Author's Notes:
All persons in this story are well over the age of 18.
This is a true story. It is definitely not a stroke story, so if that's your cup of tea, please look elsewhere.
Names have been changed, of course, and place names may or may not be real. I'm offering it in Romance instead of Non-Erotic because there are a few explicit bits in it, but there is little outright sex. I hope that it brings a little joy into the lives of those who take the time to read it. The writing of it certainly brought some joyful memories into mine -- and Sarah's, of course.
So here we go!
It's a little difficult to say when the forces that brought us together began spinning up. Was it when, on a mild September evening during my fifty-third trip around the sun, that Maggie, my wife of fourteen years told me that she wanted a divorce?
Or was it some years earlier than that, when I began to realize that my mate -- the woman I had loved and made so many compromises and accommodations for through the years we were together -- had stopped loving me? In truth, that she had never truly loved me enough to allow me past the protective barrier that she had built inside her, the barrier that she used to shield herself from the pain of her father's many decades of cheating on her mother. The same pain that made her irrationally jealous and obsessively suspicious of my behavior toward other women. I have to say up front that there was never any cheating. Never. (At least on my part.)
Or was it when I found out that she had never really enjoyed my attempts to satisfy her sexual needs and desires, and had faked her sexual enthusiasm and orgasms with me from the beginning? Why on earth would a woman do that? To lead a gullible man to the altar by his penis? To mate "for life" under false pretenses? Like most clueless guys, I thought from the responses I got that I had been doing a pretty good job in that department -- although the stresses of an increasingly unsettled marriage meant that the frequency and enthusiasm had been suffering for quite a while.
Whatever the cause or reasons, I had been totally blindsided by that revelation, which had come out during "marriage counseling." Well, whatever the answer, my marriage was over because she said it was, and I had to work through the stages of grief as time permitted, and then make plans to move on....
* * * * * *
Or did it begin when another man, many miles away, became restless and unsettled in his own marriage, and began to believe that the grass was, perhaps, greener elsewhere? Possibly, just possibly, a wiser man would have applied some care and fertilizer to the grass he had been tending, but he did not. Instead, 27 years into "forsaking all others," he bolted over the fence to mount a younger filly, leaving Sarah to sort out the broken shards and develop a plan for living the rest of her life.
The man she had lived with and loved and raised children with had given up on their life together and was gone. Only her two sons -- both grown into fine young men -- her friends and family, and her professional life were left to validate her worth as a person. (And at this point, in spite of her sorrow and despair, Sarah was about to enter a new and exciting stage in her life -- that of being an independent woman who would make her own choices!)
* * * * * *
Whenever it truly began, the magical forces did not start to come together until I had started to come out of the grief and despair I felt for the loss of my own "until death do us part" partner. It was on a Sunday in January of 1996, after spending the first New Year's Eve of my life alone, with no family, friends, or loving companion nearby, that I started looking at the Sunday Times-Dispatch for more than news and entertainment.
Yes, kids, before there were Match.com and Plenty of Fish and the plethora of "special interest" Internet dating sites, if you lived in central Virginia, one place you could seek out potential companions was the pre-Internet, dinosaur-era, daily newspaper called the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Before the Internet took over the world, people seeking to meet potential mates (for one-offs or more permanent liaisons) often turned to a section of the newspaper called the Personals. These ads were placed by individuals seeking companionship, love, or sex of all kinds, and were categorized by gender: Men Seeking Women, Men Seeking Men, Women Seeking Men, Women Seeking Women, and so on.
I started looking into the Personals around my 53
rd
birthday that January. Many of the "Women Seeking Men" ads seemed interesting, but I couldn't bring myself to answer any of them -- until the "Rivertown Artist" put her ad in. Since that was the area where I lived, I listened to her voice message -- several times -- and finally decided to make an attempt to contact her. As nervous as I had been on my very first date as a teen-ager, I left a message in her voice mailbox and hoped that she would call me back.
After a couple of weeks, she did. And even though her name was not Sarah (surprise!), my subsequent interaction with her is largely responsible for helping me to meet my Sarah! Here's how it went down. As we talked about our mutual love of the river and its wildlife, I asked this woman what possessed her to put an ad in the Personals, and what kinds of responses she was getting. When she told me how hard it was to meet people out here in the country, and about the quality and quantity of people she had met using this medium -- although she'd not yet met "Mr. Right" -- I thought, "hmmmm, maybe I should do that!"
I'd done something similar when I'd been single many years earlier, in another city, and the results had been quite rewarding, a sexual buffet of sorts, even though I'd not met "Ms. Right." So even though the artist never became more than a casual acquaintance, it was because of her that I became inspired to insert my own small ad in the "Men Seeking Women" section in early February. Here's what it said.
ROMANTIC River rat. Attractive, caring, athletic, humorous DWM, 53.
Love the Bay and its wildlife. Professional life in the city; laid back at home.
Seeking an honest, sensuous mate, to explore life.
In addition to the little ad in the classifieds, the Personals system was set up so the advertiser could leave a one or two minute recorded message that interested respondents could listen to, then leave their own voice message if they wanted to contact me. If you had been one of the callers who listened to my recorded introduction, here's what you would have heard:
"Hi -- my name is Brian. Thanks for responding to my ad. I'm a laid-back kind of guy who lives on the water near Rivertown, with relaxing and romantic views of woods and water and wildlife from almost every window of my home.
"I'm five-ten, with graying hair and brown eyes, and I keep in shape by walking or running a few miles as many times a week as I can. My career as a computer wizard brings me to work in Richmond at least five days a week, and some nights and weekends. I enjoy my work and the people I work with, but there's something missing in my life. When I come home, there's no one here to share the evenings and weekends with.
