The Adventures of a Love Investigator, 527 Naked Men & One Woman (21 page)

“If you fell in love again, can you imagine ever laying your life down to save your woman?”

“Of course not.”

“I knew she was the right woman for me.

She just kept marrying other guys.”

~ Garrett, 42 married

Case 519 / Garrett

Although I’m here to interview her husband, Linda does most of the talking. Garrett seems to enjoy her verbal domination. Despite my gentle suggestions for her to leave the room, Linda stays. “It took me two wrong marriages to realize that the guy for me was right in front of me.” She squeezes his arm. I try to contain my frustration. Who invited her? Sure, she called to set up the interview but I figured she understood no girls allowed. The bait for me was that her husband Garrett had waited through her two previous marriages and twenty years of separation to finally wed his first love, Linda.

Garrett and Linda sit side by side on a small sofa in their clean little tract home in a subdivision just outside Birmingham. “I was always attracted to the bad boys,” she says. “Garrett is such a great guy, I just thought of him as a friend.”

Her new husband is tall, slender, and muscular. He has a shock of unruly hair and freckles which make him look like a kid. “I waited for Linda for half my life,” he says as he reaches for her hand.

“Garrett’s a nurturer. He’s one of ten children,” Linda says. “I’m the youngest of three sisters, spoiled and proud of it.” Linda looks younger than her forty something years. She’s pretty in a wholesome way.

“How come you waited all that time for her?” I ask.

“I knew Linda was the right one, but she kept marrying other men.”

“How did you
not
get married during those twenty years?” I ask him as he appears to be a nesting-man, the kind of guy who needs a wife and home. At this point I’ve gotten good at deciphering the hieroglyphics of the emotionally hungry.

He looks at Linda before speaking. “There was a woman I cared about once, but I knew it wasn’t love. I almost proposed to that woman, but something stayed my words.”

Linda’s nasty little dog chops at my boot heel. I tuck my feet against the sofa. “The pup?” I ask helplessly as the Chihuahua takes a personal dislike to my boots... THE boots. She pulls a strip of leather from the left heel.

“Yeah,” Linda laughs. “She doesn’t like strangers. Just hold still, she’ll give up in a minute or two.”

Not a fan of drop-kick dogs, I bring my notebook toward my neck just in case. The dog didn’t look like a leaper, but we cat people are uneasy around nippy mutts. I focus on Garrett while glaring at Linda and the snarler.

“At the moment I almost proposed to that other woman, Linda was divorcing for the second time. This time the universe was working for me.”

Linda interrupts him. “I just knew it was time for me to settle down. I was ready to fall in love. Before then I had my wild oats stage to go through. Garrett’s always been my first love but I wasn’t ready for him. He’s always been ready for me.”

It takes two to make a first love successful. As I listen to Linda tell Garrett what he feels and what he’s thinking, I silently swear that I will never attempt to interview women. As I pull out of their driveway and head back to my hotel I realize I’m at the end of my rope. I will most certainly lose my mind if I continue. I’m slightly over halfway to my one thousand men and I’m not sure I can go any further.

There are no messages on my cell. Sam hasn’t found Mark. Maybe he’s dead. No... it would be easier to find him if he were. No. He’s alive. But if he’s married, he’s as good as dead to me.

“Love? At one point in my life I think I was optimistic.”

~ Ty, 43, married

Dying for Love

I’m at the end of my journey and the taste of Sal’s warning sits dead in my mouth like last night’s beer –
Don’t ask a question, if you can’t handle the answer.
I’ve asked too many questions all in the name of love. I still don’t know if love is real or just an illusion dreamed up by lonely people and dating services.

I’m at a dinner party in a private home somewhere south of Alexandria, Virginia. After the first round of scintillating conversation about babies, lawn fertilizers, and politics, there is blessed silence, and then my interviewing project becomes the entrée. “What was the most surprising thing you learned from talking to all those men?” Jane, the wife-half of one couple asks. The dinner conversation slides to a halt. Six sets of inquiring eyes turn my way.

I hesitate to answer her question. Can she handle it? Can anyone?

