Update

Mr. Frank and I got together one more time.

I let him carry the conversation.

Right off the bat: there will be no Mr. WWW or Mrs. Frank.

All the alarm bells went off, and thank heaven I am old enough and have learned enough to hang garlic around my neck and cross my fingers and mutter my internal witchly incantations.

To recite the whys would be extraordinarily boring.

You want to hear?

The women in his life just wanted his money.

Even the love (lust?) of his life, a much younger flight attendant, wanted him to buy her stuff. (What stuff, pray tell? Stuff that doesn't last like flowers and woman-stuff)

He's very bored, plays the stock market every day, tries to fill his nights with something, anything. Wouldn't mind tagging along for something, anything, as long as we shared costs. He's learned his lesson, you see. Be still my trembling heart.

Life was more interesting when there was sex involved but now there's precious little life left in Mr. Little Frank. Which pithily tells us everything we wanted didn't want to know about Lover Frank.

I nearly fell asleep.

He truly harshes my mellow.

Well, blow me down!

I'm not easily surprised. At my age, 74, I've heard it all and continue to hear it all through young friends and new friends. Variations on the theme of relationships.

I haven't performed femininity in a long while. My hair is naturally an odd mix of brown, silver and grey, nondescript, although there are some that would disagree with you. I've let it grow long over the past twelve months, I didn't want to but before I sold my house I was budgeting carefully and if there's one thing I've learned over the years it is that if you pay peanuts for a haircut, monkeys are exactly what you're going to get. My lovely stylist Bernice was thus off my budget. She is excellent but expensive. I can afford her now, thanks to a small inheritance I finally received but haven't made the appointment yet. I don't wear makeup, I wear flat shoes and jeans mainly and manicures have never been on any priority list in my life.

I'm clean but I'm an unashamedly old woman. I'm a great story-teller and equally great listener (ask Johanna my new cleaning lady who has recounted the excruciating details of all her 11 surgeries to me) and when I'm with you I give you my full on attention and am never looking for somebody better in the room. But yes, I'm, I would think, beyond romance, beyond "dating" or "hooking up." That would be fine for you but me? I would have thought myself disinterested. I still admire engaging, intelligent men, the ones who are not afraid to show their inners. I've never been interested in the outers types. I've found those kinds of friends and relationships have fallen away, much to our mutual relief I would think. The inners have hung in there with me and I with them.

So imagine my surprise when another senior of my age, maybe a bit younger, started to hang out with me. Sitting by me. Talking away to me about Ireland and all his trips there. And then said to me, what do you like to do in your spare time?

My response was vague, I said it would take too long to recount my many interests.

"We should make the time," Frank* responded.

I met with a good friend of mine, Don* who knows Frank and I asked him in absolute disbelief to interpret Frank's conversation, like was Frank actually hitting on me? I'm that out of touch, you see.

Don laughed. "Of course he is!"

Long story short, I met with Frank for a coffee and we chatted, talking with him is very comfortable. In walks Ben, another friend of mine. Ben spots me and rushes over and hugs me and then pulls up a chair and sits down.

I can tell Frank is upset but we pull him into the conversation and he keeps checking his watch, not rudely, but not subtly either, as Ben and I get caught up, still pulling Frank in to the chat. Swedish death cleaning was one of the topics and Frank talked briefly about his time in Sweden which was a bit of a tangent but we adjusted our sails.

And then with a deep sigh he got up from the table, sighed again, looked at his watch and didn't look at us and said "I'll be off!" and off he went.

"My gawd," said Ben, astounded, "Is that guy jealous or wha'?"




*not their real names