The Adventures of a Love Investigator, 527 Naked Men & One Woman (7 page)

He smiles, “That’s when our relationship turned from a would-be affair to a great friendship that has stood the test of years.”

Alex settles back in the booth, ignoring his wine. “We never consummated the physical side, but somehow that’s okay. I love her intensely, as my friend. Somehow I have this feeling that the sex has been better in our minds, than it could have ever been in corporal form. But we’ll never know that.”

Sometimes, imagining is good enough. After all, it’s all I’ve had for over twenty years.

“Every relationship is in your mind.”

~ Vince, 43, single

Case 387 / Vince

We all want what we can’t have, including me.

I spot him across the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Orlando.
Outstanding.

Vince and I met briefly two months earlier. I remembered he was good looking in a virile, rugged, stubble-strewn way. I’d been through hundreds of interviews and I secretly hope this guy is a keeper. He has hazel eyes and softly chiseled features. Over six feet tall, Vince is lean and athletic, and best of all he has a long pony tail – a particular weakness of mine.

A television producer, Vince is temporarily based in Orlando. He is forty-three and unattached.

I wasn’t sure he would remember what I look like, but he does. He strides across the lobby, the fountains splash, and the piano plays. He breaks out a killer smile.

Vince takes my hand and looks down at me. My eyes start batting as if they’re possessed. “Perhaps you may not want to interview me,” he says. “I have something to confess.”

Another bitter man who doesn’t feel he can be objective? I nod, ready to reassure him.

He looks at me and shrugs. “I’m gay.”

The dispassionate professional part of me speaks. “That’s okay.” The woman part of me silently whimpers.

He looks relieved. “Good. I was really looking forward to this.”

“Me too.”

Vince and I settle down, side by side in an alcove off the main lobby. The overstuffed chairs are comfortable and the lighting is dim. We have our privacy. I pull out my recorder and note pad.

He describes his life traveling to produce shows around the globe. A dozen or so countries a year, this producer life sounds lonely and not so glamorous.

“When I start working on an assignment with women it’s pretty much, they’re curious. They want to know if I’m available. There’s a lot of interest shown,” Vince says.

I can’t imagine.

“The ones who are not involved with somebody make it pretty plain that they’re interested, not in an objectionable way, usually.”

He stretches his lean legs. I do the same.

“Nice boots,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“I said not objectionable, but actually I have been called at two in the morning.”

“What could they possibly say at that time of night?”

“They say, ‘I couldn’t sleep and I found myself thinking about you. I thought I’d call you.’ Or they might knock on my hotel room door and say something like, ‘I’ve got a joint. Do you want to smoke?’”

Vince looks at me, studying whether I am okay with his story... so far.

He continues, “On the job I’m on now, one woman makes it obvious that she wants to go out with me.

“You know, a lot of people are looking. People want to be with someone. It’s normal – only natural. As long as it doesn’t become too much, that’s fine. I understand.”

“You are so compassionate.” The flowery words slip out. I bite my lip.

His eyes remain fixed on me. His hands rest on the arms of the chair. “There are those few incidents where I have found it intrusive. It could almost come under the heading of sexual harassment. And because of my preferences, it comes with no encouragement whatsoever.”

He smiles.

“I can be as flirtatious as anybody else in a social situation, but it happens without any encouragement. I find, on the whole, women are almost always interested. It’s not my ego.”

“Were you ever interested in women sexually?” I ask. Inquiring minds want to know.

He sighs. “I had girlfriends up until the age of nineteen. But it wasn’t for me for whatever reason. Nobody knows why. It was alright. I enjoyed it at the time. I used to go backwards and forwards at one time.”

I can’t unlock from his eyes. I’m drawn in and want to stay there.

“But then slowly it filtered out.”

I think about the Prime Directive from Star Trek. Something about leaving the planet as you found it. Vince is gay and he must stay, I mumble to myself as I pull away from the Peabody. Why are all the good ones gay? Maybe Mark was gay. Maybe that’s why he didn’t fight harder to keep me.

“Risk my life for someone else ... Why?”

