The Adventures of a Love Investigator, 527 Naked Men & One Woman (4 page)

Suddenly I’m angry at getting the short end of the stick in relationships. I mumble and excuse myself, trotting to the ladies room. Am I mad at myself or the men who’ve taken up space in my life? I throw water on my face forgetting about the mascara drippings.

I think of my first love and how much I believed in him. We were teenagers. I was Catholic and Mark was Jewish. We were torn apart by parental muscle. I was sure he was the one perfect man for me. Why didn’t he fight to keep us together? At seventeen I was strong and willful. I would have fought for him, but he gave in to his mother’s tears. I blot my face with paper towels and return to the interview.

Back at the table Rick continues, “The natural balance is so good. A woman has the ability to console with just a touch. Women need to learn about their power over men.”

“What do you mean by that?” I ask wondering if it applies to my lack of power over Mark.

“Make a man prove that he’s a man. A woman does a great favor for a guy when she makes him strive to be a man.”

Rick pulls a small red carnation from the vase on the table and hands it to me as we leave.

Strive to be a man.
I carry that phrase with me for a day and a half. I hear it in my head over the light jazz on the car radio and just before I go to sleep at night. Did Mark try to be a man in the face of his mother’s tears? I think back and recall his words. “When I come home after I’ve been on a date with you my mother’s always crying. It breaks my heart.”

“But you’re breaking mine. If she met me she’d like me. I know it.”

“That would make it worse. No amount of liking will overcome her only child marrying a shiksa. If you did meet her then you’d always wonder if it was something about you, personally. It’s better this way. It’ll hurt us less. I’ll never forget you. I promise.”

I feel Mark’s presence around me. His hand on my weary shoulder, his smile to lighten my pain. Who did you grow up to be, my love?

“Men will talk to strange women. They just find it strange talking to familiar women.”

~ JR 48, divorced

Case 204 / JR

It’s one of those golden South Florida days. At JR’s suggestion, we conduct his interview in a small park near his beauty salon. We sit on the edge of an old stone bridge that crosses a timid little brook. Eighteen months have gone by since I began interviewing. I’m embarrassed I thought I could accomplish one thousand interviews in one year. I was so naïve.

JR begins before I can set the tape. A Truman Capote character, slightly effeminate and way too dandy, he’s forty-eight and a bit overweight. He wears black slacks and a black tee-shirt. His sand-colored hair is perfectly groomed and doesn’t wilt in the humidity. Mine is hanging like wet straw. There’s something creepy about JR’s body language but I’ve been lucky so far and brush off the flash of intuition that shimmies down my backbone.

The birds are singing and a gentle breeze is blowing. I’m feeling what I felt with James. I start to look around for an escape route. How can a park be this deserted on a weekday? I push dark thoughts from my mind and begin to tape the interview.

JR jumps on my request that he share a vulnerable moment with a woman. Vulnerability hasn’t been an emotion easily accessed by the guys. JR has no problem unloading his story. He speaks in a rapid Carolinian drawl.

“My ex-wife ... we had broken up. It was my fault. I walked out. And then I finagled her into letting me back into the house. My son was a little boy then and I really loved him. I wanted to get back with my family and straighten out my relationship with my wife.”

I notice JR looking at me hungrily.
Ick –
I brace my right boot poised for flight just in case.

“I got back into the house for about six months. It was bliss. Sex every night. I told my friends and clients how much I had fallen in love with my wife again.”

I inch away from him wondering what I’m sensing below the surface.

“One night we went to a group therapy. The therapist went around the room talking to the married couples. When he came to me, I told him how everything was wonderful. I was in hog heaven. He asked my wife how she felt. She said, ‘I want a divorce. I want out of this marriage.’ She was getting back at me. She waited until I was comfortable, until I told everyone I had fallen in love with her again. Then she dumped me... publicly.”

He slumps and in slumping, he moves closer to me on the stone wall of the bridge. I look away as if processing what he has told me. I am, in fact, looking for other people. We are still very much alone.

