How I Got a Date with Jeremy Irons in a Castle in Spain and How a Size Two Diva Went Shopping at Lord and Taylor for a Size Fourteen Suit

I was giving a lecture in London, in the Victoria Auditorium of St. Martin's Academy of Science. Sunlight streamed through slits in the black velvet curtains, but overhead the massive chandeliers were dimmed to almost nothing. A polite crowd of dark suited Europeans sat quietly in elegant, carved chairs under a long line of portraits of eagle-eyed 19th Century Professors with substantial facial hair, who seemed to join my living audience in rapt attention to what I had to say, as I clicked through my power point slides.

What I had to say was that there was a fatal flaw in the way we had been designing clinical trials for lupus over the past twenty years.

"WE WERE TOO LIBERAL WITH THE BACKGROUND TREATMENTS!" I yelled, pounding the massive podium.

Lupus is a complicated disorder of the immune system with frightening symptoms that come and go with no warning. Although there are overlapping clinical features from patient to patient, it is almost impossible to find any two people whose immune systems are imbalanced in exactly the same way.

Imagine how unpredictable this teeter-totter would become if you took 250 of these patients and they were on six or seven different combinations of background treatments, each one of which might tip the immune system in a different direction. But that is exactly the “background” against which we have been testing new treatments for lupus over the past twenty years. While failing miserably.

When patients enter a clinical trial for lupus they are usually maintained on their “stable background treatment” and then a new investigational drug (or an invactive placebo agent) is added on to that. Imagine if background treatment number one was so effective that the patients who entered the study on it and then got placebo kept getting better and better during the year until they improved so much that even an effective test drug could not look any better than that.

What if Background treatment number two had the same effects on the immune system as the treatment being studied? It would seem likely that for the patients on this background treatment, the test drug and placebo would also do about the same.

Now what if Background treatment number three had effects which clashed with the investigational treatment? When you got them both together they cancelled each other out. Then the group on that Background treatment who got the test drug might even do worse that those who were on placebo, who could at least get some benefit from that background treatment with nothing clashing against it.

No wonder it has been so difficult to interpret the outcomes in lupus clinical trials.

Not only did I discuss theoretical reasons why this might be the case, but I showed specific data from two of the recently unsuccessful trials. If you looked at the outcomes of the subset of patients on one particular background treatment, there was no difference between treatment and placebo, but if you looked at those who participated in the same study on a different background treatment, there was a clear difference.

But after spending gazillions of dollars on that clinical trial, where overall you could not see any benefit to their drug, the company stopped developing it for lupus.

I then proposed a clinical trial design that could begin to solve this problem and got a roaring standing ovation.

I was wearing my practical black travel clothes, but I had on a bright red silk jacket from Shanghai over them, and I thought I looked fantastic, despite a few extra wrinkles on my neck from sleeping on an airplane.

Later I rode the Underground to Leicester Square, bought a theatre ticket for later that night, and walked to Hyde Park corner. Once, many years ago, I did that same identical walk carrying a copy of Boswell’s “Life of Johnson

If you want a great vacation I recommend you take one of Boswell's books to London some summer. Sit in Kensington Gardens or take a boat ride down the Thames and keep reading that book, it is like a guidebook to the past, but in modern London a lot of what Boswell describes is still there. Meanwhile, do you think this blog is funny? Read that one!

And it is full of important romantic advice.

As I walked my own favorite mile of Boswell’s London, where major landmarks have barely changed since the 18th Century (knowing that I was being recorded by the secret cameras they have peeking out to spy on you in London now from behind every scultpted cornice), I experienced the letdown you always get when a great performance ends and the show closes.

Applause is a supreme high, but for me it is always followed closely by a letdown when I walk out on the street and realize that nobody there cares whether I live or die.

Why do you think I like to play the BIG MOUNTAIN SNOWBOARDING iPhone app so much on my iTouch? That game is a lot like my life. So far I have reached the bronze level on it. I have learned that when you go up a slope you should quickly lift your gizmo up and then start angling it. Your little snowboarding mannekin will lift into the air and start flying and spinning.

The more tricks you can do in mid-air the more points you get and the points float up the screen like applause. But if you do not stay on task during the landing he will end up pointing sideways and he will bump into a tree or start meandering up against a cliff or....he slows down to a stop.

Then you have to give the gizmo a little shake to make him start moving again. Much like my life.

You may be better off obscure and happy with a man who really loves you. But then again, how would I know? I recommend that you play BIG MOUNTAIN SNOWBOARDING a few times and ask yourself if you can handle this sort of life. You can get this at:

www.gamespot.com/iphone/action/bigmountainsnowboarding/index.html

A few months after my existential moment in London I was traveling again when I received two emails from the American College of Rheumatology inviting me to present the data from two failed multicenter clinical trials in a huge auditorium at the National Meeting in Boston. I immediately broke into a sweat and phoned Diva.

“What am I going to do?” I screamed. I have two big important talks and they are both about failed clinical trials.

“So what? You will turn it into a great platform for yourself. I am so jealous,” Diva complimented me.

“The companies won’t let me turn it into a platform,” I sobbed. “The FDA won’t let them!”

If it were up to me to explain what was going on in these trials, I might start by showing something fascinating about how the drugs work and then report that the trials didn’t work out so far and suggest some reasons why. Ooops. That’s backwards. What I should do is start by saying the trials didn’t work and then dissect all the trouble with clinical study designs in lupus and end with my proposal for a new study design suggested by the failed data.

As I have discussed in a previous blog, the order in which you reveal important information is critical both in business and in romance! (See “Sealing the Deal”, posted several days ago).

“I am so upset,” I wailed to Diva. “You know the kind of talk I could give and I won’t be allowed to! Remember how well that paid gig went in London in June!”

“Of course, I was so jealous I was planning to have you assasinated, and they paid for Business Class, too.”

“Well it won’t be like that this time. Not with ACR abstracts. I will have to stand by for an upgrade, and they will make me show fifteen redundant data slides where there is no difference between treatment and placebo and then ten more slides of boring safety tables. There won’t be any time at all to say anything interesting. Everyone will be snoring by the time I get through that.

“Stop worrying, you will think of something to make it memorable.” my loyal best friend assured me.

“Your total confidence in me is amazing,” I told her.

“Well I don’t know about that,” admitted Diva. “What are you going to wear?”

Diva considers my practical, versatile travel wardrobe (which allows me to fly around the world for a week with only two carry-on bags including my laptop case) to be ‘old lady knits.’ Whenever I get an important talk at the ACR or EULAR, Diva always puts her foot down and forces me to buy a new designer suit.

In whatever size I am at the time.

Fortunately, I was in Dallas when we had this conversation, and there was an upscale mall right across the street from my hotel. Diva was in San Francisco, about to go home to New York.

“How was your Ad Board meeting?” she asked me.

“I was the smartest person,” I assured her. “How was yours?”

“I was the smartest person,” she said. “Well good luck, buy a suit today, you only have two weeks before you come to New York, and I have to see you in it before we decide how to have it altered.”

I could tell Diva was antsy to hang up on me, and I figured it was because she wanted to catch an early flight home. She hates airplanes.

Ad Boards, (or Advisory Boards) can be one of two things.

1. Vanity consultations where lower level functionaries from a pharmaceutical company pays local doctors a generous honorarium to sit in a room while they show slides to push their products. Then the doctors fill out a form in the end to give advice about marketing the product that nobody pays attention to.

or….

2. Critical meetings of the coolest people in the industry, where they pay experts in the field a generous honorarium to help them figure out why most of the clinical trials for lupus have failed in the past twenty years and what kind of trial design to try next.

And how to talk their top management into paying for another clinical trial for our godforsaken disease.

Diva and I used to do both kinds of Ad Boards, but now we only do the second kind. One of the reasons for this is that our NIH-funded institutions do not like us to participate in anything that might be construed as commercial frippery. The other reason is that we have now climbed a little higher in the academic-industrial world and we are too busy going to type 2 meetings to have any time for those easy money type 1 meetings.

You may be wondering what this has to do with romantic advice.

Everything.

I have already described to you some of the worst dates I have had, mostly with random men from the Internet.

The best dates I have ever had have been with men I have met in the wide world of my career. And these meetings have invariably taken place in the context of some Type 2 Ad Board where I was the smartest person in the room, or after a great talk that I gave in a large auditorium to loud applause.

No kidding, independence, self-sufficiency and fame can get you dates.

No wonder I am confused by a woman who takes over a man's kitchen and makes him drive her to the airport.

