It's A Fairy Tale Romance

I've told you bits and pieces in posts and comments about Cal, the boy I met at his brother's coffee house in 1960. I was barely sixteen, he was barely eighteen. It was his older brother (married and with children) who hit on me, but it was Cal who I chose to drag home to my parent's empty house for the purpose of having sex with a very sweet real boy. He was gentle, kind, patient, willing and in the end probably in a great deal of pain, if the stories of blue balls are true. I was the first girl he'd been naked in bed with. He was the first boy I'd been naked in bed with. (My daddy did not count and it was because of my experience with my daddy that I so wanted to have a normal experience of sex with a real boy) I was not the first girl Cal had sex with, but the first girl who really wanted to have sex with him but who wasn't able to have sex with him.

It was the very early trauma of those years of sex with daddy that made sex with Cal impossible. I eventually had to get medical help for the problem for the clamped down muscles that would not allow me to even use a tampon. My body did not want to be penetrated by anything. My body had a mind of it's own and was determined to remain virginal if not technically a virgin.

Now, 49 years later the boy is an old man and the girl is an old woman. He has been married twice, raised two of his own children, and two of his second wife's children. He's lived in the same house for thirty years. Prior to that he lived within a few blocks of me and used to see my photos in the newspaper modeling. He recognized me. This in itself amazes me. So close and yet so far.

Then a year ago he read my letter to the editor in the newspaper and googled me where he found my blog. He started reading and read for a full year before he emailed me. That is a patient man. That is a loyal man. And of all the men I've ever known, he is the first to read my novel. And at breakneck speed. He finished it the day I took it off the blog.

We have been talking on the phone now for weeks. I am again the aggressor in this odd relationship. But he seems fine with that. I ask very personal questions and he answers without thinking for the answer I might most want to hear. He says he can't lie to me. I'm hoping that's true. I believe that intimacy is impossible where honesty is withheld.

I thought I was through with men. I thought I was again impervious, sexless, disinterested, over it all. I might be wrong about that. There might be a bit of romance left in this old woman's heart. I'll keep you posted.

Bill Evans Trio: My Romance

(I am reposting this while I get my brain working again. Today isn't starting well. So, for awhile, lets ponder the troubles of my failed romance. It might be instructive.)

When I met Tom (the man I call first love/last love) he was just beginning to play the acoustic bass. I've always had a thing for bass players. There is something about the instrument--it's rather womanly looking, and the man playing it has it in an embrace between his legs. His arms are wrapped around her and he is fingering...

I like men with good hands, finger dexterity, and stamina. Bass players fit that bill, pianists, guitarists too. For a brief period of time, Tom used to ask me to sing to his bass or piano accompaniment. I was reluctant, but eventually gave it a try. I have a deep, smokey voice, fairly limited range, but almost perfect pitch and a great memory for the lyrics of jazz standards. Solo bass is one thing, bass and vocalist is another entirely. I would lead him through my vocal arrangement of My Romance in my key, and he would say, but that's not the right key, that's not the key it's written in. And I would say, but it's my key, my range. If you want me to sing with you, we will have to play it in my key. He would say, "Sing it. I'll follow." And we would run through the song over and over, and just when I would get comfortable with the arrangement, relax and really start enjoying myself, he would change it up, get loose and start throwing in a bit of bass virtuosity. Without warning, he would play a solo in the middle of a duet. It ruined everything for me as a singer. And then I refused to sing for him. It's a metaphor for what went wrong with us.