(First read post from a wedding weekend, part 1 , if you haven’t yet.)

the ceremony

4 p.m. Saturday 12 July

It’s a Protestant ceremony, and everything goes beautifully. Plan C looks at his watch at the end and says with satisfaction, ‘Twenty-eight minutes. Perfect. No wedding should last more than half an hour.’

He continues in the affectionate mode of the night before, even putting his hand on my knee at one point.

the wedding banquet

We’re seated Noah’s-Ark-style, man, woman, man, woman at a round table for ten. At our end of it, the order is like this, from left to right: Plan C’s son (S), son’s fiancée (SF), Plan C, Mimi.

At one point early in the evening, before the main course is served, S gets up from his chair, squats by Plan C’s left side, and whispers something. S returns to his seat, and Plan C asks me for a kleenex. S has apparently noticed something yucky in Plan C’s nose. The expression on Plan C’s face is one of irritation, embarrassment, and humble obedience, all mixed together.

I look at S, who is eyeing me seriously, as if to say, Something has to be done about him. We can’t have him looking this way at a formal public occasion.

I want to indicate to S that I’m willing to help and do indeed want Plan C to look respectable, but at the same time I don’t want to treat Plan C as a child. I lean across and say, ‘Okay, you cover the left nostril, and I’ll take the right one.’

* * *
Fortunately S doesn’t hear what I say.

Plan C asks me what I said. I tell him, and he laughs.

* * *

It’s hard to position yourself in these family issues.

* * *

And there are more family issues during the evening.

At the rehearsal dinner the night before, the food was divine, but alas the post-wedding meal is a dismal failure. All of the options are inedible, at least judging by the great quantities of it left on everyone’s plate.

Plan C complains about it vociferously and often, his face visibly indicating his feelings even when he isn’t talking.

S (who has also eaten very little of the main course) glowers at his father.

* * *

Then the toasts start. The father of the bride, a good-looking man, stands near the center of the small dancing floor with a microphone and begins to speak, sincerely but somewhat awkwardly.

* * *
Twelve minutes later, he is still speaking, sincerely but somewhat awkwardly.

* * *

Plan C whispers to me, ‘If I talk for more than eight minutes at their [S & SF’s] wedding, shoot me.’

* * *
Oh! I think. He actually thinks we’ll still be together in October 2009. He who a month ago said to me over the phone, ‘I don’t know that I want to spend 40 weekends a year in New York’ and other words to that effect, precipitating the crisis in our relationship that I’ve been posting about since the beginning of June – he’s assuming we’ll still be a couple then.

That’s what comes of not having ‘the conversation,’ a conversation he made it clear in [European country] that he wanted to avoid, and that (taking my cue from him) I’ve avoided also. The policy I determined on was to do all the things with Plan C that I had said I would do, follow through on all our plans, which would take us to the end of July / beginning of August, and then Talk.

But my deliberate silence about this topic and his unthinking evasion of it have led him to believe either that everything is as it was, or that we have surmounted the crisis, or perhaps even that we are now together on some new, as-yet-unarticulated terms. I’m not sure, and maybe I’ll find out, or maybe I won’t, when I introduce the topic in early August, or sooner. I’ve had to suppress comments on the subject a couple of times during this wedding weekend, but I’ve gotten used to the suppression and don’t feel too much strain.

* * *

In fact, for whatever reason, I’m having a wonderful time. I don’t think I’ve been this relaxed in ages. My blood pressure must be down to 60 or something. When a decision about anything needs to be made – where we’ll eat lunch, when we’ll do this or that – I say, ‘I’ll go with the flow.’

Me ‘go with the flow’?? Totally un-Mimi-esque, but I mean it. I’m just here to have fun. I have all the right clothes, I’m feeling thin, the inedible dinner means I won’t even gain anything today, and no one here, to my knowledge, is angry at me. Everyone who meets me seems pleased and easy to converse with. I’m happy.

* * *
Plan C’s expressions of disapproval at the father-of-the-bride’s long disquisition on marriage etc. are too audible and too visible, and once more S is giving me looks that seem to say, He needs to be controlled. Can’t you do anything about him?

I find myself wondering what W (Plan C’s late wife, S’s beloved mother, whom he misses very much, I’m told) would have done. I have no idea, but my guess, given S’s looks, is that she would have acted decisively.

* * *
The problem is, trying to soothe or quiet Plan C when he’s in the heat of these rants often has an adverse affect, making him louder and more irritable.

Someone else at our table, nodding toward the father, still in the middle of his toast, says, ‘It’s hard to be the F. O. B.’

* * *
dancing at last

This is the moment I’d been preparing for since September 2006, when I started swing-dance lessons.

The dance lessons followed the renewal of my dating life by just a few months. One of these days, I told myself, you may meet a man who likes to dance, and you’d better know what you’re doing. Like my new hair (maintained by Sophie), my new clothes (OnlyHearts camisoles and shrugs, short skirts), my new personality (cheerful, good-humored), and much else, my dancing lessons formed part of the new self I constructed to meet the needs of my new life.

I had eighteen months of wonderful lessons with Dru.

Although Plan C’s dancing style is quirky and idiosyncratic, I’ve gotten used to it. ‘Just follow him,’ Dru said, unable to mesh the swing-dance style he’d been teaching me with Plan C’s dancing.

So beginning in March Plan C and I practiced off and on, in my living room or his, to his (the Righteous Brothers, Patsy Cline) and my (the Temptations, the Supremes, Bobby Darin, Fred Astaire) favorite music.

I improved.

This wedding was to be our first time dancing together in public, on display.

* * *
And so it was a crisis indeed when I returned from Europe with a swollen foot, because it might mean that I couldn’t dance, I couldn’t go to this wedding, and the preparations of months would be all for naught.

* * *
But the wonderful podiatrist I went to (who gave me an appointment right away because she is my mother’s doctor, and my mother is her favorite patient) told me that I absolutely had to go to this wedding and had to dance. She’s the podiatrist for the cast of Wicked, so she’s used to people who need to dance on sore feet. After diagnosing a stress fracture in my right foot, she gave me instructions on taking care of it and told me that Saturday night, half an hour before the dancing started, I should take two Motrin and dance my heart out. And if my feet hurt in a few hours, I should take two more Motrin and keep on dancing.

* * *

I forgot to take the Motrin till the middle of the dancing, but I had rested my foot most of Saturday (while Plan C golfed), and it was feeling much better.

* * *

But the dancing offered another site for Plan C’s complaints Saturday evening.

First, the dancing floor was too small for a wedding with two-hundred guests, he said. It should be twice as big.

Then, he attempted to find out the protocol: was everyone supposed to wait for the bride and groom to have their first dance before the dancing was open to all?

The answer appeared to be yes.

* * *
Plan C took this protocol as a personal affront.

It won’t be that way at their wedding, he said, nodding toward S and SF. There will be dance music played the whole evening, before, during, and after the dinner, and people will be told to dance the whole time. And there will be a band, not a DJ.
* * *

So from about 5:30 p.m., when the reception merged into pre-dinner seating under the tent, until 9:30 p.m., when the ceremonial part of the banquet ended and the bride and groom had their first dance, followed by the dances with parents etc., followed finally by general dancing for all the guests, Plan C was in a state of continuing irritation rising at times to anger.

He heard all his favorite music being played, but he couldn’t dance to it. He heard Big Band tunes from the 40s and 50s, he heard classic rock, he heard Astaire and Sinatra and Billy Joel and everything he loved sounding out, and he had to stay seated.

They won’t be playing that later, he predicted. Everything I want to dance to is what they’re playing now, and when it’s time to dance, they’ll play awful stuff.

* * *

Plan C was right.

* * *

Most of the evening, the DJ played what the 20-30 generation appeared to want, which was what Plan C called whitepeoplejumpingupanddown music.

