Practicing on my thumb and other thoughts of an almost-single sexagenarian woman

friday june 20th 11:45 a.m.

I’m at Cornelia, the midtown spa to which Plan C gave me a gift certificate, the polish on my toenails drying after a pedicure.

Tears are rolling down my cheeks.

Why?

The music playing is “Let’s fall in love” (Harold Arlen) followed by “They can’t take that away from me” (Gershwin), two of the most wonderful love songs ever. They seem to frame my romance with Plan C. I can imagine him remembering “the way” I – what would he remember? – the way I whistle when I’m happy, the way I carry a little backpack almost everywhere (something he complained about but I’ll bet anything he’ll cry when he thinks of it months from now), the way I put a ton of sugar in one cup of tea, the way I’m funny and happy and bouncy so much of the time, the way I love to dance to “My Girl”, the way – lots of things.

And I’ll probably have memories like that of his idiosyncracies, though he doesn’t think he has any; the way he rants about Hillary or Lincoln or politics after about 10:30 in the evening, over the phone; the way he counts how many glasses of wine someone else has over dinner and says, “She kept up with me!”; the way he dances so unpredictably but gracefully; the way he rolls his eyes when he’s flirting and looks like the late Diana, Princess of Wales – I call it his ‘Diana eyes.’

The memory of all that….No, no, they can’t take that away from me.

And then (to do this backwards…) “Let’s fall in love” – we were both so eager to fall in love.

The dinner at –

Enough of that for the moment.

* * *
And across the room, having their manicures together, are a mother, her daughter, and the daughter’s friend.

“I’m getting married tomorrow,” the daughter says to her manicurist.

* * *
And I start crying for her innocence, for her youth, for her hopes.

I decide I’d better not wish her good luck when I leave; considering my history, it might have an adverse effect. So I just smile when I walk by with my lovely toes.

* * *

And I’m thinking, at the rate I’m using up this gift certificate, Plan C’s birthday present to me in March, it’s going to outlast the relationship.

* * *

Maybe I’ll be having my toes done before a date with someone else, maybe, with luck, the final man, and it will still be on Plan C’s dollar.

* * *

8:30 p.m.
Plan C calls.

We have a mostly factual conversation, ‘factual’ as I see it anyway, not about ‘us’ and our crisis but about what each of us did today, what each of us will do tomorrow, what clothes we’re packing for [European country], etc.

I tell Plan C that my ‘legacy’ from Performer is the knowledge that you can put tupperware in the microwave; my legacy from him will be regular pedicures and manicures, which – now that I’ve had a couple, now that I know how much they improve my feet and hands, now that I no longer think of them as exclusively the preserve of rich leisurely Park Avenue ladies who volunteer at museums and have long expensive lunches – I’ll probably indulge in, myself, every couple of months or so, or whenever I think I need them.

He comments only that tupperware gets slightly melted and misshaped in the microwave (not in mine, I note); and he is ‘glad’ and pleased about the pedicures etc. He doesn’t notice the implications of the word ‘legacy,’ or if he does, he doesn’t remark on them.

Probably he doesn’t notice. He’s distracted by his own pleasure at having introduced me to this nice, ladylike, grooming practice.

* * *

We talk for about an hour. I mention how much I hate spending time without social life, seeing people etc.. He mentions that he’s happy to be alone; but the thing is, he isn’t: he went to a dinner party Thursday evening, and one of his sons is spending the weekend with him (along w. son’s fiancee), and the other son is coming over with his girlfriend later tonight, so that’s hardly alone.

Actually, it’s sort of a boring conversation. I wonder at what point we can end it. I’m also interested to hear whether he ends it with ‘okey dokey’ (a phrase he picked up from me) or ‘I love you.’

He starts to say ‘okey dokey’ but then says, ‘Good night, love.’

I say, ‘Good night.’

* * *

saturday june 21st 7 a.m.

Waking up very early these days….a sign of disturbance, for me. Woke at not long after 5, actually.

By 7, I’m sure that the relationship with Plan C is not going to last, for all the reasons aired in the past couple of posts. But I remember RS’s (my psychiatrist’s) wise words to ‘make haste slowly’ (Festina Lente).

But how slowly? Okay, our European trip for 10 days starting Monday; that will take place. And then, I have to wear that new dress (and another one, for the night before the wedding) twice this summer, to the two weddings that Plan C is invited to, or I won’t get my money’s worth out of them. Really, I had no other need for them at all. But the second wedding is at the beginning of August: can our relationship last that long?