“Tell us, please,” Jane’s husband, Pete, asks.

I look at the faces of my dinner companions. They hunger for the romantic imagery they hope I’ll conjure up. Our hearts are strongest where they have been broken. I decide to share my strength with them.

I’ve completed over five hundred interviews and I’ve altered in the process. I’ve stood by while clueless men picked through the bones of relationships. I’ve nodded in agreement as each one mourned the demise of something I questioned the existence of ... true love. Was love real or something created in the Disney studios?

The tale of Ty sums up my most surprising lesson. And so I choose to dissect him for the smiling dinner guests. My hosts will regret inviting me because at this stage I’m not the best entertainment. All eyes are on me.

I think of the movie scene where Hannibal Lector serves the villain his sautéed brains for dinner, and the villain numbly eats them. I’m about to cook their hearts and serve them with fava beans. Sorry folks.

“Here’s a perfect example of what I encountered.” I smile at my companions. “At forty-three, Ty is a hunk. He has his own construction company in the Carolinas, specializing in designing and building large rustic second homes for wealthy Floridians. His wife is a beauty with a degree in interior design. She recently closed her business in order to spend more time with their kids. Their twins are fifteen and both the boy and girl need a bit more supervision.”

“Exactly where were you when you interviewed him and what were you wearing?” Cammie asks.

The need to identify with me is something I continue to find amusing. Everyone wants to be there with me in spirit as I talk the talk. “We were in one of the homes Ty had recently completed. He was doing a final walk-through that afternoon. We used the morning to get into his head. I was wearing my usual inquiring reporter outfit – jeans, a sweater, and boots. Ty was dressed as hunky lumberjack.”

The women at the table nodded. They’re now in tune with me.

“Ty talked about meeting his wife and loving her first for her and then as the mother of his kids. He confessed to his embarrassment for not ever having had an affair as his work involved being around other guys most of the time and so there was no opportunity. Ty didn’t use the Internet and wasn’t a drinker. His conscience in the adultery column was clean.”

“Was he passionately in love with his wife?” Jane asked.

“No, actually his feelings were more brotherly. He said he couldn’t remember the last time they’d had sex. His caring for her was confined to her status as the mother of his kids.”

I sense a little squirming at the dining table and decide to go right for the punch line. “After we talked for a few hours, I asked Ty the most important question I carry in my quiver of queries. I asked him if he would die for his wife.” My words hang suspended over the dinner table.

“‘Why would I want to do that?’ Ty asked.”

In unison the men find something of great interest on their plates. There is no further guy eye contact. The women are deer in the lights of my oncoming car.

“I pushed Ty a bit more until he finally responded. ‘Maybe I answered too quickly. Give me an example.’”

My fellow dinner guests sit stricken with fear. It’s as if they sense what’s coming.

“I set the scenario of the small plane going down with only one parachute on board. Would he give it to his wife?”

“‘This is confidential, right? You won’t use my real name, right?’ he asked.”

I watch their faces – actually the women’s faces as the men continue to look down.

“Ty answered, ‘If there were only one chute and it was just my wife and me I’d take the chute.’”

There is a long, dark pause. No one at the table speaks.

“Ty kept on digging love’s grave. ‘What would that accomplish... dying for my wife? She doesn’t have a career.’ I wait for their response. There is a collective look of disgust on the faces of the lady guests. I feel the need to give them the complete picture. “Once Ty realized how bad he sounded, he tried to correct what he said. He made it worse.”

“‘If we were being held at gunpoint and the gunman said – it’s either you or her – I wouldn’t say it’s her, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t say take me instead either.’”

The woman diners hang on my words looking for comfort.

“Less than three percent of the men I interviewed said they would be willing to die for the woman they loved.”

“What?” Lady voices whisper.

Jane speaks first. “Only three percent of the men? That’s like only fifteen men out of five hundred.”

The husbands are quiet as they wait for a reprieve.

Jane persists. “Maybe they didn’t understand the question. Maybe if they really were in a life or death situation, they might react differently.”