You don’t believe that I can get great dates after behaving like a person who needs noone? Ha. I once had a date with Jeremy Irons in a castle in Spain.

Not Jeremy Irons the movie star, Jeremy Irons the rheumatologist. Still, if anything, this guy is even more handsome and drop dead classy than the actor. Or at least middle classy, but if you sat all the way through Brideshead Revisited, you know that was exactly the character that Jeremby Irons (the actor) was supposed to be playing.



My date with Jeremy in the castle occurred at the International Lupus Meeting which was in Barcelona a number of years ago. About three weeks before that, Diva and I had been doing a type 2 Ad Board with Jeremy in San Diego and he and I had gotten into one of those lethal arguments that should be avoided at all costs in a collegial setting.

Jeremy had an idea that at the beginning of each clinical trial the investigator should just say “what is the main symptom being treated” and let the outcome be “whether that thing got better.” He thought this was the best way to avoid the confusion of symptoms that make outcomes of lupus trials so impossible to interpret.

He thought that if a person comes to the clinic with a little rash on their cheeks that they don’t care about and a little sore in their mouth that they know will get better on its own in a few days, and they also have severe arthritis that is making them miserable, it should not matter, in a clinical trial if there is still a little rash and a minor mouth sore left after you test a new treatment, as long as the arthritis gets better.

He was absolutely right about that, and his idea has become an underpinning for the clinical trials solutions that I think may turn our entire industry around.

But when Diva and I first heard him suggest this idea at the Ad Board in San Diego, we were at least three failed clinical trials away from recognizing how prescient he was. We also knew that at that time the FDA would never go for a trial design that was based on something a clinician just thinks up in clinic, they like outcomes to be measured with “validated indices.”

Diva and I didn’t’ know Jeremy very well back then, except from a distance. Once, a few months before we met up with him at that Ad Board, he had been going up an escalator at the EULAR meeting when we were going down, and Diva had pointed him out to me as an example of the perfect man.

We both knew his reputation, of course. We knew that he had cured the NZB NZW mouse model of lupus with a combination of chemo and a targeted biologic treatment when neither one of them worked alone. He had given a big talk at the EULAR meeting and Diva had been sitting next to me in the audience practically drooling over him.

“I am so in love with him, he is the most romantic guy in rheumatology,” Diva had said. “His beautiful wife died and he is heartbroken over her and he is so brilliant and handsome....”

"Shhhh," said an annoyed scientific delegate behind us who was trying to hear the talk.

“He seems nice and he is gorgeous, but he has a whiny voice,” I pointed out.

“What are you talking about? He has a mellifluous voice like a radio announcer. It sends shivers down my spine!” Diva raved

The guy behind us gave an exasperated sigh, got up and moved to another part of the auditorium.

Now we were sitting in a small room with him and five high powered Japanese Pharmaceutical VPs. However, now he was sending a different kind of shivers down our spines. Scary shivers. He was using tricks to make us look bad and make himself look good.

Whenever the company guys asked a question, he would demur that he needed to reflect on his answer, and request that Diva and I each say what we thought first. While he acted like he was meditating. Then, when we were done he would lift his head and render his opinion, and try to make us look bad.

His way of talking was slow, contemplative, full of long, thoughtful, portentious pauses that made the drug company people lean forward expectantly, and he frequently got his facts wrong.

He would also pepper his remarks with humble disclaimers and complimentary remarks aimed at us to make himself look like a nice guy, before softly, sweetly and regretfully over-ruling each thing we said.

At first we let him get away with it, hoping this would turn out to be an anomaly, but to our mounting horror he kept doing it, again and again.

It is not that Diva and I have trouble entertaining an opposing point of view, it is just that we have both become used to the extra income we get, doing one or more Ad Boards each month, and his manner of rendering a consistently negative verdict on us felt like he was jeopardizing our creds!

We met up in the ladies room after the second break and I told Diva to stop staring at him like a swooning schoolgirl and she told me to stop worrying about offending her, just let him have it.

We went back in the room and started haranguing him like fishwives every time he opened his mouth, blocking him at every turn with our superior knowledge of the facts.

Despite our inferior vocabularies, and our more shrill tonal nuances.

It was obvious to Diva and I that we knew more stuff than he did. And it was gradually becoming evident to him to, each time we countered his frail assumptions with the data. As the morning wore on he was getting really mad at both of us.

Especially me.

He kept saying “Don’t interrupt me, Della,” in a really angry and offended voice.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you will know that quite a few men seem to say this to me. But this time I was in a professional situation. With Japanese people. I was on my best behavior there. And I was innocent.

Here is an example:

“I may be wrong," he began at one point. “In fact it must be obvious to everybody that I have been wrong from time to time...” looks down at his hands modestly as if he is waiting for someone to contradict him. “….but what I would like to suggest….that is, if this opinion could be considered a suggestion only, since I certainly would not want to assume that everyone would agree with it....” he smiles at me. “...so what I am only SUGGESTING….” he continues sweetly, “is that the BILAG is far too complicated an outcome measure and you are unlikely to acquire interpretable data from it.”

I wait politely. There is a six second silence.

“That’s not true!” I yell.

“Do not interrupt me, Della,” he says angrily. “I have the courtesy not to interrupt you, and all I ask is that the same courtesy be extended to me.”

A very difficult man. Not to mention how off base he was with the facts.

The BILAG is the British Isles Lupus Activity Group Index, and it is the only validated measure for lupus that actually works. Some of the time.

It has been widely used in clinical trials for lupus, all of which failed. No wonder people who don't know what they are talking about are beginning to suspect that there is something wrong with the BILAG.

But these trials have failed primarily because of the choice of what to measure, not because the BILAG measuring tool is no good. In other words, if you are looking for a change in millimeters that you should have been measuring in centimeters, and the outcome doesn't make any sense, it is because of an error in your choice of increment, not because the ruler is broken.

All of which I said, while he got madder and madder at me, because in his mind I had interrupted him in the middle of one of his interminable pauses.

In my mind the matter was simpler and less personal. I knew a whole lot more about the BILAG than he did. And I knew a whole lot more about patients, too. This guy was a mouse doctor. What did he know about human patients in clinic?

There is a beautiful piece of work by a guy in Texas who took a lupus mouse and bred it to a healthy mouse. All of the offspring had some laboratory features of lupus, but none of them got sick. He identified three different regions in the genes that could be identified in three different types of the offspring mice. Then he started mating these baby mice together. If you combined baby mouse one and baby mouse two, very few of them got sick. If you combined baby mouse one and three about half of them got sick. So does that mean that regions one and three are important and region two is not?

Here is the interesting part. If you did some complicated breeding experiments, and ended up putting together baby mice one, two and three so that you got all their genetic elements put back into one mouse, guess how many of those offspring got sick? More than 90%. This suggests that whatever number 2 had was important after all, but only when it has a full set of the other lupus puzzle pieces on board. This was a plenary piece of work that explains some profound issues about how genes interact with each other.

But if you are a human and everybody else in your population is not inbred by scientists to resemble each other, you can inherit a whole lot of different genes. Some genes work with other genes to increase their impact and some genes work against the effects of other genes. We already know there are hundreds of genes that can increase the risk to get human lupus, not three. It is possible that it could be thousands of genes in fact.

And every human lupus patient can have a different subset of these genes working together (or working against each other) than every other lupus patient. This is just to say that human lupus is a lot more complicated than mouse lupus. There is a lot more to measure there. And yes, Jeremy Irons, we do need the BILAG.

But it was very hard to get this message across to the people of Takada Horita Pharmaceutical Company, when every time I spoke I was accused of interrupting and every time Jeremy Irons said anything he first looked humbly down at his hands and made some likeable, self-disparaging remark in his mellifluous radio announcer voice. He had the Japanese culture down pat and what were we supposed to do? Turn into Geishas?

And then with an inexplicable assumption of finality, he rendered the final verdict on every topic, simply over-ruling the girls with a dulcet finality that brokered no response. And the Japanese guys were eating out of his hand.

Diva and I had never dealt with anybody like him before.

At the end of the meeting, he had done us some damage and we had done him some damage and I guess it was a tie.

He shook hands and bowed with all the drug company people, gave a curt nod to Diva and gave me a long, scary stare. Then he quickly left for the airport.

Diva and I were booked on the same initial flight to Chicago where we would be separating for connections to our home cities. I figured we could discuss what a jerk Jeremy was on the airplane, and I was looking forward to that because I was still riled up.

“Was he an ignorant jerk or what?” I sniffed as the plane started lumbering down the runway.

