Love in the Slow Lane

Somehow, it's already eleven years ago that I met Dan Paik.
The essay I wrote about it got published today in P.S. I Love You, a Medium publication.

https://psiloveyou.xyz/love-in-the-slow-lane-467df7d9ccc7?source=friends_link&sk=471110cfdbd9cefec817166908394638

How I Met Dan

My date first messaged me on Match.com a couple of weeks earlier while I was visiting friends in Portland. My friend Robin and I sat on the couch, our heads together over my laptop and scrolled through the pictures and profiles of the men who were interested in me. “Date the bass player,” she said. “They don’t have to be the center of attention.” After decades with a man who remained at the dinner table or a party only when he commanded the room, I liked the idea of someone who didn’t need to be wailing the melody center stage. The bass player had a solid day job, too and was fit from years of practicing and teaching Tai Chi. He didn’t profess to have any “unusual needs” like the guy in the loafers and the sport coat who explained during our online correspondence that he insisted on being “included” when his girlfriends used the toilet. The bass player didn’t post dozens of pictures of himself poolside in a skimpy pair of Speedos or shots of his pet lizards posed on toy furniture. So I took Robin’s advice and answered his message. 

We agreed on a hike for our first date and climbed one of the trails near the Griffith Park Observatory on a December Southern California day when you could actually see into the distance. The ocean was shimmering in the sunlight; storm clouds piled up like a stack of pillows over the San Gabriel Mountains, and from our particular angle the Hollywood sign appeared to read, "Hollywoo." There wasn't really any serious wooing going on though. Both of us were cautious. But conversation was easy, sweet and deep. After two hours of talking and walking we hugged and agreed we’d get together again. Then we got into our separate cars and drove down the hill. At the bottom, as we sat side by side at a stop sign, he blew me a kiss before we turned in opposite directions.  

            But I wondered if I really would see him again. My experience with Internet dating did not include much forthrightness when it came time for the on-the-spot analysis of the first meeting. “It would be fun to get together again,” I told the stocky curly-haired guy I’d met for coffee after a couple of weeks of emailing back and forth about our favorite New Yorker stories. He had teeth the color of topaz and t-shirt so sweaty that I shook his hand with a fully extended arm and had no intention of seeing him again. 

            “You’re beautiful and sexy and you have a great sense of humor,” the screenwriter on the verge of his big break told me at the culmination of our expensive dinner. I tried to envision my silver hair glistening in the candlelight like some ad in an AARP magazine, but I saw the way his gaze shifted every time a pretty woman young enough to be my daughter walked by our table. “I’ll call you next week,” he said as he kissed my cheek. I knew he wouldn’t.

            Dating at the age of fifty-plus includes the inherent knowledge that we’ve all been broken, and there seems to be an ethic that says, “Do no further harm.” It makes it hard to be honest about the prospects of beginning a relationship. But with a little bit of luck a pleasant hour or two has been spent, and one returns home with a clearer idea of what characteristics might be included in that perfect match.  If you are someone that dates with your head and not your heart, that is.

            I have no idea what the bass player sees in me, is what my head says as I ride next to him. I ponder his profile while he watches the six lanes of traffic in front of us. We’re so different from one another, I think. Different ethnicities. An age gap of ten years. I’m taller. I know very little about music or eastern religion. But then he glances my direction and our eyes meet. There’s nothing I’d like better than to skate my palms over his shaved head and bring his mouth to mine. How exactly did an online dating site figure this out?  Or am I just swept away in the moment the way I was last summer before I got tired of the playwright who wanted to read me a play of his every evening before we turned out the lights?

            I’m striving for more candor this time around, and while I don’t think Internet dating requires a brutally accurate assessment of why people don’t especially want to go on that second date, I aspire to some degree of honesty. “I don’t ever plan on getting married again and if we continue to see each other, I’m going to take things very slowly,” I told my date before our good-bye hug in Griffith Park. “It might be months before I’m alone with you in the dark,” was my response after he invited me over to his place to watch a movie. “I’m really glad you came to the airport,” I tell him now, electing to keep my hands to myself in an effort to avoid a fifty-car pile up.

