A romantic interlude-1

About a week ago, I promised to try and write about some of the early moments in my relationship with my ex-girlfriend (what an awful way to refer to somebody!) so tonight I will try to deliver on that promise. As those reading this blog know, we have been apart for over two months now, and we split up a month before she left town, to continue her effort as a long-term volunteer doing hurricane relief work in Biloxi, Mississippi.

For the rest of this post, I will call her "Angel," which has a certain irony, since she is Jewish, and considers herself very much a Jew, culturally, though she is not at all religious. But down in the Bible Belt, her clients call her "Angel," which to them is a high compliment; and, I must say, though I am confirmed atheist, this label appeals to me on many levels as well.

When I first met Angel, I was about a year out of my second marriage, and, except for a short but intense relationship with a special someone who showed up right after my marriage fell apart, I had been alone for that amount of time. Not to fast-forward too much, but it would be half a year before Angel and I would become romantic partners, and I did not date anyone at all during that period of time.

The first night I met her, something about her touched me deep inside, somewhere that I could not then identify. Part of her appeal to me (a classic rescuer personality) was that she was in trouble; going through a painful breakup of a long relationship, but there was much more. The only way I can explain this is I instinctively knew that here was a person who was going to eventually emerge as a whole new being in our world, perhaps in ways that would help everyone she touched.

At the time, although I was hardly a poster boy for Those Who Have It All Together in this world, I somehow felt I could help her, so I offered to. Another friend who witnessed these first exchanges between us warned me: "Watch out, David. You are falling for her at first sight."

Okay, so she was right. I was. But I didn't know that yet. Checking back in my journals later, it was a full month before I sensed that I "liked" this new woman. I wasn't thinking with my male body, contrary to what many women believe men do; in fact, I didn't feel any particular physical attraction to her. What was drawing me to her was happening on some deeper, more mysterious level.

Part of what she told me she needed was to get out of her trap, the house she had bought with her long-time boyfriend, and which they now were going to sell as part of their breakup. (One reason I couldn't allow myself to be attracted to her was it was obvious she felt terrible pain in leaving him. And, if there is one thing I have learned in my love life, it is to move aside when a woman is still focused on someone else. The several secret love affairs I have had all ended, for me, when I could tell that the woman I was with was really crying for her partner. At that moment, I let them go, though I did not necessarily have the language then to explain why it was time for me to leave them.)

Back to Angel. She needed to be distracted. I was teaching at Stanford, so I invited her to spend a day with me down there. She agreed; I picked her up, and off we went.

Now, for those of you who haven't been there, Stanford is a rather strange place, in its own lovely way. The couple that founded it, in honor of their only son, who died tragically at a young age, appear to have had contradictory ideas for what kind of university it should be. The husband died early on, and his wife took over, but in an era when women were typically discounted and not listened to. (Some would say we are not yet out of those woods.)

The biggest mystery behind the early years of Stanford is whether Mrs. Stanford, the widow, was fatally poisoned, perhaps as part of a strategy by the early bureaucrats to circumvent her wish that it serve a much broader demographic than has proved to be the case.

In any event, she died, and the rest is history. (If you are interested, I can point you to a provocative book that explores this little-known story.)

Okay, back to my story. So the day I took Angel with me turned out to be "sexual harassment training day" so all of us professors sat in on a session that urged us to avoid any sexual contact with students, and to turn each other in, should we suspect a colleague of crossing the line.

Afterwards, as we walked back from this workshop, my colleague, Professor Bill Woo (who died this past April) glanced into my office and saw Angel sitting there. "Better make sure you do not harass her!" he quipped.

That was the first moment I realized that an objective observer might think the age disparity between us (15 years) might be an issue. She had a baby face that fooled Bill into thinking she was 20 years younger than she was, and therefore a student.

She was no such thing, but a middle-aged woman looking to be distracted by a new friend for whom she yet had no romantic or sexual feelings for at all. She and I went out for lunch and a long walk, during which we discovered Stanford's gardens of large wooden sculptures of figures with big breasts and very large penises.

I felt a bit embarrassed by these figures, but Angel didn't.

Well, this story has gotten much longer than I intended it to. Apparently, I am going to have to spread the narrative of how I fell in love with her over multiple posts. But perhaps that is best, as I continue my process of letting her go. So, I'll write some more later...