Diva was gripping her armrests with white knuckles. “Wait, “ she hissed. “Wait until we make it up......ahhhh....ahhhh...Oh,no! Oh no! What was that?”

The plane had shuddered a little. “Just a normal vibration.” I said. “They call it the vibration of acceleration.”

The plane was lifting. Diva shank in her seat. “Is that normal?”

“Is what normal?”

“The vibration thing. The acceleration thing.”

“I don’t know," I giggled. “I made it up.”

“I never felt anything like that before." she said sternly.

"Happens all the time and you know it," I soothed her.

Suddenly she stiffened in her seat. "I think our angle is wrong. this isn’t normal, we aren’t getting enough altitude!”

“No, no, no, perfectly normal. They take off in different ways sometimes.”

“Why? Why would they do it any different way? Why can’t they just do it normally?”

“You know, wind, air traffic, birds….”

“BIRDS? BIRDS? BITE YOUR TONGUE!”

The plane angled up a little more, and we were climbing steadily now. She started to relax a little.

“Let’s get a drink, “ I said. “As soon as the flight attendant gets up.”

I love flight attendants. They take care of us frequent fliers when we are nervous and tired and cranky. Especially the First Class flight attendants, when we get upgraded.

I peeked down the aisle and saw ours unstrapping herself and getting up. She had aleady seen me and nodded at me.

“Was that really a normal takeoff?” Diva asked me.

“Diva,” I said. “How many airplanes have you been on....just in the last year?”

“I am a Platinum now,” she said with dignity. “Now I’m almost as good as you." I am an Executive Platinum, but I am more loyal to one airline than she is.

“Congratulations,” I said. "You will be getting more upgrades now."

"Say," she mused, "I wonder if we get to exit first in a plane crash?”

“Let’s talk about Jeremy Irons." I said Isn’t he a jerk?”

“He was discusting,” she said. “And stupid. And boring.”

The flight attendant had picked up on my “four finger” sign and was pouring us some Pinot Grigio, but not in the miniature wine glasses they usually use if you only hold up two fingers.

“Diva stared wonderingly at the large plastic soda cup full of wine she had just been handed. “What’s this?” she said. “How did this happen?”

“I gave her the secret sign,” I said smugly.

I had learned this trick from a worldly Italian businessman in an Armani suit I once sat next to in First Class. You know, the type of really cool character who is known by headwaiters around the world and who probably paid full price for his ticket.

“Wow,” said Diva. “That was really nice of her.”

The plane gave a lurch and she took a huge gulp from her cup.

“Bird strike?” she asked me.

“Hard to say,” I said, “but....it would have to be a little bird.”

“How do you know that?’ She asked suspiciously.

“Because we didn’t crash,” I grinned.

“Yet,” she pointed out and drained her glass.

Fortunately, wine works quickly on her. A few minutes later she was grinning and holding out her cup as the flight attendant came back up the aisle.

“You know, she is primarily here for your safety,” I reminded Diva.

“Are you enjoying your flight?” the lady asked Diva as she liberally poured the cup full again.

“Shurtainly,” said Diva smiling at her goofily.

“Back to Jeremy Irons, I am having trouble figuring him out,” I mused. “You are so right about his voice. He is so mellifluous and you think he is being nice, so why was he constantly dismissing everything we said, but of course failing to humiliate us because we are smarter than him."

Somehow, even then, I must have recognized that if I didn't have a little crush on him I would have been working on my laptop by then, instead of talking about him. Do guys talk about girls on airplanes? I never heard any of them doing it.

“Jeremy? What did I say about him before?” Diva

“Discusting, stupid and boring.” I reminded her.

“True. But he is so mellifuel, melliflu-lous.”

“And he obviously doesn’t know anything about the BILAG,” I reminded her.

“And handsome, too, don’t you love his chin?”

“But boring, “ I said. "No sense of humor. None at all."

“And brilliant. Some of what he said today was ash-cually brilliant.”

“Yes,” I admitted, “but most of it was wrong.”

“But he is brilliant. Just admit it, Della.”

“And neurotic.” I proclaimed. “I think he is extremely neurotic.”

“He’s hot,” she said. “Just admit it.”

“I don’t think so.” I lied.

“We never like the same type,” she sighed, adjusting a pillow under her head and pulling the airplane blanket up to her chin.

“I can’t stand him,” I said defensively.

But she was already falling asleep.

Then we were in Barcelona, at the International Lupus Meeting. It was a mediocre meeting and Diva had been in a crabby mood ever since we found out our full priced American Airlines tickets were on a co-share with an Iberian flight that would have cost half as much if we had purchased it online through them in the first place. And this was one of those situations where we had to use our credit cards and get reimbursed once we got to the meeting, something that makes us both crabby. Me because I like to pay off my credit cards in full each month. Diva because she likes to complete her minimum payment in full each month.

Also, Diva hates Iberian Airlines because she thinks that Spanish flight attendants are haughty.

On the plane, when the lady had passed us for the third time with her nose up, ignoring us loudly snapping our fingers at her, I had tried to explain to Diva that haughtiness is a sign of firey beauty in Spain, related to the Flamenco dance and the tango, but she was remembering the full cup of wine we got on the American flight from San Diego to Chicago, and the chintzy little wine glasses we got in tourist class on Iberian.

There had been no upgrades on that flight. They had been snapped up by those of our colleagues who bought their tickets more than a month in advance. Diva had to take it out on somebody. You do feel the turbulence more in the tourist section, even I think so.

Diva also hated the hotel in Barcelona which made us wait three hours for our room after a harrowing, turbulent red-eye flight across the Atlantic followed by circling around Barcelona for an hour in a thunderstorm.

I should say the flight was harrowing to Diva, and Diva cowering in her seat and wimpering for eight hours was harrowing to me.

She also did not like the food in Spain. Or the small room they had assigned in the convention center for her plenary talk on neonatal lupus. Or the level of the science that was being presented by our colleagues. Or the way our ex-boss, the Screwdriver, had insinuated that I stole some grant money from him when I left Columbia University. Or the way our friend Martha’s paper (preliminary to the one that revolutionized the care of lupus patients, which came a year or two later) was ignored by most of the attendees.

Or the cost of a taxi to get across town to where the good shopping was.

Diva lives in an East Side Manhattan apartment with a terrace and a view of the Chrysler building, wears only designer clothes and recently bought a house in Ocean Beach which she is totally gutting and renovating with every penny she earns at Ad Boards and consulting on her cell phone with pharmaceutical investors. While I am trolling the internet for cute men, she is trolling Ebay for antique chairs for her apartment, or shabby chic bedframes for her beach house. This does not leave her much ready cash for traveling.



People who do not know Diva very well are often astonished when they overhear this woman in an Ann Klein suit and Christian Louboutin heels screaming about cab fares or some hotel bill that some company or university lectureship administrator forgot to pay in advance for her. Whenever possible she refuses to put down a dime for lodging, food, or transporation when she is traveling, but there are two very good reasons. 1.) She usually doesn’t have to. 2.) She requires every penny she earns to pay off her credit card bills for clothes and furniture, and she can’t afford any extra expenses for necessities.



Although my general finances are simultaneously more modest and stable than hers, I agree with her about the traveling expenses. If you pay for something that someone promises to reimburse later you only have a 50:50 chance of ever seeing that money again. And then only after wasting hours of your time writing invoices and sending irate emails. Then try having 20 outstanding invoices to twenty meeting planners whose names do not match any event you went to, and figuring out which ones have already been direct deposited and which have not.

So on the night of the Gala dinner, we were both feeling very strung out because we had discovered that morning that the Congress had still not pre-paid our hotel bill. Very likely we would be stuck with it when we left. Now we were waiting wearily in 90 degree weather surrounded by 2,000 other scientific delegates, slowly inching along a line for the three or four busses that were driving back and forth ferrying everybody bit by bit to some fancy castle, five miles away, where the dinner was supposed to be.

“Let’s face it, the pre-planning is terrible at this meeting. Let’s leave,” I said to Diva. “Why are we standing here like this?”

“Pay for dinner? No way. Just wait a little longer,” she said.

“Yeah but once we get there we will be stuck. Trapped. If this is how long it takes to get there, imagine how long they will take to bring us back. We will have to stay for the whole boring thing with the stupid awards ceremony and the stupid jokes and that boring dermatologist from Boca Raton singing “Memories” and Rudy Costanza playing polkas on his accordion. Although you know I love Rudy’s polkas. Its just how long we will have to wait in line again, as in forever, to get back “

“Rudy is very good on the accordion,” Diva said loyally, knowing that I was very fond of my ex-boss. He was the one I left the Screwdriver for when I LEGALLY transferred my own grant money from Columbia University, downtown to St. Elsewhere. Long before the Head of the Accounting Department stole 275,000 from my NIH funding and I fled to Oklahoma.