            When we get to my place, I invite him in for a glass of wine. I’ve already told him I’m not ready to sleep with him yet, but as we sit in my living room with the lights low, visions of the future stand quietly in the shadows. Through the French doors, I can see the ivy and jasmine vining around my patio, and it’s easy to imagine my roses in full bloom when summer comes. Something is unfurling inside my heart.

            In this era of Internet dating, love happens the way it always has. It’s not a laundry list of attributes or an inventory of likes and dislikes that propel us toward one another. It’s an earlobe, the taste of a kiss, or the way someone nods when they understand what is being said. Dating sites no doubt increase the traffic on the freeway to our hearts. The intersection of the data on our screens and the input of our senses is a good place to stop and smell the roses. But love, as it’s always been, is still a happy accident where the palpable world collides with the mysteriously intangible. 

            My date pats the sofa as I set two glasses of wine on the coffee table. I curl up next to him, pondering the wonders of Internet dating and the small miracle of how, in a city of almost four million people, I’ve been guided to someone I never would have found on my own.

Throwback.....WTF? It's Friday? I don't care. Throwing us back in time anyway.

Beach walk on the rocky shores of Maine. October 2012.

This post is from January, 2009. My third date with the man who loves me. As I sit at his bedside, the pondering of the past five years is one of my comforts.

"I gave San Francisco to a woman," my ride from the airport says. I like it that he understands what I mean when I tell him I've had trouble being in L.A.  "It's a problem when a freeway exit sign represents a person and the experiences you've had with that person," he says.  He really gets it, I think as the 110 curves through downtown. "There's Mr. Ex's building," I say as the damn thing looms over us in the urban glow like a monolith that maybe has a mind of its own and just might want to tip over right now and crush us.  He looks over at me and nods. This guy isn't a taxi driver.  He's a Match. com guy and the ride from the airport is date #3.  We've been emailing the whole while I've been away--not obsessively--just very few days or so and I like him even better than I did when I left.  But the only thing I know about where our relationship is headed is simply that he's giving me a ride home from the airport.  One date at a time.  It's all I can manage. 

I panicked in the jetway.  What if I didn't recognize him? That last time I saw him, we'd sat in the dark at a dance concert.  What if he didn't recognize me?  Airport fluorescent isn't my best look.  What if he recognized me and pretended he didn't and walked away?  But when the escalator delivered me to the hallway outside of baggage claim he was there at the bottom--pretending to hold up a sign.

I had a fantasy for months after the marriage ended.  Whenever I came back from a trip, I'd imagine Mr. Ex had changed his mind and there he was at the airport waiting for me.  He was holding a sign and it said, Take Me Back or I'm Your Vehicle, Baby, a line from a Chicago song he'd always quote if he gave me a ride somewhere. Mr. Ex never showed up.

But now here I am in a car with a guy that did show up and we're driving through my past in the City of Angels.

EXPOSED

I've been feeling rather exposed lately.  As if my heart could be plucked from my chest, put on a plate and eaten until not even the tiniest morsel remains.

"This isn't a relationship," I told the man I'm dating a week or so ago.  He looked surprised until I went on.  "It's a love affair," I said.  Making that distinction was my way of reconciling the fact that we live apart and aren't really involved at all in each other's day to day lives and that I see him about half as much as I'd like to.  This week, I'm asking myself what I want--really.  His last relationship was a weekend thing.  For 7 or 8 or I dunno how many years, he and this woman saw each other only on the weekends.  I could see that working out...if we actually saw each other on the weekends.  What if what this all comes down to is that I like him more than he likes me?

La Meme

I've been tagged by an excellent blogger, Elizabeth Aquino at http://elizabethaquino.blogspot.com  Her blog a moon worn as if it had been a shell is nothing short of remarkable.

