The Cougrr

We’re sitting at the Root Down restaurant in the Highlands neighborhood of Denver, a converted auto shop filled with art deco kitsch. There’s an entire wall hung with hard plastic desk phones from a bygone era in various bright colors. I meet my date for the first time. She’s elegantly dressed in frilly black pants and a sleeveless black top sipping a strawberry rhubarb Caprihina. We embrace like old friends.

Since me and DanceCougrr (her Match handle) started instant messaging on Match a few days before, we realized we were mental soul mates and as she wrote, MOTs (Members of the Tribe) This elegant, zaftig Jewess, a former sub-prime loan maven, has re-invented herself in a couple of new start-up ventures. She pole dances and is fluent in several dance forms. She’d emailed me photos of her on a pole with a bodybuilder/fireman for her 50^th birthday. Her sybaritic personality was that of a self-actualized woman unafraid to grasp life by the balls and fully enjoy every moment in all of its absurd glory.

The endless patois of witticisms endowed with occasional yiddish or rap phrases turns both of our minds on. If my brain had a clitoris it was being stroked every second – before our date, she left a voicemail telling me how stimulated she was by our conversations. We acknowledge that even if we never “feel the animal” for one another, we will always be BFFs.

I order another drink, a tequila infused with poblano that tickles my throat. By the time we head to the table I feel my cranium being grasped by the alcohol and tell the Cougs that my brain function is impaired, but I continue rattling off puns and spontaneous mutations on our conversation. She’s bringing out a part of me that is unique to my NYC jewish roots. My dad and I bonded by spending endless hours one-upping each other with wit. My date is across from me, her kind brown eyes lucid and receptive. She’s a profoundly good listener. She tells me about her foiled date with a guy she calls the “Avatard,” a man who communicates with extra-terrestrials who needed a ride from DIA since his car was “in the shop.” They never met but he emailed her a pornographic photo of the Avatar’s leading couple in a compromising position.

Bathroom humor and serious inquisitions into personal histories intertwine as we wax poetically about the Gnocchi and Falafel. One wouldn’t think these two would mix well, but the food is so exquisitely prepared it’s melt-in-your mouth ecstasy. I don’t remember the last time I had a meal where I wanted to eat as slowly as possible. We bid farewell to our waitress and circumnavigate the Highlands neighborhood. The buildings are a mish-mash of cold post-modern condos mixed with cute Victorian bungalows and hideous 40s era shacks with aluminum siding. She can talk architecture. We can discuss anything under the sun. It’s kind of like a middle-aged Jewish version of Before Sunrise – an entire night of magic free of sex. We end up on a park bench across from a Spanish influenced mission. She jokes that we could go over there and assume the missionary position. We chat on the bench about my trips to India, her cruises around the world, her time in Istanbul. She’s curious and asks more questions than I can answer. Intellectually, we have a rapport established in a mere few days that’s exciting, stimulating, profound and raunchy. At midnight she appears illuminated and vibrant. I’m fading. My new single life with its 2 a.m. weekend bedtimes has caught up to me. I assure her I’m not yawning because her company is boring. Au Contraire. We trace our way back to the restaurant and in front of another post-modern rectilinear apartment building we notice the brilliant full moon. I turn my back and drop trou, momentarily exposing my cheeks, mooning the moon. The Cougs, not one to approach anything in life half-assed, turns politely, and bares all to the white orb in the sky, outdoing me for commitment to the moment.

Match.com Redux

A 29 year old woman, “Devka007” from Manhattan, sends me a “wink” on Match.com. Her profile reads, " I’m inventor, so my relationships with the person who is going to be my future husband will never die. I will always keep in reserve some wood to hold the fire of our love.” She’ll never have my wood, because I don’t have the cash she’s looking for. By her syntax and profile picture she could easily be Tatiana in the Bond film "From Russia With Love."

In 1996 I joined Match during its formative years when I lived in the loveless suburbs of NYC; if you were unmarried it was akin to having leprosy. So I electronically ventured out of the the NY ‘burbs and met a woman in Florida who claimed she was 44 years old. We shared a passion for astrology and developed a steady email relationship. It turns out that she was 64, had MS and was wheelchair bound. Yes, I did spent a weekend with her in a B&B in quaint Nantucket just for the adventure. I promise, it was strictly platonic and we had a wonderful time together.