“Anyway, we can get drunk or something,” Diva reminded me. I am sure there will be free beer or wine, it won’t be so bad.”

“it’s already bad,” I said, trying to fluff my hair which was plastered to my head. “Its hot and I’m wilting.”

She started fanning me with her “Meeting at a Glance” booklet. One more bus pulled up, the line moved a little and I spotted Jeremy Irons a few yards ahead in the crowd. Our eyes met. I nodded, wishing my hair looked better. I don’t bear a grudge long.

He smiled and gave me a gracious little wave.

“Hey Diva,” I poked her in the side. “Look. There’s your boyfriend.”

“Things are looking up,” she said. “God is he handsome!”

“Who?” said an English woman behind us. Diva pointed him out. “Oh….you are sooooo right! Delicious!”

“And he has a mellifluous voice like a radio announcer,” I added sardonically.

Another bus rounded the corner. Some people were milling around, breaking the line, greeting and hugging each other like long lost friends which, come to think of it, they probably were.

It was hard to tell who was ahead of who any more. Diva maneuvered us (me, herself and the English lady) in front of a group of Italians who were arguing about something incomprehensible. “At this rate, we will be on a bus in ten minutes,” said Diva. “You can hold out for another ten minutes, can’t you Della?”

“I hope you can,” said Jeremy Irons in his mellifluous voice. “This is going to be a wonderful party.”

He was standing right beside me. Close. How had we gotten so far ahead in the line? Or how had he fallen back so far?

“Do you know about this castle place?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “I have been there before. It is set high on a hill, with a magnificent view of Barcelona. It is one of the most beautiful vistas in the world. I can’t wait to show it to you. And inside the castle, there are hallways filled with Meidevil and Renaissance Art, some of the most exquisite examples of tryptechs that exist, and then there is everything from el Greco to Yanez and Llanos, some of the later paintings have a definite Italian influence, much like Spanish versions of Raphael. And yet so Spanish. You can’t possible take it all in the first time, so I suspect we shall have to return there again and again.

Yes, he really talked like that. I left out most of the six second pauses, though. They were growing on me. He really was a very thoughtful guy.

And what did he mean by “we”? Was it the Royal ‘we?” Or did he think I was a friend of his?

“Oh, yeah, great.” I said softly, perplexed.

He was leaning down towards me to hear me better with that drop dead gorgeous face, and I was finding it a little bit difficult to dislike him. I did feel a little guilty that I was standing between him and Diva, who was making goo goo eyes at him from my other side, and nudging me to get out of her way. But we were all being jostled by the crowd, so it would not have been easy to pull a switch.

Suddenly he was taking my hand. “Let’s run for it,” he said.

He pulled me out of the line, away from the crowd. Three busses were coming around the square. Jeremy and I ran for the third one before the rest of the crowd had finished figuring out how to divide itself into thirds. We integrated ourselves into a flow of people near the front of the third bus, and stood there, waiting for the doors to open. It occurred to me that a very odd thing was going on, we were still holding hands.

A little breeze ruffled his hair. It was just like a movie, where a regular girl gets a date with the most popular boy in school. I felt a guilty thrill of electricity and then I realized that Diva was not there with us. She was still standing there, 50 feet back, where we had been before.

“Come on Diva, over here! “ I yelled. But she just waved me off.

“See you at the Castle, Della,” she called balefully back, looking as confused as I was.

On the bus, he led us past several open seats in the front to where there were two together, and guided me in there. He sat beside me and put his arm along the back of the seat, touching my shoulder for the entire trip, but not in any way where you would know if it was on purpose or not.

The sights of Barcelona passed in a blur outside the tinted glass windows and I thought I should try to remember that tour of the city.

Here is what I remember. Spanish architecture, people walking down the street. People walking up the street. And Jeremy Irons' arm around me.

There I sat, getting vapors from a handsome and attentive man who was asking me polite questions about Oklahoma and the Ardmore Medical Research Foundation, and was waaaaaay outside my dating league. Besides I really had thought he hated me.

The castle was at the top of a steep hill and when we got off the bus Jeremy took my arm again. “I would like to take you to the most beautiful spot in the world,” he said. “With your permission.”

We had to climb about a hundred steep, ruined, stone steps, and he kept his eye on me, steadying my balance from time to time. Whether I needed it or not.

Of course I didn’t need it. But I was wearing Dolce and Gabbana heels , so how would he know that?



The top of the hill looked out in one direction over Barcelona and the port and the Mediterranean, in the other direction was the rest of Spain. The sun was low, and the horizon was turning red. It was as sweeping and romantic as one of those scenes from Lawrence of Arabia or Dr. Zhivago.



And as emotinally evocative as the last scene before the Intermission in Gone with the Wind. You know where Scarlett Ohara says “AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I”LL NEVER GO HUNGRY AGAIN!!!!!”

And the sky turns orange and the black dirt of Tara trickles between her hands which are raised to the cinemascope vista of the horizon, as the music swells: da DAAAAAAh da Daaaaaaa.



How can you fail to fall instantly in love with a man who has brought you up the magical stairs behind a castle in Spain? And soulfully gazes over the stunning panorama while you can't take your eyes off his handsome, chiseled profile? Even if you don’t like him.



“Wow.” I said.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Jeremy. “Let’s go see the paintings,now. There are several that I particularly want you to see.”

Who, me?

I was beginning to think this might be a date.

Back in the castle there was already a crush, but the waiters in white tie were diligently passing around an unlimited supply of white wine.

Jeremy picked up a wine glass and swirled it, sniffing at it.

” I can tell this is not from Airén grapes.” he complimented the waiter.

“No senor. “This is Riax Baixas de Galacia.” The waiter bragged.
Jeremy nodded approvingly and handed me a glass. I wondered if we would have had to go thirsty if they had turned out to be Airen grapes.

Then he tucked my arm through his elbow and patted my hand, and I felt a swoosh of erotic longing as we began to tour the paintings, bound together on one side, each holding our glass of wine in the other hand.

A lot of people we knew were noticing us and whispering to each other, was that fun or what?

I did habor a fleeting thought though about what they might actually be saying to each other, such as “the most romantic castle in Spain and the most gorgeous eligible guy in rheumatology and he picks HER?’

The paintings were as fantastic as the view had been. Not that you should take my word for it, take his, he seemed to know what he was talking about. I am a cultural buffoon, having traveled all over the world and seen some of the finest original Art ever created, drunk the best wine, eaten the best food, without the foggiest idea of what any of it was.

But as we strolled with our wine and our linked arms through hallway after hallway of great paintings, even I was blown away by a glorious kaleidoscope of Spanish faces, Mary and Jesus frowning at us, soldiers and Dukes in stiff white ruffs frowning at us, great ladies and their children, all frowning, long, dour el Greco faces crying into their long chins, it was a whirlwind of black eyes, black fringe, black clothes, olive skin, and mantilla covered ladies, haughtily flicking their fans.



















In between drinking my wine, drinking in 300 years of Spanish culture, and drinking in an occasional enraptured gaze at the handsome, intent, gentle face of a brilliant, tragically widowed, gentleman who had chosen inexplicably to hang out with me on that glorious, evocative evening, even if he did try to destroy my rep at a recent Type 2 Ad Board, I also got glimpses of Diva, who had evidently arrived not too far behind us, and seemed to be touring the paintings too.

Or stalking us.

l kept trying to catch her eye as she popped in and out of sight in the milling crowds, gesturing for her to join us, which was not that easy with one arm protectively cradled by Jeremy Irons and the other balancing a glass full of fabulous Spanish wine.

The more I drank, the more full my glass got, that was how magical the evening was. That’s how good the serving staff was, too.

So mostly I was reduced to gesturing at Diva with my chin, since I did not want to risk losing what I had in either one of my hands.

But she insisted on following us at a distance, making silly faces at me. She was pretending to be furious that I had stolen her boyfriend, but of course she made it very clear by her exagerrated gestures that she was joking.

And of course I knew better.

Dinner was in some cavernous hall lined with gigantic tapestries. Jeremy led me to an empty table, away from the main throng of people. It was a great set up for a long, intimate dinner.

What might have happened, I still wonder sometimes, if I had not suddenly developed a case of extreme guilt, excused myself for a minute, run back into the portrait gallery and dragged my best friend Diva and the Englishwoman we had picked up in the bus line back to the table with Jeremy.