I’m not sure.

* * *

And what about sex?

Plan C has made several allusions to sex, the sex he expects us to have during this trip, and those references set me thinking about my recent sexual history.

* * *

Two years ago, 6 July 2006 to be exact, I slept with the first new person since I met my now-ex-husband in 1981. He was the first man I dated in this phase of middle-aged dating, very good-looking, large, a good kisser, smart though not witty, lacking a light conversational touch.

Having vacillated about my decision much of that evening, I decided to sleep with him only because I was going to [European country, the same one I’m going to Monday] in a couple of days, and if I were to die in a plane crash, then it would have been a long time, a vvvvvvveeeeeeerrrrrrryyyyyyy long time, since I’d last had sex.

Not that I’d be thinking about sex, probably, in however many minutes I had to realize I was about to die.

But at any rate, it was a deliberate choice for a mini-fling, not a deep investment of the emotions.

* * *

Oh yes, and I was a kid then, only 59.

* * *

Rolly, you may or may not remember, had (in the fit of pique that ended our relationship in early December ‘06) complained that I was ‘inexperienced.’ He later retracted his complaint, once it was clear we were definitively over and not going to date again.

‘Maybe it was me,’ he said.

* * *

But maybe it was me, I thought,

So what did I do?

I practiced.

On my thumb.

Well, that’s what the website said to do!

And now I have an elongated right thumb.

* * *

Only kidding.

Only kidding about the elongation, that is; I really did practice on my thumb.

I learned how-to by reading lots of websites, but primarily by reading this and this over and over.

I can’t remember which site said to practice on your own thumb, but I did that as dutifully as once I learned the principal parts of Greek verbs.

Correction: I did it more dutifully.

* * *

So I got very good. To be entirely truthful, I went far beyond what I learned on the web. And I got even better when I observed what Performer liked (that would be July through December 2006) , and much, much better with Plan C, who was quite explicit and articulate (need I say, more articulate than he was about almost anything else) about what he enjoyed the most.

* * *

In December, after Performer dumped me (saying, ‘The next man who sleeps with you will be very lucky’), I thought, I only want to sleep with One More Man. I’m not horny any more. I’ve had enough sex these past six months to take the edge off my appetite. I’m not desperate.
I only want One More, the final one.

* * *
Plan C, as I noted a couple of posts back, thinks highly of my skills in bed. He has often praised them in hyperbolic terms. When he does, I think of what Performer said. I’ve never quoted that to Plan C, but if – when – we break up, I’m going to tell him about it so he doesn’t say the same thing himself. Not that he is likely to be that crude and that rude, but it’s possible that’s what he’ll be thinking.

* * *
Now it looks as if the ‘One More’ I picked out (or, more accurately, who picked me out) is not going to be the last after all.

* * *
But here’s the thing:

it’s not a skill like a tennis backhand or swing-dancing or the French r.

I have to feel – to know – that the man loves me, and that I love him back.

* * *

It’s intimately connected to the issue I’ve brought up in the previous two posts, Plan C’s insistence that I write down my daughters’ names, not his, as ‘person to contact in case of accident or serious injury.’

Person to contact in case of accident or serious injury.

How is that phrase connected to blow-jobs, you ask?

* * *
It’s connected the way that binding is connected to a book, electricity (or a strong battery) to a computer, the oven to your Thanksgiving turkey, the vocal chords to song, the heart to the flow of blood.

That’s how.

* * *

If he doesn’t love me that absolutely, or (okay, let’s be honest here) doesn’t show signs of being about to become the kind of person who wants to be the first in the emergency room with me when I’m full of tubes and needles, when my life or death is visible in little green zig-zaggy lines and audible in beeps, when my face can barely be seen under the sheets and the masks, when the nurse checks every few minutes to write things down on the clipboard – then I don’t know if I can find within myself the emotional energy to do the things to his penis that give him such exquisite pleasure.

* * *
Because that’s why I do it: for love.

* * *

And how will all this play out in Europe, 23 June through 3 July?

Will I want to sleep with him?

Will he, for the sake of sex, or for whatever reason, maybe genuinely, pretend to love me again, or say that his old love has returned, or affirm that it has? Or will he not bother to? And if he doesn’t – or even if he does – will I be interested in sex with him? And suppose – as seems a strong possibility – I’m not, will I avoid a big scene by faking? I can imagine him saying, Why didn’t you tell me this before I got on the plane??? and can imagine me saying, in return, I didn’t know it would be like this. I didn’t know I would feel this way.