Fast forward nearly 15 years and I’m back on the market. Match seems to engender the same zeitgeist as it did in the 90s – people always seeking, but rarely finding. After perusing hundreds of women’s profiles, which reminded me of browsing real estate comps in the South Boulder neighborhood where I just bought my house, I found one woman to be unique and compelling (to continue the analogy, every boring brick ranch in South Boulder under 600K is neither unique nor compelling). She emailed back to tell me how much she enjoyed my profile but that she’d already met a potential special someone. I'm hoping there's another woman out there who shares my twisted sense of humor and is wickedly playful and smart. But most are “honest, loyal, compassionate, caring” and want “long walks on the beach, kissing beneath the stars or candlelight dinners.” It seems as if each woman loves her family and friends, and is happy with herself if only the right man appeared to help them complete their lives. Some are even “baggage free.”

My profile is just as hypocritical as those of the women I’m writing about: show your game face to the world - emphasize the positives. Don’t expose your fatal flaws or wounds. I think everyone should have their ex-lover/husband/wife or therapist write an honest letter of recommendation that told you how their partner really was in relationship. Then you’d save months, maybe years of wondering what inner demons lurked inside that person and save all that heartbreak in the end. If only it were so easy.

Then there’s my non-carniverous diet; one of my close female friends informed me that she’d never date a vegetarian.Since I only know less than a handful of vegetarians including myself, the social liability is huge. One solution is to never cook at home, but order out every meal. That works in Manhattan quite well, where most refrigerators have a bottle of wine, a box of Arm and Hammer baking soda and some 3 day old Chinese food in a half opened cardboard box sitting on the middle shelf.

One woman writes a list of her negative traits: she needs 8-9 hours of sleep a night. I think she's my perfect match: I only sleep 5-6 hrs. a night and if she was dreaming peacefully in my bed I could have 3 or 4 hours of guilt-free downtime knowing my soulmate was just snoozing away. She posts that her liking hip-hop is a negative and I’d have to agree. She’d have to walk around the house with an I-pod and earbuds or I’d have to start a crash diet of Ice T and Kanye West.

And the 43 year old dog lover who “loves to get all gussied up for a night on the town as much as I love a t-shirt and jeans at a hole in the wall.” No one born after 1945 from any major metropolitan area says the word “gussied up” without sounding like someone’s great aunt from Wichita.

A 54 year old woman from Denver sends me a message inquiring about dancing at the St. Julien. Her photos reveal a classy woman - fit, confident, cosmopolitan and unselfconscious. Women over 50 often possess a magnetic beauty born of wisdom. Sadly, older women are often relegated to the post-menopausal cougar set, an unfortunate part of our culture in which wisdom and life experience is devalued for artifice and youth. However, at this late stage in the game, I'm thinking about kids, and I've already been with several women older than me.

Every woman on Match in the Denver/Boulder area is “spiritual but not religious," except for the 31 year old from Colorado Springs who loves God (like most people in the Springs). She had the appearance of a Russian mail order bride whose wardrobe needs would bankrupt me on the first shopping trip. I guess I could borrow my friend’s black Beemer and with a good slathering of Gendarme cologne, and pretend I'm rich for one date. It’s just we’d have to hook-up at her house because once she saw the futon couch in my living room it would be all over.

But then, an email from a woman in Denver, a transplanted 44 year old Jewess whose path through life mirrors my own. She wrote, empathizing with the fact that I’d just left a very long term relationship, “I've been there, and learned that it was a gift as when you are completely comfortable being single, then you are ready to meet someone.” By that metric, I'm not ready. I hate being single. When I was virtually married I was intrigued by the freedom that my single friends possessed. Now, my empty bed and all too quiet house are unnerving.

