered once more when this spirit of ecstasy unexpectedly returned.
The inner voice, however, refused to be silent. Years ago I had taught myself that a TV writer must be true to his deadlines if he plans to pay the rent. My defenses tightened, I would not play the fool this time. I would remain loyal to the script still waiting; no wasted hours would wreck this afternoon’s pursuit of honest toil. No more high school make-out attempts, I reminded myself. Stay loose, have some small talk, then adios. That’s how to treat reality.
Besides, there was still the ex-jock down the street to be factored into the equation. I resolved to be unmoved and untouched and unloved, I was going to show strength of character. My strategy was firmly orchestrated and I knew I would make an easy retreat from this surprise reconnoitering and that would be that.
HER’s strategy had also been firmly orchestrated. She stood fast near the foot of the stairs, watching me fuss at the kitchen stove. I jiggled the burner controls, posing my question with gentlemanly restraint. “I suppose you’d like a cup of tea?”
At first, her response didn’t register in my conscious awareness. It was like one of those delayed concussions which catch up a few seconds after the explosion. I looked around with a startled blink, almost positive I had misunderstood.
She telegraphed another one of her dazzler smiles at me, amused by my reaction and aware that she was now in charge of my complete attention. Then, she pivoted a coquettish glance upward toward the bedroom and, as laden as it was with wicked promise, repeated her statement for my unbelieving ears: “I said, couldn’t I have the tea . . . afterwards?”
“Afterwards?”
That one little word tagged at the end of her response was an explicit and unmistakable message which the purely male part of me instantly understood. My fingers twitched off the burner control as I made a sharp spin away from both the water kettle and all my firm resolve.
“Let’s go upstairs!”
I said it in a crisp and lusty voice and HER turned, purring as I remember, and climbed my stairway to heaven.
About noon, (HER) called. Jolt! She said she had been touched by my gift of Seymour, the doll, and had been thinking things over for three weeks, wanted to see me, wanted to re-establish the relationship. We talked about what was important to her— marriage, having a child, a career, etc. None of this bothered me—except the “child” part.
I was firm in saying that I did not want children should we patch it up, would not concede to this. (HER) was equally firm, until I made her realize that it was a stumbling block which would stop any further negotiations.
It unsettled me. (HER) is the kind of woman who, when she wants something, drives straight for it, to hell with the barricades. She did not do that in making her offer of reconciliation. She in essence only dabbled a toe in the water to check the temperature—which she admitted today. I was not inspired to throw caution to the winds and sweep her back into my arms, as much as I wanted to.
Before we get any deeper into this business, Captain, I think it’s time I owned up to another flaw. All my fat and balding contemporaries will have a good chuckle about this. My memory for details does not always reflect pinpoint accuracy. The journal I started during the latter part of this trauma, and most of which I now repeat on these pages, dished out a large helping of “poor me” along with the facts of the ordeal. What I felt and wrote in these words was the product of an extended state of absolute desolation; a lover’s pain. It’s not that I distort the truth to deliberately deceive or confuse; it’s just that I sometimes get things mixed up. I reverse chronology or attribute incidents to the wrong people; or I mix up the right times with the wrong places. I am, in other words, getting older. If you are too, then no further explanation is necessary—you already understand what I’m talking about.
The clear and clean view is here in these pages, however; the plain truth of how it was with HER and I—even if some of the picture images have turned a little blurry in the mind. The important thing to remember, Captain, is that we’re not going for pinpoint accuracy here. We’re going for the broad strokes, the clues, the hard dynamics of what’s really involved in trying to tie together two lives separated by too many years of irretrievable time.
It’s best to know this if you’re trying to understand my star-crossed connection with HER. At this point, you may think I’m the villain and she’s the misunderstood little darling. It’s okay to think that because all of her friends certainly thought so toward the end. I was the grouch, the grump who didn’t always approve of the way she spread her sunshine around. It goes with the job when you’re the spear carrier for a royal being.
December 4—Sunday. This morning, I decided to go for it—to confront (HER) again and continue our “talk.” We went to a little cafe near the ocean and I told her how it was as far as I was concerned, that she had not shown any great enthusiasm for patching it up, that she had only given it lip service.