This is one of those question things like they do on Facebook.  I'm supposed to answer them and then tag more people who will do the same etc.  I like the title of this one--La Meme is French and translates to "the same."  We are all more alike than we imagine, I think.  Plus, I guess La Meme  is also a brand of absinthe, which sounds really good to me right now.

Here goes:

What are your current obsessions?

The man I'm dating but very rarely see these days. The indelible mark that seems to have been left on me by my divorce.

Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?

White silk pajamas

Last thing you bought?

2 wallets--for my mom and for her twin sister for mother's day

What are you listening to?

Birds singing & one of my dogs breathing deeply in her sleep

Favourite kid's film

Lady and the Tramp

Favourite Holiday Spots

southern Greece, anywhere in France, Rome, New York City,Cambria on the central coast of California

What are you reading right now?

I just finished Pope Brock's American Gothic and am about to start a book that mysteriously ended up in my stack--I think because someone (I can't remember who) said I had to read it.  It's called The Living End by Stanley Elkin.

Four words to describe me: 

moody, struggling, grateful,sad

Guilty pleasure?

kahlua in a glass of milk at bedtime

Who or what can make you laugh until you are weak?

So many things...I once could not get up out of my seat after a performance of Noises Off that I saw on Broadway.

First Spring thing?

I planted a lemon tree and a kumquat tree on my patio.

Planning to travel next?

Minnesota, Iowa & Greece--all in the month of May!

What do you wish for most?

Other than world peace, etc? My one true love.

Best thing you ate and drank recently?

A made to order tofu bowl from Whole Foods

When & with whom did you last eat dinner by candlelight?

3 days ago with my daughter and the elusive man I might still be dating.

Favourite ever film?

Cassablanca .

Care to share some wisdom?

Asking for help is very difficult, but sometimes necessary...and very, very...helpful.

If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?

I would never ever think of my ex-husband again.

What's your motivation for starting another day?

My dogs have to be walked or they'll eat my couch and tip over the dining room chairs.

Rules of la meme:
Respond and rework. Answer questions on your own blog. Replace one question. Add one question. Tag 8 people (I'm tagging only four)

I tag:

Barry at http://www.schwumpdumps.blogspot.com

Julie at http://www.julesarose.blogspot.com/

http://tovadarling.blogspot.com/

 Musings of the Lame

Write the Story of Your Life in 10 minutes?

I have a much older half-brother. Maybe he's 70. And maybe he's not my half-brother. He could be just a step-brother. That's a secret my father took to his grave. But that's another whole family tree blog that I don't plan on starting though if I did the title might be Can Only See the Forest, Not the Tree. Or maybe Family Bramble. Or Through Thicket and Thin. Or how about Please Tell Me Who My Siblings Are In Case I Need A Kidney? Anyhow, my aunt just emailed me and said J. seems to have a girlfriend. Cool. HOW DO PEOPLE DO THIS?  

I had date #5 with the Match.com guy last night and I am just completely stymied. How many Friday night dinners and Saturday night theatre dates will it take before I feel like I know him? How do people get to know one another when there's more past than future? Every day that ticks by is one more calendar square of some stranger's/future date's life that I have no clue about.

The theatre piece we went to last night was a series of vignettes performed by women writers on the subject of motherhood. Crucial bits of these women's lives LIVE ON STAGE. I went because my friend Elizabeth was in it. We've taken memoir writing classes together and are in a writing group. Memoir cuts to the chase. You learn your fellow memoir writers' big stories right away.  I've never shared a meal with Elizabeth at her dining room table. I've never gone to the movies with her, prowled the mall, lazed the day away with her on the beach, babysat her kids, but I know her big story--the thing that has changed her into who she is now, and she knows mine.  

But how do I get to know this guy I like, that I'm probably repelling because I am so stand-offish and look at him like he's a stranger? Should I date only memoir writers? Not too many men there.