Diva protested as I dragged her across the room, saying it was my date,and I had a right to it.

"Don't be silly," I said. "You can date him too, it will be fun."

“OK,” Diva said. “But you are nuts as usual. Did you see the way the way he was looking at you? He loves you!:

“I thought he hated me.”

“Me too. But you never know!”

We all gathered around the table. Diva sat on one side of Jeremy and I was on the other. The Englishwoman sat on the other side of Diva. Nota Petrosian and a couple of his fellows from UCLA showed up to fill up the rest of the table. Diva started making unsubtle handsignals to Nota about me and Jeremy Irons, and he laughed and winked at me.

“These are incredible tapestries,” I said to Jeremy, to get his attention away from my horrible friends.

“I don’t know much about these,” he said, gazing around with appreciation. “But I am guessing that one is probably Andalusian.”

“Yeah and they’re so big,” I murmered. "How did they ever get big enough looms to weave them?"

He smiled at me. “I think they are modern. They have factories here, so unfortunately, although the style is lovely, they are made by machines.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling dumb.

“What kind of wine should we have with dinner?” he changed the subject graciously.

“White wine!” Diva yelled.

“Red wine!” one of Nota’s fellows said. “We are having beef.”

“You don’t need to drink red wine with beef,” Diva scoffed. “And besides I don’t eat meat, speaking of which, what the hell am I going to eat?”

“Well, of course you can drink anything you like,” Jeremy said to the table. "And Diva, we will make sure you get a vegetarian plate."

Then he turned quietly to me. “I recommend the Ossaria reserva." He said in an intimate sotto voice. "I would like to see what you think of it.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Is that reserva stuff white or red?” Diva asked me loudly.

“Uh....”

“It’s a wonderful red wine,” Jeremy smoothly interjected, turning to her politely, "...but let me also recommend something you might like...I think maybe....this one...."

“Say,” said Diva leaning over and grabbing Jeremy's arm before he could turn back to me. “I hear your daughter is a swimmer.”

“Why, that’s right,” he said, sounding pleased and gratified. “She just got her national ranking.”

“My daughter is a Badger!” Diva bragged.

“Really? From New Rochelle?”

“How did you know about the Badgers?” I asked him. The Badgers is all Diva ever talks about during the swim meet season.

“Everybody knows about the Badgers,” Jeremy laughed at me smugly, making me feel left out.

Have you ever eaten dinner with two people whose daughters are serious high school swimmers? Don’t.

For the rest of the evening, the date went to Diva. Once the topic of swimming was broached, the two of them zeroed in on each other with all of their body language as if there was no one else at the table. For a while I tried to listen to them intently discussing the relative difficulty of three hundred meters and five hundred meters and what kind of flip turns are optimal and whether it is better to be the best in the worst league or the worst in the best league...

I would have been a little more impressed with her prowess if there had been an ounce of flirtation in Diva’s manner to him, or but it wasn’t like that at all. They were behaving like two Stage Mothers, sparring with their daughters for swords, each pretending to compliment each other's kid while finding a way to slip in something to point out about their own daughter's superiority, and trying to wheedle from each other the real skinny on every statistic and every swim meet the other kid had been to as if to scope out how formidable the competition might be eventually at the Olympics.

Diva and I still argue to this day about whether her half of the evening counts as a real date or not.

Meanwhile, as it became increasingly clear that I would not qualify even as a secondary hanger on in that conversation, I gave up on them and turned to Nota and his fellows, but they were rapidly becoming drunk and silly. The fellows were all under thirty and telling jokes I did not understand, using slang words I did not understand.

The Englishwoman had found some other friends and disappeared. I ordered a glass of white wine and drank it. Then I went to the bathroom, checking out the other tables to see who else was around. I sat down with some friends from Pittsburgh for a while and had another glass of some kind of red wine, not sure what it was, but if it was Ossaria reserva it wasn’t all that good.

Of course we cannot be certain that I would have had that opinion if it was still being ordered for me by the handsomest man in Rheumatology.

Eventually I found myself up on the stage drunkenly dancing the polka with a very tall, stiff Swede, while my ex boss accompanied us on his accordion. The whole room under the giant tapestries was applauding and cheering us except for Jeremy and Diva, who were still bent close together at their empty table....

Jeremy Irons got married about a year after that to a very nice woman who works for Pfizer. Nobody that gorgeous and romantic was going to go floundering around the academic circuit having fantasy dates with squirrely lupus ladies for very long, anyway. Diva and I forgave each other immediately for stealing him away from each other that night, especially since we both knew the whole thing was some kind of a warp in real time.

He could not possibly have kept up that level of romantic intensity with me anyway in the cold light of day. We were bound to start some lethal argument about the BILAG before too long. Which of course did happen, the next time we were at an Ad Board together.

But just in case he really is like that in real life, his wife is very lucky! And I don’t envy her! That was one exhausting evening.

Fast forward to a late afternoon a number of years later when I had heard that my two abstracts on failed clinical trials were accepted for two big talks at the ACR meeting. Diva was on her way to the airport in San Francisco, and I was in Dallas with several good hours left before I had to leave for my short evening flight to Oklahoma. There was time enough to shop for a suit.

I went across the street to Dillards to see what designer label I could fit into.

For comparative purposes, I would guess I was probably at least 20 pounds heavier than I had been that night in the castle in Spain.

But I was feeling cautiously optimistic and wearing my Spanx, so I tried on a size 12 Liz Claiborne pant suit. Liz Claiborne clothes are larger than some of the others.

I couldn’t even get the pants up over my upper thighs. And the jacket would not close in front. Gosh, I thought. I must be really be a 14 now.

So I tried on a size 14 Alfani. I could pull on the skirt all the way if I squeezed a little, but the zipper couldn’t even get off the launching pad. The jacket would close if I pulled it hard enough, but not all the way to the buttons.

What was I, a size 16? Yipes!

Queasily, I tried on a size 16 Jones New York jacket, and it looked terrific. Very cute. And I didn’t look fat at all in it. I am one of those fortunate people who doesn’t usually look quite as fat as I really am. If my clothes fit. Unless I lose a substantial amount of weight.

Feeling a little better about everything, I asked the saleslady for the matching skirt but she told me the skirts in that line only went up to size 14. She suggested I try a 1X in the LARGER WOMAN’S department.

"That might be more comfortable for you anyway, sweetheart," she suggested, giving me a little wink.

Demoralized, I walked away. I knew I could have worn that Jones New York jacket with some other random skirt if only Diva would not kill me.

I was about to leave the store, so I could get back to the hotel in time to have a good cry before packing up, but I saw a larger looking suit on a rack by the escalator. It was incredibly ugly, in some kind of awful knit (as opposed to the body-skimming black knit pants and Misook jackets which are the centerpieces of my practical, wrinkleproof, bulkless travel wardrobe). This, however, was a knit suit.

Do not EVER buy a knit suit. Unless you weigh about 90 pounds and have no taste. If you are larger than a ten they are guaranteed to make you look twenty pounds heavier than you really are.

And they are all ugly anyway.

The word knit does not fit with the word suit.

But I checked out that section of the store anyway, thinking there might be something better in my size.

“Can I help you, doll?” came a gravelly voice with a Bronx accent.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m looking for a suit, but I am apparently too fat. The only thing that seems to fit is size 16.”

“I can fix you up, doll,” she said, eyeing me appraisingly. Her breath smelled like cigarettes. “I have some sweet little numbers back there. Size 14. My suits will fit you. And you will find they are very attractive. And very slimming.”

“Are they knits?” I said. “I don’t want a knit suit, this is for a professional meeting.”

“Are they knits?” she repeated, appalled. “Would I bring you regular knits at your size?”

“You won’t?” I let her lead me down a crowded hallway into a small dressing room.

“These are high end knits, doll. It’s not what you think. Here, let me take your jacket.”

She disappeared with my jacket. I took my clunky shoes off.

“Here you are, doll.” She had three suits with her, and they were, actually, very pretty. Almost but not quite like knits.

I was not sure that Diva would like them, though, so I hesitated.

“These are high end knits,” she said again. “It’s not what you think. And, they are all size 14. You are definitely a size 14.”

“Do you have any size 16?” I asked.

“Well, we don’t go that large,” she admitted. “But we don’t need to, these are going to fit you like a glove.”

I waited until she left the room, firmly latched the door, and examined the price tags. Wow. One of them was $1,024, one was $994 and the other $1,294. I lined them up in reverse price order and slipped out of my functional black travel pants, laying them over the back of a chair.

