The Wandering Widow - Travel, The Balm For All Ills, Bettina Goes On A River Cruise Looking For A Soulmate

Archie Loving had travelled to over sixty countries in his long career as an international management consultant. On behalf of the World Bank, Chase, Citibank, and the United Nations, he assisted Third World countries manage their investments. 

After a particularly nasty time in Angola - the rival militias that had fought a decade-long civil war had not yet been demobilized, and the country was as lawless and ungovernable as today's Somalia - he retired, happy that he never again would have to experience the malarial, rat infested miasmic horror of an African airport and be shaken down, robbed, and threatened by border police, customs, and security.  Enough was enough, particularly since after so many visits, so much foreign assistance and investment, and so much Western hopefulness, these countries were still desperately poor, corrupt shitholes.  

So it was was with no little measure of amusement that he watched the widows of his coffee mates, tennis partners, and business associates head for the green hills of never-never-land.  One had been particularly eager to get on a plane.  Hers had been a good marriage as far as the old fashioned kind goes (no one arranged marriages between Vassar girls and Yale men, but that was why they went Ivy League), nothing to write home about, one of those love-her-loathe-him kind of couples.   She was no peach, an increasingly screechy, demanding woman; and he was a bully, everything from the way his shirts were folded to why his wife was always late. 

It was no surprise, then, that Bettina booked a Danube River cruise with Lindblad, ten cities in ten days, first class dining, and fellow passengers all from the same social couche - prosperous widows and widowers all fleeing the bier for some deserved adventure before their number was called. 

Things are never what they seem, and although the food was good, it was not the five-star banquet customers were led to believe.  The sauces were pasty, oversalted, and speckled and dotted with what was to pass for artistry but caused diners to pause.  The cabins were ample but airless, the staff accommodating but impatient, and the on- and off-loading at each stop badly timed. 

Nevertheless no one was there for the food, the air, or Europe.  This was to be a sexual jamboree, an open market for future romance and companionship.  There was an eagerness on board, a kind of sprightly spring in the steps of the men and a coquettish charm about the ladies.  There was always a bit of a scramble at meals - the company deliberately did not assign seating so that the rough-and-tumble of courtship could happen organically. 

The trip, said Bettina, did not turn out exactly as she had hoped.  The men were all still memorial, 'when my wife and I, etc....' and the women as catty as women can be; and although there were some interesting prospects, they seemed more interested in the grandkids or the farm in Chillicothe than seriously pursuing a romantic future. 

By and large, it was a boatload of Babbitts, wealthy men who over the years tethered to the same woman had lost any interest or ability in sexual pursuit - a claque of leisure-suited old men, pure and simple. 

Bettina, however was far from discouraged.  She had picked the right church but the wrong pew.  Tours were the right venue for enterprising mature singles but one had to vet, suss, and triage carefully. 

'Africa is for me', said Bettina, sensing that those who chose Congo, Niger, and Zambezi River tours would be more alive, more willing to open long-shuttered emotional doors and share real feelings. Bettina consulted Archie Loving.  Bemused and surprised that anyone would want to travel to Africa except for business reasons, Archie hesitated.  Where might he send this naively hopeful woman that wouldn't end in misery?  

He scanned his virtual map of the continent along the four axes of the compass and could come up with nothing.  Each place was either a malarial swamp, a crime-ridden ghetto, or a potholed uncivil backwater.  He mentioned Egypt but Bettina quickly dismissed the idea.  'No, Archie, I want the real Africa', the same response she gave when he suggested Morocco; and so it was that against his better judgement, she booked the Bend in the River tour up the Congo River from Kinshasa to Kisangani.  

The European tour company, advertising multi-story air conditioned first class cruise ships, playing the old bait-and-switch, subcontracted the business to N'gomo Tours, Ltd. of Lagos, and hoped for the best.  

The passengers huddled on the foredeck of the steamer as it made its way up through the choking tangle of water hyacinths, its 1960s-era diesel hammering away, smoke belching out of the single stack amidships.  It was Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn on the African Queen all over again, and for all intents and purposes they were heading into the heart of darkness. 

