I had seen Justine on Match before we met at a friend's annual basketball party. She showed up and we met in person and talked at some length. She was yet another divorcee who had turned to interior decorating as the only way to make a living after being out of the workforce to have kids. She was pretty, with strong Germanic or Scandinavian facial angles. She was a bottled blonde and busty, in fairly good shape. I appreciated the good luck of running into her somewhere other than online.

At one point during the evening the host's friend Kiki joined our conversation. She was notorious for having left her under-garments behind on the couch at the prior year's party. I took a half-step back and watched as the ladies got into an animated discussion about being single and trying to meet men. I had to smile when Kiki enlisted Justine as her "wingman" for future bar adventures. 

Justine asked Kiki what she was looking for in a man, and Kiki replied: "I'm just looking for someone to fuck." Apparently, this declaration included me by dint of my proximity to the conversation. I’d never heard a woman be so baldly matter-of-fact about sex before. I was also less than interested, considering the previous year's story.

Justine and I stayed late into the party, dancing and doing the Seventies “Bump” dance, until few people were left. I walked her out to her car and we chatted about getting together. We kissed a bit, and then went home. The next day I looked her up on Match and found that I had actually "favorited" her previously, saving her profile for easy recall.

Her profile had the tag line "sallying forth to a forever love... and I'm feeling lucky!" The first line read "to quote a famous French actress: 'You protect your being when you love yourself better... that's the secret.'"  I had no idea what that really meant in terms of online dating, but it seemed poetic enough, and I read on.

Her profile also said that the thing that attracted her the most in a man was honesty, and that she hoped to find a "friend, a mentor and a true love," though the relationship should "leave time for individual pursuits." She warned that "if you are restless and looking for something ‘fast’ I'm probably not your girl." Hmmm, I thought, that’s what the fast ones usually say.

I Match-mailed her about connecting again and she replied that she'd seen me on Match as well but had narrowed her search to Manhattan, "for a lot of reasons" before deciding to take a break the week before. But she was interested in staying in touch via regular email, which she gave to me. I didn’t ask about Manhattan.

We corresponded back and forth a bit, leading to a get-together the next weekend. In a nice phone conversation that Thursday we made plans for the upcoming Saturday night, and I was excited to see her. 

But then the next day I got this message:

hi there,
it was really nice to chat yesterday. hope paddle was fun. i need to cancel going out tomorrow night. not sure if i should call you??  call me when you can.

 

I called her and left a message inquiring what had happened but didn't hear back from her. She finally called me the next week and so we made plans for the following Friday. 

But that Thursday I got another email:

Hey Larry!
Hope you're having a great week!!... It is not looking good for tomorrow night. I have my kids this weekend, and both my sitter and my housekeeper are away. I am having trouble for Friday.

Saturday I am in the city all day with the kids - and maybe overnight. Sunday I am available and so is my sitter. Although, yikes!...  it's the Superbowl!  hmmm? The Rivercat usually has a great band on Sundays.

​

Any thoughts? Let me know. 

​

I sent her a note with the babysitters I had used while living in town, and miraculously one came through, so we agreed to meet at a local bar that Saturday. Some other mutual friends from the party at Christin’s were going to be there as well, so it seemed like a good group.

That night I drove to pick her up, and after a tour of her meticulously decorated Cape house, we headed over to the River Cat. We sat down at the end bar by the band and had our first real "relationship" talk.

 

She'd had a weird marriage with very little sex – apparently only a couple times a year. It seemed that her husband was a closet gay and finally announced it to her after ten years of marriage, quickly spurring a divorce. She admitted to being acutely frustrated by years of sexual deprivation. I thought perhaps I might offer her some relief, but kept it to myself for the time being.

It seemed her brother was also gay, and so in combination with her marital experience she had developed an extremely sensitive "gaydar" orientation-sensing awareness. We had spoken before of a friend of mine whom she had also corresponded with on Match, and they had recently met for coffee. She felt strongly that my friend was actually a closet queen.

Beyond this little unrequested revelation, we talked for a while about our lives and marital experiences - the usual semi-confessional between divorced people who are feeling each other out for psychological health and fatal flaws. 

Eventually, Christin, her friend Mack and a dark, attractive woman named Coco came in and chatted with us at the bar. But after a while they headed off to dance, and we continued to talk. Before long Justine started looking over her shoulder every once in a while, back towards the door to the bar, where the group was standing. Eventually, she excused herself and went out into the foyer. I waited alone for a while at the bar, listening to the band, but when she didn't return after about ten minutes, I got up to see where she had gone.

There were a lot of people on the dance floor and a cardboard sign on the outside of the foyer door blocked the view outside. When I snuck a peek through a side window I saw Justine talking to Mack - with her hand on his shoulder. Mack was the local heart-throb, so this was not a good sign, and certainly not one that I had expected. I couldn't believe she'd pull such a move on our first real date.