The Shangri-La to the South

There's a place south of here where men act like men and women will grind you all night long. It's a place not far away, a kind of sexual Shangri-La, a place called Denver.
This is what G tells me. She's a young, half-latina model who's rubbing her leg against mine at midnight after a party. Her open marriage permits such flirtations and I don't know how far it can go since I'm getting cockblocked by an acquaintance who always seems to hover over every woman I talk to - friend or potential date. She proclaims that Boulder men are pussies and don't know how to approach a woman. My cockblocking friend then imitates the typical Boulder dude who is too busy meditating, going to men's groups, being all sensitive and conscious to act like a real man. Then it strikes me that he and I ARE that guy that he's mocking. Maybe I need lessons from my latino friends who have machismo dialed in. My amigo R seems to take at least 3 women home every week. It helps that he's got his salsa moves down. Another latino friend has a game that doesn't work so well ; he tells women that he's got a piece of fresh Chilean sea bass at home that must be cooked that night. I assume the sea bass is a metaphor for the fresh catch between his legs. He must have a lot of rotting fish at home, because none of the women I know will bite, so to speak. But he does have a point - he says women in Boulder won't allow a man to be assertive.
G is not the first woman to tell me that Boulder guys are wimps, are too superficial or too afraid to be masculine. Maybe I need to change my game from being a sensitive, compassionate quasi-New Age guy and just start grabbing women and pinning them up against the walls at dance venues. Perhaps there's another option: this place called Denver south of here where I’ve heard tales of all night parties where men get mauled by women at first sight. This Denver place sounds like descriptions I've heard of Brazil, where gorgeous women jump into your car as you drive by to make love with you. Maybe we overthink things in our little Boulder bubble: we all have therapists and long lists of what we seek in a partner. Maybe we just need to go to that Shangri-la to the south where people are more spontaneous and tear one another’s clothes off without thinking about it twice.

My Almost All-Female Mountain Bike Adventure

I’m camping with 5 women and one guy in a densely wooded grove of conifers looking out into a meadow of blooming columbine in Crested Butte, Colorado – mecca for mountain biking, skiing and general escapism from urban life. In this town where the ratio of men to women is 7:1, the ratio of my trip is 2:5. These women are serious riders – most of them race for sponsored teams and they’re ready to put the hurt on me on long ascents through 12” wide singletrack that undulates through the forests and open slopes densely blanketed with wildflowers. The snow had just melted from the higher alpine trails at 11000 ft. and we are there for primetime.


I love biking. In many parts of America, hiking purists don’t want people on mechanized objects ruining their placid trails, but in CB bikes rule. I have two legs full of scars and scabs to attest to the many crashes I’ve taken this year piloting my steel horse through rock gardens and narrow trails.
My mostly female camping companions beat me up on the trails and kept up with my scatological and sexual humor by the campfire. Something about crapping in the woods and being covered in dirt, sweat and campfire smoke is a great equalizer between the genders. One evening we reached a concensus on the most appropriate female pubic shaving pattern: a complete laser job was out – it evokes pre-pubescent girls (and for me the first time I played doctor with two neighborhood girls at age 11, amazed at my first gaze into the pink conch shell depths). In "Get Him To the Greek," the outrageous send-up of rock star excess and narcissism, Jonah Hill's character finds himself in front of a girl in Vegas with her pubes shaved in the shape of a microphone. She invites him to sing "hairyoke." Classic. But as a guy, you just don’t want to go down there and get slammed in the face with a 1960s hippie jungle or have to become a licensed Alaskan bush pilot to find your way around. I did not address my recent manscaping adventures in which I attempted to create separation between my nether regions and the Jewish rug that I hide beneath my polyester bike jersey.
The conversations inevitably turned to relationships, and at one point one of my female friends noted that all of us around the campfire were single - we all looked at one another with knowing smiles and proceeded to share our war stories with each other. The topic of “what was your worst date ever” rendered one tale in which a guy showed up without his wallet and forced my friend to pay for the entire $100 meal. Apparently this was his modus operandi with all women. You’d think that would catch up with him someday. Although he promised to repay her, and even apologized to her when they ran into one another post-date, he never ponied up for his half of the meal. One woman complained that you can’t get a guy in Boulder to buy you a drink at a bar – that’s because they already spent every last dime on climbing or biking gear and their low rent crash pad. She’s just dating the wrong dudes.
As for me, it’s been since the Pleistocene era since I’ve dated, but back then in the mid-90s my worst date was with the beautiful coffee shop girl who initiated some above the waist intimacy with me - then at 4 a.m. suddenly announced that she “didn’t want to hurt me” and went home. I wanted the kind of hurting that could have followed, but apparently her self-image was of some kind of succubus who would drain my soul of all life force and leave me spiritually dead. The next week she went on to seduce one of my co-workers who descended into the depths of hell with her – I suppose I was spared. The topic of coffee shop girls arose in another conversation. Seducing a captive audience behind a bar or a café counter is uncool. Attractive young women slaving for tiny wages are easy targets for lonely guys who happen to be regular patrons at your local coffee joint.
My weekend with this posse of women ended in forging some new friendships and bonding more with an old friend on the gorgeous 5 hour drive to and from this mountain mecca. If I could get a sex change I’d probably join the Tough Girls (not these Tough Girls) racing team and qualify to race in the expert class, but as my current gender I would be low on the totem pole among male racers. Before we left town, we shared beers with a local couple who were planning their autumn wedding. The bride-to-be mentioned that in Argentina when you raise a glass to toast someone and you don’t look them in the eye, you will be relegated to having 7 years of bad sex. I was already scolded for my lack of toasting etiquette the last time I failed to meet someone’s gaze – god forbid I suffer the Argentine curse.

