Cool Pleasure

I like someone… and he appears to like me…. so far. Time  will tell. Time  will tell if If we continue to like each other. Developing relationships are kinda like opening a  wrapped present. They are nice to get, and you are filled with anticipation as you unwrap them. And the unwrapping is a pleasure in  itself. Best to enjoy the unwrapping, and savor it… because  you might not like what’s inside. Or maybe you do, and maybe it’s something you treasure for a long long time.  Or discreetly “re-gift”. …and pass him on to your girlfriends? One thing I know, is that this pace is good for me. Two months and three dates so far. A forth rendezvous is in the planning. He’s not the kind to “glom on”… and boy, do I run when that happens. There is no glomming. It’s a cool relationship that’s brewing here. It’s good for me to have some tempering. He sets the pace.

He lives far away and already has a lot of elements to his life…. and that formula is apparently the weird cocktail mix of what attracts me. Close, exciting, intimate, and a little out of reach. He’s very smart. Very, of course. And he’s  cool, secure, laid back and wordly. I don’t know him well, but he seems quiet and deep. I love being in  his company.

And knowing  when I’m going to see him next brings some  kind of order to my life that I don’t  feel otherwise. It’s  something to look forward to and all the menial or difficult challenges of life are what I  get thru to get to that time and place. Really liking someone, can make the smallest, simple things a great pleasure. Like hearing cool him just say, ” I can’t wait”.  Funny how three words can gave me such pleasure. Such cool, sweet pleasure.

Charlatans of Palm Beach

Charlatans of Palm Beach.

Charlatans of Palm Beach

It was a strange night last night, starting with the two crazy ladies at the bar. I came in  to  “The Meat Market” with my two well dressed, classy  girlfriends and James, my very nice, good looking, tall, English wingman, friend. It’s the popular new steak house on the island.  All the seats were taken, but we gathered around the corner of the bar and found  a little gap where  we stood ,ordered drinks, and  began to civilly chat amongst ourselves. Two younger women, oddly dressed, sitting near the corner, in close proximity to our little standing group, immediately let it be  known with a lot of obvious eye rolling, that this was, their corner. It grew into  outright aggression, when one reached over and grabbed each of our  four drinks and slammed them down, to apparently center them  on the cocktail napkins, which they were not completely on, and then yelled at me. ” THIS IS PALM BEACH! Where were YOU raised!”. I am relatively well known in these places and like to think I am  quietly, well regarded. And as those of you who have been following this blog this year may recall, I do  not suffer fools well, yet alone aggressive fools.

But I bit my tongue. I was  amused by their eccentric behaviour, and stepped back to consider them. One dressed in a tank top, on tank top, with a bare lower back, with an earpiece stuffed into her left ear. She befuddled me when I tried to speak to her and she pretended  like she couldn’t hear me, while all the while  engaging in a conversation with her comrade. The comrade girlfriend was dressed in a very bright, twenty year old, candy pink sweater, and kelly green pants… which all looked like it came from the Palm Beach Goodwill…. The West Palm Beach one, that is.  She looked like a tarted up clown. I was bewildered, because though they were very snappish, I thought I could chat them up a bit, to soften their bizarre, tense, hostility over us being  near them at all. Their behaviour didn’t make sense to me. It was a weird vibe, and I wanted to make it a happy vibe.

But when I tried to speak to tank top, pink sweater rudley barked at me, ” Don’t bother her! She is the TOP DESIGNER of Lilly Pulitzer! She is busy on the phone placing her orders in Hong Kong!”…  Really???…  I had, had enough. I said, ” That’s interesting… because I’m friends with the “top” designer for Lilly Pulitzer. The whole corporation. Her name is Maura. She’s  Finish. She lives across the street from me. Her husband is Gunther. They have this amazing cat that rides the elevator.” This was the truth. I gave pink sweater and tank top, enough information  for them to know that they were “found out”.  I was kind and gave them a chance to recover, just in case she really did work for Maura, but was slightly exaggerating. But no, instead, pink sweater, now embarrassed to be caught in  a blatant lie, went on the attack and snarled loudly back at me, “Well, I’m a Palm Beach RICH BITCH ! Dont fuck with me!” She nearly bit me, saying it. I starred and blinked for a second to see if she was  kidding. She wasn’t. She was serious.

