So Much Love

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So much love.  So much love lost.  Where did it all go?

I’m driving home alone after a long summer weekend with friends.  I draw up beside a pair of young rebels flying down the pavement on a motorcycle in the lane next to mine, defying the law that requires that they wear helmets.  Her girlish arms wrap around his waist, her mouth presses against his ear.  His head tilts back toward her, his mouth opens in laughter.  Her sun-streaked hair flies out behind her.

I know them.

I know them well.

Georgia and Joe; they are the ghosts of my young love and me the summer after my sophmore year at college.

We streak past tall pines crowded thickly together along the side of the highway.  My windows are rolled down.  The scent of balsam fills my nostrils.

We slow down as we drive through the towns with French and Native American names; names that caress as they slip through my lips, names that translate as, “The Lake That Speaks,” “Translucent Waters,” and “The Breathing Hole of the Gods.”

 

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Adventure in a Parisian Cemetery

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We’d bought a map in a little kiosk just off to the left of the iron-gated entrance to Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris .  Alan, my ex-husband, and I had picked out the names of the honored dead whose monuments we wanted to find; Oscar Wilde, the Irish writer who died disgraced and penniless in Paris, now resting under a striking Art Nouveau monument; Abelard and Heloise, real-life star crossed lovers from the 12th century, separated in death by the walls of their adjoining tombs;  Frederic Chopin, the composer of deeply romantic melodies.

Oscar Wilde's Grave

These are kisses covering Oscar Wilde’s grave

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Kidnapping Men: Part Two

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Ten years after the incident in New York, surrounded by a different cast of characters and on another continent, I kidnapped my second man.

On a sunny June morning in southern Scotland, Alan, my former husband, our friend Reggie (who wrote One Man’s Viewpoint) and I dropped Reggie’s current squeeze, Rachel, at the gates of an ancient castle for a day of history, antiques and gardens, with a promise to pick her up at the 4 p.m. closing time.

We were intent on more vigorous activity.  Our aim was to follow the ancient cattle drover’s trail that Reggie found in a guide book.

We parked our rental car next to a gypsy caravan, found the trail exactly where the book said it would be and headed out.

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Kidnapping Men

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Okay, I’ve done it.  I’ve bent them to my will; taken what they had and used it to meet my needs.  I’ve kidnapped them

Twice.

The first time was on a rainy night in New York City.  Have you ever tried to find a cab on a night like this?  Impossible.

Alan (my former husband) and I were newlyweds, bar hopping in the Big Apple with Marius (see Valentine’s Day Two) and his current squeeze, Pamela.  We were trapped in Soho, miles from our final destination.    Drops of rain fell on our shoulders, on our hair and dripped off our noses as we watched full taxis pass us by.

Drastic action was called for.  I took it.

Like Claudette Colbert in the movie It Happened One Night, I edged away from my companions, slid one foot off the curb and manufactured some wardrobe malfunction that required sliding my skirt high up my thigh to fix.

Clark Gable is looking at Claudette Colbert just as Alan looked at me as I fixed my own manufactured wardrobe malfumction.

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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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An Air That Kills

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I stole time away from work on Friday for lunch with my friend, Patrick.  Last month, when I encountered him by chance out strolling in my neighborhood, I dug into my pocket and gave him The Vixen Divorcee’s business card.  After we parted I thought, “Georgia, are you insane!  What were you thinking?  Now he’s going to think you are the biggest bit of inane mental fluff imaginable.”

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You’re So Beautiful

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Words that ring with such sweetness and light in the ears of any woman; “You’re so beautiful.”

Words that ring with particular sweetness and light when falling on the ears of a woman whose 60th birthday looms closer than she’d like to acknowledge.

That would be me.

The words only work their magic under two conditions.  First, they need to be sincere.  They can’t be lies or exaggerations.  They certainly can’t be manipulative; spoken to achieve a desired result.

 

 

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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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