Later I asked SF what precisely that was, who were the artists responsible for the music Plan C detested, and she said, lots of them. When I pressed her on specifics, the only name she could come up with as a possibility was Bon Jovi.

* * *

But sometimes the DJ played music Plan C liked, and on those occasions, we danced.

* * *

I’m proud and happy to announce that I did just fine.

* * *

Yup, all those months of lessons and those weekends of practice payed off. I would have been a dreadful dancer without them. And as recently as six weeks or so ago, I needed half an hour to warm up and become a passable dancer.

But I did well on Saturday night, and the fact that we were in the midst of a crowd in a small space meant that I never felt self-conscious, because it was hard to notice anyone.

* * *
I did notice a few things about Plan C’s dancing, however, that I hadn’t realized when it was just the two of us dancing in my living-room.

He dances to be noticed. Visibility is the key word.

Plan C is not vain about his looks; he hates photographs of himself, and he often makes allusions to his ‘pompous’ photo-face or his increasing stomach or other less-than-perfect body parts.

But he’s quite vain about his dancing. He kept moving us around the floor – to the extent that anyone could ‘move’ in the small, crowded space – to slightly emptier spaces, and, I thought, to spaces where we could be seen by women he considered attractive.

Or so I suspected.

After each dance, or at least after several of them, he made approving noises about my dancing, and once he said, ‘I make you look good.’

* * *

So after a while I began saying the same thing to him. And when the whole evening was over, I said to him, ‘Your dancing was not bad. I made you look good.’

* * *

My little joke.

* * *

But he really was a vain dancer. On two occasions he suddenly wrapped other women into our dancing. People were dancing in informal groups much of the time, not always couples, and Plan C seemed to sort of swoop down on such groups and suddenly sweep one of the women into our dancing.

Plan C did it gracefully and was pretty pleased with himself. He said something to me later like ‘That’s one of my little tricks’, but I asked him please not to do it again. It reminded me too much of infidelity.

* * *
Whenever the music changed from a song he liked to one he detested, Plan C appeared personally affronted. And usually at those times, the average age of the dancers changed from 50s - 60s to 20s- 30s. There was definitely a clear generational difference in the dancing music preferences, though there was always a bit of overlap.

Celebration was played once, and Plan C perked up, saying ‘I have this choreographed,’ but it turned out not to be the recording he liked.

* * *
Then Plan C requested the Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody, and the DJ obliged.

The song worked like magic, or medicine.

* * *
At the first strains of Unchained Melody, Plan C was transformed.

He became a different person – emotional, romantic, almost teary-eyed – sort of like the person he was during the first three weeks of our relationship.

These are the lyrics:

Oh, my love, my darling
I’ve hungered for your touch
A long, lonely time
And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your love, I need your love
God speed your love to me

Lonely rivers flow
To the sea, to the sea
To the open arms of the sea
Lonely rivers sigh
“Wait for me, wait for me”
I’ll be coming home; wait for me

Oh, my love, my darling
I’ve hungered, hungered for your touch
A long, lonely time And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?
I need your love, I need your love
God speed your love to me .

copyright Frank Music Corp.

As the song began, Plan C held me tightly, in slow-dancing position, and within a minute or two he said, ‘I like you very much,’ followed immediately by ‘I love you.’

I remember the exact words and their sequence, because I was baffled, first by ‘I like you very much,’ given that in February, March, and April, he had said ‘I love you’ fairly often; and then by ‘I love you,’ because he hadn’t said those words in ages. And I also wondered at the difference between ‘I like you very much’ and ‘I love you,’ and the way the first modulated into the second: was he trying to remember what he felt, were his feelings changing as he spoke, or was he correcting himself? And I wondered what the second phrase meant about Plan C’s notion of our relationship at the moment.

And finally, I wondered whether Unchained Melody caused those feelings; or released them; or created them the way some mind-altering drug might create feelings.

(For what it’s worth, Plan C’s email message to me, sent when he arrived home around 3 a.m. Monday, having dropped me off just after 1 a.m., was signed ‘love,’ the first such signature since early June.)

So for one reason or another, Plan C appeared to be getting re-attached to me over the weekend, considering the hand on the knee during the wedding, and the response to Unchained Melody.

* * *
During some of what Plan C called the whitepeoplejumpingupanddown music, we were watching the young dancers. Near us, a slender young woman with a good cleavage, long dark hair, and a short black dress, was pulling a young man onto the dance floor. ‘Come on, Michael,’ she was saying, ‘Let’s dance.’

PLAN C: She’s the sexiest woman here.

MIMI: (gives Plan C a look)

PLAN C: I mean, the sexiest young woman here.

MIMI: I thought you didn’t like skinny.

PLAN C: It’s not the body [hah], it’s her face.

MIMI: (no response, but note taken of her face; Plan C does indeed prefer brunettes with significant hair)

PLAN C (watching the young man acquiesce and begin dancing with the woman): He doesn’t know what he’s got. He’s a jackass.

MIMI: Suppose someone said that about you?

PLAN C: I would. [pause, during which he appears to be remembering the circumstances] I do.

MIMI: (no comment)

* * *

marriage in the ER
6:40 a.m. Sunday 13 July

It’s very early. I hear Plan C sniffling. Then he gets up, goes to the bathroom, turns on the water, does something, and returns. The same procedure is repeated several times. Finally, at a little after 7, he turns on the light and says to me, ‘I have a nosebleed.’

I wake up officially. I advise him to lie with his head back for a few minutes. But he keeps having to blow his nose, and the blood is still coming. He’s worried, because he’s on a blood-thinner.

Soon Plan C believes that, because of the Plavix, he will bleed to death.

He calls his physician, who advises him to go to the closest ER.

* * *

Because this is a skiing and biking area, it’s full of medical facilities, and the nearest emergency clinic is very near the hotel. (And, because it’s in the mountains, it’s also full of tourists’ nosebleeds on a regular basis.)

Plan C is the first patient of the day, and he wants me in the examining room with him.

In a few minutes the doctor arrives, a lanky, skinny man in western-looking (to my east coast eyes, at least) clothes with a friendly manner. He assures Plan C that he is not going to bleed to death and explains the steps to follow: pinch your nostrils closed for five minutes and hold the pinch-position, and if after that you’re still bleeding, stuff cotton or tissue up the bleeding nostril and hold it some more. Then, in about an hour or two, once the bleeding has stopped, add antibiotic ointment.

I’m scrawling the instructions down in a little notebook. That’s the only way I can remember something medical or scientific.

Plan C asks a question, and the doctor says, ‘Your wife’s writing it all down…’

* * *

(We are also married later in the day on the plane, when the man next to me asks, ‘What were you and your husband doing out west?’)

* * *

And so we have another sexless, ‘married’ morning, a total waste once more of the beautiful king-size Marriott bed.

‘I had other plans for this morning,’ Plan C says regretfully, indicating he had wanted to use that nice big bed for sex.

* * *

Back in the hotel, Plan C – ravenously hungry not only from the morning’s adventures but from the absence of an edible dinner the night before – has two helpings of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast.

* * *
mimi’s wide-eyed questions on the flight home

DELTA PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM: Fasten your seatbelts and turn off all electronic devices. As we go through the cabin for a final time, please let us know if you have any questions.

MIMI: Does God exist?

* * *

MIMI (looking out the window as the plane takes off) to Plan C:
Why do they call them the Rockies?

* * *

saturday 12 july, 6:50 a.m. mountain time

I’m sitting on the steps of the Marriott, drinking a skim latte grande with my trademark ten sugars and feeling the fresh, beautiful morning mountain air. My body, which only recently returned to New York time from European time, is still on New York time.

Plan C is playing golf at a local course. That’s his way of seeing the world (he also played two courses in the European country we were visiting two weeks ago).

