Romance for Real Women

Most real women are far too frugal to buy books in hard back. But there are some exceptions.

Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child are one exception. For those of you who don’t know, Jack Reacher is the itinerant ex-military cop who wanders the U.S., stumbling into situations requiring his special skills of calculation mixed with a hard headed willingness to do serious violence. He carries only essentials with him, a folded toothbrush, an ATM card and an expired passport. Every couple of days he buys a new set of clothes, discarding the old one. He occasionally works the odd job, but lives mostly on his savings.

Reacher’s operating principle is forward movement. He hates to go back. In Nothing to Lose, the new Reacher novel, he’s “taken it into his head to cross the continent diagonally” from Calais, Maine to San Diego, California. As the book opens, Reacher is in Hope, Colorado where he is intrigued enough by the name of the neighboring town, Despair, to make a side trip to it.

In Despair, he is picked up by the police, tagged a “vagrant” by the town judge and driven back to the border between Hope and Despair. His decision to stick around is described this way: “Six blocks to Main Street, Reacher figured. If he turns left, takes me onward to the west, maybe I’ll let it go. But if he turns right, takes me back east to Hope, maybe I won’t.”

Reacher has been called “One of the most popular characters in contemporary thrillers, a perfect hero” (Chicago Sun-Times) and “the thinking man’s action hero.” (Denver Post).

He is intriguing. And, he is “thinking” in the sense that he is calculating and not just when he is faced with violence where the odds are against him. Here, his operating principle is “Get your retaliation in first.” And there are other odd flashes of calculation as for example when he calls upon the judge in Despair. “In Reacher’s experience the average delay when knocking at a suburban door in the middle of the evening was about twenty seconds.”

What an extraordinary thing for a character to know!

But there is more. After a woman answers the door she “stood still and said nothing. In Reacher’s experience the husband would show up if the doorstep interview lasted any longer than thirty seconds.”

Wow.

But he is not a crusader in the sense that John MacDonald’s Travis McGee was a knight in tarnished armor defending the weak or wronged. Far from it. His only motivation to investigate Despair and trigger the events of the book is the right turn made by the cop. Once the town’s ugly secrets begin to emerge, he is on the “right” side, but only by happenstance.

I once read a review where Lee Child was quoted as saying “Reacher is an animal.” (That might not be exactly the word he used, but it’s close enough.)

He is. A fascinating and brilliant animal. And Lee Child has given us a fascinating and brilliant book.

It’s number one on my summer reading list.

As I was flipping through my stash of hot guy pics, I came across one of Keanu Reeves and thought about that silly movie where Diane Keaton picks Jack Nicholson over Keanu. I said when I saw it and still believe—that just wasn’t right! Keanu’s character was gorgeous, charming, a heart surgeon, adored her, AND he took her to Paris for her birthday for dog’s sake!  Jack’s character was a jerk played by Jack. Was this woman too stupid to live or what?

Based on my vast research over many years of dating, I’ve decided handsome men can be just as wonderful people as the aesthetically challenged.  AND they look so delicious naked. Yeah, yeah, I’m shallow but there’s no way I’ll ever be so demented I think Jack is a better deal than Keanu…ever, ever, ever!

Of course, the Ultimate Perfect Man ever in cinema was Jake Brigance in A TIME TO KILL. Everything a woman could want—brilliant, loving, faithful, funny, a modern day knight in shining armor with a southern accent fighting for justice. It didn’t hurt that he looked like this:

Sigh. Off to the movies…

Aloutte

Okay, I admit I’m a little theatrical. A lot theatrical.

Real women can be theatrical.

When we were little, my sisters and I used to dress up in Miss Moonbeam’s treasured relics from the sixties. These consisted mostly of faded tye dyed caftans which she felt herself unable to discard. Mom encouraged us to play with her old things perhaps dreaming that her peace and love philosophy would rub off on us the same way dye fades in the wash. That is to say, quickly and thoroughly and all over everything else.

Although I made do with tattered caftans, I yearned for polka dots, sequins and crystals. At Halloween, I always insisted on the brightest, most sparkling costumes. My Cinderella at the ball costume wasn’t fantasy. It was the deepest expression of my personality. I spent months finding exactly the right accessories for the beaded flapper dress Granny gave me one year. A long strand of faux pearls, earrings and a real cigarette holder.

