won’t you change partners and dance with me?

Just got back a few hours ago from my professional conference in a European capital, and now I’m unpacking one set of clothes & repacking another for my trip tomorrow morning to visit Performer in what I’ve been calling the ‘rural hinterlands’ of a neighboring state.

UPDATE ON THE RELATIONSHIP

Is it a date or a visit? Four weeks ago today I met Performer, and when he left after our 13-hour date I posted the comment, ‘This may be The One.’ It didn’t feel like a first date; it felt like first, second, and third dates, all rolled into one.

I haven’t seen him since then, because he returned to the hinterlands for his summer performances. In the intervening 28 days, he phoned every evening but two, including many probably very expensive calls to Europe, and emailed me every day. I spent a fortune in that internet cafe; so much money that twice my little user-card was all stamped-up and I got a free hour!

During the many years I’ve been going to that European city for conferences, no one has ever phoned to see if I got there all right — not my ex-husband (when he was my husband), my children, or my mother. They just assumed that if they didn’t read about a plane crash in the morning paper, I must have arrived in good shape.

Performer phoned the day of my arrival, leaving a message on the cell phone of the friend I was staying with, and calling again later to talk to me.

This kind of attention is unheard of in my experience; only my dear and much-missed maternal grandmother would have cared so much about me.

Perhaps I’ve found someone who will love me as much as my grandmother did!

Astonishing.

So anyway, when I see him tomorrow, after I get off the bus (a five-hour trip to quite hinter hinterlands), it will only be my second time seeing him, but I’m arriving for a three-and-a-half day visit. Or second date. If he hadn’t been calling so regularly, and if I hadn’t printed out photos of him on the web to look at, I would feel I was visiting a stranger. But after what must be almost 60 hours of phone conversation, I know him quite a bit.

Nevertheless, it feels odd…good but odd.

And of course he and I are both fully aware that the state of longing and anticipation and high romance we’re in will not endure, at least not in that form. Hey, he’s 70 and I’m 60; a 130-year-old couple has too much past to have such expectations. Between us we have five failed marriages. But we’re hoping we’re wise enough now to — oh hell, I don’t even have words for it. Everything comes out sounding like a stupid magazine. You know what I mean. We want this to last well beyond the orgy we expect to have on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

A FANTASY

Performer talks a lot about his not-yet-ex-wife Becky. As he tells me about their fights and disagreements, major and minor, and as he makes it clear how happy he is to have found me, I often — no, not often; always — find myself imagining what my now-ex-husband said to his new partner, Sherry, about me. I can hear him saying She always insisted on xxxx or She never wanted to yyyy or She always complained about zzzz or She was never happy.

And so I imagine Sherry feeling pleased as punch with herself, that She doesn’t complain about zzzz or She doesn’t insist on xxxx and so on. She’s got her man and she’s able to please him and keep him happy! Bully for you, Sherry!

And so when Performer talks about Becky, I actually don’t feel superior or think how wonderful I am. I just hear my ex’s voice.

Of course I do feel bad that Performer was so unhappy, and I sympathize with him. But I see ‘the larger pattern….’

* * *

It’s like a folk dance, or a grand right-and-left, when everyone briefly holds hands with everyone else and then finally ends up with a new partner.

* * *

I used to accept with resignation the fact that my ex- found a new partner within two months of our separation, and that I was still dating and dating and dating (or even worse, not dating). The man always finds someone first: okay, that’s the way it is with every couple. So be it; there was nothing I could do about it.

Then one day I had this enlightenment: why can’t I be the woman that some man finds before his ex-wife finds someone?? It must take two for this pattern to exist; if (heterosexual) men find a partner before their ex-wives do, they must be finding women, and with luck I can be that woman.

* * *
And now I am that woman.

* * *

And so I have this imaginary conversation with Becky (Performer’s not-quite-ex):

Becky (I say), yes, I’ve got him. It’s true. Your almost-ex-husband is in love with me. But don’t worry: my ex-husband is in love with Sherry, and he met her over two years before I met your husband. And you know what? You can meet someone too, if you want to! Just like me, you can be that woman that the ex-husband meets before his former wife meets someone new!! Go for it, Becky! You can be as happy as I am: just (as Fred Astaire sings) change partners….

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

Twenty-six years ago this summer, I met my now-ex-husband. We had one date in the city, and towards the end of that date, he invited me to visit him a couple of weeks later on his farm in the rural hinterlands.

Precisely what happened with Performer.

I can’t help but feel, every now and then, that I’ve been here before.

Now, the place where Performer lives over the summer is much, much nicer than my ex-husband’s farm, which was described to me by the friends who introduced us as ‘horrible.’ Performer’s house is bigger and more beautiful — he actually has a cleaning woman and has leaks fixed and walls painted, whereas my ex had a minimalist approach to maintenance. Performer’s grounds are more extensive and better kept-up; I’ve even seen flowers in some of the pictures.

And Performer and I know one another better now than my ex and I did when I visited his farm for the first time. Of course I don’t know him that well, but I certainly hadn’t had sixty-plus hours of phone conversations with my ex when I arrived that late June day in 1981 at his farm.

Okay, so there are differences.

But the next morning, on that 1981 visit, I was very happy, and wondered if this was the man I’d live with forever, the man who would turn out to be the father of my children.

* * *

Well, the second part was true, at any rate!

* * *

And yet, I hope to be very happy in the same way on Thursday morning of this week, when I wake up for the first time with Performer beside me.

* * *

Well, here’s to a society that gives people second and third chances at love, as many chances as they want, actually. So I meet Jewish men with country property! Okay, it can’t be helped. And we have first dates in the city and then they invite me to the country. That doesn’t prove that the universe is orderly or plus ca change or anything. Now Sherry is visiting my ex-husband’s farm: better her than me!! Let her enjoy the mess, the squalor, the leaks, the pealing paint, the filthy kitchen. I’ll enjoy the order and beauty of Performer’s house.

If this really is a pattern, then Becky will meet a man with a palace.

So be it!

UPDATE

Performer called at midnight to ask what kind of pillow I liked.
!!!

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