Old Flames - The Totemism Of Past Girlfriends Or, Romance Dies Hard

Bob Fielding had just been left on the curb by his wife of many years.  'I've had enough', she told him through the screen door, and that was that.

Bob had never lived alone, although he made a pretense of emotional independence.  His long trips to the heart of darkness were his statements of macho self-assurance; but he was always glad to be back home to his own bed, the New York Times and coffee, a round of golf and some time off on the Bay. 

He never questioned what he wife did during his African sojourns for he took her much for granted.  She had been a devilish little coquette at Miss Porter's, and came into her own during her exploratory college years when 'Who am I?' morphed into 'Who cares?'.  A hot ticket...Queen of Tarts...The Devil In Miss Jones...but all that was left behind after two serious years of graduate school, a Madison Avenue job in publishing, and marriage to Robert Fielding, Yale graduate, World Bank economist, traveler, and man of certain sophisticated tastes. 

Bob had no doubts about his wife's fidelity, felt that she loved him as much now as when he met her, and assumed that on every return from the Dark Continent, she would be there with dinner on the table and the bed turned down. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  For all Bob's own fidelity and honorable intentions, he was a mistake; but because of sunken costs - he, as a banker could understand that concept - Alison Jones stayed on in the marriage far longer than she should have.

Not that he was a bad husband.  God forbid she should be married to the likes of Brandon Philipps, philanderer-in-chief of Philipps, Locke & Suitland, a man without a filament of moral fiber, a sexual vagabond worth only the notable salary and interest from a private income he brought to the marriage.  Poor Polly was left to weep over her sewing night after empty, soulless, lonely nights. 

No, Bob was a good husband; but with plenty of good years ahead of her, she was not about to languish in the suburbs, tinkering with faucets and spread sheets.  She was still 'Miss Jones', a woman of agency, a tigress, a still attractive belle of the ball with no intention of wasting a drop of her remaining sexual energy.   

And so it was on that cloudy, unusually cool May afternoon that she said her goodbyes to her husband, Bob. Of course divorce proceedings would involve meeting again, but there would always be the insulating layer of lawyers, so when she said goodbye, the deal was as good as done. 

Bob had no interest in finding out where his now ex-wife had gone.  He was not one to cry over spilled milk, and he was feminized enough to never question a woman's prerogatives, so he turned to his own needs, at first licking his wounds but then ginning up the wherewithal needed to meet the brave new world. 

Of course he moped around the house for a while trying to bustle and make himself useful, but ended up in unmade sheets and take-out.  'This will not stand', he lectured himself in the bathroom mirror one Tuesday, and vowed to turn over a new leaf 

His trip to Ouagadougou would be just the thing to clear his head.  A thorny Bank issue to be resolved, money at stake, and the First Minister was to be courted always picked up his spirits, and now that the job was all he had, he put even more life into it. 

The First Minister had heard of Bob's divorce - the corridors of the World Bank always echo with juicy gossip - and he would use the information wisely.  He would treat the newly singled economist to a treat that would make any man forget his wife - a beautiful Fulani woman, one of his consorts, available at his beck and call and assure that his Bank loan would proceed without a hitch. 

Now most men would take kindly to the First Minister's offer, but although Bob thought that getting rid of all traces of his ex-wife would be a simple matter, he did not count on residuals - those nasty, niggling bits of a marriage which stay with one after divorce.  Bob didn't want Mlle. Sekou, but a partner, someone to fill his life not just his bed. 

He thanked the First Minister for his consideration and generosity, guaranteed him the approval of the next tranche of money due to him from the World Bank treasury, and assured him that his credit would always be good in Washington. 

 

Separation does many things to a man, not the least of which is a re-assessment of life and sexual ways.  After the divorce, Bob examined his life of rectitude, civil temperance, and doing the right thing and wondered if he had squandered his youth. 

Bob had not been unhappy as a married man. Marriage gave one a needed center, consolation, commiseration and last but not least, sexual intimacy.  All fairly pat and predictable but not so bad, a kind of needed architecture with familiar walls and carpets to make forays into the outside world less threatening.  He had not squandered anything.  He had willingly and happily married Alison, and their days together should not be measured by the last one when she walked out the door. 

Men in Bob's position all act in the same way. Their first step towards putting their life back together is contacting old girlfriends.  The elision into singlehood, 'dating' and the difficult search for a marital partner would be far easier with someone known, a former lover whose inner rooms had already been explored. 

