TheBanyanTree: A Few Good Men

[Margaret R. Kramer]

I hadn’t heard from Joe in about 10 days.  Since our breakup, he’s been
calling me about every three or four days or so.  The conversations are not
too bad, just like friends catching up.  Every once in a while, he would
sling a zinger or try to guilt me into getting back with him.

I figured he found someone else and that’s why I didn’t hear from him.  I
got a call from him on Tuesday night.  He sounded upset, kind of like he
does when he’s been drinking.

His story came out in a rush and it wasn’t always very clear.  He told me
that he had been seeing this woman in his building.  He said she calls him
about 20 times a day.  He was supposed to see her that afternoon, but she
told him that someone else was coming over, so he called her a whore and
probably some other choice words I’m sure.  He can be quite a jerk when he’s
been drinking.

I got him to calm down a little bit and then we talked about normal stuff
for a few minutes and that was it.

The next morning, I got another call from him.  He wanted to know how he
sounded on the phone last night.  I told him he sounded OK.  Then he told me
that his new girlfriend called the police and wanted to get a restraining
order against him.  He said he did nothing except call her a whore.

>From my personal experience with him, that’s true.  He’s never called me a
whore, but I’ve been called other things, like a drug dealer, by him when
he’s in an agitated mood.  As angry as he can get sometimes, he never makes
verbal or physical threats.  If so, that’s when I would call the police, for
a threat or if I feel like my safety is in jeopardy, but not if he called me
a name.  That’s when I would just  hang up.

I saw Joe last night and we discussed this further.  He played this woman’s
voice messages for me.  Oh, my gosh, I couldn’t believe it!  This is a 65
year old woman who was a teacher.  She’s been divorced for a number of years
and evidently had a bad break-up with a boyfriend several years ago.

She left 15 voice messages over a period of six hours on Monday, July 5.
She whined because he wasn’t calling her.  Joe has a way of doing that,
which infuriated me, but I learned how to deal with it.  I wouldn’t bother
calling him and let him call me when he was ready.  He didn’t withdraw this
early in our relationship (he’s been only “messing around” with this woman
for a week), but when it happened, it did kind of throw me.  

I could understand that she would be confused and a bit upset, but to leave
15 rambling three + plus minutes long voicemails?  She’d go on and on about
what this means and where do they go from here and how bad her break-up was
several years ago.  She’d hang up and then call him back a few minutes
later.  No wonder he didn’t answer the phone.

Doesn’t she realize people keep voicemails, especially if they’re Joe and
the messages are off the wall?

Sometimes I get insecure with Frank if I don’t hear from him when I think I
should or if I perceive he’s pulling away.  And then I’ll blast him a bit,
usually in a short text message, and only one, not 500 of them.  He
understands what it is and will call me and reassure me.

The next day, Tuesday, she called him and he answered the phone and they
made plans to get together in the afternoon.  Then she called him later and
told him that she wanted to live her own life and was going to see other
people.  She was going to have a male neighbor come over and look at the
hanging baskets on her deck that afternoon and she would call Joe after he
left.

Now this is probably too much information, but here it goes.  If an older
woman doesn’t have regular sex, her vagina atrophies, which means it gets
smaller and drier.  Evidently, this woman had this problem with Joe.  After
a few days of trying, they were finally able to have intercourse after they
bought some K-Y jelly.

To me, that tells me she didn’t have much of a love life before Joe, so
where were all these other people she had lined up?

She was trying to get him to react and he walked right into it.  She never
called him back.  He got mad and called her a whore and she called the
police because she thought he was going to do something to her.

The police officer visited Joe and got everything calmed down.  Joe talked
to the apartment’s office manager the next day.  The officer manager talked
to the woman and then told both of them to just get along.  Good advice.

I told Joe that it probably was a good thing that she called the police and
ended what looked to be a vicious cycle.  He withdraws, she gets clingy,
then she runs her jealous game, and he falls for it and gets angry.
Hopefully, they won’t kiss and make up and just let this thing go.

While I was there, a 78 year old woman who lives in his building called him.
It was almost 10:00 pm.  She wanted him to come over and have coffee with
her.  Hmmmm . . .

Before it got dark, Joe showed me the building’s garden.  He works in the
garden every morning with this 84 year old woman, who I did meet.  She
didn’t seem like she was breathing down his throat, but you never know.

Finally, Joe told me about another woman who was in the garden with us.  She
had just gotten back from a trip out east.  She’s probably in her 60s or
70s.  I guess one of the tour bus drivers caught her fancy and she gave him
her card, hoping he’ll call her.

This setting is a good one for Joe.  It’s a 55+ apartment with income
requirements, but it’s not for poorer people.  Most of the people are middle
class.  It’s obviously a social group, and Joe likes that.  He likes the
attention that he gets from the women and doing activities with them.

Plus, he’s a single, relatively healthy male in a group of lonely older
women.

And now I’m just like them, except I’m at the young end of the age range.
Is this what retirement is like?  Converging like a bunch of drug crazed
freaks on the few males available to us?

And males definitely have an advantage through the lack of their numbers and
their ability to attract younger women.

I hope by the time I get older, I’ll either have someone or I won’t care
anymore.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net
www.linkedin.com/in/margaretkramer

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.   
-Wallace Stevens