The muzak, piped in loudly over my right ear and disturbing the beauty of the morning, is playing ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,’ and I’m singing along with it –

THEY
Asked me how I KNEW
My true love was THROUGH
I at length rePLIED
When a bright flame DIES
SMOKE gets in your EYESSSSSSSSSSS.

Those may not be the exact words, but they’re the ones I’m singing. And I’m wondering if Plan C was a ‘bright flame,’ and wondering if the song implies that the singer is crying.

I’m not crying at all about Plan C. It has been a longish romance — now over five months — but I don’t know about the ‘bright flame’ business.

* * *

The muzak soon changes to ‘Isn’t it a lovely day to be caught in the rain?’ and I start singing that one, too.

Then I’m overcome with an uncontrollable urge — to post to this blog.

It takes about fifteen minutes to find the ‘Business Center’ (a desk with a computer) and to find someone here who knows how to get it up and running, but now it’s in full gear, and so am I.

on the plane yesterday

I’m travelling in the little Gap sundress I posted a picture of a while back, with a camisole under it and an OnlyHearts shrug; Plan C travels in shorts and blue canvas shoes without socks.

And so as I sit there, squeezed in between Plan C and a young boy with a ‘Delta’ tag around his wrist (signifying, I guess, that he’s a minor), I have a four-hour opportunity to study Plan C’s legs.

My European friend (female) who golfed with Plan C two weeks ago emailed me praising his golfing style and his ‘fine pair of manly legs.’

! ! !

A great phrase, I thought. Early in our romance I alluded to his ‘massive thighs,’ thinking of Michaelangelo’s David, and he loved that phrase (surprise). My friend’s phrase is also apt.

* * *

So I look to my left at those ‘manly legs,’ and I feel some desire for him, but at the same time I’m thinking, Isn’t it interesting how desire disappears. How right now, I desire him and those legs and the rest of him, but six months from now, or maybe even less, I’ll (with luck) be desiring someone else, and if I see Plan C, I won’t desire him or even remember how I did. I’ll look at him and think, Was I once hot for this guy? How on earth could I have been? how could I have wanted to go to bed with someone so — so striped and checked and pleated, someone whose clothing style is so conventional, someone — well, someone as ultimatelywhenyoucomerightdowntoituninterestingtome as Plan C? did I really want to be naked in bed with this guy from (neighboring state) whose business is so boring, who doesn’t even enjoy it himself, whose life has been so dull (to me, even to himself) in so many ways and so distasteful (to me, even to himself) in so many other ways — his petty sins, his little dishonesties, and so forth? How on earth could I have been so blinded by good sense as to want such a man or even be interested in him longer than five minutes?

* * *

Yes, that’s what I’ll be thinking some day.

But not yet.

the rehearsal dinner

Over drinks and after dinner we meet many of Plan C’s friends from his hometown back east. They’re all glad to meet me and view me with curiosity and interest. One of them says, ‘Plan C, we heard that you’ve been telling everyone about Mimi, this wonderful woman you’re dating, and we’ve been dying to meet her.’

* * *

Hmmmmmm.

* * *

You’re out of date, I’m thinking. This is the man who wouldn’t agree to be ‘person to notify in case of accident or serious injury,’ or wasn’t sure after all if he still felt all the things he said in the heat of his first passion. With luck this relationship has two more weeks, maybe three. You’re looking at a romance near its end, not a permanent pairing.

* * *

I observe Plan C talking to people, some he knows and some he doesn’t know, and realize that — from the social point of view, at least — he was at his worst in [European country] with my friends. There, he seemed gauche, dull, serious, plodding. Back in his own country, he seems slightly more charming. I can see again why my friend K (a sometime reader of this blog) found him ’sexy’ and ‘good-looking,’ or, as she put it to me in words more-or-less like this, a pretty man to have on your arm as you enter a room.

* * *
Plan C drinks quite a bit at the rehearsal dinner and is happy and loose-lipped, though not sloshed. He is also more affectionate than he’s been in ages, kissing me every now and then and giving me warm looks.

in the hotel room

And so my expectations are up for a little whoopee tonight. The dinner has ended early enough so that all who want sex will have time for it.

* * *
(Let me explain ’so’ in the previous sentence: it doesn’t mean ‘in order that,’ i.e. the groom’s parents have timed the catering in order to allow for sex for everyone. It means ‘with the result that,’ i.e. as it turns out, there is time for sex, should anyone happen to want it.)

* * *

Ahh, but not for those who have a 7:18 a.m. tee-time.

* * *

So as I get into the beautiful king-size Marriott bed, having used up a bit of the Estee Lauder ‘Pleasures’ powder that I have packed for travelling, Plan C turns away and says he’s too tired.

* * *
“What is this, marriage???” I say.

* * *

Plan C laughs slightly and goes to sleep.

* * *

the mountain air in the morning

And so early in the morning, I’m drinking my latte in the fresh mountain air, listening to classic love-songs on the muzak.

* * *

The wedding is this afternoon.

Sitting next to Plan C while two people pledge eternal love to one another — now that will be something.

* * *

catalogue of his stuff in my apartment

– 1 Joseph Bank shirt, size L, checked [pale blue, pale yellow]
– 1 pair khakis ( “dockers” ), W38 L29
– 1 LLBean nightshirt, size L, plaid [dark grey, light grey, red]
– 1 striped [white, light brown, light blue] 100% cotton robe, Club Room, size L
– 1 pair Reeboks, hexalite, white with grey trim etc. size 10.5 UK
– 1 pair Wolverine thermolite heavy bad-weather shoes, brown, size 10 M USA
– 4 men’s suit hangers
– toothbrush, toothpaste, other bathroom stuff
– Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II by Stanley G. Payne
– charger for his treo
– bag of grocery store coffee (he doesn’t like the Equal Exchange French roast beans I use)
– 3 chocolate bars, remainders of my birthday present to him 28 May
– brown carry-on size Tourister suitcase

catalogue of my stuff in his house

– clogs, size 8, that I use for bedroom slippers
– white terry robe he bought for me to use there, the first time I spent the night at his house [do I take it with me or do I leave it for the next woman who spends the night with him? I think I'd like to have it]
– Estee Lauder lavender powder (”Pleasures”)
– toothbrush, shower cap, et al.

the trappings of masculinity

So here you can see all the objects listed in the catalogue above.

And in this close-up you can see the checked shirt (left), and the nightshirt (right) on top of the robe (under the nightshirt), as well as the coffee and the remaining chocolate from his birthday present, the chocolate he said he would eat “over time,” but that I’m getting out of my fridge so he can eat it “over time” in his own space.

I have a nice photo of him in that bathrobe, the first good photo I took of him, with a cute, funny Plan-C-ish expression on his face.

The trappings of masculinity…they must be important to me because I didn’t grow up with any, as I mentioned indirectly in this recent post. In the household where I grew up, the toilet seat was never lifted, and the cover was always put down. There were no neckties, no big shoes, no loud male voices, no heavy footsteps, no smell of men.

* * *
So the presence of all that male paraphernalia is noticeable to me, makes a big statement. It makes the apartment feel distinctly different.

I like it…but I have to like the man, of course. I don’t mind seeing it go.

I trust that before too long — how long, who knows? — there will be more.

* * *
Next time, maybe not so many stripes and checks.

* * *

more space in my closet

Now that I’ve packed his stuff up, there’s much more space! I need it. I knew my closet looked crowded; I hadn’t realized it was because I had set aside so much space for Plan C’s clothes. Not that he had much there, as you can see from the list, but I kept a large empty space around his clothes, so it would look tidy, because as you know if you’re a careful reader, Plan C is a tidy person.

laundry

I washed the towels & washcloth Plan C used. I don’t expect him back to spend the night.

Unless he’s reading this blog, which is possible but not likely, he isn’t consciously aware that he’ll never spend another night here.

Unconsciously, however, he may know it.

two more weekends?

