Maria (aka: “mariamaria”)

I can’t remember if I paid for dinner or not, for both of us, but I do recall picking out filet mignon, against the waitress’ suggestion. After all, you can’t beat filet mignon, and I knew that. Maria followed my lead. This was after driving around through some strip-hell of New Jersey, two hours south of me, where we’d already ditched one nice enough looking Italian restaurant because of paint smells, exiting beneath the nose of a kind enough gentleman who both understood and wished to protest our sudden and unfortunate leave-taking.

I did like that spirit of hers, just to get up and leave; and I liked, too, how for the first half hour, rather than sitting down somewhere over bad coffee, we walked around a sports field and sat in the aluminum bleachers, trading some of the facts of our lives. That she did this in a white dress, and didn’t show concern over getting it dirty, was a real plus to me, too.

I had to, as is often the case, push to the side that Maria was less attractive than she appeared online. There, she was a princess. Here, in real life, she was attractive, but would not stop the show. She looked tired and a bit beat down, as did her car, a late 90’s Honda she pulled up in next to my Saab. Hell, I know I look a bit beat down myself, so these things I tend to let go of pretty easily. After all, the picture in the menu is supposed to look better than what turns up on your plate. It’s advertising, and you’d be a fool, unless you were some untapped Adonis type, to put yourself out there looking like we all do after some forty plus revolutions around the Sun after one more long hard day in the brain box, not to mention a pummeled enough heart.

But there were many things about this woman that threw me off. I did not like her lie in her online profile about not having a child when she did. Sure, I said I was divorced when I was separated, but I was getting divorced. I in no way wished to remain married to my wife. Did I deceive myself that it was merely titular? Yes, I did. But that was about how much pain remaining married to her was still causing me, not some desire or urge or longing to hang onto her. God, no.

That was my lie. And I admit now it was a little more than just technical. But a child? How could you do that? How could you deny that? That’s not technical. That stone of judgment I did cast silently into the waters while we talked with ease over our beef dinners.

We were enjoying each other’s company so much that we stopped in another place and had what I had hoped would be good coffee. It was a huge hacienda-type place with few and silent workers. A bartender made our drinks whose order was taken by another. Maria had the house’s specialty which was some sort of coffee concoction with alcohol, like a hot toddy, some ski drink, and I a double espresso. It didn’t make her drunk, but it — or being with me — did make her comfortable.

And, as I listened to her sad story about being sexually harassed at the local community college’s nursing program by a teacher — a lecherous Argentinean male nurse — who’d failed her by her not putting out for him, and how the whole establishment closed in and surrounded her like a bunch of Swiss pikemen, like Myrmidons killing Hector, when she brought it to the administration’s attention, I felt worse and worse for Maria.

There was a vulnerability to her which is a good thing, but also brittleness and an anger that pushed me away. There was stuff that didn’t add up. She seemed to have no attachment to her own child, not that divorced mothers must be primary caretakers, as the legal lingo of parenthood goes, but the lack of affection I felt from her made this child seem not even what Thomas Hardy derisively calls children of ignorant parents their “appurtenances.” Even if I can’t care and love children of another myself, the lack of care and love, if I sense this from a parent, anything but feeling joy and love unbridled for one’s children, this strikes me deeper than anything else I know on earth. I guess I’m tossing a second stone of judgment where the first one already went.

Maria’s exasperation over a man she told me she’d dated who was still buzzing her phone repeatedly while we were out together was a another huge stone in the water. That a) her phone was on to let it happen; and b) that it kept happening; and c) that it’d been going on with him for two weeks like this; and d) that I had to know and hear all about it — these were big stones. It also came out that, at noon, I was Maria’s second date of the day.

Even though I myself have killed two birds with one stone by having back-to-back dates in White Plains with two women, for instance, hearing about it from Maria so offhandedly was a serious put off. Even if everything’s flibbity-jibbity, don’t make the one you’re with feel that way. This to me is where tact, decorum, and upbringing come into play. Others might argue that that’s also where my hypocrisy and deceit rear their consumptive heads, and this might be true, too.

Even though Maria said she wanted to come upstate to see where I lived next time, and I probably agreed with her at the time that that would be nice, she was a woman I’d end up sleeping with a few times, maybe a month or two, and never fall in love with. That’s what I saw as plain as day: I wasn’t going to fall in love with Maria. I actually could put up with and accept her lying a bit about her personal life and the other stuff. I liked her. She was fun and had some spirit. But I wasn’t ever going to fall in love with her. I could recognize that like I could see the Ace of Spades. I could feel that, and let it go without a further care.