Mr. Match practically leapt into his car to drive away from me last night. Maybe if I ever see him again I'll ask him to write me the story of his life in 10 minutes.  This is a writing exercise that's often used in memoir classes. There's an even shorter version of this idea that's come out in an anthology called Six Word Memoirs.  Some examples are: "One long train ride into darkness." (Wayne Colodny) "Wolf! she cried.  No one listened." (May Lee) I think perhaps this idea originated with a Dickens' character in Great Expectations, one of the books I'm currently obsessed with.  When Magwitch tells Pip the story of his life, this is how he puts it: "In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, you've got it". 

That's what I want--well, not that exactly, but THE STORY.

Who Gets the Angels?

"I gave San Francisco to a woman," my ride from the airport says.  I like it that he understands what I mean when I tell him I've had trouble being in L.A.  "It's a problem when a freeway exit sign represents a person and the experiences you've had with that person," he says.  He really gets it, I think as the 110 curves through downtown. "There's Mr. Ex's building," I say as the damn thing looms over us in the urban glow like a monolith that maybe has a mind of its own and just might want to tip over right now and crush us.  He looks over at me and nods.  This guy isn't a taxi driver.  He's a Match. com guy and the ride from the airport is date #3.  We've been emailing the whole while I've been away--not obsessively--just very few days or so and I like him even better than I did when I left.  But the only thing I know about where our relationship is headed is simply that he's giving me a ride home from the airport.  One date at a time.  It's all I can manage. 

I panicked in the jetway.  What if I didn't recognize him? That last time I saw him, we'd sat in the dark at a dance concert.  What if he didn't recognize me?  Airport fluorescent isn't my best look.  What if he recognized me and pretended he didn't and walked away?  But when the escalator delivered me to the hallway outside of baggage claim he was there at the bottom--pretending to hold up a sign.

I had a fantasy for months after the marriage ended.  Whenever I came back from a trip, I'd imagine Mr. Ex had changed his mind and there he was at the airport waiting for me.  He was holding a sign and it said, Take Me Back or I'm Your Vehicle, Baby, a line from a Chicago song he'd always quote if he gave me a ride somewhere. Mr. Ex never showed up.

But now here I am in a car with a guy that did show up and we're driving through my past in the City of Angels.

Bachelor #2

I went to dinner with another date tonight. He's a writer and we have a lot in common. Our meal together was very, very pleasant. High energy and vivacious. I liked him well enough to see him again, but maybe he's not that into me. I have no idea, really. We were on our best smiling behavior and it's just hard to read  a total stranger. Dinner or coffee is such a common first date, but there's a certain amount of pressure in that endeavor--staring into someone's eyes while stuffing things into your mouth or slurping something hot while trying not to dribble.  It's, well........a little too intimate, maybe. The hiking date was easier in a lot of ways. I didn't wonder what to wear and we  could walk and talk without being forced into eye contact while chewing.

I've made email contact with 3 other guys, too and will maybe date them when I get back from this set of travels. The way I see it, it's like when magazines or lit journals allow simultaneous submissions---it's good to get that piece of writing around to several editors at the same time. There's a better chance that it will find a home.  But wait.....am I looking for a home?  I'm not.

So this is where it gets complicated.

Dancing in the Dark

I had the second date with the guy I met for the first time last weekend. After we decided to get together again, I suggested we attend the Christmas open house of my favorite L.A. modern dance company.  I guess the standard dating advice givers might throw up their hands at this. Modern dance isn't everyone's cup of tea, but why pull punches is my attitude.  Here's what I like.  Here's who I am. Why waste time?  And after all, I'm willing to try new stuff, too. Wanna take me to Vegas?  Hell, I'll go. Nascar? You bet. I've never enjoyed these things in the past. But having the person you love reject the past you concocted together is a great way to open your mind to new things. My date seemed to enjoy our evening, although he told me that a few years ago he would have scoffed.

Anyway, before the dance stuff we had dinner in an incredibly raucous bar with the Laker game on a screen almost as big as the stage the dancers performed on.  We had to sit close and talk into each other's ears and found out that we both love to watch basketball.   I wonder if there could be a Match couple more different than this guy and me.  I ask myself why I like him,  and the best thing I can come up with is that he seems like a really good person....and that I like his face (not typically handsome) and his eyes. He's studied Tai Chi for 30 years (and teaches it) and has all this eastern spiritual stuff going on and I can't imagine what he sees in me.........all I can figure is that he's as willing as I am to open heart and mind to something new.