Next weekend, to that wedding in the remote state — if, that is, my swollen foot is entirely better (it’s a little better), and if Plan C states clearly that he still wants me to go to it. I won’t know a soul there, and he won’t know very many. But he has been talking about it since our first telephone call February 6th, when he said one of the reasons he wanted a girlfriend was that he had several weddings to go to….

* * *
Yeah, I know.

* * *
And it’s for that wedding (as well as one in early August that our relationship probably won’t last till) that I bought the two dresses, a picture of one of them included in this post. If I don’t go, should I return the dress? do I have any other likely uses for it?

Will have to think about that one.

Then a family occasion out of state the weekend of 19 July, and then the next weekend is the one we’ve scheduled for Plan C to help me shlep some stuff in his car. I hope he’s still on for that. I’ve been such a kind, generous, pleasant person (:)), as Plan C is well aware, that I trust he’s still agreeable to help.

* * *

And so (as I now imagine it), he drives me to my apartment with the stuff, and he picks up his suitcase with all the stuff in the photos above.

And the morning of the Sunday we do that, 27 July if I’m not mistaken, will be our last morning together, and boy oh boy do I have many things to tell him then!

To tell him in his own house, so he can’t leave in the middle.

* * *

I’ll say them politely, quietly, calmly, in a very low-key way.

* * *

I’m making a list already. I sent myself an email message with a bunch of the things I want to say, so I don’t forget them.

For your edification –

one of the things I’ll say

Next time, don’t give the woman you think you’re in love with your late wife’s jewelry.

Give her new jewelry.

Save W’s jewelry for your daughters-in-law; they will be her heirs, as well as any granddaughters you may have.

A new woman gets new jewelry.

* * *
Plan C thought I didn’t like jewelry. I do like it, at least the inexpensive jewelry I buy for myself, and a few artsy-looking pieces I’ve acquired here and there, some of them necklaces and earrings my mother no longer wears and gave to me. But if Plan C had ever chosen something specially for me, I would have been happy to have accepted it.

Even though at the time (mid-February of this year) I was beginning to be in love with Plan C, and he already was with me, I was put off by his gift of “the last piece of jewelry I ever gave W,” which he wanted to be “the first piece of jewelry I give you.” I can’t find the schmaltzy note he presented it with, but I think it even went so far as to say that he felt “she would have wanted it that way.”

* * *

Sure she would have!

* * *
Anyway, the second time I insisted that he take it back, he did.

But by then, he was already falling out of love with me.

* * *

so where are we now?

Good question.

Looking for references to jewelry in earlier posts, I found this passage:

____________
email and lovers

In a 2.75 hour period, between the time
he returned to his own house Sunday evening
and the time he went to bed, Plan C sent me
twelve email messages.
_____________________

Well, if email is the measure of love, or to put it more plausibly, if communication with the beloved indicates anything, consider this: since Friday evening 4 July, when Plan C phoned to inquire about my foot, I have not heard a word from him. Not an email message, a text, or a phone call (and it’s now Sunday the 6th about 1:30 pm).

His damn treo has phoned me twice: by itself, it phones the ‘most-called numbers’ on its list, because Plan C doesn’t know how to control it. Sort of like The Sorceror’s Apprentice, I guess, but with technology. It called me yesterday around lunch time, and at 6:23 this morning. Fortunately I was already awake, because my body was still on European time.

But Plan C hasn’t called at all, and in this phase of our relationship, I don’t initiate contact.

* * *
If you hear irritation in my tone, you’re right.

* * *
I’m ready for this relationship to end, but I’ll feel a better sense of closure if we have those two final weekends (and I need his car and his help to move my stuff! — and the opportunity for a Talk).

* * *

However, there are ‘no rules’ now. He surely is aware that we’re in a ‘transitional’ phase, and it’s not clear what the rules are.

So that’s where we are, folks

And I’m fine with that. Eager and even impatient to begin a new life, for what feels like the millionth time. I’m ready.

the near future

I’m looking at a very nice photo taken of me just a week ago today, at a table in a field beyond a friend’s house in the European country I just returned from. I’m smiling, looking relaxed, happy, pretty….

Maybe I’ll use that as a profile picture.

* * *

the euro

Are you aware of how far the dollar has fallen against the euro?

* * *
Plan C is quite aware.

He was aware of the fall of the dollar against the euro about seventeen hours a day.

* * *

I had to place a limit on the number of times he mentioned it.

* * *

Each time, Plan C would prognosticate and euro-ate as if it were the first, as if he had not said the identical words in the identical order seventy-five minutes earlier, with a frowning expression on his face:
I’mnotgoingtoEuropeagainuntilthedollargoesup.
It’sturriblebushandhistax/fiscal/monetarypoliciesetcetcetc
there’sgoingtobeworldwidedepression
oiloiloilit’sexpensiveoverpricedthepriceisdrivenbyspeculators
oiloileuroeurodollardollarbadbadworstdepressionsince1929
worstworldwidedepressionsince192919291929
oiloileuroeurobadbad
europeanscomingtonewyorkwithemptysuitcasestofill
canyoublamethemdollardollarbadbadeuroeuro
notgoingtoeuropeagainwhiledollarsolowagainsteurobadbaddepression.

After our second day together, when he began euro-ating for about the fifth or sixth time that day, I said firmly, “I’m going to have to limit these euro-ations. You’re going to be allowed only two a day. To be fair, I’ll allow you one more today.”

Plan C accepted this quota at once. He found it amusing.

Once when he made pronunciamentos about the euro a third time in a single day, I said, “You’ve just used up one of tomorrow’s. That means you only have one left for Thursday.”

* * *

I gave a party in our hotel one night and invited among others a friend who’s a banker. I described him beforehand so Plan C could recognize him and announced, “L is a banker. I want you to meet him and talk about the euro. For the duration of that conversation, your quota is lifted.”

Over their beers, L and Plan C talked for quite a while. “What did you talk about?” I asked Plan C after the party. “The general state of the world economy, and oil,” he said.

* * *

Plan C in a pensive moment

Plan C is sitting low in a comfortable chair, no reading matter in his hand, staring into space, looking pensive. Is he mulling over the changed nature of our relationship, in its pleasant but moribund phase? Is he musing about this foreign culture, entirely new to him, and its differences from American culture?

I ask him what he’s thinking about.

PLAN C: I’m counting my socks.

* * *

Golf

I was happy that Plan C had two good golfing days in Europe.

I began to understand why golf was the perfect sport for him:

– it has special socks;

– it has special outfits – shorts, specific styles of shirt, hats, shoes, gloves – and altogether a distinctly tidy look, with lots of pleats and folds, and Plan C especially likes folds and pleats and creases;

– no running is required; and in fact, no speed is required; you don’t need to rush or get out of breath. Is golf aerobic? I doubt it.

– it can be played in peaceful solitude or in pleasant, knowing companionship;

– there are lots of numbers, lots of items to be counted and tallied;

– it has lots of little rituals, tools, and rules, a special and set-apart space, players who are aficionados, who understand one another’s taste as soon as the common interest is acknowledged. It crosses national boundaries. The Pro in the second course Plan C played in [the European capital city] welcomed him warmly, advised him about clubs, which Plan C was renting, and seems generally to have made him very happy. Golf creates its own little world that is orderly, predictable, and challenging, but only as challenging as any one player wants it to be.

And it offers exercise, I guess, for those who enjoy it in that form, but exercise in little white socks and special hats and gloves and shoes.

Plan C’s dream, the night of July 1

Plan C dreamt about talking dogs. There were a mother dog and a puppy, and the mother dog was talking away, and then it emerged that the puppy could talk also, and Plan C said to someone that it made sense, if the mother dog could talk, that her puppy could also.

* * *

three hours from JFK

In the air, three hours from JFK. A young man across the aisle from us is shuffling a deck of cards repeatedly and playing solitaire.