The Wedding

At a good wedding, love radiates into the hearts and minds of everyone in attendance. This particular ceremony, with its ritual mix of Buddhist invocations beneath a Chuppah traditionally used in Jewish weddings, was sublime. I was aware that these two new friends of mine were destined to be together for a very long time.

At weddings, the synergistic mix of love and alcohol often fuels late night hook-ups for single guests. However, in this crowd of 150 people, I was one of just a handful of single folks (note that the use of the word “folks” has been popularized by our current President to dumb down his Ivy league pedigree for the average American). In this sea of married couples huddled together beneath umbrellas in the backyard of the betrothed, thunder punctuated every line of poetry exchanged between bride and groom. Me and my 3 other unattached friends formed an island of singledom, united by our knowledge that we’d be going to bed alone inebriated in the wee hours of the next day.

The most intriguing experience I had was with a 90 year old woman. She wouldn’t bust out any moves on the dance floor to “Thriller” but we had great conversations spanning two days. With her crystal clear mind and rock solid countenance, she told me of her years in New York and subsequent move to rural South Carolina.

I think it’s easier to be a single woman at a wedding: women aren’t afraid to throw down the moves with and upon (yes, one intrepid dancer rode the Bride’s lap) each other. Guys only dance together if they’re completely piss-ass drunk or spent their frat boy years together and have fond memories of making fools of themselves. Not wanting to potentially offend any husbands watching from the sidelines, I remained aloof until the vodka took effect. As extroverted as I am, I fear female rejection. I’m also no Patrick Swayze on the dance floor– I make up my moves on the fly, just like we did to “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” in the 70s. It’s a form of creative flailing that shows just how vanilla I am (well, I’m not as bad as some wedding dancers).

This wedding left me with questions about why I’ve never married despite having been in several long term relationships and what inner demons I must exorcise in order to enter the highest union. When the bride and groom shared their inspirations before exchanging vows, one thing the bride said stuck in my mind. She said that he had discovered her in a way that she could never see within herself. In loving her for who she is, in holding up a mirror to her soul, she could manifest her being in a way more profound and beautiful than she could have imagined.

What is the mystic calculus that enables two people to challenge one another, bring out the best and worst in one another, survive the inevitable clashing of egos, to weather the slings and arrows of matrimony and emerge greater than the sum of two parts? My grandmother, a wise woman with a twinkle in her cerulean blue eyes once told me the true triangle was two human beings joined together with God above. Although she wasn’t especially religious, her words stuck with me. It evokes the New Testament passage, “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I also.”

Being at a special wedding reaffirms my desire to take the leap into the dark, numinous state of marriage. I’m old enough now to have overcome my earlier fantasies of ending up with a woman who looks like Jennifer Connelly. Whoever the ONE is that emerges from the ethers, I want to jump into the crucible and be transformed into a greater element than I could ever be alone.

With thunder rumbling above, and rain showers blessing the ceremony, the groom read this poem “La Pregunta” by Pablo Neruda:

Love, a question
has destroyed you.

I have come back to you
from thorny uncertainty.

I want you straight as
the sword or the road.

But you insist
on keeping a nook
of shadow that I do not want.

My love,
understand me,
I love all of you,
from eyes to feet, to toenails,
inside,
all the brightness, which you kept.

It is I, my love,
who knocks at your door.
It is not the ghost, it is not
the one who once stopped
at your window.
I knock down the door:
I enter your life:
I come to live in your soul:
you cannot cope with me.

You must open door to door,
you must obey me,
you must open your eyes
so that I may search in them,
you must see how I walk
with heavy steps
along all the roads
that, blind, were waiting for me.

Do not fear,
I am yours,
but
I am not the passenger or the beggar,
I am your master,
the one you were waiting for,
and now I enter
your life,
no more to leave it,
love, love, love,
but to stay.