I laughed in  her face, and retorted,  ” You haven’t  been out of rehab very long, have you? ”

As  I  turned, I could hear more nonsensical exclamations, about the length of her heredity here, blah blah. ( And actually this seems to be a fairly  normal, younger woman refrain these days. I’ve heard other intoxicated younger women rant, they “belong” here and everyone else  are interlopers. This  pretentious, bad behaviour only loudly announces  their deep insecurity who they are NOT, and how they are desperate to be perceived. It’s  the ” thou protesteth too much”,  school of psych.)

I am finding I  have don’t have time or tolerance for rude, bad behavior. I call it out quickly, and if necessary, take action to correct it. Maybe I’m becoming righteous bore. I hope not. But I just can’t stand bullies. I gave a quiet, discreet mention to the manager with whom I am friendly, that there were some bonafide crazies at the other end of the room, that probably shouldn’t be served any more. They weren’t, and left. I love odd, quirky characters, but not ones that get in my face.  Bad manners and  phony stories are one thing, aggression is another.

The false judge was there too. You know, the one who isn’t really a judge but is just a sociopath that tells everyone he’s a federal judge, so he can pick up women and get free drinks. He was banned for life at Buccan last week, when he threatened to have the very sweet trio of girl bartenders there “arrested” if they didn’t serve him. Which is hilarious in of itself. A federal judge is going to have bartenders arrested  for not getting him a  drink fast enough? That finally got him thrown out. I had researched his claim of being a judge seven months ago, when I smelled a fraud. There wasn’t a federal judge by his name appointed since 1924, and that was in  the Four Corners of  the Southwest, not the Miami district he said he practiced in. If he were that Four Corners  judge, he’d be about 130 years old now.  What amazes me is that  so many people swallow another man’s bull shit so easily.

It’s as if being in Palm Beach increases people’s gullibility level. Remember, this is the place where Madoff, made off with so much. Maybe because  occasionally you find yourself handing a drink over your head to a polite, tall, black guy, standing behind you, because he can’t get to the bar, and you learn the next day, it was Michael Jordan. And it really is. Or Rudy Giuliani, or Tiger Woods, or Bill Clinton. They’ve all  been to Buccan,. Maybe it’s a place where anyone can be anyone. So it attracts a plethora of frauds, shysters, and charlatans…. who opportunistically reinvent themselves as needed. The roll in  and out of town, with the tide, like flotsam and jetsam. A healthy dose of cynicism, or at minimum, a lack of gullibility takes you far here. Charlatans, liars  and crazies…. Its  not lions and tigers and bears….but it  certainly isn’t Kansas either. It’s just Palm Beach.

On Intimacy

Intimacy. What is it? It comes with sharing with another those things that are rarely shared. And it comes from trust. It can happen suddenly. It’s not necessarily physical. And once felt, it’s hard to contract from. It’s hard to  go back to that non-intimate place. I was very intimate with someone, recently. It felt great.  I want to feel it again. I want more. But I can’t.  Now there is a vast, yawning canyon of time and space and the business and busyness of  our separate lives.

Now that I think about it…It is the intimacy that I miss most in losing my husband, the intimacy. and him, of course.  That unspoken, shared point of view, that was  special and unique to us. Big part of  what  made “us” the “us”. I experienced  the pleasure of a rush of intimacy, again. That expansion into an unknown place, the “stepping off the cliff-ness”. And now I am experiencing the rough contraction from that place, and the thrill of that leap is now replaced by the fear of hitting the ground…  hard.

And I wonder, if my life is to be now lived in little snatches of joy and exhilaration, taking and appreciating the joy for the moment, as I find it. To  learn to be  more satisfied, with less. To take it as it comes and to not be greedy. Maybe I have had as much and as good, as life can offer, and to be content with what I have already had in my life. I find myself  standing back more and watching as a close in, but distant observer, of the machinations of the people around  me. Maybe I am meant to be the  wise observer. Or the foolish one.

One week, and he hasn’t called. Funny how some things don’t  change. I am fifty something, but still have the heart of a fifteen year old girl.

The Void.. after he left.

