Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

Some more one date wonders from Craig's List. You don't wonder why they are unattached, you do wonder, though, how they got so far in life (age-wise only) without having learned anything about women, and how men need to interact with women.

Divorced? Oh, yes.

Before agreeing to meet, I asked Thomas his marital status. (There's a reason for the question which I haven't brought up yet, it is because of the separated man who was not as upfront as he should have been about the degree of his separation.) Thomas told me that years ago his wife had left him and their two young sons, because she felt that "she couldn't do it," and that he raised them himself. One was in college and the other had already graduated. What the heck, I thought, maybe a sensitive man.

So, when we met for wine and appetizers, I was a bit stunned when his life story had an important chapter that he had not mentioned when answering my question. It seems that there was another marriage. It seems, too, that his answer that he was divorced only referred to wife number one, not wife number two. From her he had only been separated for two months. Oh, and while he was figuring out what to do, he was living in a friend's basement.

Need I say that there were no more meetings. But I did get a needed ego boost, he asked me out again at the end of the date.

Widowed for how long ago?

I was definitely looking forward to meeting the successful Jewish widower, who was semi-retired at 35, totally devoted to his children and cared for his wife through her illness. Can I say that I was thinking "rescue" as he described his life and what he was looking for in a woman. But, as always, there were some hints at wrinkles in the smooth sail to early retirement with him.  First, his wife passed away less than three months prior. Try as I could to validate his rush to remarry, it still made me feel uneasy. I was separated for three years before I ventured into the field. Also, he did have some lack of esteem issues, even though he built a successful business that was supporting his early retirement, he kept commenting on how intelligent other people were. I mean who's afraid of an English teacher once they gets out of high school?

When we met, in one of my favorite restaurants (I was going for food with him, not coffee), he stared at me, assessing my observable qualities. But, vixen that I am, I stared right back at him. Perhaps my forthrightness was not the way to win the man who was willing to buy an $800,000 beach condo for his next wife as he had done for his deceased wife. Ah, well. I didn't really want to retire from life at 47 to have sex, eat breakfast, have sex, go for a walk on the beach with him for the rest of my life. It had an unseemly quality, since he wanted to "save" someone from her trailer park life with his McMansion lifestyle. Besides, I have things I still want to do.   

Insight from a Singer-Songwriter

And then there was Jeremy, the singer-songwriter who, upon meeting at Greenberry's Coffee Shop got me a cup of coffee, but none for himself, since he only likes Starbucks and had just had a cup. What to say to that?

As he told me about his two divorces and three children, his being estranged from his two children from his first marriage because she poisoned them against him, and how his second ex-wife was moving with his daughter to California, I kept thinking RUN LAURA RUN. And I should have, because when he espoused to me his opinion of my life, I became poisoned by his thoughts. According to his version of Zen philosophy, I am where I am in my life because that is I where I have led myself and where I want to be. How people think that we really are masters of our fate, and that we have control over other people and their actions, stuns me. Is this a man thing? this impression that you are the rudder, mast, and even wind of your life? So now, every once in a while, I have Jeremy's "insight" swirling about in my head, as if I need even more negative thoughts there.

By the way, Jeremy, you have a lot less hair than in your picture, and your teeth are much yellower, too.

Needless to say, Jeremy won't be writing any songs about me.