Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss. Sometimes a kiss is a promise. And sometimes a kiss is a recipe for confusion. After you've passed the age of twenty five, you have been kissed enough to be able tell the difference, at least that what I used to believe.
My friends and I have seen it all. We've been loved, we've been cherished, we've been fooled, we've been embarrassed. We have even resorted to "party tricks", like wearing French Maid costumes. Even in the midst of all of this, we have always believed that eventually, we'd wise up, get our "happy ending", or at the very least have a damned good time casually dating a lot of men, without all of the drama.
Recently, I heard a story that reminded me that no matter how old you are, you can always get duped.
The other day I ran into a neighbor. We'll call her Carol. While I don't know exactly how old Carol is, she's clearly over fifty. She has grown children. She's experienced a bitter divorce. However, a man who is in her life has managed to keep her body craving but her mind guessing.
Lest you think that I comb the city looking for blog entries, I want you to know that I did not solicit this story. One day, Carol volunteered to help me with my dry cleaning and started telling me her story. In so doing, she welcomed me into her life and now she is a part of “Chatón’s World”.
As she helped me with my numerous pieces of clothing, Carol began describing her romance with Rod, a man with whom she has been involved for over three years. She was gushing! She described him in vivid terms. He's handsome. He's engaging and charming. He drives a convertible Mercedes; and he has the kind of charm that makes you kiss him first and ask questions later. He's over sixty, but still has the energy to play the field. He also has a problem with commitment. In a word, he's an old school player who has not retired his card.
Despite his being a player, Carol is all strung out over Rod, which convinced me that all of Rod’s parts must still be working, or he has some help from his little blue friends.
It turns out that Carol and Rod lived together three years ago. After they had been living together for about a year, he came home one night and told her that he needed a break so that he could “play the field”. During the break, he became seriously involved with someone else. And Carol was devastated.
As luck would have it, Rod’s romance was short lived. After the other woman broke up with him, he returned to Carol full of apologies and regret. And despite being involved with another man, Carol let Rod back in.
While on the rebound from Rod, Carol met Muhammad, a man of a different faith and background who cherishes her. However, despite letting him into her bed, she hasn’t let him into her heart because she can’t get over Rod. And despite Rod’s ongoing attraction to other women, she is convinced that she and Rod are “meant to be together”.
Based on this belief, Carol is trying to show him how good she is for him. She does good things like dying her hair and working out, but also other more personal things like making him dinner and dressing up like a nurse and caring for him when he's sick. If he gets this when he has a wandering eye, I wonder what he'd get if he was actually acting right?!
As much as I love to talk, I was speechless while Carol shared her story. For you cynics, I was not silent because I knew that her story would make interesting Blog fodder.
Rather, I was incredulous. I could not believe that this “real grown up” was going through the same challenges as my friends and I. We often drink wine and share our stories. Naïvely, we have believed that time was a cure for the bullshit. None of us have contemplated that fifty year old women are going through the exact same relationship drama.
During my conversation with Carol I began to realize that age isn't a substitute for wisdom. As we age, we need to learn from our experiences and mistakes or we'll doomed to repeat them. Or in this case, still be trying to fit into that same French Maid uniform in 2040…
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