The skirt went on easily, but there was no mirror in the room. What kind of dressing room was this? I tried on the jacket and it was a perfect fit. I stretched and leaned and sat in the chair, and nothing bad happened.

“I am a size fourteen!” I sang out gratefully.

On the other hand the jacket was a little short, and I worried about that. In general, I don’t look good in short jackets. Still you never know. I once had a short jacket that looked terrific on me.

“Of course that was about twenty pounds ago,” I muttered to myself.

“Ready, doll?” the saleslady called. “Come out and take a look at yourself!”

She pushed my door open even though I thought I had locked it. She stopped when she saw me, and then gave me a big happy smile.

“Gorgeous! Come out and take a look at yourself! And let me get these out of your way,” she cooed, scooping up my pants.

“No thanks," I said, nervously. "I’ll keep my own clothes. And can you bring my jacket back, please?”

She had already left the room with my pants. I followed her and ran right into a full length three way mirror.

OUCH.

The jacket was just long enough to accentuate my big butt, and the skirt was riding up on my thighs, and bunching under my belly. I looked awful.

“I look awful,” I said. “I look fat!”

“Let me bring you a pair of heels,” she fluttered. “You should never look at yourself in a suit without heels on.”

She disappeared into the store. I looked around for my clothes and could not find them. Where could my pants be? She had been in plain site the entire time.

Was she a witch? Resignedly, I went back in the dressing room to try on the second suit.

“Here are some heels for you to use,” she called, barging into my room again, before I had the skirt pulled up. This time I was one hundred percent sure that I had locked the latch.

Either she was a witch or the latch was broken. Or both.

“Here let me help you with that zipper,” she said, reaching for my back with her claw-like hands.

“That’s OK, I have it,” I said quickly, stepping away from her and zipping it myself. The skirt seemed to zip up a little looser around the belly than the first one, although it was still tight around the butt. And the jacket was longer than the first one. And I had to admit it was a beautiful material. I loved the material.

“Uh….I will look at this one in the mirror, and can I have my clothes back now? I asked her.

“Of course you can, doll," she soothed. “Put first put on the heels, I insist. It will completely change how you feel in this suit.”

I slipped my feet into the shoes which were several sizes too big, and wobbled out of the room like Minnie Mouse.

My legs looked great in the heels, I have great legs. The Knit suit had ugly broad shoulders, was too wide on top and bunched around my thighs, creating two huge elephant humps. It was the most hideous view of myself I had ever seen. But then again, (I was forced to admit with a sinking heart), this might be the fattest I had ever been.

‘WHERE ARE MY CLOTHES?????” I screamed at the witch.

“OK, OK,” she pouted, opening a drawer in the wall. “You don’t have to get an attitude.”

I looked at my watch while leaving the store, and figured that Diva must be on the plane waiting nervously to take off. I crossed the street and sat down in the lobby of my hotel to call her.

I just wanted to talk to my best friend. And I knew that if she was on a plane she would be feeling the same way.

I was crying so hysterically by the time she said hello that it was hard to explain about the saleswoman from the Bronx bringing $1,000 designer knits in size 14 that made me look fat.”

“So get a sixteen.” said Diva briskly. “Wait a minute, did you say knit?”

“I think she was the knit saleslady, and she had me trapped in there, and then she ran off with my clothes.” I sobbed brokenly.

"Get the hell out of there, with or without your clothes, I will handle everything for you when I get home!" shouted Diva.

That is if I get home alive,” she amended herself.

And I knew that she would.

Here is a sample of the many flurried phone calls going back and forth every 10 or 15 minutes between Diva and me the next day. I was in my clinic in Oklahoma with 15 lupus patients, and she was in Lord and Taylor on 34th St and Lexington Avenue, neglecting her three overdue textbook chapters and a large stack of grant applications she was supposed to review.

Diva to Della: "I don't believe you are a size 14. That's ridiculous."

Della: "Well they were knits. You can’t really tell with knits. They stretch."

Diva: “I didn't mean it that way. I am guessing you are a 12 at the worst.”

Della: “Listen to me, Diva. I only looked good in a Jones New York size 16, and nothing else that I tried on in that entire store fit.”

Diva: “What were the brands you were trying on? Were you trying on all low end brands like Jones? You know they run little in those brands.”

Della: “It was not Jones, it was Jones New York. That’s not low end.”

Diva: “We can do better than that. If only I was sure of your size.”

“I know what,” I suggested, “Ask Martha what size she is. I am sure I would fit into her clothes now."

“Good idea,” said Diva. I will call her right now.

Martha used to weigh at least 40 pounds more than me, but she had been going to the gym and I had been....traveling a lot.

Diva (calling back) “She says she is a 14 in a jacket. She wouldn't tell me her skirt size.“

Della: “See? Martha and I are both 16 in a skirt, I told you!”

Diva:” I don't believe it. You have to be wrong. No way. You are not that fat. And (loyally) neither is Martha!”

Della: “Yes I am. I really am that fat. I am going on a crash diet.”

Diva: “Good, then I will get you a 14?”

Della: “Absolutely not! What if I plateau before my talks?”

Diva: “Trust me, I am looking at the really top end suits for you. These run much larger.”

We hung up and I went into Room 4 to see a new patient. She was an 18 year old of mixed African and Caucasian descent, tall and slender, pretty enough to be a model, except for the dark disc shaped lesions on her cheeks and forhead and the open sores on the side of her head, which were raised, red, weeping yellow fluid, and scarring up at the sides so that no hair was likely to grow back there.

We talked for a while and I learned that she was a senior in high school, her mom died of lupus when she was thirteen, and she hoped to become a nurse. She had seen the first few spots of this discoid rash come out about six months ago and it just kept getting worse. It was not responding at all to hydroxychloroquine or low dose steroids.

In the last month or so she had been waking up with painful joints in her hands, wrists, shoulders and knees. There were sores on the roof of her mouth. She was so tired that she got short of breath climbing one flight of stairs in school. A boy she had a crush on at school had called her ugly the other day. My phone was ringing.

“Excuse me,” I said to my patient, and stepped out of the room. It was Diva, calling me back.

“OK, I found this really nice woman shopping here. "Say hi."

"Hi!" I called out.

Another voice called "Hi" throught the phone and giggled.

"She is about the same size as you," continued Diva, "...and I have been trying some suits on her. So here is our question. Would you mind if the jacket flops out a little over your butt?”

“Well, how does that look on her?”

A piece of paper was inserted briskly between me and my phone. “Dr. Sugar, can you sign this?” One of the Medical Assistants had an order for an abdominal sonogram that I had asked him to set up for my last patient. I signed it.

“Actually I think it’s kind of sexy,” said Diva. “I mean her butt is sticking out just a little, but it works. And its a beautiful suit. It’s an Ellen Tracey. These brands always make them bigger. I am getting you this one. It's a 14.”

“No! No! Get the 16!" I screamed. “I don't want the seams to rip in front of 2,000 people when I climb the stairs to the podium!”

“You are nuts,” said Diva cheerfully. Then, sotto voice, “Her butt is MUCH bigger than yours and she is wearing a 14. "

“You have no idea how big my butt is. I am very clever at hiding just how fat I am. With my stretchy black travel pants and the long sweaters that you hate!”

Suddenly Diva was yelling, “Hey! Hey! Where are you going?” I heard a scuffle.

“SHIT! She is going to buy the suit,” Diva yelped.

"So what, get another one for me," I laughed.

“You don't understand, that was the only 14 in the store! I have to get it back, talk to you later!”

Click.

I went back to my patient. She had been crying.

“What has anyone told you about lupus?” I asked her.

“That my immune system….”

I handed her a box of Kleenex.

“What about your immune system?” I asked her.

“Attacking me.” She sniffed.

“Well you know what?” I said, sitting down on the stool next to the exam table where her feet were dangling in adorable little ballet slippers with roses on them, “Nothing could be further from the truth….”

The Cowboy in the Parking Lot

We all lead very full and sometimes stressful lives, so if you are reading this column just for amusement, I have a better recommendation for you. Get an iPod and download some amusing apps. I can recommend a game that you can find at http://appshopper.com/games/big-mountain-snowboarding

It only costs $1.99 abd I think you will like it, especially if you are under 35 or over 50. How many middle aged women with truncal obesity do you know who will ever really be able to get on a little platform that looks like a skateboard without wheels and go barreling down the side of a mountain, scrunching and leaning and spraying snow in order to avoid the rocks and trees, flipping over in mid air while flying over a cliff just for the sheer excitement of risking your life. Try it girls! The virtual experience I mean, since no amount of Wii Fit is going to get me (or you I am guessing) on a real snowboard.