Engine trouble, a stop or two at village outposts, manioc and monkey meat ('Our traditional, local cuisine'), and bitten alive, was the routine; and no group of travelers was more happy than Bettina and her fellows when they returned to Kinshasa. 

Archie had No Congo and No Nigeria clauses in his contracts.  Lagos and Kinshasa were considered among business travelers to be the very worst places in all of Africa, and that was saying something.  From the minute you set foot on Nigerian or Congolese soil, you were accosted, harassed, intimidated, and bullied; and the only survivors of this primitive jungle chaos were diplomats met by embassy armed guards and carried off in armored convoys. 

Somehow, mirabile dictu, Bettina managed to return home safe and sound but without purse, cell phone, watch, or string of pearls. 

'I miss Harold', she wept as she slipped into an empty bed her first night home, but after a few months of desultory pursuits - book clubs, volunteering, coffees at Caffe Nero she was restive, feeling alone, and watching the time tick away while she languished in the Washington suburbs. 

'Something in between', she decided. Not the Tower of London or the stinking waters of the Congo but something congenial, pleasant, and responsive to her simple needs. Turkey was it - more or less civilized, not quite Europe but European in style and popular culture, a bit too Muslim but there was romance in the muezzin's call to prayer. 

The trip sounded exciting, following in the footsteps of St. Paul (his letters to the Ephesians were required reading), the stone dwellings of Cappadocia, the modern city of Izmir, the historic Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia of Istanbul. 

Yet the on-off sightseeing, the endless traffic-choked highways, and the same brutal diet of ground meat and eggplant every day, left little time or opportunity for romance. There was Harry Otter, a businessman from Kansas City who had lost his wife in a freak accident five years before; Billings Potter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Potters, Eddie Koons, heir to the Koons Ford Northern Virginia mega-car dealership, and Pinky Rivera, a first generation Filipino-American who was the real estate king of San Antonio.  

These were the men who noticed her, chatted, mostly about home, but went to bed early.  The rest were dutiful travelers with their heads in books on Suleiman the Great or the Greek wars, who actually signed up because of the docent, Mehmet Baltaci, a Turkish historian and men for whom women - especially their dead or divorced wives - were royal pains in the ass. 

'Why can't I get it right?', Bettina asked herself after yet another fiasco; but undaunted tried and tried again, all to no avail.  She wasn't exactly looking for Mr. Right, but at this point in her life any swingin' dick would do.  Why was she being so picky?

At least every one of these tours cleared her head - it takes time to get rid of junk in the old emotional attic - and her husband Arnold had left quite a clutter.  So, it was chaise lounge on the patio, gourmet takeout thanks to DoorDash, women friends for tea and gossip, and a rather boring set of golden years.

Neither marriage nor gay widowhood are what they're cracked up to be, so man up, she told herself; and yet...and still...Poor Bettina could simply not give up the idea of company, any company, except, God forbid a clone of that prick of a husband, Arnold. 

Left On The Curb - Why Divorced Men Troll For Past Lovers, But Only Reel In Old Shoes

Andrew Phipps had never thought the unthinkable - that his wife of many years would up and leave him. He, unlike other married men his age, had been faithful, dutiful, a good provider and supportive companion.  He had done nothing to upset his wife, let alone this. 

He came home from work one Thursday evening and found the house bare, emptied of everything but the early American painting picture of Great Aunt Tally which had graced the living room and had looked down on his evenings by the fire, his glass of port, and the New York Times. 

A nasty looking old woman, he thought as he walked into the now empty living room - a reaction to the shock of his wife's departure, some kind of compensatory mechanism laying blame on all women and the frightful Aunt Tally who was the closest at hand. 

 'Now what?', he thought, the usual first understandable notion that came into his head, one of survival, a resettling of accounts, a refurbishing of his life, moving on, but that was displaced by a spew of long-closeted words - bitch, cunt, slattern, trollop - which made him feel good as they echoed around the empty house. 

Not a word of intimation from her, not a fair warning, nothing.  A summary dismissal and abrupt departure. 

He had read about such things, and wondered how any man could be so clueless, so vulnerable, so impossibly tone deaf; but there he was with his dick in his hand, alone after thirty years of marriage, facing the prospect of take-out, unmade beds, unwatered plants, and junk mail. 

