when rolly met mary

So who’s Mary?

She’s the friend who (after I told her, in April 2006, that as I walked through Penn Station I looked at men wondering which ones were 60) informed me that I was cruising:

http://sexagenarian07.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/i-begin-to-dateagain-june-2006/

When I was dating Rolly — even that phrase makes the relationship (and ‘relationship’ isn’t the right word either, because whatever it was never achieved that status) sound too steady and normal — okay, in the midst of the 44-day period in which I had 6 dates with Rolly (the 6th after we had ‘broken up’), I’d call Mary to get Advice:  he wasn’t phoning enough (in fact he phoned me twice during the 44 days, I think; Performer had called me more than that before we even met); his emails were becoming shorter and less frequent; whenever we were to meet, he was always ‘running late.’

*   *   *

Now, Mary is not only smart; she’s shrewd.   She told me that I perhaps expected too much communication; that I had too many requirements; maybe I should just relax etc etc etc.   She liked the sound of Rolly: he was witty, bohemian, smart.  I had met someone really good, really classy, much better than one might expect from the internet.  I should go with the flow blah blah blah.

Actually Mary is too subtle to use a phrase like that, but that was the gist of her advice.  She thought everything was fine, and the problem was me.

*    *    *

Well, it wasn’t; the problem was him.  He began enthusiastic; he became ambivalent; he ended entirely jumpy and rejecting, eager not to see me, or not to keep seeing me.

But apparently still ambivalent: I noticed (as one can, on jdate) that he was viewing my profile on his lonely Christmas day, when all his family were visiting his exwife.

Haha! 

*   *   *

Anyway, enough about all that.  We had only five dates, just enough to make me think he might be The One,  but just few enough so that I was not at all heart-broken, just sad, then irritated, then impatient for the next man.  We had a sixth date on December 10 to go to a concert I had bought tickets for.   On that final occasion I was very jolly (to his surprise, I guess) and introduced as a topic of conversation how oral sex can be safe sex, an issue we discussed (i.e. he attempted to explain the difficulties) in the intermission between sacred songs about the immaculate conception and the virgin birth.

*   *   *

But a little of me remained in his apartment, the tupperware in which I had brought him leftovers from my family’s Thanksgiving dinner.   I told him that when I was ready to see him again — only, I explained, when I was fully involved with someone else and not likely to get sentimental or romantic about him  — I would collect the tupperware.

The tupperware became our running-joke and excuse for communication all last spring and a bit over the summer. Rolly would give me updates on its condition:   a mouse was nesting in the large one, but once the babies were born and big enough for independence, he’d wash the container out.  There were roach droppings in the small one, but he was sure they could be scraped out. 

And there was also a pigeon in the large one once, because he had left it on the fire-escape.  All the species native to Manhattan seemed to want to procreate and excrete in my tupperware.

Yup, that’s Rolly…………….funny guy.

Then August came, and we made plans for the Great Tupperware Exchange.  We would meet in Central Park, take a walk, and he would return the tupperware.

But as it turned out, he forgot the tupperware, and our time together was entirely occupied with discussions of the asshole:

 http://sexagenarian07.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/rendezvous-with-rolly-and-katie-couric/

*     *    *

So at about 5:45 pm on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, Mary (who was visiting me for the holiday) finally met Rolly.

Her response later (and of course that was the whole purpose of the rendezvous): ‘He’s very good-looking’ and ‘He’s very sexy.’  

If you’re wondering how a 74-year-old can be sexy, I’ll show you:

Yup, that’s Rolly’s body (last spring, I believe; he sent me the photo, which had his family in it, and also his head, of course).   I no longer crave it — haven’t for about 50 weeks now — but I can admire it with detachment.

*    *    *

 The Friday after Thanksgiving Performer was entertaining his children, and I was quite open about the fact that Rolly was coming over for drinks, though he never asked me about it later.  He has a life, and I think he simply forgot about this event.  

Rolly was invited for 5 pm; Mary was supposed to have returned from her shopping before then, but she was late, so Rolly and I had a little tete-a-tete for a while.  I can’t remember what we talked about, and I kept wishing Mary would hurry on back, but we found plenty to keep us chatting.   He was wearing his usual blue casual clothes, jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt.  He’s a plainstyle man, too plain to be called preppy.  The photo above gives an accurate sartorial representation.

