THE SEARCH FOR MR. ADEQUATE
Part XXIX
By Susan Silver

“That old Gang of mine”

While this cat was away, the mice were ... well ... having their own traumas.

Deb, who is rapidly approaching the twenty-second year without sex, finally gave up on Mr. Magic (gay ... yes he was) and to mend her broken heart, accepted a blind date. The guy seems very nice from what she says, and is attractive and she is now on date three with him ... but as she put it, “she is still looking for the pony.” (For those of you who are comically impaired and don’t know the joke ... it’s the kid looking through the pile of horse manure and in answer to why he continues ... “there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere.”)

So, as far as I can tell this doesn’t bode well for the guy, but as another friend of mine says, Deb is “practice dating.” And more power to her, wish I could say the same.

Lizzie, the little gremlin is making some progress. Finally, I was allowed to come see her new place, although obsessive-compulsive that she is, she actually made me take my shoes off ... don’t ask. It is beautiful and in perfect taste, of course, except there is too much of everything. The Collier Brothers would feel crowded. (For those of you who are anecdotally impaired and don’t know the reference, they were two guys in the forties, I think, who lived and died with never having thrown anything away – garbage, furniture, clothes, tchotchkes, newspapers stacked in every inch of their house and they had to be dug out.)

I made Lizzie promise she would start by taking just one thing off every surface and she promised she would ... but not yet.

Anyway, she’d almost unpacked everything, but realized she has to rent a storage space for the rest of her wardrobe and has a lead on someone who just died in her building and she is hovering around their bin, making nice with the family.

She also has been going out of the house, and wearing colors! These are huge breakthroughs!! And, drumroll please ... she finally broke up with the creep (Deliveryman/Lover ... so called because he came over for sex whenever asked to!) She’d been seeing him on and off for the last twenty odd years, and they were odd! I have never met him. Neither has anyone else. I am assuming he does exist. She’s crazy, but not that crazy.

What had once been a normal relationship ... as normal as you can get with a guy who doesn’t speak and won’t meet your friends ... had deteriorated over the years into long periods of absence and then occasional sex. Now, though he’s returned on a bi-monthly basis ... it’s decomposed totally. That is to say, abstinence with no explanation! With a dinner thrown in.

She still was not allowed to ask him anything which required more than a yes or no ... and made the final decision to call him on it. With my encouragement. If you count me screaming at her as “encouragement.” This is what good friends are for, folks. Yes, we still talk three to five times a day. But one call is the “are you alive” that single folks need.

Anyway, instead of merely saying goodbye, she asked him “what did he see in the future for them?” He looked at her blankly and didn’t say anything. Which is the answer, after all. So she triumphantly notified me that she had given him the boot. What did you say, I said? She said “nothing ... but I won’t see him again.”

I screamed, er ... said ... “why didn’t you say ‘this is the last time I will ever see you again, you asshole? Do not call me, do not attempt to see me, do not even think of me?’”

She said she didn’t have to. He knew.

Well, he did not know! He has been calling as usual, every few days for dirty talk on the phone. She doesn’t pick up, but records it ... don’t ask ... and here we go again, ad infinitum, ad nausea. I tried to tell her in a calm way ... “youhavenotbrokenupwithsomeoneiftheydon’t-knowyouhave!!!”

But she does things in her own quirky little way. So, I will keep you posted.
Stan ... poor Stan. He found a girl he actually liked, who was actually normal ... and who actually had the chance of being the mother of our kids ... my godkids that is. But she moved out of the state and he had been so busy at work, he couldn’t even develop the relationship enough to ask her to stay.

He is now not dating, which I think is a good thing for a guy who goes out every single night. He needs some time to regroup, restore, refresh and all those other re’s. I am encouraging this because I am worried about his dropping dead from stress and work pressure. But on the good side, his hair looks really great.

And speaking of hair, Mr. Joey, my hairdresser/shrink is making me very nervous. He is taking more and more time off to go to Florida where his life-partner is. He swears he won’t leave permanently for a few years but I think I better start saving up for trips to Miami every six weeks as long as I can travel. My mother’s hairdresser/shrink, Mr. Robert, was with her until she was eighty-eight. But my situation looks precarious. Even though it’s a lonnnngg way to eighty-eight. Yes ... I said a lonnnnngggg way. Bitch!

Lil and Big Lennie, (not their real names) that normal happy couple ... are having a lovely summer in the Hamptons. I wish I could say something mean about them, but they are the two best, nicest people and I love them. Although I could tell you why he’s called Big Lennie ... but no, I promised I wouldn’t and I still want to be invited to the Hamptons and Palm Beach in the winter.

I get new pictures all the time so that I can see that Ben and Nate are getting cuter every day. As four and two year olds do. I hope to see them soon as I miss the hugs and they now are used to me running after them and kissing them. And they are still young enough not to be able to fight me off. Although Ben can kick pretty hard since his swimming lessons.

Ben swimming

Nate laughing

And okay okay ... I can’t avoid it any longer. I have to deal with my avowed “new energy” for The Search. It’s too hot outside. That is my excuse this week. All I did was lie around watching Dean Martin’s Greatest Hits on PBS. Dean ... so gorgeous, so cool. Who cares if he never read a book?

Although amidst my languor, I did take a huge step. I actually called a guy who had fixed me up last summer with someone who was not my type. And when he asked what was my type ... I should have said “Dean Martin with brains and a library card,” but I said, “I’ll let you know when I see him.”

I saw an article about someone who is really smart, really interested in the things I am, and inordinately successful. Nice looking and now single. So I called the first guy who is a friend of said perfect match and asked him to introduce me. He said he would love to, but the guy has a girlfriend. I said, I heard he broke up. He said, he’ll check into it. Stay tuned ....

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