I sigh. “No other response from the men was that consistent or that lopsided in percentages. Had it been fifty-fifty, I might buy that theory. They understood the question.”

“Maybe they were all just lying to impress you,” Jane processes her shock.

“In that case, the answers would have been just the opposite, wouldn’t you think?”

The ladies all nod in agreement. Nancy, an attractive blond turns to her husband of twelve years, “Jeff, I’d die for you in a minute,” she says, hoping that he will respond in kind.

Jeff stares at this wife. “Why all the drama? Dying for love. How often does that come up?”

“It just helps to quantify love,” Nancy responds.

Cammie jumps in. “You’d give me the chute, right Rob?” She hugs her lover and laughs. Two years together with much to learn.

Rob ceases to butter his bread. “We’re being honest here, dead honest?”

Cammie nods, gnawing on her lower lip.

Rob sounds their death knoll. “What would be the point?”

“I don’t think I wanted to know that,” Jane says.

“I know,” I say.

It occurs to me as I drive back to my hotel that perhaps my project might have attracted a number of upside-down narcissists. I know what the right-side-up versions are like. Sleazy Steve’s counselor made that clear. Narcissists are very reluctant to open up and trust. They lie. They misread people and often erroneously believe they are liked and respected. They want to be told that everything they do is better than what others do.

My interviewed men are the exact opposite. They’re completely open and looking for some shred of confirmation. But then I think of all the Chet’s and Len’s and Mitch’s who enjoyed the opportunity to narcissistically talk to me in safety. Either way I have over-indulged and feel sick at heart.

“Love is something I haven’t mastered yet.”

~ Roland, 61, married

Case 520 / Roland

Roland is tall, with a high forehead and a friendly face. He has a funny way of wrinkling his upper lip as if smelling something awful. Despite this quirk, he’s a pleasant man. His five children are his joy, his career is his passion, and his church and his forty-year marriage are his strength. Roland is a Mormon.

I’m having one of those days when I’m sure someone is sticking little pins into a doll that looks a lot like me.

Roland greets me in the foyer of his building and leads me to his private office. As we walk in, I miscalculate the layout of his room and sit down in
his
chair which is closer to the doorway. I sit there wondering why the drawers in his desk face his guests.

My latest man looks startled at first and then appears to enjoy my ditzy behavior. Once again my interviewee is thrown off guard and rendered comfortable. My secret plan.

We chat for almost four hours as he reveals his inner workings. “My marriage to Katherine is something that is eternal and will last forever. It’s not temporary or earthly. When we went into marriage, Katherine and I had the absolute feeling that we had burned all bridges. We were married and no matter what, we would somehow work it out. Separation and divorce were never an alternative.”

I study the smiling faces in the portraits on his desk. He talks on and the edges of my funk start to lift. Since I’m in the power seat, his chair, I keep on questioning.

“Why do you think marriages don’t last today?”

He smiles, refolding the wrinkles on his head. “In my father’s generation people went into marriage expecting less and getting more. In our generation people tend to go into marriage expecting so much more than what’s realistic.”

“How about love?” I ask.

“I believe love is simply being able to put someone else before you. I think the closest I have come to it is probably with my children.

“Don’t get me wrong. I feel great love for my wife. I just don’t think I’ve been successful in demonstrating that I can put her ahead of me. Ironically, the reason for that is that she’s so good at putting me before her. It’s very easy to take advantage of that. Real love is unconditional but Katherine is perfectly blind to all my faults and that is a heavenly gift.”

We wind up our interview with me feeling temporarily better about love and relationships. At least this man understands what love is. Roland carefully guides me out of his office. I leave without breaking anything or walking into any closets.

“Family Values – what that says is dependent female and the male who is in charge.”

~ Father Paul, 51, married

Case 522 / Father Paul

The minister looks like a king sized altar boy. I’m nestled in his study, perched somewhere between an interview and a crying jag. He performed the marriage for my daughter and her husband. During the wedding rehearsal someone mentioned my adventure. The priest asked if he could share his thoughts on love and marriage with me for the book. At the time I agreed to listen, I had no idea I would be in melt-down mode by the time we met.