“Sorry, JR. Time has just zipped by.” I click off the recorder and stamp my boots to get the circulation back in my legs.

JR appears frazzled. He produces a camera from his pocket. “You can’t go... until I take your picture.” The words fly from his mouth.

“No pictures.” I don’t want this man to have my picture. Who knows what he’ll do with it.

“One?” he pleads. There is something edgy in his voice.

“Just one,” I answer in a low growl as the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Of course.” JR works me toward a clump of trees out of view of the road. I step back onto the path. He takes my elbow and guides me near the dark side.

This is how women get butchered.
I break free and charge up the hill to the road. “The light is much better here.”

Uncertainty flickers in his eyes. I stand poised to deliver a good kick. JR takes my picture. I yell my thanks and race to my car. He follows but I’m quicker.

“Most men struggle terribly with the whole idea of sharing.”

~ Ben, 54, married

Case 288 / Ben

My right heel sticks in the snow bank. I yank my foot free and sprint for the warmth of the heated reception room. Inside, a blinding glare of bright colored carpeting, white walls and framed photos of men in jerseys accepting trophies from men in suits hits me. I squint to take in a litter of chairs. A ring of metal racks circling the room proffer pamphlets on Christian lifestyles.

I’ve come to the corporate offices of one of the hottest sports teams in the country to interview their general manager.

“Hi!” Ben greets me with practiced enthusiasm.

At fifty-four, Ben has the kind of energy that sets me on edge. This sports guru wears a navy blazer with gold buttons, tan slacks and a light blue pin stripe shirt. I can’t make out the detail of his shoes, he walks too fast. He herds me double-time into his office. The room is light and bright with very few personal photos and a clean desk top. Oh boy, a clean desk. A bad sign.

Ben opens up the interview by talking about his career. I keep easing the subject back to love and marriage. On my third try, it takes.

He settles into his chair, leaning on his elbows. “From the time my wife was a little girl she had these wonderful visions on how marriage would be.” His gaze moves from my face to my neck and downward. Despite the glass wall extending the length of the room, I feel a little uneasy.

“I sandwiched our wedding in between the games. I was trying to make three trades the night before the ceremony and then get the team on the road.”

He thinks I’m impressed and smiles a photo-op smile. “Once the rings were exchanged and the marriage had taken place, I was relieved. That little piece of the jigsaw puzzle was in place.”

I feel sorry for the pretty woman whose picture sits on the credenza behind his desk.

“For the first ten years of our life, I thought everything was wonderful. Then my wife started to send out these little signals. I would try to deal with it, maybe an evening out or maybe some flowers or a box of candy...anything to try and keep the noise down.”

He swings into defensive mode.

“It’s very tough to run a team if there’s a lot of squeaking in the background.” He studies my face to see if I’m with him. “I learned to lubricate the wheels, calm it down and go on.”

This must be the opposite of love. “You’ve been married for twenty one years?”

He nods and shrugs it off – a bent puzzle piece.

“One Sunday afternoon, Patty told me that she didn’t care anymore. She tried everything she could think of and that she was quitting. She didn’t say that she was leaving, but she did say that she didn’t have anything left to give. She said she had died emotionally.”

I begin to shiver.

“You have how many children?”

“Nine.” He answers, proudly. “I had hoped children would give Patty the emotional food she craved. After we had our three, we adopted six more kids.”

What would the world think of this man, this team manager if they really knew? Ben wined Patty and dined her and wooed her like a player he was trading up for. He placed her on his team and then ignored her. When she felt emotionally hungry, he would fetch another child to fill her void.

After a long pause, he continues. “A woman has a hard time understanding. She wants her man totally engulfed in her. And the guy may be, but he has a hard time demonstrating that. A man comes home and she’s there like a little puppy dog. He can’t respond to her and she feels totally crushed.”

This is the first interviewee I have wanted to punch. It would feel so good. With no apparent love in his heart for either his wife or his children he burdens her while making himself look like a benefactor. I consider the possibility that I’m cracking up.