I assure you this snowboarding game is better than the real life thrills we usually get to experience, and the mountain has no performance anxiety.

On the other hand, if you are serious about the quest to understand yourself and others, and prefer not to die alone, play the app later and finish reading this Blog. Just remember, I am not suggesting you actually act on my romantic advice unless you want to keep your dignity intact and lose the man every time. I do contend that whether you do what I suggest or the opposite we will be digging deeply into the human psyche in this column, and, one way or another, you might learn what it is you came here to find out.

And if you did follow my advice about finding a guy to date (posted in November and entitled “How to tell if a guy is a loser on the Internet and what kind of makeup to wear”) It is also possible that you have already met the Cowboy in the Parking Lot.

I met him twice.

The first profile he put up on the dating service I was using showed a guy who looked about 50, just a little overweight, bald, wearing a business suit. Nice smile. He did not have an outstanding narrative, but his description of himself was simple and dignified. And he could spell.

You want some romantic advice? Do not respond to a man on the internet who writes “I am a romantick who will never let you fergit you are a laddie. “ He will pay about as much attention to you as he does to spellcheck.

The Cowboy in the Parking lot did not make this mistake. Here is what he wrote: "Hi, I am just looking for something casual at first, I like to hike, go to art museums and the symphony. I am a business man and all I am looking for is a nice woman who is fun to be with."

Pretty good, right? He sounds sane, employed, and easy going. Compared to the other profiles you see on those dating sites, he could be a gem. A far better prospect than all those guys who tell you they are interested in a woman without any inhibitions (without paying for it) or the ones who don’t want to date anyone who plays games. I had coffee once with a guy who did not want to play games. It turns out his definition of playing games is turning him down for sex after one Venti low fat latte.

The cowboy in the parking lot was the first man I ever met from the internet. I was very nervous, starting out on this dating adventure, having been married for 18 years and with recent bilateral mastectomies and chemotherapy. But my hair was growing back at that point, and my best friend Diva had talked me into going out on a few dates.

I think my getting cancer upset Diva a lot more than it did me (without underestimating how upset it made me). She used to call me on the phone every week when I was going for chemo so that she could make sure they were not overdosing me. She always made me hand my cellphone to the nurse so she could confirm their calculations for the cyclophosphamide concentration. Eventually, after three or four rounds of chemo, when I casually mentioned that I was losing my appetite, Diva flew from New York City to Oklahoma to take me out for Sushi. What a drama queen!

When she arrived at my door, I let her in, then ran back to the bathroom to finish vomiting. I could hear her stalking nervously through my house. When I came out of the bathroom and sat down weakly on one of my gorgeous new dining room chairs (purchased while peeing toxic waste after the CAT scan which proved there was no cancer in my liver), Diva was gazing out through the kitchen window at my back yard, trying very hard not to notice my bald head, and to hide her tears. Then suddenly she yelled, “I know what you need! A swimming pool!”

At first I was doubtful, but it turned out that she was brilliantly on target. We called some pool companies that weekend to come over and give us estimates, and within a few months I had refinanced my house and acquired a backyard oasis with a little pergola over my back porch that had roses climbing up it, and a 30 foot, double oval gunnite pool complete with a swimout and a waterfall. I fell in love with that pool and swam in it every day for the rest of the summer.

With that success under our belts, Diva decided it was time for me to start dating, and instructed me to go on the internet to find some prospective boyfriends. It was only going to be for practice, since I did not want to enter into any meaningful relationships until I got my breast implants done, but we both agreed that after 18 years of marriage I probably needed some practice. Neverheless even a practice date was not going to happen until the wig came off.

I would have preferred to do the whole cancer thing bald and natural, but I have to order chemo for a lot of my lupus patients and I didn’t want to scare them, since it usually doesn't end up that bad for them at the doses we use.

So I had been wearing a wig for the duration, outside my house, anyway. It itched and I hated it. I would come home at night and literatlly tear it off my head. Now my hair was long enough to dye back to its natural color (or at least the color that was natural when I was a little younger) and I felt it was time to put myself to the furniture store test. You may be wondering what that is.

Think about it. What happens when you walk into a furniture store? At least five salesmen will accost you before you are halfway across the room to try to sell you a posturepedic mattress or a livingroom suite.

So here was my idea. If I walked in with my man-length hair and bilateral mastectomies, and they called me “sir” this would be evidence that I was not ready to take the wig off in public and try to get a date on the internet. But if they called me “ma’am” I was good to go.

No cheating. I wore generic jeans and a white shirt. No makeup. No jewelry. No purse.

I strode proudly into the store, head held high, terrified, waiting for the Greek chorus to begin. Suddenly they were calling me from ten feet away, twenty feet away, one guy turning and barely glancing at me first, over the shoulder of his cheap suit, another one who could only be seeing my silhouette against the sun, and in every case I was hearing profuse strains of unpremeditated art. (from Shelly, “To a Skylark” I can't write like that)

“Ma’am can I help you?”

“Good afternoon ma’am,” we have a sale on Lazy Boy.”

“Two lamps for the price of one, Ma’am.”

“Ma’am, have you taken a look-see at our wrought iron consoles?”

“Ma’am, what sort of décor are you thinking about accentuating today?”

Tears of joy were rolling down my face. I hope I didn't upset anybody. I ran out of the store, sped home, fed the cats to get them off my laptop, and aligned myself at the keyboard. Pushed the buttons and clicked the mouse until I found the guy who called himself "The All Business Man" who had sent me a “wink” from the internet dating site I had signed up for that morning. Bravely I began my first letter to a potential suitor.

Dear All Business Man: I am a….(deleted that)….

I think….(deleted that)….

You seem….(deleted that).

In a panic I phoned Diva.

“Should I tell him about the mastectomies?” I wailed.

“Are you dating now? Yipeeeee!” she yelled.

“No I am just writing an email to one of them. Should I tell him about the mastectomies?”

“Don’t bother with that, yet, you don’t even know him.”

“But what if I like him? It would be sort of like living a lie.”

"What lie?"

"Men think all women have breasts. I would feel like an imposter."

“No, you don't have to tell him before you've even met him. Tell him after you meet him, no after you decide you like him but try to do it before it looks like he wants to have sex. Wow. Imagine trying to tell him while he is ripping your bodice open.”

“I have never worn a bodice in my life. And I just can’t lie to him like that.”

“Well just take it easy, one thing at a time, he’s bound to notice you are a little flat chested.”

“Flat chested is not the same as unchested.”

“OK then go ahead and tell him. Weed out the faint-of-heart up front. That actually sounds fine to me,” she mused thoughtfully. “I mean I see your point, this way you don’t waste your time on someone so superficial that all they are thinking about are breasts.”

“....as in all men?”

“Humph,” said Diva, who is a size zero, triple A cup. “I never had any breasts and it never cramped my style with men.”

“You do so have breasts,” I assured her. “They fit the rest of your gorgeous thin body!”

"I have nothing, nothing, said Diva proudly. "By the way, what exactly is a bodice for? is it more like a corset or is it more like a bra?"

I was unsure what a bodice was, too, but if you are interested I have done a little research on that.

I was now feeling free to compose a letter that, once I had perfected it, made me confident that I could winnow out the frogs to find my true prince while simultaneously suggesting I might still have what all men really want, great breasts! The only lie I would need to tell, while spilling my guts about my life threatening disease to a pack of strangers on the internet, was that I had already completed the breast reconstruction surgery and that the fakes were every guys dream of mama. Of course I wasn't planning on using my real name.

Remember, this was only for practice, I was not planning to test the illusion in real life. Yet. A casual cup of coffee maybe, if somebody wrote me a nice enough letter, but I could wear a shawl, until the surgery was over.

I looked over the All Businessman's profile again.

"Hi, I am just looking for something casual at first, I like to hike, go to art museums and the symphony. I am a business man and all I am looking for is a nice woman who is fun to be with."

Dear Mr. Businessman: I wrote.

Here are the reasons you might like me:

1. I am casual at first

2. I like to hike, go to Art Museums and the Symphony

3. I am a nice woman and fun to be with, unless you don't like me

Here are some reasons you might run screaming away from me:

1. I travel a lot, and I might not be in town for your birthday.

2. I am sometimes absent minded, and not very good at finding my car in parking lots. One time I landed at Will Rogers airport and trudged around rows AA-EE for over an hour until I remembered I had taken a cab from my house the day I took off. However, I have a mind like a steel trap when it comes to lupus or Toll House cookies.

