Dandyland Diaries (5 page)

Chapter 6

The next two months I spent driving across country. I stayed at my family cabin in the north woods of Michigan, where I would hike alone in the mountains while listening to my iPod on shuffle. I had even given up control of my musica
l choices to the music gods of Apple, and even that felt good. I would walk the miles of empty beaches by myself, where I could see the sunlight dance on the sparkling water of Lake Superior and have quiet conversations with my aging father. I was meditating daily and visualizing what I wanted the future to hold. I kept seeing an arm extending out of a cuffed shirt and black suit jacket, reaching to shake mine in agreement for some unidentified deal. I said affirmations each night before I went to bed and slept with a little bag of precious stones under my pillow that a friend had given me to help me feel supported and safe. Some nights I cried for everything I felt I’d lost, but that was okay, I thought—I was allowing myself to grieve for a life that was no longer mine.

I was so comfortable in the cabin that I was scared to leave. It was a nice bubble where phones didn’t dominate and the Internet wasn’t
needed. It is nice to disconnect from time to time, but it was time to go out and start my new life.

I had
the luxury of basically travelling to wherever I was invited to stay between Michigan and California. I drove to all of my destinations with the top down, arriving browner and wilder-looking each leg of the way. I swam in a beautiful blue quarry in Indiana, and at one glorious instant, I took a giant leap off of a steep drop into the water, calling out, “This is my whole life!”

I went to a Tibetan monastery where the Dalai Lama stays when he visits the States. The grounds had many beautiful temples and str
uctures for praying, and I found a little place by a tree where people left gifts as offerings. This is where I left my husband’s wedding band. Later, I told him about the gesture and he said that sounded like a perfect place for it. It was rare that I felt I had done the right thing, so I cried.

An old schoolmate drove me around the Rocky Mountains on a motorcycle and made me laugh until my sides ached. I had acupuncture and Frito Pie in Santa Fe. I ate deep-dish pizza in Chicago and strolled through Linco
ln Park. I had reconnected with so many wonderful people who were all going through some sort of crossroads in their life, so conversations were deep and hugs were long. But eventually I felt like it was time to head to my awaiting new home.

While I had be
en traveling, I’d found an apartment through a friend on Facebook. I had plans to stay with Sarah indefinitely. She offered and I accepted. I was happiest when I was around her and her family, and we had this dream of living together in a compound setting, being all artistic and shit. I had introduced her to a long-lost friend of mine that I’d known in NY. Joe and Sarah were now living together happily with plans of marriage, so I got two very good old friends for the price of one. What a deal! Sarah now had long cotton candy-pink dreadlocks and Joe was covered in tattoos and sported a pink mohawk. She was definitely back in her right place again and letting her freak flag fly high and proud.

The apartment wouldn’t be available for a couple of months, so I
was really looking forward to laughing time with my peeps. When I stayed with them, I actually stayed in their bedroom. It sounds odd, but it really wasn’t at all. I knew them both so well that it felt like a fun slumber party every night. Sarah had pushed together several beds so that her entire bedroom was just a place to lie down and breathe. Everywhere in the room-bed were pillows, blankets, and snacks tucked away in crevices. A large flat-screen TV played crime shows at night when we would make up our own version of the story and laugh until we had to pee. I would announce almost nightly, “I want to stay up all night!” and about five minutes later, I would be sound asleep and snoring.

We wrote and got very creative with ideas and plans. We came up with
several ways to end world hunger and decided that showers were overrated. The shelter from the outside that we created was a powerful therapy of sorts and I really didn’t want to ever leave, but I knew that I had to get on with making my own way yet again.

The first night that I spent in my new apartment was so strange and surreal. I hadn’t lived by myself in twenty-two or more years. I just basically felt like, “Okay, I was there and now I am here.” I don’t really know what that means, but it wasn’t my ho
me yet and I didn’t have any furniture or belongings to feel attachment to; it was just a room thus far. So I sat there in silence and eventually I slept.

I thought really long and hard about what I wanted to put inside of my new space. I wanted colors and
I wanted lots of them. I wanted minimal. I wanted exactly the opposite of what I had before. I wanted no brown. Brown was the color I had resorted to when I was tired and numb. I wanted it to be vibrant and youthful because that was how I was feeling. So I went midcentury modern. Pinks, greens, blues, reds, and patterns were my new happiness.

I was feeling like I had my own world, exactly as I wanted it. So naturally I began to feel horny. I hadn’t felt horny in a really long time. Not just horny, but
crawling-out-of-my-skin horny. Everywhere I looked there was an amazing face attached to an equally amazing body. I fell in love about twenty times a day, minimum. I couldn’t figure out how I would maneuver myself into a situation where I would get laid though. Janet, whom I’ve mentioned before, was making out with guys all the time. I wanted that! I wanted to make out! How do you do that? I hadn’t made out in years. I still had a couples-centric mindset, so much so that I didn’t pick up when someone was interested in me. I had pretty low self-esteem issues still lingering from years of feeling bloated and old, so if a man would speak to me, I would just think he was being courteous.