When he had calmed down and fixed himself a drink, he began to deconstruct the event.  Obviously she had not run home to mother - too calculating and comprehensive was her departure - and so he began to vet a list of possible lovers.  Was it Armand from Hastings & Porter?  William from Tuckahoe? Frank the IRS man?  By his third martini, the cavalcade of lovers didn't seem to matter much anymore. Dumb fucking cunt, better off without her, plenty of fish to fry. 

But the next morning as he grappled his way off the couch, stuck his head under the faucet, and pulled on old bucket of fried chicken from the refrigerator, Andrew was at a loss.  Anger, resentment, parsing, and rage had disappeared and he was faced only with 'what next?'. 

Word got around the office - everyone knew that he had been left on the curb.  Some blamed his wife - women could never be trusted, said one, better off without them - while most others blamed him, a traitor to the cabal of macho men, those who knew a woman's place.  To them he was a pussy, a wuss, man with his nose wide open and a distant look in his eyes.  Fuck him, he gives us all a bad name. 

It was inevitable that Andrew change jobs, and residences while he was at it.  He closed up shop on all fronts, moved to Tucson, moved up in rank, settled in to his rancho in the foothills, and started a new life.  Of his ex-wife he heard nothing.  For all he was concerned, she could be in Timbuktu, a white slave in some salt caravan bound for Adrar. It was all about him now. 

Despite the recent fracaso, Andrew had had his fair share of girlfriends, mostly coeds and cheerleader types who were attracted by his interest, his flashy car, and his willingness to spend lavishly.  This generosity was in fact his signature.  At that heady, late adolescent time no girl probed any deeper than a man's wallet, and Andrew fit the bill of a happy-go-lucky legacy boy without complications. 

There were a few girls who mistook his generosity for serious intentions and thought they had a keeper, but Andrew, as light-witted as he was openhearted, never fulfilled anyone's promise. 

At the same time when he fell for a girl, he fell hard, and Lucinda Archer was his first love.  She was a junior at Bennington, a girls finishing school in Vermont, and her cute, pert, charming little ways struck a chord.  In Junior Year he was madly in love with her, besotted, and lost.  His grades dropped, his extracurricular activities dwindled, and he spent most of his time away from school up north. 

Lucinda, as cute and innocently desirable as she seemed to Andrew, was actually a serious hunter - a girl from a modest background with the intelligence, savvy, and wherewithal to get ahead in the world; and her planned trajectory had no place for the likes of Andrew Phipps. 

However, she, unlike his wife much later, had the decency to let him down slowly with concerns about her aging grandmother, her frail and needy siblings, and the farm in Chillicothe; and so it was that she was the first old girlfriend Andrew called when he had his feet on the ground. 

It is not surprising that men always seem to turn to their Rolodex after a difficult split. There is no balm for the sick soul than memories of innocent times.  It is also not surprising that most men either find their adolescent loves fat and ugly, married with children, or worst case scenario, clueless as to who was calling. 

'Who?', said Lucinda when he rang her up; but after some unravelling of the layers of the past, she at least remembered who he was, but little else.  'I thought we could get together and relive old times', said Andrew to which Lucinda, a real estate agent who had learned how to sort buyers from losers, deftly but quickly scotched the idea.  'Wonderful idea, Andrew.  Let me get back to you'. 

The squalling baby in the background didn't do much for Andrew's hopefulness, but he sincerely believed he would hear from her. 

Then there was Lucretia, a tarty Italian girl from the Bronx whose 'earthiness' had appealed to him in his Greenwich Village days.  She was part goomba and part Columbia rebel, rampaging through her post-graduate years with abandon, and took Andrew in when he was on the rebound from dear Lucinda, benefitted equally from his generosity and his neediness, and then left him hanging after she moved in with one of Abbie Hoffman's Weathermen associates. 

Yet the credulous, desirous Andrew never trailed her or wished her unwell.  She had her reasons, he knew, and she had loved him, so she would remain in his memory if not in his bed. 

He tracked her down to a town on the Jersey shore where she lived with the owner of South Jersey's biggest cement works.  Amodio Brothers’ mixers were seen on just about every construction site north of Philadelphia, and thanks to a number of Man of the Year Articles in the Trenton Dispatch, Andrew was able to locate Lucretia. 