(Of course that would be a lie, because I’m writing this out two days before we leave.)

* * *

By Monday, the day we leave for our ten days together in that European country where I do business, it will have been a week since his ‘turmoil’, as he called it, or his ambivalence, became clearly known to me. I’ve had a week to get used to what feels more precisely like a withdrawal of his love, and in that week I’ve come a long way. Although he has said I love you once in that time, and continues to write me as ‘Mimi, darling girl,’ and to sign his emails love, using the nickname that I invented for him, that no one else ever used, although he has phoned I think two or three times since then, and we have not discussed this ‘turmoil’ of his – I feel I’m somewhere very different. I’m a ways out of this relationship now; I think. I found my old dating-profile and made a few changes. I’ve decided to use the old, wonderful professional photo but also one Plan C took of me on the Brooklyn Bridge a few weeks ago.

8 a.m.
I’m beginning to be more and more certain that things with Plan C are going to end. I have Labor Day in mind as a mental deadline by which I’ll put my new profile up.

If I can wait that long.

***********
The tags are still attached to the dresses I bought for those weddings Plan C has been invited to this summer. I can return them if necessary.

* * *
sunday june 22nd 9 p.m.

Two very short email messages from Plan C but no phone call on Saturday. It felt just like being single again and enduring a painfully quiet weekend without a date. A short phone call just now about luggage, logistics, everything. I was cheerful, crisp, businesslike; it would take a sharp ear to detect a change in my tone.

Plan C has no idea how his crisis, which then became our crisis, and is now also my crisis, has affected me. I didn’t say anything to indicate that I’d had trouble thinking of anything else the past week, and it seems never to have occurred to him.

Example: several fancy chocolate bars that formed part of my birthday present to him a month ago are still in my refrigerator, because it has been too hot for him to take them home on the train. Noticing them over the weekend, I thought, Is he ever going to get to eat those chocolate bars? Will he ever be here again? I bought them for him and I want him to have them. I’ll suggest that he take them to the airport tomorrow , where we probably won’t feel the heat, and on the plane.

I made that suggestion in the phone call just now, and he said he’d take one, and leave the others to eat “over time.”

“over” what “time”? I thought but did not say. If you’re not sure about your love for me, what makes you think this relationship is going to continue?? And anyway, with the jolt of his uncertainty, I’ve come to think it shouldn’t continue. So eat the damn chocolate! Get it out of my refrigerator!

* * *
Okay, okay. RS’s mantra: Festina lente.

monday june 23rd 11 a.m.

Walking home from doing some final chores, I had the feeling I had during our Brooklyn bridge expedition a few weeks ago, He’s someone else’s husband. That day, I answered myself with the quip that At our age, every man is someone else’s husband.

That’s true, in a way, and I guess I was trying to quiet a feeling of unease, at that time unarticulated, that Plan C and I weren’t quite right for one another.

This morning, when that little voice spoke up again, I listened to it. I thought, Maybe that’s right. Maybe he is. Our styles are so different: I’m (for better or worse) so artsy-lefty looking, and he’s so golfing and straight-arrow-looking; I’m such a nutty free-spirit (do not mean to compliment myself; other people have used the f-s phrase of me, and I added ‘nutty’) and he’s so conventional in many ways. I don’t mean to imply that I’m superior because of those distinctions, just that we’re really different.

So I was curious to see how I’d feel when I saw him this morning, the first time since our crisis a week ago this evening.

* * *
I had lost it.

I had lost the love, I think. He seemed a nice, good-looking, pleasant man, smiling and glad to see me. I couldn’t quite come up with a smile of equal enthusiasm, but I remained chipper and upbeat. I made no move to kiss him, so he kissed me.

* * *
The voice of RS: FESTINA LENTE!

Okay, okay. Although I think I may be out of love with him now, I really can’t tell. I’m feeling great — happy, thin (because of course I was too unhappy to eat much this week! isn’t that always the way….nature’s way of making heartbroken women happy very quickly), eager to go on this trip, and curious to see what it will be like travelling in Europe with a man — for the first time since 1976, with my first husband.

* * *

We’re off to JFK in an hour. Wish us a safe flight and a happy landing. I’ll post from the other side of the ocean. And thanks, all of you, for all your comments over the past week.

- Mimi

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