MIMI: I can’t imagine playing solitaire with real cards, now that you can play it so easily on the computer.

PLAN C: I hate playing cards. Every night for the first three years of my marriage I had to play Russian Bank with W. I hated it.

* * *

This was the first and only manifestation of W on our trip. Definitely, definitely, she didn’t make it through Customs.

two hours from JFK

MIMI: You still have both euro comments left for today. Feel free to use them up.

PLAN C (smiles but returns to his reading).

one hour from JFK

I’m sitting beside Plan C (who is engrossed first in The New Yorker and then in the Hillary issue of New York Magazine), watching him….a man I know, sort of. Or know well; or know better than any other man in the past three years; know his clothes, his walk, his tan golfer’s arms, his widely-spaced, slightly startled-looking hooded eyes with the light freckle on the right eyelid, his serious, slightly frowning expression, his little angers (“That’s very rude, for him to put the seat back that far into your space”), his nail-biting (occasional bandaids on his fingers), his frizzy grey hair, what’s left of it; his stomach, not too bad at all for a man his age; his carefully creased pants, his Movado watch, gold with black leather band, his maroon short-sleeved polo shirt, his tortoise-shell glasses (on his head, because he doesn’t need them for reading) – – – and his complete unconsciousness that I’m staring at him from inches away and taking notes, engrossed as he is in his reading…

* * *

I’m watching a man who is slowly turning into literary material.

and so the question remains

And so the question remains: how conscious is he of us? does he know I’ve completely rethought our relationship? does he have any idea?

He’s (in some ways) the least aware man in the world….but it’s hard to say. He takes things in, sometimes, without articulating his thoughts about them or even having thoughts, while he is still absorbing little bits of reality that indicate something important.

* * *

My plan: to do all the things we had already scheduled, which take us through about the first weekend in August, and then stop seeing him.

* * *

On the warm side:

– He has alluded a few times to our future, saying he would eat his chocolate in my refrigerator “over time,” and alluding (at the last dinner party we went to, Wednesday night, in the European capital city) to his son’s wedding (in October 2009) as if he thought I would be there.

– He kissed me warmly in the airport when we parted yesterday evening; he initiated the kisses, and the warmth was his. And in the (European) airport, while we were waiting at the gate, he turned to me almost with tears in his eyes – remember, he’s emotional, often tearful, though you haven’t heard about that for a while – kissed me, and said with great feeling, “Thank you for this trip.” He put it that way not because I had paid for it – we split most costs – but because it was my friends, my knowledge of the country, my vision of it, that drove the trip and that made it so much fun. Why the tears? I wonder. Perhaps because he felt that I was being true to my promise, true to my word, true to all our plans, in spite of all the doubts he had expressed about “us” a few weeks earlier, doubts, in fact, which he had been expressing one way or the other since the end of April.

– I arrived back in New York with a mild injury, a swollen foot, no idea at all about the cause (it began last week 6 days after we arrived, so I don’t think it could be attributed to the flight), and was limping because I couldn’t bend it. The half-mile walk from the plane to the baggage carousel didn’t help. I had to cancel my 4th of July plans to visit a friend. Plan C called late at night, after he got home, and was ready to come here immediately if I needed help etc. I was reminded of his uninterest in having his name be that of the “person to contact in case of accident or serious injury,” and thought it notable that nevertheless he was ready to be at my side for something so insignificant as a swollen foot.

On the cool side:

He sent me an email this morning, the 4th, that (for the first time) was not signed ‘love’, was not signed with the special nickname I used to call him by (but have not used since our crisis a couple of weeks ago), and did not address me as ‘darling girl.’

So unconsciously, at least, he is responding to the new tone of things, a modus operandi (affectionate but non-commital) that we have created jointly, without once talking about it.

* * *

on the plane

Monday 23 June, about 10:30 pm eastern daylight time, somewhere over the Atlantic.

PLAN C (breaking a long silence): I wonder what Polly’s doing right now.

* * *

(Polly is his cat….)

* * *
A little later:

PLAN C (looking out over the clouds): This is my tenth trip across the Atlantic.

MIMI: Tell the pilot you should be flying the plane.

PLAN C (nearly chokes on his wine laughing): That’s what I like about you. You’re funny.

* * *

in the rain

We are on a train to a seaside town where I have friends. A message comes across the loudspeaker that there has been ‘an incident’ on the track near the city, and the train will go no further than the next stop, where we will all be transferred to busses for the rest of the trip.

About 500 passengers are standing in huge, somewhat disorderly crowds around 3 busses.

It’s pouring. We’re standing with our luggage in what is usually called a ‘torrential’ rain, waiting for the doors of the busses to be opened. Will there be enough seats for everyone? will our luggage fit? will we all be able to sit with our travelling companions? how late will we be? will the train people at the station inform our friends who are waiting what has happened and let them know when we might be expected to arrive?

Will they provide us with what we really want, huge fluffy towels so we can dry off from this?

Plan C is standing under his umbrella, squinting dubiously at the locked bus.

I say to him, ‘This is what comes of joining jdate.’

He smiles.

* * *

the president

No, not the asshole president of our own country, but the wonderful, educated, articulate, attractive president of the country we’re visiting.

Because of professional work I’ve done, I get interviewed on the radio and then invited to a major ‘A-list’ exhibit opening and reception at a famous gallery, where the president will speak. The staff-member presses an invitation into my hand the day before and says those magic words, ‘Bring a friend.’

I interpret ‘a friend’ to mean as many people as I like, so I bring along Plan C and a good friend, M, with whom we’re planning to have dinner that night. M, a native of the European country we’re visiting, tells me she has never seen the president, and points out that she has to wait for an American to invite her to meet the president of her own country.

We don’t exactly meet the president (whom in fact I’ve met on two previous occasions — though in fact I’ve never met any president of my own country), but we are present for an exciting Scene. As we arrive, the steps of the gallery are crowded with the press, dignitaries, the mayor of the capital city, cabinet members, the rich, the important, the beautiful (three distinct and not necessarily overlapping categories), and the artsy, who are mostly young.

We wander around admiring paintings and studying the wardrobe of the young and artsy, who are being photographed (depending on the skimpiness of their dress) and interviewed. We drink wine (Plan C, M) and orange juice (me) and gather in the room where the podium is set up. We are well-positioned to hear the president give a gracious and eloquent speech, which is quoted at length in the paper the next day.

Oh to have a president who can give a gracious and eloquent speech!

* * *

Plan C enjoys himself. Few people could fail to enjoy an evening like that. And then the rain (which follows us for the first 3 days of our trip) lets up and we walk to a restaurant, where over dinner Plan C and M talk and bond, and I’m pleased.

* * *
M is one of only two friends of mine who have met Rolly, Performer, and Plan C. I can’t wait to hear what she has to say (I’ll see her again tonight, but in a large crowd, so the girl-talk will have to wait).

guys and machines

We’re in a train station. I’m standing with our luggage, and Plan C is getting cash. He returns with a dreadful expression on his face. I wonder if he is angry with me for something. As he reaches me, he says, ‘The fucking machine wouldn’t give me money. It worked for the person in front of me and the person behind me, but not for me.’

He’s very upset and remains distressed for a couple of hours, until we meet my friends, who greet us warmly. Yes, it’s hard to cope with that kind of frustration, but by the age of 60 or so (or 35…) most people have learned to ‘get over it.’

Not Plan C. He seems to feel he has been humiliated in public. It’s not worth saying more than a few token words of comfort, so I leave him in silence.

* * *

The next day, he is inordinately pleased when he is able to work the computerized ticket-machines for the capital city’s public transportation. A big smile covers his face. I follow his example buying my ticket, and he is delighted to feel he has taught me.

* * *
my adopted country

So as you can tell, this is no ordinary European trip. We’re not ‘touring,’ hitting the museums and cathedrals and grand squares while we consult the Michelin and hunt for moderate-priced restaurants and struggle to ask directions in the native language. No way.