Dating.  A leap of faith--like the dancers in a Diavolo performance.

http://www.diavolo.org/fs_main.html

Go see them at Santa Monica City College February 20th and 21st.

Up.....Date

I had a date today with a very nice guy.  We climbed one of the trails near the Griffith Park Observatory on a rare Southern California day when you could actually see into the distance.  The ocean was shimmering in the sunlight, storm clouds piled up like a stack of  pillows over the San Gabriel Mountains and from our particular angle the Hollywood sign appeared to read, "Hollywoo."  There wasn't really any serious wooing going on though. Both of us were cautious in our approach to the date. But conversation was easy, sweet and deep.  I told him I'd like to get together with him again, but that I wanted to move slowly, let things unfold very gradually instead of fantasizing that our relationship might turn into the next big thing and let that fantasy push us forward into something that might not be real.  

After two hours of talking and walking, we got into our separate cars and drove down the hill. At the bottom, as we sat side by side at a stop sign, he blew me a kiss before he went left and I went right.  

I drove west to a friend's art show and drove through the neighborhood where I used to live with Mr. Ex and then across Melrose where he and I saw dozens of plays over the three decades we regularly went out to the theatre in L. A. 

The shadow of all those years together is still like a rain cloud waiting to burst and wash away present pleasures.

Emotionally Unavailable

I've been on Match.com again (it's like crack--I say I'm quitting, but...)  His name was Gene and we've been emailing back and forth for the past few days. Tonight he emailed me and said he was sorry but he's realized he's "emotionally unavailable." It's the holidays. They're a bitch when your heart is broken, when your heart is half-way healed and probably when you think it's almost recovered. While I was visiting my friends in Portland, we took a scenic drive and then went downtown to walk through the streets under the lighted trees. When I stepped out of the car and heard the brass band on the corner finishing a Christmas carol, I felt my eyes fill with tears.  All those houses with their pretty lights, the city lit in some kind of happy conspiracy and then the music---it made me sad and if I hadn't had a lollipop in my purse, I would have been standing in a puddle of tears. This is my second divorced Christmas.  I had 29 married ones.  I wonder how many Gene had.   

Retail Therapy

I've been craving some new lingerie for weeks.  Mission accomplished. Macy's is having a fab "buy 2 bras, get 2 free" sale!  I hope my efforts find  an appreciative audience.

Oscar vs. Emmy

There are only so many things one can do with a painful and squinty pirate eye. Reading is out. Ditto watching a movie. Writing is a pain.  So I feel a blog binge coming on.  I've been surfing the net and found some information about the guy who had the potential, all those years ago, to derail my wedding plans.  He's the one in the tux holding the Emmy.  I wrote him a note and sent it off in care of his agent. Maybe it will make life more interesting.  Maybe not.

The Herd

Most of the people I've gotten to know left today.  I still have a week to go and will need to find new dinner conversation.  Start from scratch. Maybe I'll ring the blade of my knife against my wine glass and ask if there are any men, amongst the new arrivals, with a moose tattoo.

Desperately Seeking Moose

Okay, I know this is weird, but bear with me.  I just woke up from a nap and I dreamt of a guy and well, I liked him a lot and he had this tattoo. That's it in the picture.  I can't draw, but maybe you get the idea. Pine forest. Big ole moon (that's the thumbtack.) And a moose. Does anyone know this guy?  He's really nice. Smart. Sweet. Fun.  And a good kisser. Oh--The tattoo was on his chest and abdomen. Big. From about below the nipple line all the way to the belt line.  Call me......

Match

I sweartogod I unsubscribed but there it was. His picture in my in-box saying he'd winked at me and he was gorgeous--45 and gorgeous. So I clicked.