He just left. And I just went out…again. When something’s good with a man. Between me and a man, I shouldn’t write about it. Right? For God sakes, why would any good self respecting man want to be referred to in some woman’s expository refrain about her single life?  But here I am writing about it.. Writing  about … wait for it…HIM.! He’s just a man, and in so many ways an average man… and in so many ways for me…not at all, because he seems, “to get me”, whatever that means. But sex is involved which  can screw up everything, particularly ones  perceptions in how one  is ” got”, as in “gets me”. But he has  already rationalized the same thing, that I  have that, telling me; “we are from the same tribe”… and we are. From Philadelphia and Catholic, and kind of waspy all the same, tribe. And more  importantly, we are just really comfortable around each other. I like this man. And as soon as he left, I  went off, not wanting to  be “off”,  so much as  not wanting to be so liking  one man, because it’s not a safe place for my heart. I don’t want to like one man, no matter how right and good it feels with him. I’m scared to feel hurt again. And he is not unattached. Very few men in my age group are. There are always vestiges of another life dangling in the way of clean, pure, starts. Its ok, I accept that. What I don’t accept is that I have met someone who is clearly compatible and attractive and good for me. And I am not comfortable  with that. It’s too good with him… and that makes me want to scream…NEXT!  Read past all the bravado, and fear,as I am writing to say I  met a man, who actually touched me. And as good as it feels to finally be touched… it scares the hell out of me. I don’t want to be touched. But he left and now there is an  emptiness I didn’t feel, until he filled it…and now I’m left with this void.

Who’s Putin?

I played a proper game of golf yesterday. 18 holes on a private course as the guest of a friend of a  friend. I held my own, which meant I didn’t unnecessarily humiliate myself or more importantly, them, as I conducted my game. I did occasionally swear, from time to time, or uttered some undecipherable exclamation when I grounded my club or my ball went crazy in  the wrong direction. My girlfriend just uttered her polite and charming “Oh NO!” by contrast, when her ball did the same. As if her shank was  such an unexpected surprise. I admired her for that, for her “Oh NO!”, as opposed to my, trying to be  under my breath, “fuck”!  She is a much more politer exclaimer than I am.  I’ll never be her. I won’t ever be as polite and as refined and edited as she, nor will she be me. I’ll accept this and this is the basis of a good mutually beneficial relationship. I found a new friend that might rub off on me  in a good way, and I, her, I hope.

Girlfriends; i.e. a friendships  between women is measured in dog years here in Palm Beach. Seven  years anywhere else,  is  one year here. Everyone is so transient. Geographically, we are either  going north or south with the season. When  will you see them again?  But their relationship status is equally important. Are they with, or without a man? We, the single women are all orbiting in a similar solar system, but if you get hooked up with someone in a more permanent basis, you go into another solar system, and your orbits don’t necessarily cross any more. I’ve been missing a good girl friend whose orbit I’m not intersecting with currently, and am hoping we reconnect. But I’m relaxed about it. One of the things about Palm Beach; its like an estuary, where there is always a good flow of both, clear pure water  and the salty brackish water. You need both. There is as theory that life began on earth in the estuaries, where there were two distinct cultures; salt and clear, mixing, that created life on land. The salty and the pure in Palm Beach certainly makes it more interesting and creative for me.

We had some great conversations on the course yesterday. I heard the story about a friend of a friend, a guy, newly released from the  bonds of marriage, and was enjoying his new found freedom and how it manifested itself with the multitude of  younger nubile, willowy women who are willing to throw  themselves at him, because of his maturity and financial status. He was enjoying himself immensely with a younger gal, his dance instructor. He, a hedge fund guy, when during dinner, he mentioned that he, that  day,  had been at a lecture about Vladimir Putin, and his bed fellow responded: Who’s Putin?  HIs  30 year old playmate didn’t know who  was the most powerful man in the world is. It was a wake up call for him.  Putin  can apparently effect sex in America. They didn’t have sex that night. It was was the grand  reckoning that he had little in common with this gal other than the most basic gratification. Eventually we all need  intellectual and soulful connection.

Ive been working away, hard on “For Love or Money” my comedy screenplay and so haven’t been writing post as  I’d like. But here is this one. Good night y’all. Peace, love and a good solid  night sleep to y’all.