Mom was horrified. I loved it and still regret outgrowing it.

Granny never quite reconciled herself to the bohemian daughter she’d produced and, despite her deep, unwavering love for my mother, never understood her. But she understood me.

Granny insisted I take ballet classes which I did enthusiastically until it became clear even to me that I’d never be a professional. But, oh, I loved those costumes and the glittery makeup. I loved performing even if all I did was trip around the stage. Literally.

Granny also gave me dance lessons which in our town were taught at the local war memorial that had an auditorium for civic use. Mom swallowed the dance lessons, although the clouds of pink Granny and I decided were essential for waltzing were harder for her.

Along with sequins and beads, tears used to be an essential part of my theatrical repertoire.

I learned early on that I could cry just by thinking of something sad. My Cinderella costume, conveniently lost at some point in my childhood, a string of crystals Mom declined to buy, make up she made me scrub off. All could bring tears.

Shallow, I know. But we make do with what we’re given.

My tears aren’t the sobbing kind. No. At least in my fancy, I am more the pre-Raphael type, long tresses bound in a net with a few tendrils of hair attractively escaping over a willow neck; white skin emphasized by a sheer gown; disconsolately watering the plants I’m drooped over with tears that escape one by one.

God, I was good.

Unfortunately, Mom also had the gift of tears. So, when I’d go into my drooping femme act, she’d tell me to knock it off. Or when she was in the mood she’d provide a little competition and my sisters and Granny would find the two of us draped languorously on the couch, tears flowing down our cheeks between giggles.

As I got older, I admit I used the tears to great effect especially with men who didn’t know me well. My ex-husband claimed before he departed that he never knew what was up with me. (I never said the divorce was entirely his fault.)

To her credit, Mom opposed manipulation by tears. In fact, when my partner and I were just into our relationship, you know the stage where you’re committed, but everything is still sort of starry, Mom suggested we do our femme act for him. I was enjoying the hell out of it until it occurred to me that S/O was being given an important piece of intelligence.

So now when I droop, he sits down and enjoys the show. Once he even asked me to hold the action until he got the popcorn ready.

Hardly fair.

However, I got smart and now I set the mood. These days, I’ve stopped drooping and now do my performing in sexy lingerie.

So, I get the results I want: his undivided attention.

It’s all theater, ladies.

Although I adore blonds, I admit that most gorgeous men are dark haired.  A writer friend told me romances with dark haired men on their covers outsell those with blonds—which is why the ever delicious Nathan Kamp, a brunette, was her fair-haired hero.

Then I realized for the most part I like my heroes dark and dangerous.  These are fantasy men after all and I don’t have to live with them on a daily basis (the criteria for a husband/significant other has NOTHING to do with the fantasy thing). The fantasy hero is tall, dark, leanly muscular, handsome, a bit of stubble works—the alpha male with a “right here, right now, baby” attitude that sets the pulse to racing.  A masculine masterpiece like him…

Oh, yes, he looks great in jeans.

And out of them.

Time for that cold shower!

Until next week…

Aloutte

My friends, who consider themselves experts on what this blog should and should not contain, have given their opinion that Aloutte, my friend who is posting “Hot Guy Friday,” has been insufficiently introduced.

Never mind that they know her and get HGF every Friday anyway.

Nevertheless, they may have a point.

Here goes. Aloutte is a friend who is about my age. (I’ve mentioned my age once in the “Who I am” section of this blog and I’m not going to do it again.)

Like me, Aloutte is from the East Coast and grew up with hippie parents, a fact that gives us much to laugh and cry about.

She is a top professional with a financial services firm, one, by the way, which hasn’t lost money for their clients in the recent market turmoil. She is highly educated, and a wide ranging reader of both literature and romance who can dissect a book in about thirty seconds.

After a couple of false starts, she has been happily married for a decade and like me, she loves gorgeous sexy lingerie.

She started HGF” as something of a joke, but soon found all her friends loved getting the eye candy, especially on Friday after a long week at work. She describes better than I can why she does it in her first HGF post.

She’ll be posting tomorrow. Stay tuned. I always do.

My Mother, the original Miss Moonbeam from the sixties, declined to marry any of the fathers of her children. Marriage is bourgeois, an insignificant, meaningless piece of paper, an institution designed to oppress women, all according to Mom.