Almost the moment Mary arrived, the conversation turned to sex.  Not sure why that was; Mary didn’t turn it (Mary, btw, has a boyfriend, as I had explained to Rolly ahead of time, so he didn’t think I was setting them up).   Rolly is very, very funny talking about sex.  He told about the 60th birthday party of his friend Harvey Hankoff: I referred to Harv as ‘a sex maniac,’ and Rolly said that wasn’t altogether accurate….but it was sort of accurate.  Maybe sex fiend was a better term.  At this birthday party at least 20 of Harv’s ex-girlfriends were present.   All of them seemed to keep on good terms with him and were happy to come celebrate.  During the festivities,  there was a point when everyone in the room had to offer an individual toast to Harv.   Rolly couldn’t think of the right words to use, because he knew Harv was sleazy and couldn’t imagine toasting him without using that word, but felt it was maybe  not le mot juste under the circumstances. So he thought he’d just talk about the way he knew Harv, and began by saying something like, ‘Well of course, I know Harv physically,’  and then realized that that wasn’t the right thing to say either, and that it was actually all the women there who knew him ‘physically.’   So Rolly said his toast was not well-received…

I have no idea what he meant by that, but (and isn’t this usually said of women?!) he was charming when he said it.  He smiled and blushed.  And Mary and I laughed a lot.

Then we moved on to the subject of cocaine.   I asked after the health of the man in his building who sold cocaine, and Rolly said it was a woman, not a man, and she had offered him some once, and he pretended to try it but didn’t really.

Then Rolly and Mary started talking about being secret smokers, or smokers in denial, which they both are.

*    *    *

So having begun by talking about sex and then moved to drugs, we ended up talking about work and books and the eccentric artists Rolly used to hang out with in Athens.

Mary was with us about an hour, and then she left to meet a friend.   In our girl-talk later, she not only said that he was ‘very sexy’ and ‘very good-looking;’  she said he was ‘the kind of person who lifts a conversation.’   She’s right.  He does.

*    *    *

Mary also mentioned later that when she left, she felt that Rolly was not about to leave, that he had no intention of going also, as often happens when one person leaves a gathering and another one says, ‘Oh yes, it’s getting late.  I’d better go too.’

Nope, he stayed on a bit because he wanted to see the upstairs of my (small, first-and-second-floor) duplex.  I explained that the downstairs was neat-looking because I’d moved all the mess upstairs, but he still wanted to see it.   The only comment I can remember is this: when I pointed out the upstairs bathroom to him, he asked how many rolls of toilet paper I had.

Our joke: for the role/roll of toilet paper in our relationship, see

http://sexagenarian07.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/part-2-of-mimis-first-anniversary-dating-stats-including-a-surprising-fact-about-toilet-paper/

I don’t know if he was expecting to be offered dinner, if he thought that there would be more Thanksgiving leftovers this year, as there had been last year, but I made no reference to offering him any, and he left soon after our tour of the upstairs.   He mentioned wanting to read a book Mary had written, but I didn’t say anything about lending it to him, because I didn’t want to get into another of those when-can-you-return-it things with him.    He recommended a movie, in fact, oddly enough, as he was leaving, asked if I’d want to see it with him; that was odd, I thought, since not only were we not dating, he knew I was seriously dating someone else.   Then on Saturday Mary and I went to see the movie, and I invited Rolly to join us, but he couldn’t.   And then I sent him an email brief review of the movie — on Sunday — and he hasn’t responded.

So that’s that.

*    *    *

I was saving what was left of the leftovers for Performer, who came over for dinner Sunday, after his children had left.

*    *    *

So that’s how Rolly met Mary.

*   *   *

And oh yes, the tupperware?  He returned it the moment he came in the door, and I looked at it, and in mock disgust, instantly put it in the sink and ran very hot water with ajax into it.   That was my little joke, but there was just a little something sticky that wouldn’t come off.

An apt symbol of a romance that went nowhere but gave me a lot of good material.   Rolly’s the kind of person you can dine out on.

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