“There’s something about having to share the only cramped couch on a steamy summer afternoon that encourages closeness. And discourages panties.“
For the last thirteen years I stayed in a small cottage on an island 30 miles out to sea. It’s a pain in the ass to get on and off, especially with multiple dogs, which I had, unless you had a private jet, which I didn’t. All the better, I thought when I found it, since immediately following my late husband’s death what I needed most was a refuge from obligations and expectations.
Eventually, it felt safe to tentatively crack open the cottage’s rustic front door to romantic partners. They’d have to have somehow found their way there, no small feat in and of itself, and only after some pretty committed wandering through and around the obstacles guarding my heart. If they were game enough to show up on my painted white porch, I let them in. After all that, how could I not?
There were the three summers with The Super Naughty, Very Irresponsible Publisher, who introduced me to his collection of erotic books. And then without warning dropped my heart into a shredder as if it were a page of bad writing. Next, because he was nothing like The Super Naughty, Very Irresponsible Publisher, was The Clean-Cut Tech Founder. He approached sex as if it were a science project intended to optimize for longevity. It was one loooong, performative Ouch!. I could only bear him for one week end, poor thing. Then there was the summer with The Workaholic Hollywood Producer who I almost fell in love with. (It was a very, very good summer.) There’s really nothing like that feeling when somebody looks over a cramped cafe table at you as if they might tip it all over to gobble you up, is there? And eventually, thank god, there was The Lovebug With The Dysfunctional Daughters. He did have a private jet and it flew him in from East Hampton for an afternoon so he could teach me how to make his Mother’s secret grilled plank salmon recipe. He stayed for two weeks. Yummmm. The only other woman he had taught to make his Mother’s salmon recipe, so he told me, was Angela, his personal chef of 30 years. (Presumably her lesson involved less intimate attention.) He made me feel like I was wrapped up in a chenille blanket. Too bad about the dysfunctional daughters, though.
Each one deserves his own short story (except The Tech Founder, who might want to pick up a copy of this Intimate Guide to Soulful Sex). And maybe I’ll go there someday. But, to be clear, these were not relationships worthy of a novel.
The small cottage‘s constricted quarters, it turned out, were just a little too tight for two people. In other words, the perfect size for bumping into each other everywhere, inadvertently or not.
The furniture was all proportionately sized for the diminutive cottage. There’s something about having to share a cramped couch on a steamy summer afternoon that encourages closeness. And discourages undergarments. Like panties, for instance.
Not to mention what comes from trying to maneuver around a bed that was only a “Full XL.” Have you ever heard of that? Me neither. It’s somewhere between a Full and a Queen and there was a lot of slipping off of it, creating convenient opportunities for kneeling and bending. (As well as other positions that were no longer possible after surgery in my right knee and a menial meniscus tear in my left.)
And the clawfoot tub? That required a gentleman to get in first with his back to the faucet before I could shimmy my ass down in between his feet, then, facing him, gently drape my legs over his, my knees ever so slightly opened …
Then, if I were lucky (which I often was), the gentleman might have felt the urge to rest his arms on my legs with his hands having really nowhere to go other than up toward my breasts, which were amply within reach, or down my thighs, which, ummm, well ….. you are a CRUSH Reader, so you get the picture. (That’s what I love about you, CRUSHes, not everything has to be spelled out between us.) In short, so often the water turned frigid long before we recognized it and leapt out.
At some point I started thinking of my small cottage as a love shack.
The possibilities were tantalizing.
For over a decade, returning to that small cottage at the start of each summer felt like walking into a sensual embrace.
Until it didn‘t.
Last summer I started to get this annoyingly vague sense, like when you know you’re forgetting to pack something important but don’t figure out until you’re at the airport that you left your travel charger in the wall socket. It was the feeling that what I had been doing all these years was letting a few provisional men in provisionally, who, if we‘re being honest, for reasons obvious from the get-go were men I was never going to fall deeply in love with.
And how did this sense come over me? I had taken a rare, brief trip off the island and had discovered that alas, there was, out there in this very big world, a man I thought that I could fall in love with. He is a cross between Cary Grant in North by Northwest (“I have two ex-wives and several bartenders depending on me for support”) and Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark (“It’s not the years, it’s the mileage”). Somebody with whom I’d have the possibility of a meaningful, full-blown, helium-swelled-up, floaty (but substantive) love affair worthy of a novel. Or failing that, soulful sex. Or, if not soulful then at least quick, non-performative and orgasmic. Something to ensure a good night’s sleep, despite my menopausal night sweats.
If I were lucky it would be a love affair worthy of a novel, preferably a mash-up of James Salter‘s most erotic passages from A Sport and a Pastime with the happy ending of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The realization that there was - out there in the world - somebody I could fall in love with, wanted to fall in love with, or at least somebody I was willing to try with - was more frightening than exciting at that point. So I was surprised to find myself at my shrunken West Elm desk one lazy afternoon a couple weeks later writing out a handwritten love letter on my favorite monogrammed Dempsey & Carroll stationery. (“Dear Mr. Darcy,“ I wrote, “I don’t want to go another day without being your lover … X-Oh!-X, Dish.”). When I dropped it into the “off island” slot at the post office, I felt a shift. It was probably my dog, Ricky, who had recognized my neighbor’s dog, Marigold. Or, it might have been my heart.
Heading back into the small cottage after the drop-off, instead of feeling embraced by my love shack, I felt trapped by it. Trapped on the island. Trapped in my cautious heart.
The narrow hallways and tight corners in the cottage were great for generating fusion. But I‘d been hiding out on the island, I realized, making it nearly impossible for real love to find me. And absolutely impossible for me to find it. I’d have to swing the cottage door wide open and burst forth toward the mainland.
So I packed up the cottage. Sent its contents on to various beloved friends who might find them useful. Everything except the stash of erotic books left behind by the Naughty Very Irresponsible Publisher after our sudden, catastrophic split. I kept those. I might need them, I thought, in case Mr. Darcy took a pass on trying out my love (he did), my search for love took a while (it has), or the batteries in my vibrator went dead (they did).
We are now seven weeks from Memorial Day Week End, the unofficial start of next summer. I had a wonderful, fun, confidence-building winter of dating and making new friends. And now people are starting to ask me about summer plans. The askers all have a plan. (Only people with a definitive plan ask you about your plan, I find.) I don’t have a plan. So far, I know that I’ll be in New York City a lot, and then I have invitations, not yet firmed up, for golf trips to Boston, Long Island and the South of France.
For the first time in over a decade I am heading into a summer where I am not tied down geographically, emotionally or romantically. My dog Ricky will be spending the summer with her ’other mother,’ a close friend. I am free as a bird to go anywhere my heart wants to wander. And lately my heart wants to wander somewhere hot. Oh, and meaningful.
The possibilities are tantalizing.
Anyway. What are your plans for this summer?
The Crush Letter
The Crush Letter is a weekly newsletter from Dish Stanley curating articles & intelligence on everything love & connection - friendship, romance, self-love, sex. If you’d like to take a look at some of our best stories go to Read Us. Want the Dish?
