It was a strange trip. I tried so hard to be loveable, to be the person he would love the way he once did. I’d lost weight fretting loss of him, and arrived with him in London feeling thin, pretty, and desperate.
Why were we here at all, dragging suitcases through Earl’s Court, looking for signs of rooms to rent. That’s the way we’d always traveled, and we had done well together in other countries, renting a car (he always drove), searching out rooms like that. The year was 1983.
I’d met him in 1977, at Singles event in Philadelphia. I wore the bright green jumpsuit I’d made, showing off what was then a good figure since I taught dance and worked out with teenagers all the time. I’d chosen a wide grosgrain plaid for the belt and no doubt wore heels. I was always in heels in those days.
After the discussion groups — we were given topics, it was all so contrived—we could mingle at the bar which is what I did, and ordered a gin and tonic. It was May, almost summer. A summer drink, a bright green jump suit, suddenly a man with blond hair next to me asking if we could share the peanuts.
I had been dating haphazardly, overlapping men. It was a free time for me, not discriminating at all. I felt fairly wild. M children were adolescents or young teenagers. I’d lived in a sterile marriage for 5 years and had broken free a year or two before that. Free was the word.
Anyway, after those years of doing everything together, me and that man that I met over the peanuts, after several dates a week,trips to New York, to Europe four times, to Montreal to ski, and always loving, loving, there came a time when things got very awkward in bed.
He couldn’t climax; I felt helpless; he suggested medical treatment for me; I followed his suggestion—nothing wrong with me. In there somewhere I became aware that there was another woman or maybe several other women and the fact that we were a couple became a lie. Everything became my fault and I I was a nervous wreck over it, over him, and then he just called it off.
How could he have called off what I thought was my life, my life that would go on, with a person I’d never felt that close to, a shared life, except for our houses. I continued to live with my kids; he lived in a beautiful house that I had helped him build, that he’d let me pick out the colors for, and so on, a future that didn’t go on.
To say I was devastated was to define that devastating word. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t think, I didn’t know who I was or would be without him.
After months of loneliness, I called him. He cared enough,some residue, to suggest we try again, take this trip to England together.
Of course I agreed; I was elated. The children were 18 and 20 then. The daughter went to her father’s house; the son stayed with his job, with a neighbor looking in.
I went to England with my. . . lover? He wasn’t even that. But here we were in Earl’s Court, dragging suitcases to find a room, the sun shining that day, I remember, me in a trim navy blue wrap skirt and print blouse, tucked in, and probably heels. We dressed in those days. It didn’t matter. My vacation “job” was to get him to love me again.