Time however had not been kind to Laura Owens.  From pictures posted on social media, she was still appealing in New England socially mature way, but when he explored further, he found that she had become fat, un-comely, yenta-looking and far from the ideal woman she had been decades earlier.  

What was he thinking?  She had three adult children, an early Teamster retiree as a husband, a home – of all places – in Mantoloking, home to ‘Jersey Girls’ and Mafiosi from Newark, and an interest in ‘gardening,, self-help, and autism’.  Needless to say, he never called, wrote, messengered, or texted.



The aborted search and the discouraging discovery of a woman transformed, through Bob off the trail, and Alison returned to his thoughts with a vengeance. The problem wasn't with her leaving or her recurring memories, but with the past and reconciling it with the present.  

He was past-due on sexual attractiveness.  Although men his age routinely had lovers thirty years their junior, they had come to these affairs knowledgeably.  Women, whether young or old, are attracted to maturity, sexual confidence, financial security, and maleness – the savoir faire of an older man – but Bob had none of these.  His only hope was pairing with a woman of his own age,  someone like himself who had made wrong early choices, realized too late that it was time to change, and had to settle for what she had agreed to. 

There were such things as bright beginnings; but where to look?  In his day there were singles bars, library reading rooms, and alumni seminars; but virtual dating – more controlled, more efficient, and more cost-effective – had taken over.  How could he possibly navigate this new electronic universe; and would the output be worth the input?

So, he continued to mine the alumni resources as far back as country day school.  He had heard that Nancy Boothby – his eighth grade love - had moved to California; and that had possibilities; not like resettling in Iowa or Nebraska, and might signal a sexual and emotional freedom that had lasted since the Sixties; but she had died of breast cancer many years earlier.

There was Belinda Dandy who was from solid Chicago stock – the Dandy family had built a paper empire to rival Scott – and Belinda had hoped that Bob would marry her and join Daddy in running the company; but rumors were that she had married an Italian and was living on the Riviera – or a Mexican with a Cancun villa; or a Serbian with holdings throughout the Adriatic and the Black Sea. Bob saw that he had no hope in this company of international gentlemen, chose not to renew contact with Belinda, and closed the book on her, Smith College, and weekends at the Taft.

After two years of this, Bob realized that his old captain’s license was no longer valid.  Navigating these new sexual waters but so dying for sexual encounter with another human being that he might look the other way in the morning was not an easy task.  So much had happened over the decades since he and Alison were married that he felt that he no longer even had a toehold in the market. 

Of course there were women as sexually dépaysée as he was – adrift in sexual waters, hoping for a familiar buoy, but grasping more than getting purchase – but where were they? Finding the right woman would be like finding a needle in a haystack unless the gods intervened; and pray he did for divine guidance  if not resolution, to no avail.  He was as alone and lonely as he had ever been. 

He continued to mine the Internet for old loves, even marginal ones like Lacy Birnbaum whom he had taken to the Lefferts prom and who had been laughed at because of her gimp and misunderstood because her father had short-changed customers at his clothing store and in a very Republican town campaigned on behalf of ‘the little man’.

Resignation to old men’s bathrobes and Chinese take-out was on his horizon because it already had happened to many men of his age.  Watch out, he told himself, but with no words of self-encouragement.

The list of old girlfriends had dwindled to nothing.  They either had died, persisted in bad marriages, were divorced and living on generous personal incomes, or were resigned like him to incidental contact.

It would be nice to report that Bob eventually found his soulmate; but he did not.  He was simply too inflexible, too fixated on ideas and principle, and too stubborn to give an inch.  There were plenty of women who would gladly have had a fling with him, married or not, but he was too sexually inept.  He had never had to rely on clues and suggestion – if progressivism is anything, it is not subtle; things are either right or wrong - so he was lost with women who react first on instinct and intuition, and only second on fact.

There are no particular lessons in this story.  Marriages are doubtful things but with remarkable shelf life.  Most people get married, either put up with it or end it. A few are happy and a very few murder their spouses - Turkish soap operas are particularly good at that - but all in all it is one of those things that one does and finds out the consequences when it is too late. Fortunately there are few George and Marthas Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf affairs;  and thank God there are very few Goneril and Regans around to murder their husbands, but marriage is usually not a pretty thing to watch.  

Bergman's Scenes from A Marriage is perhaps the closest to reality - a tough-going slog - and Anna Karenina is a great proto-feminist story.  There are thousands of marriage stories, one overlaid on every other, so there's a lot of experience out there. 

Bob was just one of many who fit into a classic subcategory - Looking For Old Flames which have died out.