There was, for awhile, a lot of hostility floating between us and it looked like el finito for sure; which, in honesty, is what I wanted—at least I think I did. A resolution one way or the other.
There’s this other problem I better mention while I’m at it, this business of stamina which men of my years have to think about. I’ve always tried to stay in moderately good shape, to keep the musculature firm and well-toned. But stamina you see, takes more than just exercise. It takes a certain mental attitude too. I’m talking sexual stamina here, Captain, the stuff a man needs to sustain the pleasure machine.
I tend to believe it involves the head as much as it involves the body. Whether or not you have stamina in sufficient quantity depends, I think, on being in the right place at the right time with the right person; and whether you can feel a special urge to want to be with that person. It’s as if lovers, once they realize this is what they are, undergo a change like maple trees do in spring. The sap begins to flow—the strength and the stamina—and everything is sweet. Well, at least it’s sweet for a while; but even maple trees fall over sooner or later . . .
Fortunately, at least I hope it’s fortunately, we took a walk after breakfast and after a little fencing, I voiced what I wanted her to understand. Essentially, I said that the woman in my life has to consider me the most important person in her life. I have to be numero uno in thought and love and consideration. In turn, she gets it back full measure.
I told (HER) that, frankly, I didn’t fully believe what she said about getting back together. It just wasn’t her M.O. to say words and then hang back. She goes for it when she wants something. (HER) had to agree that I was right, that she did indeed still have doubts; that she was still undecided and not clear about her emotions or how to make a reconciliation work, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
That second afternoon HER and I spent upstairs in my bedroom proved to be a revelation—emotionally, sexually and psychologically. She went to my bed this time with full intent to do great bodily pleasure, and so she did. We literally consumed each other—you know the old saying—“like crazed weasels.” I could sense that she was eagerly determined to make me feel the joy of pleasing her.
HER was in a state of discovery, approaching her own zenith of sexual ascendancy (a fact she would come to emphasize on a more frequent basis than I cared to hear). In reluctant contrast, I was a repossessed macho man who had been—until then—pursuing a self-initiated course of sexual withdrawal.
It was a glorious pairing of bodies on that warm afternoon in my upstairs bedroom. Words of uncertain tenderness were exchanged. Feelings that I had kept so securely hidden behind the armor seemed to bubble freely to the surface. I could sense a happening, an epiphany; something was going on here with this young being which transcended the simple act of a purely sexual encounter. HER had made her transition into my life—the couch would be going out, the curtains would be coming down. From that afternoon onward, we were destined to be a union of pleasure and delight. At least that how it’s supposed to start. The agony comes later.
December 8—Thursday. Yesterday, I saw (HER) briefly just before she went to a counselor. This counselor is supposedly for her to make some kind of peace with herself regarding my firm stand against children. It’s not firm from the standpoint that I wouldn’t want a kid. It’s just that reality has stuck its ugly nose into the affair. I’m simply too old to start a new family. I was rather clipped and short with (HER). I guess my patience was running thin.
She said maybe we could get together for the weekend. I said no, positively not. No more stalling, no more hit and run routines. Either we put it together or we don’t.
After HER and I had thrown ourselves into bed, everything very quickly condensed into decision time. We were now, both of us, facing a tough dilemma. She told me her option had run out at the ex-jock’s house down the street and she was heading back home to her parents in several days. Since “home” was far away in another country, this meant our newly-consummated affair would be impossible to maintain on a continuing basis. We would be “G-U-A,” geographically unavailable.
Again, my self-defense mechanism went on automatic as my inner voice bluntly reminded me I was on a fool’s course. Don’t get involved any deeper, the voice said, keep it loose and light. These kinds of cautionary reminders may reassure the male ego, but they do not necessarily override what is happening in the heart. HER and I said a reluctant goodbye on that afternoon, but we made sacred promises to each other that it was to be only a very short goodbye. She was returning to her home city to set up housekeeping in a new apartment, the one her parents had helped her secure. She had promised them to stop her wandering ways and be a good girl and put substance in her life.
It turned out she wasn’t too truthful with her parents either.
Later, in thinking over my rotten attitude, I called (HER) and apologized, and to tell her that I really would like to get back together—but it was still okay if we didn’t. (HER) was sweet and said she was definitely “coming back,” wanted to think through some things, we would talk tomorrow. So that’s where we left it.