Plan C, some of the time, is a tourist in this country, but I first visited here 40 years ago and have zillions of friends all over the place. We have been entertained non-stop, and I’m really glad to have a day off (today) from compulsory eating of enormous meals. Everywhere we go, my friends are hospitable and incredibly generous: they serve us three or four vegetables, two starches, meat, fish, homemade rhubarb pie, and a ton of wine. We are served four of these enormous meals in three days (Friday night in the seaside town, Saturday in the capital city, Sunday [mid-day] dinner in the beautiful mountainous countryside, and Sunday [evening] dinner in the suburbs of the capital city).

So we are not, as you might have imagined, stuck with one another as tourists. Plan C is meeting all my favorite people, and he is grateful and enjoying himself. We spend some time apart and some time together.

* * *
And oh yes, there is no time for sex.

* * *
We are getting to bed between midnight and 1 a.m. and getting up early to re-pack, catch trains, go places. We haven’t discussed this interesting situation, I mean The Absence Of Time For Sex, at all.

There has barely been time to discuss it.

* * *

dammerung

But there might be tomorrow. Or there might be time to engage in said activity, if we want to, because tomorrow I’m taking friends out to dinner (they took me out last summer, when I was posting about Performer from this very same internet cafe, overlooking a famous and busy shopping street of this capital city), and we will be close to the hotel and not out too late.

It’s one of my favorite words, dammerung.

(I should say right away that although it’s a German word, this isn’t Germany that we’re visiting.)

As you may know, dammerung means twilight. It has an umlaut over the a, but I’m lucky to be able to find the upper case key on this foreign keyboard, let alone fancy accents. So you’ll just have to Imagine The Umlaut. That means the a sound is prounounced eh, and the word is related, I think, to the English word dim. Or if it isn’t, it could be. I understand the word to mean a slow dimming, such as happens at twilight. It means a gradual coming to an end, as in Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, the Twilight of the Gods.

And that’s the state this relationship is in now: a dammerung, a very slow coming to an end.

* * *
Whether Plan C knows this, or what he thinks or feels, or what he thinks I think or feel, I have no idea. Our first day here, I said something, I can’t remember what, that touched ever so lightly on the idea of our relationship, and he said — I can’t remember what exactly, but it was something to the effect of ‘not wanting to have that conversation.’ Maybe the word ‘now’ was at the end of his sentence. But whatever it was, I felt the same way.

* * *
But we’re getting along very well — not a single fight, though we’ve now been together seven consecutive nights, more than any time in the past (our previous record was five consec nights). Each of us is being very thoughtful. I’m going out of my way to see that he feels at home, to see that he is included in conversations with old friends of mine, who are all being very warm and welcoming to him. (And no, I haven’t taken them aside to whisper in the kitchen, This is ending. We’re breaking up. He’s not the one.) I try to understand and anticipate his various needs — for silence, for conversation, for comfort, for a toilet — and he knows that I am and appreciates that.

We’re both being generous about money.

This morning I asked Plan C if he thought I was ‘cheerful,’ and he said yes, I’d been cheerful all the time he had known me.

* * *
So that was nice to hear. Why did I ask?? I guess because I wouldn’t always have thought of myself as cheerful, though I think in recent years, I’ve changed. Certainly in the last two.

* * *
At one point over the past few days, maybe when we were staying with my friends in the seaside town, the thought occurred to me, We’re like an old married couple. We were at ease with one another, physically comfortable with one another, but not living in a charged, erotic, romantic atmosphere.

Not that there wouldn’t be, or won’t be tomorrow perhaps, attraction, but the dials were turned down. I knew his needs, preferences, wishes, and he (I think) sensed mine.

* * *
But the more I heard him talk, got used to the kinds of things he said to people, the ways he thought and talked, the more I felt confidently and unambiguously that this was not the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

* * *
Or even the rest of the summer.

* * *
I think I ‘owe’ him going to that wedding the weekend of the 11th, the one (well, the first of two, but who knows if I’ll make it to the second?) I bought the dresses for, because he bought my plane ticket back in March, and it would be embarrassing for him if I didn’t show up and accompany him. And he has promised to help me move some stuff from one place to another in New York, a move that will require his car. So we have plans together that both of us probably want to keep to through about the end of July.

* * *
And if there’s time for sex in the next few days in the pretty-nice hotel room bed, we’ll probably have it.

* * *

a somewhat odd situation

So it’s a somewhat odd situation, one we haven’t discussed. We’re getting along almost perfectly (I don’t want to jinx things….) and I’m not at all unhappy.

Oddly enough, I’m not even depressed about having to go back on jdate and match whenever that will happen, though perhaps I will be when the time comes.

* * *
And how did this happen?

Well, if you remember (and if you don’t, read the posts from late May to the present moment), he gradually become more difficult and argumentative and less loving, and then, when pressed by me, acknowledged that he didn’t know what he felt about me anymore, or if I was still his beshert.

And for a few days, maybe four or five, I was very upset, mildly (not painfully or intensely) heart-broken.

* * *
But then when I saw him a week ago today, the day we left together on this trip, I realized that my feelings were no longer the same, and that — for lack of a better phrase — I was out of love with him.

* * *

Perhaps because of the wonderful distractions of so many close friends and this wonderful country where I always have a terrific time, or perhaps because the most painful part of the break-up is over and the dammerung is almost interesting, I don’t feel bad.

and moreover

And moreover, is it so terrible to have had this romance? It’s not as if I were a young woman of 25 or 30 who had hoped to marry Plan C, or as if I had married him and we had to get divorced.

Nothing irrevocable has happened. Hey, you know, I’m 61, he’s 66, why can’t we do this? It’s not as if we lied to one another. We fell in love and then — with minimal hysteria — we fell or are now falling out of love.

There are worse ways to do that.

* * *

And we certainly made one another very happen for about three months.

* * *

W

It occurs to me that in the eight days we have been together on this trip so far, Plan C has Not Once mentioned his late wife.

She was a pervasive presence in his conversation in the past, always. And since the beginning of May she has been a dominant presence.

She was a damned irritating ghost.

* * *
But on this side of the Atlantic, she has been completely absent.

* * *

I guess Plan C forgot to buy her a ticket.

* * *

new post coming monday….plan c will be golfing then, weather permitting, so i’ll have time to post.
no change in the romantic situation — it’s ambiguous, uncertain, and as yet undiscussed — but i’m having a fantastic time, as i always do over here, and am happy. (plan c is also enjoying himself — it’s all new to him — and every night we’re going to dinner parties that seem to last 8 hours.)

tune in monday pm.
xxx mimi

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

Fagin sings that in Oliver.

In a different context I, too, am ‘reviewing the situation.’

I have to remember what RS [Rolly's shrink, and mine] said Tuesday: I don’t want to see your heart broken prematurely by a man who may not break your heart in the end.

And he also advised Festina lente, make haste slowly.

* * *
That’s what I’m doing. Slowly… reviewing the situation…trying not to make haste…but quite uncertain how things will turn out with Plan C, or even how I want them to turn out.

* * *
Before me is a photo of Plan C and myself taken a few weeks ago by my daughter. We’re standing, our arms around one another. I have quite a number of those shots, in none of which do I look really good, and certainly in none of which do we look good at the same time.

I’ve got a number of the same kind of shots of Performer and myself, taken last October — some even taken by the same daughter.

* * *
How many of these will I have before the photo’s of me and the Final Man?