I'd been thinking about devotion this morning. What a beautiful word it is.  How it sounds like doves, or votive or lotion, and how I wanted devotion to a partner, to a relationship, how maybe this time there would be more cooing, more peace, olive branches every night for dinner. And there it was.  The word.  Devotion. "I will add a new meaning in the dictionary to the word "devotion," he says in his profile.  

Then I scroll down. Eyes: Brown; Hair: Brown; strategically placed tattoo..........................................Politics: ultraconservative.  

Oracles and Ouzo

Three weeks ago, I was in Greece.  At this very moment, I was on a bus heading back to Athens after a day at Delphi. That was the day I decided I'd talk to strangers, the day I decided internet dating sites were infinitely less interesting than real places with real people.

I've thought a lot about the relationships in my life since then and about what I wish I had done differently in my marriage (this is different from thinking about what I wish he had done.)  I have a lot more thinking to do, but what I really want is to be able to do is express what I am really thinking and feeling, and listen to what the other person is saying and appreciate how they are feeling. 

The protagonist in the  novel I'm writing is such a victim that she's begun to irritate me.  It's up to me to edit that out of her so she can take her journey and transform.   

The same sort of transformation should happen in a good memoir. There's got to be transformation--at least for that one segment of life that the writer is writing about.  

All of this is why I will be spending my day inside my studio.  

Of course, I'm hoping for transformation in real life, too.

Tonight, if I can find a liquor store, I'm going to buy a nice bottle of Greek ouzo and share it with the friends I've made here--and some of the people I haven't gotten to know yet, i.e. strangers.

A Marriage Made of Teflon

One more internet dating prospect has evaporated back into the ether of cyberspace. No dinner.  No coffee date.  I have too much baggage, he says. Thirty-two years worth of baggage is pretty hard to stow in an overhead bin the size of calendar year.  Yeah, I've got baggage and it's expensive to travel with it.

But I think people who say they can pick up and go with their toothbrushes and the clothes on their backs are kidding themselves.  Where's this guy been all these years?  

I'm not sure I'd want a life (or a man) made of Teflon, but then again--this stuff is getting heavy. I'm now visualizing abandoned suitcases......here comes the bomb squad to blow them up.

Broken

The coffee date with bachelor #1 turned into dinner and a walk in Old Town.  It was fun.  A very nice man.  We share some common interests.  He's not pompous and didn't talk about himself for hours.  I went for connection....but not for fabricating something out of nothing.  I paid attention to what he was saying, doing; what I was thinking, what I was feeling, what I was doing.  The evening wasn't a bust.  But there was no bolt of lightening, not even a little buzz of electricity, really.  So much of love is just out there in that invisible surge, the gesture, the sound of a voice, the way you feel when your knees accidentally touch on a bus ride. That's online dating's missing piece.

When a friend I made in Greece and I were discussing love, he told me he was broken.  I said that at this stage of life, if we're not still married, we're all broken.  Hopefully, not beyond repair.

Court(ing)

I spent three hours in family court today. The end product was temporary spousal support. I don't like the word "temporary," because the marriage is permanently over. He's married to someone else.  Eventually though, we will reach an agreement on permanent support and I will have that for the rest of my life--which is...temporary. 

Everything, it seems to me, is temporary.  And, if you have a good memory, everything is permanent, too.  Temporary.  Permanent.  It's hard to separate them.  

I never imagined my marriage as temporary.  I never believed that my husband's leaving me would be permanent. But as "they" say, "Life goes on."  Temporarily, that is.

I'm off to have coffee this afternoon with bachelor #1.  It's an exercise, more than anything else. He's semi-retired--a businessman. In the wings, there is also an architect, an attorney, and an investment broker.  I may have coffee with all of them eventually, but the dating websites have been un-bookmarked.  No more profiles, no more guided questions, no more "must haves" and "can't stands."   Meanwhile, I'll just try to look people in the eye when life presents an encounter.  What we all want, I think, is connection.  Can you hear me now?  How about now?