How do you do this dating stuff? I’d been in my twenties last time I was re
ally out there and totally single. I didn’t have a child to explain, I didn’t have a job that made my hours all fucked up, I didn’t feel old and awkward in the bar scene, so Janet suggested I join a dating site. That was all she wrote. Um, no… lucky for you I wrote more.

“Thank You Goddess, for everything You've given me.  I am nothing without my Goddess.  I can only hope I see You in my dreams again soon.”

                                                                     
—
slave

Chapter 7

Now for the fun… You’ve been patiently reading through my boring recall of my last several years and for that you get a reward. You get to live whorishly and vicariously through me for the next several pages.

I joined a dating site and was suddenly swamped with invitations ranging from, “Evah lick a asswhole?” to “You are the most stunning woman on this site.” Funny enough, most of these messages came from men in their twenties. I hadn’t lied about my age, which at the time was forty-four, so I soon realized that the “older woman” fantasy was alive and kicking. Praise the Lord! And what about this? Women with curves are hot? I must have died and gone to hot guy heaven. An array of beautiful torso-ed pictures flooded my inbox. I couldn’t help but wonder what washboard abs felt like when powering down on me. So I decided to find out.

I contacted a guy with an astounding body. He was Italian, spoke five languages, and was available that night. Whoa, Nelly… I wasn't sure I was quite ready for that just yet. At least let’s do some shallow chitchat before we make the penis plunge. Then I r
ealized I didn’t give a shit about what he did for a living or why he came to Los Angeles. What I did care about was what he felt like and how hard he could fuck. What I didn’t want is some dude thinking I gave a shit about knowing him. So I decided to meet him after many false starts and stops. I felt like I just had to get this one under my belt and then I would have broken the “dry spell” that I’d been experiencing for the past several years.

I told him I would meet him at a place nearby in my neighborh
ood where we could get a drink first and make sure the vibe was right. We decided on 9:00 p.m. I told him to let me know when he got close to the meeting place because I didn’t want to be there waiting by myself. 9:00 p.m. came and went and soon became 11:00 p.m. I got a message from him apologizing for the delay but that he had decided to work out and was now ready to meet. What the fuck? I told him I was too tired now and that the place was closed. He could go suck a bag of dicks… I was going to bed.

I ig
nored his next dozen or more messages that came flooding in. Then the phone rang. Wow, he had some nerve! I answered it.

“Hello?” I said quietly, as if someone in the room would hear me and know what a loser I was for answering the call.

“Ah, hello, this is Marcus. May I speak with you?” he answered in a thick Italian accent.

“Marcus, I'm getting ready for bed. You had your chance.” I began reapplying my lipstick.

“Please, I am sorry. I can make it up to you. Let me come over,” he whispered.

“No way! I’m
not having you over at my house now. I don’t even know what you really look like. You could be a fake.” I toyed with him.

“No. I am not a fake. I could be on a street corner and you can drive by me. If you don’t like the way I look, you can just keep drivi
ng.” Apparently he had done this more than once.

I thought about that proposal. It did give me some upper hand. But if I stopped when I saw him, there would be no mistaking what would be expected to happen next. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that defini
te of a situation, but then again, it felt like a dare… and goddamn it, we know what happens when I'm dared to do something.

I told him a street corner and then said, “What time can you be there?”

“I can be there in a half hour.”

Holy shit, I was doing t
his. I was basically getting myself a free hooker who I'd meet for the first time on a random street corner in Los Angeles. Guys did it all the time, right? Shouldn’t I be able to have some nameless, shameful sex and not feel like a total whore when doing it? The funny thing was I didn’t feel like a shameful whore. I felt totally turned on and I didn’t care what anyone else thought. It was my time to have some fun, and I didn’t have to explain myself to anyone or tell anyone for that matter.

I got into my c
ar after putting on appropriate “I’m picking up a hooker on a street corner” attire. I figured knee-high four-inch heeled boots and leggings with a black leather jacket set the tone. As I drove away, I couldn’t believe that I was actually going through with it. I could still turn back, but I knew I wouldn’t. It was happening and I was excited, scared, and nervous and about as far away from the world I knew as I could get. And I kept moving farther away.

The streetlights cast long shadows against the sidewal
ks. It was fall in L.A. and there was a chill in the air. I slowly pulled up to the corner and saw him. He stood there in jeans and sneakers, a very unassuming-looking free hooker. He wasn’t gorgeous or breathtaking. He wasn’t even smoldering hot in his own sexiness. He was just a young guy who looked cold standing on a street corner, hoping to get laid.

He came up to my passenger window as I rolled it down. “Follow me,” I said.

And he did.

We walked in silence up the stairs to my place. I had no idea what
to say to him. I let him inside my apartment. He commented on how he liked it. I really didn’t care. He sat across from me and I offered him something to drink. Water to be more specific. No need for alcohol to play a disappointing factor in this scenario. We spoke about what we had done that day, and then we went outside where he smoked a cigarette. He was nice and pleasant enough. He seemed less likely to chop me up with an axe than I had suspected a few hours before. That was a bonus.