* * *
Okay, here are the negatives, the case against staying with Plan C, at least as I see it now:

1) is he smart enough for me? He and I both think — or is it know ? — that I’m ’smarter,’ but what does that mean, really? what kind of smarts? My two husbands were both extremely smart, definitely my intellectual equals, possibly more-than in the case of my first husband, but that relative equality didn’t make for a happy marriage. RS started to give me examples of happily married intellectual-unequals, Nobel prize-winners he knew married to ‘ordinary’ women, but I stopped him before he could go into detail. ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to do it with the genders the other way: smart women with less-smart men. If you mean male Nobel prize-winners [he did], then that doesn’t show me anything. That’s a traditional pairing, the genius male and his ‘ordinary’ wife. I can’t learn anything from that.’

Not that Plan C is dumb or dim; by no means. But he is resistant to learning things. He hates being taught, hated school, didn’t attend a lot of his college classes, dropped out of graduate school, and stopped reading books a few years ago when he stopped smoking (because he got lung cancer….duh!). He said he used to stay up all night reading and smoking…. The books on his bedside table (including one of mine….) look really good, but they’re unread.

Or do I mean that he isn’t interested in ideas?

But he’s a good ‘reader’ of literary style. Once he read something I wrote and made a — well, I won’t say ‘astute,’ but a useful and valid criticism of it.

Or maybe it’s just that he’s stubborn. He doesn’t have a flexible mind. After we went to see the film The Counterfeiters, he got angry when I said I didn’t like watching violence in films, or really depressing subjects. He kept saying, ‘But it really happened. That’s what the camps were like.’ Of course I knew that; my response had nothing to do with the accuracy or truth-value of the film. I just don’t like seeing people beaten or shot or tortured. I didn’t like Bonnie and Clyde for the same reason. He kept arguing for a long time (this was at a cafe on Columbus Avenue). How could he not see that I wasn’t appraising the film aesthetically, or denying the existence of Nazi cruelty, or anything like that? I was simply saying that it upset me to see violence and torture, and I didn’t like watching films like that.

It was not unlike an argument of ours I described in the ‘lovers’ quarrel’ post: it became important to me for him just to understand the distinction between having a certain kind of response to a certain kind of film, always, all my life (i.e. i get upset by watching violence on screen), and making a judgment on the value of this particular film (i.e., this film is good, this film is poor). I felt an idiot could understand that distinction; why couldn’t he?

Yes, it was late at night, maybe 11 or so, and as I’ve often noted here, Plan C is often not good to talk to late at night. Sometimes he gets in rants, and sometimes he just gets dense.

But do I want to spend the rest of my life with a man who can’t have a simple, easy conversation about a movie, a discussion in which we have different opinions? I wasn’t feeling argumentative. Many people have no problem with violence in films, and so be it. We might then have gone on to talk about other aspects of the film. But he found it impossible to tolerate what for me was a very simple matter of gut emotional response. I would certainly have tolerated such a response, or a similar one, in him.

That’s the only example of that I can think of. Maybe he was angry about something else, and it came out that way? It’s true that only happened once, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a life-partner who wasn’t so intolerant?

2) Or maybe it’s that he’s not all that interesting to me?? He has stopped reading, more or less, as I said above, though he has read a few political pieces that I’ve showed him in The New Yorker. And today (he said in an email) he read something I wrote that relates to the trip we’re about to take.

But he seems to have slowed down intellectually. He’s not in peak form. I’m rarin’ to go. I’m full of ideas. And I’m eager for and open to new ones. And I don’t have to agree with people to find them interesting — well, I do have limits. I don’t want to talk with anyone who defends the war in Iraq. But so far as movies, books, and Democratic candidates go, I like to hear lively, non-belligerent debate.

* * *
Maybe it’s that when the devotion is taken away, I mean, when I think of Plan C as someone who may or may not love me, when I appraise him coolly, I wonder what’s there.

* * *

3) Okay, so today, I was doing a lot of walking, especially during the lovely evening hours between about 5:30 and 7:30. Manhattan was beautiful: there were actually Cool Breezes, and the air looked pink and grey. It was very nice. I was going this direction to Duane Reade, to buy lightbulbs, then that direction to buy Stoneyfield and Fage yogurt, then another direction to pick up a prescription.

During the 1990s, when I was out doing chores at that time of day, I was always glad I had my little family to go home to, and dinner to make for them (forgetting or ignoring or denying the way my ex fought over meals…), because at that time of day so many people are homeward bound. It’s an hour when you — by which I mean I — want to be around a table with your family.

Of course, I was passing lots of restaurants with couples,many of them on dates, sitting at tables outside, but I had no desire to be on a date.

So I asked myself, Would you like to be coming home to Plan C? Would you like him to be there waiting for you? Would you like dinner with him every night? Would that be nice?

* * *
I wasn’t sure.

* * *
Why didn’t it seem right, or desirable? I kept picturing his face, pleasant-looking, good-looking, and his body and posture, imagining him waiting for me to come home, imagining us eating dinner together (in my apartment) — and somehow it wasn’t fulfilling. It didn’t feel right, didn’t make me happy. He seemed sort of like a generic man, not someone I’d be excited to talk with when I got home. I even imagined him smiling and glad to see me, but I still couldn’t feel any happy anticipation at the thought that he would be the man I’d come home to.

* * *
So I invented a fantasy man, based on the one viable not-yet-known-to-me man who met my specs on jdate two nights ago, when, after Plan C told me he wasn’t sure if I was still his beshert, I scanned the available men to see what was there for me, should I return one of those days.

And this fantasy man seemed really interesting!

He was eager to talk, wanted to tell me what he’d just been thinking about what he’d just been reading, wanted to hear my response, know my thoughts, talk some more.

* * *
It wasn’t a sex fantasy.

It was an evening-conversation-over-dinner fantasy about the man I’d want to come home to.

And he definitely wasn’t Plan C.

* * *
So does that mean that without the love, or with the love in doubt, I find — or I would find — Plan C boring?

? ? ?

* * *
This seems a quick turn-around, doesn’t it?

* * *
I don’t hate and despise him, the way I did Performer when things were over; I see him as trapped in his past, emotionally paralyzed as described in the previous post.

But I guess what was most appealing about Plan C was his apparent devotion to me, and feeling that coming from him, I gave him the love I was so eager to give someone.

And we had — have — fun dancing and stuff.

* * *
He sent two emails today. I answered the first, and he wrote back, and I didn’t. I’m “withdrawing,” big time. I don’t have anything to say, and I’m curious to see if / when he’ll phone or write again. And I’m going to follow RS’s advice and ‘make haste slowly.’ We’ll go on our trip, and I’ll see how things go. Maybe I’m exaggerating the problems, or maybe this is a form of self-protective retreat. I have no idea. However, I could be seeing the truth now. Maybe the romance got its energy from the strong need each of us had for romance, but maybe really, we’re not suited. He responded to something in my profile and picture, and then I responded to his emotions, and ‘it’ took off…….

* * *
Of course, there’s the fact that I had written him, responding to his profile, 18 months earlier. That seemed to give a validity to the romance: each of us singled out the other.

* * *
I see I’ve forgotten to list the ‘positives,’ having begun this post listing the ‘negatives.’

Hmmm…..

I must not be feeling the ‘positives.’

If I had to list them, I’d say, we have fun together; I enjoy dancing with him, or at least I do more and more; sex with him was fun (why am I using the past tense??), and he was — I mean is — good in groups of people, especially people he doesn’t know. He’s friendly and accepting and — I hesitate to put it this way, but I will — he ‘presents himself well.’ He makes conversation pleasantly, people like him, and oh yes, he always looks good.

I like his friends and they’ve liked me, though I’ve only met them all once each.

* * *
I guess that’s about it.

Is that enough for a lifetime?

We’ll have ten days of togetherness, far more than we’ve ever had, on this trip, and that should give me a better sense, a clearer sense, of what I think.

Of course for me even to consider staying with him, he’d have to want his name on that person-to-notify-in-case-of-accident-or-serious-injury line. Without that, forget it.

But I guess I mean, if his love returns, will mine?