But real women, of which she is one, love romance-even if it involves an exchange of vows before a priest in a church and comes with all the trimmings.

We just can’t help ourselves. And, it’s fun to see her in full wedding planning mode as her sister’s grandchild gets married.

The kids are just starting out, a couple of years out of college, so the original concept was that it was to be a small, intimate wedding in my aunt’s backyard as befitting the couple’s age and current economic status.

That of course was before Mom and Auntie drew up the guest list and realized there were fully 200 people that must be, had to be invited. Leaving one, even one, off the list would result in deeply hurt, never to be mended feelings

The church had already been reserved and it can easily accommodate the anticipated rally. But it didn’t take these two matriarchs long to figure out that the backyard just wouldn’t do.

So with Mom leading the charge, a country club has been rented for the reception.

The original plan had been for the bride to wear a sweet summer dress with perhaps a floppy hat. (That was Miss Moonbeam’s suggestion.) Now the search is on for an appropriate pattern and a thoroughly vetted dress maker.

An even more vigorous search is on for a veil purportedly worn by my great grandmother which has somehow disappeared. I won’t say these two perfectly charming women are pointing fingers at each other, but…

Currently, the telephones, landlines and cells, are burning up over issues involving flowers for the church, food for the reception and the merits of a morning coat versus a tuxedo.

I honestly don’t know how much input the poor bride is having into these weighty issues, but I assume everything is fine since I’ve heard nothing to the contrary. And I would have because I’m being brought up to date every night, although my opinion is never sought.

My sisters and I were raised on the aforementioned philosophy subscribed to by Miss Moonbeam. So, we are thoroughly enjoying her absorption in every detail of her great nephew’s upcoming nuptials. Unable to help myself, I went so far as to ask Mom why she was so involved since she didn’t believe in the institution.

She gave me the thousand yard stare she reserves for really stupid questions from her children.

“Bunny,” she said using her nickname for me, “you really don’t understand?”

“No, Mom, I don’t.” No chance of letting her off the hook on this one.

“They need my help,” she said before taking a call from her sister.

Oh, of course. Right.

I have sometimes criticized relationship gurus and no doubt I’ll have other criticisms as new so-called experts pop up with boneheaded advice for gullible young men and women. But real women know good advice when they see it and the advice quoted by Maureen Dowd in Sunday’s New York Times is the best I’ve ever seen.

Prompted by news articles about Christie Brickley’s notorious divorce from Peter Cook, Maureen Dowd found a 79-year-old Catholic priest, a Father Pat Connor, who gives marvelously refreshing, common sense advice on what to look for in a husband.

I won’t quote the entire column. You can look it up easily. But I do want to emphasize one important point.

Father Connor suggests you never marry a man with no friends. That this indicates intimacy problems.

I’d go a lot further.

Talk to your friends when you’re contemplating marriage or a relationship. Then really listen. Their advice is even more important than any you may get from your parents or siblings.

Friends, unless you’re running with a totally evil group, don’t have agendas. They actually want you to be happy and want you to be happy on your own terms.

Parents, however, well meaning, can’t always see beyond their own perceptions of what’s good for you. For example, you’re a doctor. He’s a carpenter. They see the socio/economic difference without understanding the stability issue is more important to you than the economic one. Your friends will get it.

Another piece of advice. Think long and hard before you ally yourself with someone from another, vastly different culture than your own. I did not say skin color here, please note. I said culture.

The female relatives of the gorgeous Muslim man you met in college wear burkas. But he’s Americanized, you say, he doesn’t believe in burkas, the headdress worn by Muslim women.

Sorry, my child, it’s not going to work. The world is growing closer together all the time, but not that close. You’ll be in for a world of hurt.

So, listen to your friends and carefully consider his background. Throw in Father Connor’s advice about intimacy, money management, humor, ability to disagree and more and you have an excellent starting point for evaluating your relationship.

If I do say so myself.

Are you as bored as I am with the apparent national obsession with Christie Brinkley’s divorce from Peter Cook? Of course you are. Real women find the intrigue surrounding the Madonna/Guy Ritchie split much more entertaining. It, after all, features a major sports figure who may or may not be having an affair with the material girl, but who is certainly and probably not co-incidentally also getting a divorce. Add to that, a mystical Jewish sect and celebrities who still have star power and you have the recipe for at least some relief from our summer dog days.