I turned away, mystified and a little angry, and focused on the dance floor, where Coco and Christin were making a nice little scene, dirty dancing together. Coco even slipped something into Christin’s back pocket while they were dancing: her phone number, perhaps? 

After another ten minutes or so Justine came back out of the foyer. I was pretty steamed by that point, so I barely acknowledged her and continued watching Christin and Coco, who were getting wilder and wilder. It was all very intriguing - especially in contrast to my date, which seemed to have gone pffftt.

 

Eventually Justine disappeared without saying a word, and I didn't really notice. When I finally decided to take a look around the bar and restaurant for her, she was nowhere to be found. I tried her cellphone, but there was no answer.

I went back to talk to Christin and company, who had stopped dancing and were chatting and drinking. No one had seen Justine for some time, so I headed out the door, thinking she might have walked home in a huff. I had picked her up at home for the date and the bar was five miles away, so I drove to her house, searching the road as I went for an angry woman.

But she was not to be found between the bar and her home. When I knocked on her door, the babysitter answered and said she hadn't seen her since we left earlier that evening. She gave me an alarmed look, like, "She's not with you?!?" so I wheeled and headed back to the bar. The group couldn't believe she had disappeared, but no one could think of what else to do. 

Christin and Mack started to dance again, so I grabbed Coco, who was a very sensuous woman of Iranian descent, and we had a great time dancing. I began to think, well, Coco would be a nice alternative for the evening. But there was something going on between her and Mack: apparently they had gone out for some time but were now “broken up.” We all danced the rest of the set, and then everyone decided it was time to leave.

Christin needed a ride home and I volunteered, and Coco jumped in the car as well, getting me thinking about possibilities. But I was dismayed for the second time that evening when she asked me to drop her not at her apartment but at Mack's, and I saw them embrace through the window as soon as he let her in. Jesus, I thought, oh-for-two in three hours!

I decided to give Justine another try, though it was past midnight at that point. This time she answered, and I quickly pulled into a neighbor's driveway to talk. Poor Christin sensed I needed some privacy and got out of the car and lay down on the grass outside the car, watching the stars, even though it was a little chilly.

Justine told me that she had taken off because I had seemed fixated on Christin! Apparently, she had called a cab and waited forty-five minutes for it in the manager's office, which was why I couldn't find her. I asked her what the story was with Mack, and she just brushed it off as nothing, with no explanation. We semi-argued for a while until Christin started to look desperately chilly, so I said I'd like to drop by to talk about it. She said she'd be up. 

I drove Christin home and then doubled back to Justine's. The front door was open, and I just walked in. The conversation with her was surreal. I'd spent all of one party encounter and about an hour with this woman, and yet we were quickly able to conjure up the kind of convoluted, blaming, responsibility-avoiding argument that I thought only haunted bad relationships. I asked for explanations, she dodged the questions - rather expertly, I noted - and wouldn't believe Christin and I were just friends. We circled the same points a half-dozen times with no resolution.

Finally, after twenty minutes of arguing across the room I was so frustrated that I just said to her, “Come here.” I was thinking about the sexual frustration she’d talked about earlier, and the minor fact that she had even agreed to see me again after the disaster of the evening. She did, walking over slowly with a mixture of resentment and intrigue on her face. I stepped into her and kissed her. And she kissed back, hard, and we kept going.

After a few minutes, when my hands started to wander, she broke it off and asked if I would like some wine. I said, "Sure" and she walked into the kitchen, flushed. I followed and put some music on her iPod docking station. We had a couple sips of wine and went right back at it. Pretty soon I had my hands in her sweatpants and she in turn was fondling me, so I suggested we go to the bedroom. 

“No way,” she said, “my kids are asleep upstairs.” I asked what difference that made in light of what had just transpired in the kitchen. She just said it was late and she was going to bed, and trooped off into her first-floor bedroom and into the bathroom, closing the door.

I paused for a minute and then figured, what the hell? and proceeded undeterred right into her bedroom. I was in a semi-dressed state of dishevelment from the end of Stage Two in the kitchen, and just flopped down in a chair at the base of her bed to wait for her.

She came out of the bathroom in a long flannel nightgown - classic female anti-sex armor - and got right into bed. I dropped the remains of my shirt and trousers and jumped in too, without any protest from her. And pretty soon we were both naked, squarely in the missionary position, a thrust away from making love. Again she brought up the kids upstairs. I promised to be quiet if she was too, and just slipped inside.

It was quick. We had both worked into the kind of froth that didn't make for a long, languid lovemaking session. And mixed with healthy doses of anger and frustration, the result was short and sharp. I rolled over, fully amazed at this final turn of events in a completely bizarre evening. But when started to close my eyes, she told me that the kids would be up in an hour or so - it was 4:30 am at that point - and that I had to leave. 

I was nearly delirious from wine, fatigue and sated lust but I shook myself awake, redressed and left her with a kiss in bed, promising to call later. I could only shake my head on the way home at the evening’s turn of events: makeup sex on the first date. 

