Writing is like being able to put life into a snow globe. It takes the things that are too big and scary and reduces them into a form that I can put away when I want and look at from a distance. It also takes all that’s good in life and captures it into something I can take out when I want and look at close up and keep forever. It makes the bad things into something I can hold…and the good things into something I can hold onto. Both help so much that I need that little souvenir of life.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Senior Sex(less) and the City: #16

The Cowboy
We’d met once about a year earlier, so we hugged warmly. Old friends in singles group world. We were eating at a restaurant where the fare was a bit tricky. My buddy—a somewhat solicitous man—asked me if I’d like some help with it. I asked him about something he was eating. Here, he said, try some. I couldn’t eat my potatoes; did he want them? We exchanged. Later, a friend asked me something about my date. Date? I assured her that I barely knew the guy. But it made me realize how easily I’d fallen into that old-married-couple interaction with this man. Odd how emotionally attracted I am to that calm, masculine energy, that ruggedness, yang to my yin. A cowboy quality.

I was reared in Nebraska. Reared in the city, but still, a part of me knew this man, knew that he knew horses and dust and how to cup a cigarette in callused fingers, flicking the ash like a small gunshot. I knew he could mend a fence and casually lean on it as he pulled the hat down to shade his squinting eyes. I could feel without touching the dryness of his hands and the stubble on his chin.

And he sensed, in turn, that I have learned to sniff the air around people, easy to spook. He knew to move smoothly, self-assuredly, not too suddenly, so I don’t bolt. He quickly had me—a separate species, really—eating out of his hand.

But helpful very quickly seemed to turn…patronizing. Is there a time in life when condescension is ever truly appropriate? I can’t think of one. Even my father was never patronizing, bless him, as the truly great never are. Those little digs cut like spurs.

Snort. Gallop.

6 comments:

  1. I love the horse metaphor but then I love this entire series you are doing. :) And yes I hate it when that happens. snort, giggle, gallop :D
    Jules @ Trying To Get Over The Rainbow

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  2. Gosh you're good, and way too good for some of your, ahem, dates.

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  3. Ooooh, he sounded like my kind of guy until that last part. Drat. There's always something...

    Pat
    www.critteralley.blogspot.com

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  4. Tammy--I just HAVE to know...Are you fabricating this (you're way too young to be a "senior")? Are these stories going to be published somewhere besides your blog (they're too good to just share via the internet)?

    I loved the ending. So abrupt and apt. And I loved the simile comparing the digs to spurs.

    A chapbook? An anthology? Are you working on it already, and I'm just behind (god knows I have wide behind), or do you need someone next to you, armed with an electric cattle prod?

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  5. Hey Sioux, I can answer all of those...I agree, I agree, I agree!! LOL

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  6. Thanks, Jules! And I almost had the word "giggle" in there, too. Funny!

    Thanks, Linda and Pat!! He really was nice at first (and nice looking)! I know there IS always something, but why does it have to be HUGE?!

    Thanks, Sioux--and Becky for agreeing--for the very sweet comments. I guess I'm not really a senior yet, but "middle aged" just doesn't sound right with anything. I had to look up what a chapbook was...and I appreciate (?!) your offer of a cattle prod! Unfortunately you have to have a destination in mind for it to work, or else you just wander in circles getting zapped...which pretty much describes my life now that I think about it....

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