The Brinkley/Cook debacle features a middle aged man having an affair with an eighteen year old. (And, frankly, could his face lifts and professional tan be any more obvious?) Haven’t we, as a nation, already gone through the angst of a middle aged man diddling a young intern? We have. And there are no spotted dresses here to titillate.

We also apparently need to know about Cook’s obsession with internet pornography. What’s new or interesting about any of this? The only thing we don’t know yet is whether he takes Viagra and I’m betting he does.

And, this may sound harsh, but with all due respect to Brinkley’s past accomplishments both as a model and as having raked up four marriages including one with singer Billy Joel, isn’t she a little washed up?

What tilts the balance for me is that Ritchie and Madonna are not hanging out all their dirty linen. In this case, Madonna is showing an unexpected degree of class. Or maybe just simple concern for her children.

Brinkley had the option of a closed trial and declined it. So, her kids who include a thirteen year old son and a ten year old daughter will have to deal with every salacious detail reported about their parents. So, there go their chances for any well adjusted childhood, if they had a chance to start with and the more I learn about her, the more I doubt it.

So, don’t play the “poor me” tune to me, Christie. I ain’t hearing a single note. My sympathy stops well before the court house door.

Tall, dark and handsome.  The classic romantic hero. Who can resist that fantasy? And why would you?

I first discovered today’s Hot Guy on Robin Schone’s forum when he was posted as the image of Michel des Anges (Michael of the Angels), the damaged hero of Schone’s historical erotic romance, THE LOVER.  Beiron Andersson was gorgeous at 27—back in the mid-90’s—and for some time I didn’t realize the photos were a decade+ old.  Here’s a PG pic but a Google search will produce a wide range of photos including some artistic nudes that will steam up your screen (nothing X, but he is European).

Recent pics and video have appeared online—dog love the internet– proving the guy still has it. Maybe it’s just me, but I think he’s just as hot at 40+. Beiron today…

It’s getting mighty warm in here.

Aloutte

Real women know that post-coital etiquette is an important element in romance. So, let’s discuss.

You’ve decided to do it. You do it. Now what? Take a little control, that’s what. Don’t leave the entire post- coital glow up to him.

You know he’s going to be hungry. All men are always hungry. What you do not want is for the two of you to be pawing through your leftovers in what should be a romantic moment.

But what they eat and drink depends on their type.

So, think it through.

Say he’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy. He likes beer, not wine. So have a platter of sliced sausage and cheese ready in the refrigerator. Have frosted beer glasses in the freezer. Be sure the beer is cold. Sure, his breath might be a little garlicy, but you’ve already signed on for that.

He’s maybe a little more sophisticated. Have grapes and brie, of course, with water crackers and champagne. He’ll appreciate your understanding of what he likes. And, remember, grapes are always associated with romance. It’s a nice, subtle signal.

The point is finger food is best. You really don’t want to be slopping around with Irish stew at this point.

Here’s an important tip. Make sure whatever you decide to offer him fits on one platter, a platter you can gracefully carry to the bedroom. If you’re very confident and have laid in a lot of supplies, have him carry the platter while you take up the slack with the bottles and glasses.

Tip number two. Use a breakfast tray if you have to, but ensure there is a place to put it that is not on the bed. Keep that area clear for other activities that may come up. Get it? Clear off your nightstand. No sense sweeping your tissues and romance books into a drawer in front of him. Too ad hoc.

Tip number three. Whether he’s a meat and potatoes guy or a sophisticate, you’ll need napkins. If you give him sausage, trust me, he’ll eat it, but he’ll get his fingers greasy. If there isn’t any room on the platter, drape the napkins over the food.

Tip number four. If you’re uncomfortable padding around naked, have a chemise or peignoir draped artfully over a chair…within reach. Slip into it on the way to the kitchen. Practice this move if you have to.

Tip number five. Don’t fight him for food and don’t take the biggest pieces. He’ll notice.

Advance planning is the key. If he’s very alert and has been very well trained, he’ll know this kind of effort required a little planning. That’s nothing to worry about. If he mentions it, tell him you’ve dreamed of what just happened. Tell him, you’d hoped it would.

He’ll eat that up, too.