Sex and the 60 – Things Like That Don’t Happen to Me

The strange events in Paris continue to perplex me weeks after returning. Whatever happened there – real or imagined - was just what the doctor ordered - at least for a while. Believing that dreams might come true is the way most people live their lives – or at least should…and I want to be like most people – when it comes to dreams anyway. But really how could something so romantic and apparently destined happen to me…things like that don’t happen to me.

Jump cut to 1969: I was a 20-year-old wild child who, with Carrie, was out three or four nights a week – dancing till dawn, having breakfast, then going to school and work. Wasn’t everyone? My on-again, off-again boyfriend was a big burly Irishman named Bernie, a mover by trade. Although he was not well educated and came from a very traditional family (bring on the virginal wives! – ooops too late!) He was self-taught and smart, a great kisser and despite being pigeon-toed, a good and willing dancer and best of all he treated me like I was made of precious metals. I walked all over him!

I remember the night, I was at our regular hangout, but that night I was standing outside crying because Bernie was mad at me for something or other. Actually, I was more posturing to get him over it. As I faked my tears I heard a voice “Got a cigarette?” I turned around and saw a fantastic looking man….blue jeans, white shirt with the sleeves rolled half up his forearms, dark curly hair, deep dark pools of liquid brown eyes and amazing eyelashes. He was a bit taller than me and his body was --- well --- hmmmm, his body. A perfect compact body – like the build of a man 6’2” but shrunken down to 5’10” – bite size – just the way I like ‘em…Hey guys, don’t think you have a corner on lusting after bodies.

I found my cigarettes and we sat on a stoop smoking and talking for a while. His name was Kevin. I may not have fallen in love that night or maybe I did, but I definitely fell in lust. He took my number and called the next day. Who the hell remembers what happened with Bernie.

So Kevin took me to a Richie Havens concert in Flushing Park. It was like a cliché - a clear, brilliant summer night and we lay on the grass looking up at the star-filled sky. I remember feeling so out of control that night. It was the first time I had ever felt overpowered by someone. Not in a physical way, but nonetheless my attraction to him was frightening – even to a wild child. I think I instinctively knew I had not yet experienced the real “wild” and wasn’t sure I was ready.

We had made plans to go to the beach the next day and met at Rockaway but the magic was gone. I suspect it was he who found me a bit too immature (six years older than me he was) and I believe he simply “shut off the light”. Willful or not he stopped exuding that sexual energy that had magnetized me. With that, the spark between us extinguished. We parted late that afternoon hardly remembering each other's names.

And a year goes by, Carrie and I are in one of our usual haunts – this place with no tables or chairs – you got your drink at the bar and sat on the floor. Once seated we scanned the room and that’s when I saw him - Kevin and it was like the room burst into flames! That was the start of a four year love affair…well it was really more like a Lust Affair in which sometimes we saw each other for who we were and liked those parts too, but the main event was Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby.

Now wild was definitely the right word – wild and unpredictable. For the sake of sanity I dated others but so did he and occasionally we would talk to each other about them. Sometime we would even talk to our respective others on the phone when in bed with each other. It was weird but freeing in a way. Those years with Kevin taught me one of the most important lessons I learned in my life – do not build your life around a man. He taught me that lesson by saying he would call on Wednesday and then a month later – on a Wednesday – he would call. There would be no little house with a white picket fence, 2.5 children, a dog and a station wagon in the cards for us. No, but oh baby, oh baby, oh baby.

Like the tortured artists of lore, so was Kevin – running from a sad childhood, finding solace in drink and drugs, he somehow functioned well on catnaps and Bennies with some Valium to “take the edge off”. But I needed sleep! I’d been at this wild child dating thing for four years, it was exhausting. Try as I could I couldn’t tame him, couldn’t fit him into my life – nor me into his. So, after four years we drifted apart – me toward my soon-to-be first husband – the sweetest man on earth. And Kevin toward a rich, troubled woman with multiple homes in exotic places. And that should have been that – right? That’s how things end in real life. Except now, in the 21st century, we would have found each other on Facebook.

But let’s jump cut to 1978: Divorced and having the affair with that married guy, career blazing and really quite happy with how things turned out – at least then, my phone rang. It was Carrie. “Hey, Samantha, you’ll never guess who I saw last night.” She didn’t wait for me to respond --- “Kevin – your Kevin.” Oh my God, I remember my whole body getting prickly. “He asked for your number but I wasn’t sure you’d want him to have it so I took his.”

Kevin never really left my mind over the years. For me he had no equal. He had set the bar so high no one else could ever reach it. But he was so complicated, so difficult – truly an “off road vehicle”. Although I was living an untraditional lifestyle, it was clearly much more traditional than his. So, I keep the number in my wallet for a while and then it must have fluttered out onto the streets of New York City one day when I went to pay for a bunch of lilacs.

Jump cut to November 25, 1981: The married affair over, career in a lull and pretty depressed and unhappy, my friend Annie says, “Come on Samantha, let’s go out to dinner.”

I had been hibernating, feeling sorry for myself and licking my wounds. “OK, but no singles bars, no men, nothing that can screw up my life any further than I’ve screwed it up myself.”

“Ok, ok”, she soothed, “We’ll just go to Oren and Aretsky, have a nice steak dinner and come home. You just need a night out. For heaven sake, wash your hair, wear something presentable and put on some makeup. You’ll see it’ll make you feel better.” I knew she was wrong but I didn’t have the will to fight her so…

I was paying the check, $24.80. I paid with my American Express Card and kept her cash – yes, I still have that receipt under a magnet on my file cabinet – why? Because as we rose to leave I looked up and there, walking down the middle of the restaurant aisle was Kevin! Our eyes locked on each other. I can’t remember if we spoke. I only remember him kissing me, in the middle the aisle, right there, like a movie and I remember the rest of the world disappearing, just like the movies.

We met one time, two times, three times! What are the chances in a city as large as New York that you would met by chance, for the third time your most memorable lover – the man who turned out to be the love of your life? And “just by chance” you would meet him for the third time three days after he returned from several years living in Australia. And that you would meet him, “just by chance” as he celebrated his birthday and that he would be celebrating it alone? What are the chances? And what are the chances that you would never leave each other again until you were forced to leave his coffin at the funeral home 26 years later? Oh, baby…

Romance, Destiny…Things like that don’t happen to me.

Next time!