He focuses south of my face again.
Is it my imagination?

The phone bleeps and Ben excuses himself. I spend a minute making eye contact with the picture of his wife. What a crappy deal she cut.

Ben returns from his phone call with all the verve of a game show M.C. “I’m convinced that most guys create little islands for themselves and get encamped on those islands. Men dig a moat around their island and fill it with water. There they sit. It’s a device designed for self-protection. If they can stay within the safety of those walls they avoid risk taking and getting hurt or exposing themselves.”

I open a mental image of my second ‘ex’ in his walled-up island. I would ask him how his day went and he would freeze with anger. The water must have been cold.

Ben shuffles the few papers on his desk and realigns the pens in a straight line like little team players.

“A wife will do anything to get over her husband’s walls and get down where her man is. The thing is ... he doesn’t want her there.”

There is no point in asking if he would die for the woman he loved – he’s never loved a woman ... of this I am sure. Two years and four months of interviews have taught me to read men. A man like Ben is incapable of loving anyone but himself. I stand to leave.

“Give me your cell phone number, just in case I think of anything else,” he asks.

“Sure.” I jot my number on a piece of paper and hand it back to him.

Ben continues talking, “I went into marriage thinking I would do what comes naturally. Well if you do what comes naturally, you’re basically going to do the self-centered thing.”

Nauseous from his presence, I find my way back to the rental car and suck on a mint in a futile effort to kill the bad taste.

True to his nature, Ben does the self-centered thing. He leaves four messages on my cell phone within twenty-four hours.

I don’t respond to his calls.

He sends a small basket of flowers to my hotel.
Funny, I don’t remember telling him where I was staying.

More messages over the course of the next three days.
He must talk to me in person.
I hesitate. My instincts are raw little pricks. He persists. He says he has a list of men wishing to be interviewed by me. The list is confidential. “It must be delivered in person,” he says.

This whole episode reminds me of when I was six years old, and I met a strange man in the hallway of our apartment building. He was selling bibles and his penis was hanging out of his zipper. I was sure he had forgotten to put it back in. I should have told him, but I didn’t want to embarrass him. Somehow, I was sure it was my fault he was exposing himself.

Each time Ben leaves his messages, I feel a strange sense of the familiar. In some way, his pursuit of me has to be my fault, or maybe it is just my overactive imagination. I decide to play out this hand.

I meet Ben in a public restaurant ...
just for coffee.
Three people come over to thank him for the great job he is doing with the team. He beams and signs autographs.

“I’m so glad you came,” he smiles. I can’t get you out of my mind. You must know enough about men to know what I really want. I’d like to get to know you better. My life is so empty.”

I stand and lean over as close to him as I can stomach. “Your penis is hanging out,” I whisper. By the time he looks up again, I am gone.

“Here comes the bride...”

~ Barbara Silkstone, Love Investigator

I hug my daughter as she exits my house. I’m thrilled and honored that she has asked me to make her wedding dress. I’ve never made a wedding gown before but this is something that means a lot to her. She’s sentimental and loves the idea of having an heirloom to pass on to her daughters. How hard can it be?

I look at the sketches and bride’s magazine clippings we’ve just reviewed. The dress will be a full satin gown with fitted pearl bodice, long lace sleeves sprinkled with pearls, an illusion top and a pearl band around her neck. The train will drop from a large bow at the back of her tiny waist. It should take me a year to make if I budget my time carefully, along with the interviews and a bit of commercial real estate here and there. I should be a perfect mess by next year. It’s close to three years since I started listening to men. I’ve lost myself along the way. It’ll be good for me to concentrate on something that shows progress. The interviews are like running in a dream. I feel as if I’m getting nowhere.

I wonder if my daughter’s making the right decision. Is this the thing to do? Is he right for her? I can’t let my tainted judgment seep into her happiness. Marriages carry a less than fifty percent chance of survival. I’ve seen red flags in their relationship. Should I speak or just shut up and sew?