I had dinner with an old boyfriend recently and it was an unexpected shock. He’d gotten terribly old. The bon vivant I’d remembered was gone, the confident stride now reduced to an uncertain gait and the twinkle in the eyes that promised lascivious pleasures had now dimmed. Oh, there was a twinkle, but what had been a luminous burst that exuded self-confidence and perpetual energy had become little more than a night light that guided you to a middle-of-the-night relief stop.
He and I had met several years after my husband died. The magic of the more than two decades we’d shared so lovingly was gone, the hole in my soul was still seeking solace. Perhaps a new relationship might mitigate the emptiness.
Lonely, I experimented with one of those computer dating sites directed at seniors. After exchanging several emails with one gentleman, I gave him my telephone number. He called and we chatted uncomfortably. Twenty minutes into the conversation I realized he was calling me from London, several thousand miles and more than a half-dozen time zones away.
A month later he flew to Los Angeles, and I offered to pick him up at the airport. He arrived in a wheelchair and my first thought was ‘what had I gotten myself into.’ Spryly he jumped up having used the wheelchair to speed through Passport Control. It was the first, but not the last, time, I’d be stunned by his actions.
He checked into the Sportsman’s Lodge Hotel on Ventura Blvd. A few weeks and several evenings together later, he moved in. It only took weeks, however, to realize this embryonic relationship was like a new pair of shoes…a little too tight here, a little too uncomfortable there.
His life story spanned three wives, a son, and a daughter, along with careers in London, Tel Aviv, and various cities in the U.S. Neither his grown son or daughter spoke to him any longer. His ex-wives, as much as I could discern, simply shrugged their shoulders knowingly. Being his wife apparently had been a heady avant-garde fashion that exhausted and eventually became passe.
I’d been in London with a friend. He and I agreed to meet for dinner at Selfridge’s, an upscale store with an elaborate food court. He’d hired a car to bring him into the city. He has an old Jaguar, but rarely drives it.
His hearing is minimal, but his male ego refuses to acknowledge that he needs hearing aids. His hair, once black and coifed, is now no more than a few straggling strands of white.
The plan was to have dinner and then enjoy a short walk to my hotel where we could chat quietly for a few hours. A dozen steps after dinner and his legs weakened. We decided a taxi would be better. He fell getting in, embarrassed as two bystanders came to his aid.
At the hotel we sat for an hour, holding hands…recalling a decade earlier, while still aging, there was the promise of a fun tomorrow.
He has bladder cancer and fears that a new diagnosis will reveal an accelerated malignancy. He thinks he wants to die. Our parting was bittersweet.
We see in others, some younger, some older, some infirmed, echoes of what we might become. It’s called life.
He was a brief, but pleasant, interlude in my life at a time that was propitious.
I’m grateful!