And if mine doesn’t, does that fantasy man I want to come home to, he of the lively conversation, exist somewhere?

* * *
I’m reviewing the situation.

* * *
UPDATE
message from Plan C sent at 11:23 pm this evening:

Mimi,
[Son] stopped by about 8 unexpectedly and we have until he just left had one of those nice visits we have had since he showed up last summer. Hence my absence tonight. So, darling girl, this to say goodnight, a mellow one for me.
Love,
Plan C

Miss Havisham in Dickens’s Great Expectations: still in her wedding dress, still standing by the wedding cake, emotionally frozen at the moment when her bridegroom deserted her decades earlier; now with grey hair, with mice running round the decayed cake, spiders spinning webs unchecked in the dark, candle-lit room, the table still set for the wedding breakfast….

* * *

Yup, that’s the way I now see Plan C:

he’s emotionally frozen at the moment of his wife’s death.

He’s overcome with guilt about all the things he shouldn’t have done to her, determined to make it all up to her now, to preserve her memory, idealize her, recreate, after her death, the marriage they should have had, that he wishes they had had, that they can have now if he only preserves his life and their house exactly as they were when she was alive.

picture copyright Dickens Museum, London

* * *
But he’s not entirely frozen.

Only ten months after her death, he begins dating the first of 84 women, because he wants to live in the present. He wants another woman, companionship, a lively and fulfilling sex life, friends, joy, play, everything. He wants to move on.

* * *
Dating 84 women, none of the dates evolving into significant relationships, he is able to preserve the old life, because nothing comes along to threaten it. He doesn’t know he is Mr. Havisham; he thinks he is moving on, meeting new people, frantically trying to find a replacement for, maybe even an improvement on, the original wife of 36 years.

Nothing challenges him to realize his paralysis, because the 84 women don’t require any movement of the emotions.

* * *
Until February 2008, when he meets me.
* * *
At first, he constructs me as a reincarnation of W, his late wife: in our very first phone call, he talks about her. ‘My wife was a beautiful woman,’ he says, and I wonder, Why is he telling me that? How inappropriate, how odd! – but whatever.

On our first date, he tells me that he met W, also, on a cold Sunday in February, and tells me every detail of their meeting.

On our first date?!

Uh oh. Red flag.

Only a week after we meet, he gives me the last piece of jewelry he ever gave her, saying, in a note, that he wants the last for her to be the first for me, claiming that ’she would have wanted it’ that way.

Oh yeah?

* * *
And yet, several weeks later, when I spend the night at his (their) house the first time, the second afternoon he bursts into tears at the kitchen table, sobbing that he ’should have apologized to her’ before she died.

I’m not so sure of that, myself.

If she was really angry at anything and felt the need of apology, she would have asked for it. She wasn’t timid or too shy to ask for what she wanted: she was strong and articulate. If she let certain behaviors of his slip by, she must not have wanted to talk about them. She knew what she was about.

* * *
And so for a few months Plan C vacillates between two lives, the new one with me, and the old one with W.

I try to give him back the necklace that was hers, but he refuses to accept it.

* * *

The second time I try, he does accept it. That was last weekend.

* * *
Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on a beautiful sunny day in May, our first real expedition together, he stops, half way over, pauses, looks into the distance, and says sadly, ‘W would have loved this.’

* * *

The old life increasingly takes over: Plan C is not in the present. He strives to keep his old life in tact exactly — the little domestic rituals, the shopping, the anniversaries, the golf, and brushing the cat, the only living reminder of their common household.

I become a drag on him, a burden, a weight pulling him away from the life he is guiltily trying to preserve whole. It becomes an effort to visit me. He ceases to find pleasure in our life together, still in process, still evolving.
.
The only thing he looks forward to is golf.

* * *
I have become W. manquée.

She would have ‘let’ him golf on Saturdays.
She would not have disturbed him while he was reading the paper, would have disappeared upstairs into her study.
She would not have required entertainment while they were at home, would have done her own chores, led her own quiet life, let him enjoy his summer Saturdays in peace.
She would not have been demanding.

Sex with me becomes an affront to her: the more fun it is, the more offensive to her, the more destructive of that old life.

* * *

Seeing his therapist every week or so, he rarely mentions W, does not talk about his continuing mourning, and certainly does not talk about, indeed avoids at all costs, his guilt.

* * *
And so things deteriorate in his relationship with me, because I don’t behave the way W did — in his memories of her, at least — and I make demands in the present.

* * *
Things between us come to a crisis (described in the last 3 posts).

* * *
August is coming up, and with it their wedding anniversary (the 39th, it would have been) followed soon by the anniversary of her death.

* * *

Will we make it to August?

* * *
Only if he confronts his Mr. Havisham self. He’s got to — brace yourself for clichés now — fess up to his therapist, tell her truly about his relationship with W, get beyond the guilt, stop casting me as either W-reborn or anti-W, break free of all those volatile emotions, the wild vacillations between guilt and reverence, understand what he’s been doing, get beyond it all, and love me in the present.

* * *
Otherwise, I’m outta there.

* * *

June, June, a month of days I want to forget:

1942
June 1 — my mother marries my father, from whom she has been divorced for 59 years. Since my birth, he has denied my existence and ignored me almost entirely.

1970
June 20th — anniversary of my first marriage

1981
June 14th — I meet my second husband.

1986
June 20-somethingth. My aunt has a family birthday for her father, my paternal grandfather. That occasion was the last time I saw my father — when, as I approached him to embrace him, forgiving all, he turned his back to me.

He’s still alive at 91.

2007
June 26th — I meet Performer.

2008
June 13th — six months since the last night spent with Performer, the night he referred to with warmth in a sexually charged email message sent to me as he and his ex-wife were on their way to tell their therapist they were getting back together.

2008
June 16th — six months to the day that Performer told me he was going back to his ex-wife (or, to be more accurate, had gone back to her).

2008
June 16/17 — long talk with Plan C about all the changes I’ve noted in him recently, i.e. in his relationship to me.

Not good.

It left me wondering not ‘if’ but ‘when’….

It’s not another woman, except that in part it’s W, his late wife. During the conversation (over the phone, late at night), he vacillated wildly between anger and apology, inarticulate silences and attempts to say what he felt. In brief: he misses his ‘life’ in the little town where he lives. As he said, ‘I don’t know that I want to spend 40 weekends a year in New York.’ In summer, especially, he misses golfing on Saturday as well as Sunday (he has been leaving at 1:20 on Sundays to golf in the afternoon). He says he is ‘in turmoil,’ meaning about his life and about my place in it. He loves his little town and wants to live there for the rest of his life and die there. I offered all sorts of adjustments, i.e. more summer weekends at his house, but it’s not clear that they would solve the problem. He also opined that he may be ‘too old’ (66) to ‘change his ways,’ i.e. not to lead his life the way he has been living it in his little town….’I'm finding that I’m not as flexible in adapting to this, and these problems are exacerbated by the distance and visiting.’

He was full of apologies for all the above, as he was talking. When I asked if there was no longer a lifetime commitment, he answered, ‘I can’t say the things you want.’

I reminded him of some of the things he had said in February and March, and he said, ‘Jesus Mimi I said those things and I did mean them.’

MIMI: Do you no longer think I’m your beshert? [a word I learned from him].
PLAN C: I’m trying to find out if you still are.

He has been discussing this ‘turmoil’ with his therapist. Whether it’s still continuing mourning (it’s not yet 3 years since W died; that was in August), the stress of coming to New York many (but not all) weekends, the absence of Saturday golf in his weekend and the disruption of his customary summer weekend customs, I don’t know. All of the above, probably.

I had asked him Saturday morning if he had discussed W with his therapist, and he said no, which surprised me. I’ve long believed that until he gets that relationship stabilized, and it is highly unstable, ours will be unstable also.

* * *
Many little things brought these new and uncertain feelings of Plan CR