From this rock-solid foundation, we continued to talk the next week. We both avoided the unanswered questions from our first date and agreed to get together again the following weekend. She had already made early plans on Friday and nothing on Saturday, but I miscalculated that our now-intimate relationship meant we would spend the weekend together.

She had early plans on Friday and talked about getting together later that evening, so I hung out at a bar on Friday night waiting for her. I gave her a call around 11:30 pm, with no answer, and gave up. I tried her twice again the next day: complete radio silence. So, by late afternoon I made other plans. 

Finally at 7:30 she called, saying she couldn't get a babysitter, and apologized for the previous night but it had been a date with someone else that had gone later than she had expected. Another date!?! Later than expected!?! 

 

I stifled my resentment and assumed it couldn't have been too successful because she still wanted to get together with me again. It was obvious at that point that I was only one of a number of romantic alternatives for her, so I just said, “Call me when you have some time.”

Unsurprisingly I didn't hear from her the following week until late on Friday night when she called again. I saw the CallerID but didn't answer because I was at home with my eleven-year old son and didn't want to get into it her with him nearby. But her voicemail was upbeat and talked about wanting to get together again.

 

I thought about it for a while and sat down and composed a long email, complaining about the poor communication the previous week and asking again for an explanation of what had happened on our first date. I didn't really expect an answer, and I didn't hear back from her.

I stopped corresponding at all and focused on other Match prospects, as well as a February vacation trip with my son to Atlantis. But the week before I left for the Bahamas she called out of the blue and we had a pleasant, uneventful chat and agreed to get back in touch when I returned from the vacation.

​

The Wednesday following my return I got a cheery email from her, in characteristic no-caps:

how are you? hope you had a great trip! look forward to chatting...

 

I gave her a call and we talked about getting together the following Friday, though she said her brother might be coming into town and she wouldn't know until Friday if it would work. I thought about it for a while and emailed back to see if she could work it out with her brother before Friday so I wouldn't be left hanging again. This time she was amenable to more concrete plans, though she deferred to Sunday night, for dinner at her place. Apparently, her kids would be with her ex- that night. It seemed like a reasonable plan.

The second date actually came off the way our first date should have. I brought a bottle of wine, she cooked a nice dinner - though she had made it earlier that day and just re-heated it when I got there. We chatted over wine afterwards and got to know each other better. I heard more about her gay ex-husband and gay brother and sensed a profound need in her to catch up on years of sexual frustration and forced abstinence. We ended up back in her bedroom, with wine and candles, and made relaxed love for a very long time.

The next morning, she seemed reluctant to get out of bed before me, but had to pee and so got up, cupping her boobs in the crook of one arm. She mentioned that she was thinking about getting a boob job because her years of nursing had stretched her breasts out a bit. 

​

She brought glasses of ice water back to the bed, and we made love again, and dozed off until mid-morning. I finally got dressed in the warm after-buzz of new sex, and promised to call her that week.

The following Tuesday I got an email from her:

 

hi there,

yesterday was really busy - and i felt horrible!...  (we're bad for each other!!!!) ... how did you feel?

wish it had been more of a sleep in day.  no alcohol for me for several days! 

on another note, here's the band you like - and you will be able to see them at your favorite bar :  ))   

The note included a notice that the band Short Bus would be playing at the following Friday night. I took that as an invitation and suggested back that we go see them together. She didn’t answer or return the message I left for her. So on Thursday I sent another note, saying - are we on? Later that evening I got a note back saying:

i didn't get your message?? did you call?
how are you doing?

​

At this point, I wasn't doing well. It was pretty unlikely that she had missed my email reply, so it seemed like she had reverted to the same shenanigans of a month before. I was losing patience, so the next morning I replied:

No, blondie - the message was in the second line of my previous email, about seeing Short Bus tonight.

​

Offer's still open...

​

No answer. I put a call or two in, with no reply. So, a few days later I wrote her a tombstone email:

You know, this weekend felt eerily similar to the one a few weeks ago - I blocked out the time, and both nights fell through and I found myself scrambling because plans with you didn't happen. I left you two messages (cell and home) asking you to call and haven't heard a thing. 

​

You might recall my email from a month ago saying that communications is a big theme with me? This routine is not going to work for me...

​

It was no surprise that I didn't hear from her again.

But about a year later I was in my local bar with some friends when she trotted in with a date. She walked by me without making eye contact. At some point I got up to go watch the band in the outer room, and within a few minutes she appeared nearby, slightly behind me but easily noticeable.

So we played a bizarre game of “I Can’t See You” for the next twenty minutes, the remainder of the set. I can't imagine she didn't want to talk to me - she'd left her date sitting at the bar, in a reversal of the situation of our first horrendous date, where she’d left to go talk to Mack.

 

But I didn't want any part of a reprise, or in adding a perverse twist to the other guy's date. She just stood three feet away from me without saying a word, finally walking in front of me to go to the ladies’ room. I turned the other way and walked out the back door of the bar.