When the trash truck rear-ended my car while I was stopped at an intersection, I should have suspended all dating plans for fear of what comes next. Not a real woo-woo girl in general, I still take note of full moons, that damn Mercury in retrograde and the resulting whiplash that happens when an 8,000-pound vehicle slams into my bumper.
Days before, my dermatologist cut into my left cheek (the one on my face) and sliced away a basal cell carcinoma, leaving about an inch-long line of black stitches crawling across said cheek like tiny ants.
I tell my date when he calls that I’ve tangled with a truck and a scalpel. I’m in need of something fun.
“How bad does your face look?” he asks before setting a time and place to meet. “I’m happy to postpone.”
Nope, I’m good I say because I’ve already devised a plan to meet this 6’ 5” looker on the top of the mountain at a fancy hotel bar, valet parking only. If a guy doesn’t flinch at the word “valet” they’ll probably pass some other dateability criteria. Furthermore, I like the romance value of this place where magenta shadows layer the patio at dusk and tiny white lights flicker around the infinity pool.
His back was to me as I arrived, and I watched as the bartender served him a martini, dirty, three olives.
When he stood up from the barstool and leaned down to hug me, I saw he had on a neatly pressed collared dress shirt in lavender, untucked, over cream-colored linen pants. I felt my chin graze his breastbone as he pulled me toward him, my good cheek resting on his solid pec muscle.
He was cuter than his photos with tortoise-shell glasses framing his tanned and angular face, and we fell into an easy rhythm of Q and A about ex-wives (two for him), ex-husbands (one starter and one long marriage for me), careers (he recently sold a successful business and now splits time between the desert and a mountain home in ski country).
A serious bout with cancer a few years ago took him out of the dating pool for awhile, but he was thankful that his stepdaughter put her education on hold to care for him during treatment. Wow, I thought, for a twenty-something to leave school like that, he must be someone special—and she’s not even his own daughter.
I’m not sure if special is the exact word I’d use for him now, but forthright does come to mind.
I watched his smooth, lanky stride like an athlete’s leaving the locker room as we slid off our stools and started toward the lobby. He grabbed my hand with a firm grip and gave it a squeeze, turning to face me as he said nonchalantly, “I like sex.”
Stunned, I snapped back without thinking, “Well who doesn’t?” and gave a nervous giggle.
We stood in front of the hotel as the valet brought our cars up the curved drive, and my date put his arms around me for a hug. “I really like you,” he said as his lips brushed mine.
I smiled back looking up at him, his eyes like inkblots. “I like you, too,” I said as I climbed into my waiting car, feeling a slight flutter in my chest.
I polled my gays and gals about the sex remark before our next date, and thoughts varied between, “He wants you to know he’s still performing his one-man show in the boudoir,” to “He’s weeding out women who DON’T like sex.”
Let’s just say that if I were a sex on the second date kind of girl (no judgment here ladies, but I don’t roll that way in my 60s for every reason from STDs to a gnarly hysterectomy scar), I’d have had a willing partner. He held the front door open for me after our goodnight kiss—and then walked inside my living room behind me. Even though I hadn’t invited him in, I felt the nervous hum of something physical between us.
I’ll pause the story right here to say this was only the third man who had been inside my home since I began dating five years before. My rule was to never be in a private place with someone I hadn’t dated for months, and this situation could have played out differently if my gut hadn’t said, “This guy’s okay.” I’d done my online homework and verified not only the information about the sale of his business on the front page of his town’s newspaper, but also the history of his deep family ties there. Everything he told me about himself matched the digital details.
I am relieved to say he was in no way aggressive or demanding with me—just horny, I suppose, since HE LIKED SEX (I can still hear Oprah saying, “When people show you who they are, believe them.”)
I faced him as we sat side-by-side on my sofa and told him I needed to share some information before he got the wrong idea. I explained that I wasn’t ready yet to bare my emotions or my lady parts to someone after a couple of dates. I needed time.
His right arm retreated from around my shoulders as he started to stand up. “Well,” he told me, “that information certainly puts a lot of pressure on me.”
“You?? How so?” I said as my left eyebrow arched a little higher than usual.
“I’ll be on eggshells around you now, but I want to see you again. I’ll call next week.” And with that I led him to the door where he again gave me a sweet kiss, encircled me with a comfortable bear hug and walked into the starry-skyed night and out to his car.
I never saw or heard from him again.
Later after a brisk four-mile walk at the foot of the mountains that stand watch over my town, I found the answer I was looking for about his disappearing act.
He had told me a story about his parents, how he’d asked for some help financing a new business decades ago. His dad said no, and then he told me the answer from his mother that really stunned him: “It’s not the right property for you. No to the loan.”
He gave a little laugh and said he got the money elsewhere, turned it into a multi-million dollar company with a couple of partners and his life was good in spite of Mama’s turn down. But years since his mother’s passing, he still couldn’t get over how it played out, he said.
“She never told me no in my life, that was the only time.”
With that memory, a little red flag began whipping in my head, and I never gave the guy another thought. I know for sure I missed the oncoming train of a man who expects to hear “yes” from every woman who revolves around his tall, entitled self.
And I’m no good at revolving around anything. It always makes my stomach hurt.