~ Gary, 46, divorced

Case 391 / Gary

The hug thing is building up inside me. I’ve interviewed close to 400 guys and I feel colder every day. My nightmares are visions of courtrooms filled with men. I’m sitting in the witness chair while men crunch lemon drops and talk endlessly of their losses.

Something snaps inside of me, I can hear it. I feel the need to do something rash, to put myself at risk, to cleanse all these crocodile tears I’ve been collecting.

Desperately needing to be alone, I travel to the mountains of Tennessee with the desire to get control of something in my world. The interviews are leeching the joy out of me. I need a straight shot of adrenalin.

Because I can’t swim and I’m afraid of water, I decide to take up white water kayaking.

The Ocoee River is the perfect elixir. Soon things are back in scale. The oar becomes a weapon to thrash the bullshit into submission. I beat it senseless and feel better for it.
Hundreds of men do not a universe make.
I’m determined to prove the existence of real love. But my inner gyroscope returns to point one – toting a load of hormones which is never a good thing. I’ve overdosed on emotional intimacy and need to balance me out.

On day three a halcyon enters my Thoreau-like existence. For the record, a halcyon is a legendary bird supposed to calm the wind and sea so as to be able to breed on water. My halcyon arrives in the form of Gary, my white water kayak instructor. I hired him to learn the proper way to kayak. He’s been a patient teacher. As we stand on the shore of the Ocoee, his muscles shining with sweat, I feel little horns sprouting from the top of my head. Heat rays start emanating from my body.

Sensitive to all signs in nature, Gary waits for his opportunity. Within minutes, I have clobbered myself with an oar. With the tip of his finger Gary touches my injured forehead. One thing leads to another and then to some thick underbrush and a tarp. We tumble onto the tarp like two woodland animals. Shortly thereafter, my gyro is humming in perfect tune.

My days are now spent paddling, running the rapids, risking all under the watchful eye of my new man. I glide over his words of endearment and stick to all things physical. Physical is the only thing you can rely on, I tell myself. I forget about the interviews, mentally shelving them for as long as it takes to become happy again.

Our kayaks slide side by side on the burbling water. There is a particularly bad spot up ahead, Gary warns. “A doctor from Atlanta got killed at this very spot last year. His foot got caught in the rocks, and his friends had to watch him drown – right before their eyes.”

“Why didn’t they save him?” I ask.

“Why would they risk their lives?” He speaks as if to a child. “They could have been caught up in the rapids and died, too.”

“Whoa ... they didn’t make any effort to help him?”

“That would have put them at risk. They could have died along with the doctor.” My hunky instructor says.

I hesitate, my question already answered. “Would you try to save me ... if my foot got stuck?”

“Of course not. You wouldn’t expect me to.”

But I do, that is the sorry part of it. I quietly pack my tent and leave the banks of the Ocoee. As I hike out of the valley, I pause at a fallen tree to catch my breath. A bright blue butterfly comes to rest on my left hand. It sits for long minutes, occasionally rubbing it’s antenna with its little feet. As I’m always looking for signs, I take his visit as a sign.
Quit while you still can.
The tiny creature finally departs on a breeze, which is exactly what I should be doing.

Mr. Kayak phones me many times in the coming weeks. His messages are pleadings. He professes his love for me. He does not understand what came over me. “Was it PMS?” he asks.

I wonder if Mark would have stepped into the raging river to save me? How many men would be willing to die for the woman they loved? I become obsessed with knowing.

“Women just put the fin down to one side and wear high necked blouses to hide the gill marks. I can respect a survivor but not a shark.”

~ Tom, 48, divorced

Case 402 / Tom

Five years into my adventure, Tom calls to confirm his appointment for an interview, he says he’s a “dolphin researcher.”

We meet in person and I put his scientific research to the sniff test. The reality is he made a small donation to a dolphin research center recently and just spent the weekend visiting the facility.

Twice-divorced, this forty-eight year old insurance estimator owns a three bedroom home in a quiet, middle class subdivision just outside Tampa. I prepare to weed through his interview, sorting truth from fiction, expecting more fantasy than reality.