She would remember him, Andrew knew. 'Ours was anything but an incidental affair'; but she answered the phone with the same querulous tone.  'Andrew who?' she said, but after the same reconstruction of the distant past, she still had no recollection of 'our days and nights on MacDougal Street'.  The grinding sound of a cement mixer could be heard in the background.  'Tony's doing our basement', she explained and then with a quick goodbye hung up.  

Tucson is not exactly a swinging town, but every town has its go-to places to meet women. At his age he would not be welcome at the Desert Lounge, the Cactus Bar at the Radisson, or Mountain Range; but the Museum of Western Art was more welcoming and culturally congenial.  Widows, divorcees, and older single women still looking for romance were always found there.

Times had changed and age changes everything, so Andrew was a lot clumsier than he was in the old days.  Funny thing about it was, the women at the museum were not much different from his old flames - certainly as tired, settled into a modestly satisfactory and uncluttered life, and old - so it was time to settle. 

He ended up with one of the women he had met in the Remington wing of the museum, all Indians on horseback and lassoing cowboys; and for a while they shared company at his and her places; but he faded into the woodwork, out of sight and radio contact, presumably married again.  At least there's that.  'She's not my first love', said Phillip Roth's Coleman Silk in The Human Stain, 'and she's not my best love; but she certainly is my last love. Doesn't that count for something?'

One hopes that all ended well for Andrew Phipps.  God knows, he earned it. 

Sleeping Your Way To The Top - A Woman's Birthright

 'Watch your P's and Q's', Roberta Allen's mother said to her as she always had, but this time as her daughter was about to join the working world, she was more concerned.  Bobbi Allen had always been a precocious child - a Lolita, a girl who even before puberty was aware of her femininity, her sexuality, and her allure, and this could lead to trouble; but Mrs. Allen never needed to worry.  Her daughter despite or because of her precocity would not only find her way, but find the best way.  

Roberta's sexual awareness came early.  There was the time that she held Johnny Vibberts' hand and led him to 'my secret lair', a bower of soft pine needles on a bed of moss where she enticed the eight-year old and stood there naked, drops of water like jewels on her skin, a warm smile on her face, and arms open to embrace him just as she had seen a hundred times before on As The World Turns, the soap opera her mother watched every evening, a clandestine lesson for the young girl who, supposed to be in bed, leaned over the banister and caught glimpses of Lance kissing Etheria. 

Johnny stood there as dumb as a stone, flummoxed by a sight he couldn't imagine, so tightly corseted and primly bound was his mother.  In fact he knew there was supposed to be a difference between boys and girls, something to do with 'equipment' as his father referred to it; but nothing more, no details, no descriptions of the work site, the machinery, or its purpose. 

If anything, it all had to do with God's creation and its multiplication, but that concept was too vague and indistinct for a second-grader, so when Bobbi Allen stood there naked without the equipment that Johnny had, he had a glimmering of what his father meant.  Still, he was unsure of what to do. Gawking was not the right response, especially when she unbuttoned his shirt. 

Bobbi stormed out of the woods, startling a partridge in the hemlocks which flapped up and roosted on the tall oak that towered over all else in the woods.  That she had picked  a piece of tired fruit from the bushel didn't mean they were all tired. 

A learning experience - some men are born with sexual awareness and others are not.  Some just stand there like dumb Johnny Vibberts while others are fascinated, can't look away, and want more.  There is a bell curve for everything, and sexual sentience, desire, and vulnerability are no different. Picking the right man for sexual pleasure, support, well-being and above all success is a matter of discernment; and of all Bobbi Allen's many talents, that was her finest. 

Roberta Allen was a trifecta, the perfect storm for making her way in the world.  She was intelligent, willful, and sexually aware - more than any of the boys in her class or her school, dullards for the most part. Ironically those that were alert and eager for sex were often half-wits and retards no different than the barnyard animals she saw rutting on her Uncle Martin's farm. Those that were attractive were diffident, uninterested in girly things but sexual adventurers, self-confident and tough competitors, not easily manipulated and used. 