Sartorial Adventures

Every few years my cousin from NYC, a writer, producer and former fashion model comes out to help me shop for clothing. On this day, her face lights up with glee when I mention that we have a Nordstrom Rack 15 minutes from my house. She wants me to look good to attract my future wife – I just wanted a linen suit for the 3 weddings I have to go to this summer. She’s been working on me for 2 decades to shed years of self-effacement, starting in the late 70s with my waist length hair hippie persona that evolved into the REI guy look….loose clothing suited for outdoor living. Here in Boulder , Colorado no one has to dress up – you can wear shorts and a T-shirt to all but the most high end restaurants and no one cares. Women care more. It’s common in this town to see a guy with a backwards baseball cap, shorts and an ill fitting t-shirt show up with his well dressed date to any given restaurant. At nearly 50, I’m still part savage. I work as a carpenter in clothing stained with caulk, wood sap and dirt so ingrained it can’t be laundered. But at night, particularly on the weekends, a crisp stylish shirt and good pair of jeans goes a long way in this town. The “playah” clothing my cuz helped me purchase 3 years ago, mostly at Urban Outfitters and Billabong, served to alienate my Ex as she believed I was trying to be single; well, she was right: part of me did. Now I get to do it full time and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. More on that later – back to Nordstrom’s Rack with our golf pro salesman who I’m going to call Chuck even though that’s not his real name. He looks like a Chuck – ruddy faced, red haired, middle aged with a small paunch beneath his tucked in shirt. He’s the nicest guy: a former car salesman turned golf pro turned clothing guy. Maybe in New York in the 1920s his job would be more esteemed – he be a Haberdasher- but in 2010 he’s just a guy hawking deeply discounted stuff at an outlet store. My cousin is a whiz at this. I swear she should quit all of her media ventures and hire out as a PFA – my acronym for personal fashion assistant. Her fingers move so quickly through stacks of jeans and racks of shirts I can’t keep up with her. I wasn’t able to change my jeans and shirts as fast as she brought stuff to the dressing room. I had so much shit in there they gave me the wheelchair accessible changing room. It was like renting a double wide trailer for two hours. I could have installed plumbing and a make-up mirror and felt like a rock star for a day. The problem with me shopping by myself is that I’ve bought size XL for many years. My cuz reprimanded me for trying to hide my burly torso in clothes roomy enough to have a roommate in. She’s also addressed my protruding nipple issues by insisting I wear undershirts. I told her how “east coast” that was and that most guys except for my buddy Jeff (a New Yorker) go raw skin underneath. Today I discovered nipple covers at a local pharmacy – well, for women who generally have double the nippleage as me. They should make them for men. I now know my chest size (42 L), shirt size and have my first pair of tailored pants in my life. I’m gonna look sharp for these weddings. I even have a matching straw hat and belt not to mention cuff links, handkerchiefs and new, tighter fitting undies to hide my junk from the wedding guests. I dropped $56 on a tie that I’ll probably wear once in the next 5 years. I’m o.k. with that. I’ve only worn a tie once in the past 30 years for my college graduation last year. I've had to Google diagrams on how to tie a tie. I’m the guy who didn’t learn to tie my shoelaces until I was 9 years old. My cuz told me if I’m really going to attract the right woman I need to dress my best. But then, what happens when she gets into my dusty pick- up truck and comes to see my Spartan home with my 1970s stereo components and futon couch? A buddy told me that futons scream “non-committal.” I’m new at this game. The problem with a partial makeover is that it makes the rest of your stuff look shabby. If my continually improving image doesn’t have its complement at home, am I just a poser? Well, yes, I’m terribly image conscious despite the fact I walk around with a semi-kempt shock of hair, cuts from mountain bike crashes all over my legs and remnants of salad usually stuck in my impossible to floss teeth. I’m working on it. I grew up like Greystoke or that boy who was raised by wolves. I love my folks, but I had to learn the basics of self-care as an adult. One friend admonishes me for spitting while I talk and blowing too large a volume of wind from my mouth. I swear it would be easier just to be a slob. My inner JewBu wants a woman just to love me for my soul. Why should these clothes, bits of cotton, polyester, wool and lycra that have been draped on my body make one iota of difference in who I am? Well, they don’t. But how we dress and how it makes us feel is as important as anything else in life. It simply feels good to look good.