No, Dorothy, not now, not ever

I could never make love to a woman named Dorothy. There. That’s the punch line. Now, let me give you the back story.

I’ve never been one of those pick ’em up easy guys. Being a bachelor for 55 years ought to stand as proof of that. I wasn’t the type who could find love. Love would find me, like how a coffee table would find my shin as I’d feel my way through the dark for a I-gotta-go-right-now 2 a.m. piss. Oooh, ow oh… well, hello there.

Just for example, one woman was at my flat til about 3 a.m. I slapped my hands across my thighs, sighed, and said, “You need to leave now or I’m going to jump your bones.”

She stood, opened her palms and shrugged, “Well?”

See what I mean? I gave her an out. She was three feet from the door.

I had been a late bloomer. The pregnancy rate in my tiny home town was scary high. And I mean scary. How could the population always hover at 600 when practically every girl walking around seemed to be pregnant. All the homes in my town had artesian wells. Could it be the water? Whatever it was, if anyone was going to make the first move, it wasn’t going to be me.

Skipping past my 20s into my mid 30s, I hit a long stretch when much younger women would link up with me. Eleven, 12, 13 years younger. They had father issues. They loved their fathers, they just didn’t like them. Simple enough, right? Young. attractive, smart, fit professional. Any of my pals would look at us and think, “What’s she doing with him?”

But none of those relationships ever lasted. Why? For one thing, they didn’t know the songs. It kind of all starts there.

“Tell me more about The Beatles.” I’d hear that a lot. Fingering across my album collection, one flame of the month asked, “Who’s this Jethro Tull guy? You seem to like him.”

“His real name is Ian Anderson,” I replied.

“Well, that’s a pretty cool name. Why did he use Jethro Tull? And what’s an Aqualung?”

Staying away from the fear of commitment thing, the most likely reason I stayed single was due to my line of work. A journalist, I worked the copy desks at suburban papers near St. Louis and Chicago, then on to city jobs in San Diego and lastly in Phoenix. I worked nights and weekends. Nights and weekends.

When I lived in Chicago, that was no big deal. A half-million people might work that shift. Nightclubs and the night life are just hitting their stride. But San Diego and Phoenix? Not so much. Not one person I know met someone and got married working that shift in those places.

The great advantage of working that shift is having daylight hours and weekdays off to do just about everything everybody else would like to do but can’t because they’re at work. Shopping, working out, playing golf, skiing, the movies. There’s nobody else around.

To fill some of that time, I took cooking classes for a semester. One woman in the class, a southern belle named Dorothy, was close to my age. She was a knockout. She had two little kids and was not happily married. We palled around in class and hung out after to discuss life and to just be together. It was nice.

She even helped me cheat in class. It was a midterm. A midterm in a cooking class? I didn’t take it serious. I couldn’t remember an ingredient or maybe the trick to get hollandaise sauce to come out just right. She gave me the answer, whatever it was. We got caught, but got away with it. True friendship, I thought.

She invited me out for drinks. “You can help me with fractions.” she said. Recipes require using fractions. I’m good at fractions. So, I said OK.

Phoenix doesn’t have many dark bars, but she found one and I joined her at a booth in the corner. I’m playing it straight. Just enough light in the booth, so I bring out the material to practice on. Her hand crept up my thigh. I stopped thinking about fractions. We both did.

Nothing happened. But the momentum to make a move was there. A few days pass. She calls. She’s in her car on her way over. “I really want to see you.” She shows up at my door, wearing a form-fitting sweater and skirt. She’d had a boob job after having the kids and was very proud of it, I mean them. As she entered, she’d kicked off her heels. As obtuse as I was and am, I knew that when a woman kicks her shoes off, she’s usually ready to play.

Again, nothing happened, not an embrace, not a peck, nothing. I’d been to her house. I knew her kids, I’d watched them one afternoon at the school while she worked in the cafe there. I met her husband, who I could tell had his suspiscions. She’d met me dressed to kill on several of these occasions. I’m looking guilty as hell.

Dorothy and her husband split up. The summer goes by, she calls to tell me she’s met some nice southerner also named Jeff. She’s very happy. So am I.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, she calls again. “You gotta lay low, maybe leave town.”

“WHAT?”

“Jeff was here all weekend. When the kids’ dad came to pick them up, they were all excited and blurted out that Jeff had been here the entire time. My husband doesn’t know about the other Jeff. He only knows about you! He’s yelling and throwing stuff. He just left. He’s really just furious.”

“But I didn’t do anything. We didn’t do anything.”

“My husband took off before I could explain.”

“Can’t you call him?”

“I try, but he’s not picking up.”

“Great.”

Cooler heads somehow prevail and again nothing happens. A few more months go by. Jeff has gone back south. Dorothy and I meet for drinks. It feels much safer somehow.

She says, “Well, Jeff, you know I was gone over the summer. My husband sent me to a therapy place to treat my addiction.”

“What addiction? Dorothy, I didn’t know you had any addiction.”

“I was addicted to sex, Jeff. He sent me away for that.”

“You gotta be kidding?! You’re telling me this now. Now? And you’re cured now right? Of course, you’re cured.”

“But Jeff, why didn’t you try anything, anything — all the times we were together. God knows, I gave you the chance.”

“I couldn’t do it, Dorothy! I just couldn’t.”

“But why,” she asked.

“You have the same name as my mom! Can you imagine? What am I supposed to do? Oh, Dorothy, Dorothy. Yes! Yes!! Yeeeaahh no. No.

So that’s it. No Dorothy for me. Ever.