Most others fell under the arc of the bell curve, boys who had been brought up in stable nuclear families, raised to respect their mothers for their solicitude and love, and their fathers for their discipline and ambition.  These were Bobbi's targets - the ones that would be successful, patient with women, and eager to please. 

One should not get the impression that Roberta had a one-track mind, a sexually obsessive one.  On the contrary, she had an early aptitude for mathematics and before she was out of middle school she was toying with imaginary numbers and infinite series.  Her interest was not in sex per se but as an instrument of success.  The strongest men could be invincible in the boardroom, but when it came to women, they were as docile, complaisant, and eager as a starstruck knight. 

Shakespeare understood this best, and the women of his Comedies all could run rings around the hapless suitors who came calling.  Portia knew that she was the desirable, sweet stamen to the bees buzzing around her flower and knew that they couldn't keep away.  So one by one they came to win her hand and were asked only to guess where her maidenhood lay - in a silver, gold, or lead casket - and one by one they made absolute fools of themselves, tangled in poetic excess, self-assured inspiration, and downright stupidity. 

Rosalind, Beatrice, and Viola, heroines in Shakespeare's other Comedies were no different.  Men were helpless at their hands.  There was little that their status, patriarchy, or inherited wealth could do when matched against these canny women. 

Now, the cheesy little tarts of Hollywood who will bed a producer after an incidental meeting have nothing in common with these Shakespearean ladies - or Roberta for that matter who knew that sexual favors were part of a woman's arsenal, but only deployed when strategically necessary and only to produce the intimidating results desired. 

Feminists who felt that women were really not the independent, strong creatures they had envisaged but weak, vulnerable, and needing protection, created and promoted a culture of 'sexual abuse' - the abasement of women by thought, word, and deed.  The workplace, once a fertile ground for sexual liaisons, was turned into a gulag.  A man who merely looked at a woman the wrong way was dunned, castigated, and released. 

Women, however, because of this new, unfettered environment, became tartier than ever - low-cut dresses, mini-skirts, baubles and jangles, perfume, and the makeup of Rue St. Denis hookers. It all was both provocative and punitive, and no one gained a thing.  Women wondered where all the good men had gone, and men whose balance sheet favored keeping their job, deferred sexual intimacy and went elsewhere. 

Of course savvy men were not intimidated by all this, and knew that women were still women, no matter how insistent the cant.  They wanted attention, to be pursued, and to be loved; so it was not difficult for these men to navigate the penitential waters of the office and make their overtures which were always received with a smile. 

And savvy women like Roberta Alden worked the same system to her advantage. There were no accusatory fingers pointed at a woman who made overtures to a man regardless of his position; and the responsibility for engaging in an office affair was always on him, never her. 

So the game that she and her male partners played was a high stakes, high reward one.  If she successfully seduced a man who was in a position to afford her both comfort and access to the levers of power, more laurel wreaths and garlands for her.   

It was a game of chess for Roberta once she had set her sights on an opponent/benefactor - pawn openings, knights forward, bishops in defense, rooks at the ready.  In addition to such strategies she, like all successful women, had an abundant armory of charm, seductive allure, and an irresistible caring generosity that few men could resist. 

She did all this with the legerdemain of a magician.  The men she seduced for profit were actually convinced that she loved them, and hence saw no reason not to reward them.  These benefactors had been so mentally seduced that they were convinced that she left them because of something they did, some inattentiveness or lack of concern.  Former lovers were never angry, resentful, or vengeful.  On the contrary, they were as congenial as could be. 

Few women have this trifecta, this perfect storm.  Few combine intelligence, will, and sexual allure in such an irresistible package as Robert Allen.  Especially in today's environment of sexual suspicion and accusation, it is remarkable that a woman could so easily make her way to the top never hesitating to use her sexual favors. 

Roberta Allen was a champion who never gloated or condescended.  She looked at the trail of adoring men who had helped her on her way up like a conquering general overlooking the scene of a battle - casualties of war. 

At the same time she was known as a consistently fair, reasonable, and just manager, and men who initially might have resented working for a woman sang her praises.  This too was part of her game, her scheme.  Men, whether potential sexual patrons or soldiers in her battalion were ineluctably drawn to her. She had no prejudices except one - men were all easy marks.