Tom’s eager to tell me of his adventures with a dating service, “They define success as if two people get married. I define success as if two people meet and like each other.” He talks fast. I scribble notes and keep my recorder running. His blond hair is flecked with gray. He arches his back, over-conscious of the image he projects.

“I saw Theresa’s video and read her profile. She seemed self-assured, but not uptight, very relaxed. Theresa is so down to earth, her idea of an ideal date is normal budget things, not jetting across the country to watch the sunset.”

Now he speaks with a put-upon air, “A lot of these women write down as an ideal date, most romantic ... oh yeah ... fly to Paris to have dinner, yeah right – on whose bank account? It’s like, you have to be kidding.” He scrunches up his face in mock horror.

Tom appears nervous as if he has a built-in calculator and is deducting his own points as we talk. His expression darkens. “I don’t think people are completely honest in their profiles,” says the Dolphin Man.

I decide not to push the honesty thing, what would be the point? I change conversational directions.

“You’re really happy with your relationship with Theresa?”

“Oh, yes. This is serious. We’ve talked about marriage.” His answer has an empty ring to it. I press the space between his words. “You’re sitting here today, because you read my invitation to be interviewed on the dating service’s bulletin board last week. Right?”

“Right... in their office.”

“I’ve got to ask you if you’re so happy with Theresa, what were you doing back at the dating service?”

Tom stammers. “I’m just letting my membership run out. You never know...”

“Once you commit to something or someone, nothing is worth breaking that commitment.”

~ Barbara Silkstone, Love Investigator

“Why am I doing this to myself?” I ask Sal as I gather my pillows into a friendly heap and lay back to stare at my bedroom ceiling.

“Hey, this was your big idea.” I can sense his smirk across three-thousand miles. The best part of being good friends is the shared language of love that allows for teasing and ego mutilation.

“I’m getting grossed out. The men are opening up way too much. I’m overwhelmed. I can’t see a direction ahead.”

“Take it one interview at a time.”

“I’ve never learned to leave well enough alone. I have to keep relearning the same lesson. When I was five years old, I knew enough to stay clear of my mother’s vicious temper. The slightest infraction would cause her to inflict bruises and welts on my skinny little body. On the other hand, I was always testing the limits.”

“Is this a long story?” I hear Sal pour liquid into his glass. The ice tinkles.

“I was eating a sugar cookie in one of the two bedrooms in our little apartment. My mother was clanging pots in the kitchen. As I sucked on the cookie I wondered what the effect of spit on the cookie would be relative to wall-stickability. I always had an interest in science.”

Sal chuckles softly.

“I slobbered up the dough to what I guessed was the proper consistency and then plastered it on the wall. It stuck for a full minute and then slithered to the floor. Unfortunately it left a cookie-size spot on the dusty pink surface. It then occurred to me that Hitler in the Kitchen would beat the tar out of me unless I made the spot disappear, quickly.

“I scrambled to the bathroom and grabbed little scraps of toilet paper, sliding them over the bar of Ivory soap. I returned to the cookie-wall and rubbed. This action caused the spot to grow large and clean. The old paint made the soap circle stand out as if a flashlight had been aimed at it. I panicked.”

Now both Sal and I are laughing.

“In my five-year old brain, the solution was clear. If the wall was dirty and the spot was clean, I needed to dirty the cookie-spot to blend it with the dusty wall. I rubbed my fingers over the bottoms of my sandals in order to pick up some smutz to blend into the spot, but each time I touched the spot it grew bigger and bigger.”

“I see where this going,” Sal says.

“I could hear my mother winding down on the pot banging. She would be checking on me soon. I was a goner. I smeared the shoe soot with great passion, creating a spot as big as my head but with a curious looking fish-tale at one end. This operation failed to blend the clean spot into the dusty wall. I could feel the pain and shook in anticipation.

“I took some pencil scrapings and rubbed them on the spot which was growing and taking on a life of its own. Then pure tot-brilliance struck. I decided the rest of the wall must be dirty because it was greasy. If I could make the clean cookie-spot greasy it might blend in. I grabbed a jar of petroleum jelly from my brother’s diaper table and smeared a handful of goo on the spot which had taken on the shape of a large whale. I was staring at the whale in horror when my mother walked in.”