3. One day, I was minding my own business when I developed breast cancer. Due to gross negligence on the part of several physicians my life was saved. In due course some radical surgery was performed. However, thanks to my plastic surgeon I am now sporting the silhouette of a thirty year old.

Della.

I was also kind of hoping to lose ten pounds before actually meeting him, what with bragging about the thirty year old body.

Within an hour I heard back from him:

Della girl, I think I am in love. How did you get so sweet and smart? Want to meet up for coffee?

What the heck? I agreed to meet him at Starbucks that afternoon and went upstairs to look for something not very revealing to wear.

When I arrived at the coffee place he turned out to be at least 70, and at least sixty pounds heavier than his picture. His skin was terrible, pock marked with old acne scars. Everything being relative, I realized that I was, by contrast, young, lithe and beautiful.

“I like what I see!” He said, and gave me a smothering bear hug that almost crushed the pointy, air filled tips of my bra.

By the way, in case you ever get bilateral mastectomies do NOT pay gazillions of dollars for those foam filled bras from Victoria’s secret. Just use your one of your own bras that has firmly built cups, but don’t let some 6 foot tall three hundred pound man crush you against his chest.

“Hi…” I gasped, wrestling out of his grip, and hurrying to the coffee bar. “I’ll have a latte!” I yelped to the kid behind the counter.

All Business Man had a caramel frappachino with double whipped cream.

We sat down at a little table with our drinks.

“Well,Della girl” he said. "Ask me anything you want."

“OK. What do you think of the Gilhouly sculpture downtown?” I asked.

“Huh? What’s that?”

So much for his interest in Art museums. That sculpture is visible three miles away through the two story glass entrance to the museum, and is a famous landmark in Oklahoma City.

"Ask me something easy."

“How’s your drink?” I asked him.

“Good.” He slurped.

“Where do you like to hike?”

“Oh, anyplace.”

“Ever gone to Quartz mountain?”

“What’s that?”

So much for his interest in hiking.

“Hey, girl!” he winked at me. "Can I ask you something now?"

"O.K." I said doubtfully.

“Do you like tequila?”

“Sure,” I said. “Do you like Mexican food?”

“Are you Mexican?” he leered.

He leaned forward, grabbing for my hand, almost spilling his coffee. I slipped my hands out of his grasp to protect my own cup, and he pressed his big belly further over the table, burping loudly. His breath smelled of liquor.

“Where did you eat lunch?” I asked cagily.

“I didn’t eat lunch yet,” he replied. Then it occurred to him to put his big paw up in front of his mouth and inhale to test the liquor smell coming out. He sat back back resignedly, and smiled at me feebly, scratching under his giant armpit.

I am not a mean person, so I engaged him in another 20 minutes of cordial grunting and burping before excusing myself with a regretful apology about having a lot of work to do.

My second date was at Panera Bread. This new guy had described himself on the internet as divorced and easy going, looking for someone to take long walks, read by the fire, and eat Italian food with. He also said he could make a great gin and tonic. His favorite movie was Casablanca. I got a date with him almost immediately by writing: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, I walk into yours.”

At least it seemed likely that he had actually seen Casablanca.

Panera Bread in Oklahoma City was jumping that evening. I had to park in the back lot. When I got in the restaurant there were only two possible men who could be my date (right age and not accompanied by a woman). One was adorable, and he was looking at me hopefully. The other one glanced at me briefly, dismissively, and went back to his book.

I walked happily over to the cute one. “Hi, I’m Della,” I said.

“Hi Della, have a seat, I’m Rick.” He said in a friendly voice.

“Oh, “ I said. “I thought your name was Martin.”

“I’m Martin.” said the guy at the next table looking up with a sour expression on his face.

“Oh,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed. “Hi Martin.”

I smiled at Rick and he smiled back. I felt a little twinge of potential attraction. but dutifully moved over to Martin’s table. Martin seemed to recoil a little as I sat down.

“Do you want something to eat?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I said.

“What?” he asked me curtly.

“Oh, uh….guess I will go and have a look at the counter,” I said.

When I got back with a cup of coffee and a muffin, which I had paid for myself, Rick winked at me. Martin did not look up from his book.

“So, Martin,” I said, “what are you reading?”

“A book, “ he said. “About the five stages of grief.”

“Denial, anger, negotiation, acceptance and revenge.” I quipped.

Rick laughed. Martin looked at me as if I was nuts.

“No that’s not right,” he said.

“No of course not,” I said.

Long silence. He was still reading, frowning, half turned away from me. I drank my coffee, while Rick watched us both, perplexed.

I wanted to switch tables. But I couldn’t do that. It did not seem sporting.

“Say, Martin,” what did you like about Casablanca?” I asked.

“Ingrid Bergman,” he said. “My wife looks exactly like her.”

“I thought you were divorced.”

He shrank away from me. “I am,” he said. “What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “Eight fifteen,” I said.

“I have to call my son now.” he said, pulling out a cellphone.

Rick and I waited for him to dial and for someone to answer.

“Hello, Marty?” my date called loudly into the phone. “Marty? Why is the TV up so high? Tell your mother that you want to talk to me before you go to bed and you want her to turn the TV down now! She isn’t? Oh. Are you unhappy? Are you sure? Is there anything wrong there? Are you sure? OK then, I’ll call you in the morning. Goodnight. I love you so much. I miss you. Do you miss me? Great. Don’t forget to tell your mom you miss me. Bye.”

He looked up, and shrank further away from me. “I am going to have to sue for custody,” he said bitterly. “This is the second night this week she left him with a babysitter.”

“Oh, I said, well maybe this isn’t a good time….”

“No, no, its fine,” he said, contorting himself even further away from me. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Well,” I said. “I don’t look very much like Ingrid Bergman.”

“My wife does.” He replied.

“Yes, “ I replied. “She must be very beautiful.”

“She is,” he said. “But she’s a bitch.”

“Well,” I said, “I work mainly in lupus and we’re trying to find a way to test new treatments. Do you know there hasn’t been a new drug approved for lupus in over fifty years?”

“Excuse me,” he said, taking out his phone again and pushing the buttons. It seemed to be ringing for a long time. His leg was shaking rapidly under the table.

“Hello, Marty? Is your mom home yet? Are you feeling lonely? Are you going to bed soon? Oh, you did? Well sure, you can go back to bed now. Don’t forget to tell your mom we had a nice talk together tonight. Tell her we really miss each other, OK? Goodnight. I love you.”

He hung up and started figeting unhappily with his book.

Although I am a nice person, and I believe that you should stay one half hour on any date, no matter how disastrous, because that is only cordial, it seems reasonable to me that this should not be required when someone is being rude to you.

“Well, I’d better go now,” I said, getting up and smiling so that both Martin and Rick could see that I don't get all bent out of shape just because some guy does not like me much.

Rick gave me a quick smile back. “Hey, I liked you, anyway,” he seemed to be thinking. Oh, phooey. If I were younger and smarter (and meaner), I swear I would have moved over to his table.

Martin was following me through the restaurant.

“Well,then.” I turned to shake his hand goodbye. “Enjoy your book.”

“I will,” he said. He was still following me out the door.

“Are you leaving too?” I asked.

“Just walking you to your car. It isn’t safe here,” he said.

The parking lot was a little dark, and my car was parked far away. I was actually a little grateful that he was there, much as I wanted my happy singularity back.

As I reached to open the front door of my car, he grabbed me and gave a violent, bruising kiss, shoving his tongue in my mouth. Then he walked away without a word.

Driving home, feeling violated, nauseous and discusted, I saw a Braum’s ice cream store and stopped for a chocolate yogurt mix with heath bar crunch in it.

There was a family there with little children. I sat in a nearby booth and listened to them arguing about whether bunnies are related to cats. And knew that I would rather be here than back there.

Later when I got home, there was an email from Martin. It just said “Are you alright?”

“Sure,” I answered, proving that I am a good person who can forgive a brute when he is obviously in pain.

My third date was with my now two-time ex boyfriend Frank (or three time, depending on how you see things) and by then I had undergone the breast implant surgery and finished with the expanders (they blow you up like a balloon a little bit each week) and I was ready for a meaningful relationship. Frank was a sweet, wonderful man until he dumped me almost a year later without mentioning it to me.

Here is how I found out that Frank had dumped me. One night when it suddenly occurred to me that I had not heard from him for almost a month, II gave him a call to see what was going on.

“Hi, Della,” he said sounding happy to hear from me.

“How are you?" I said, feeling relieved, sitting comfortably back on my couch and putting my feet up on the coffee table.

“Oh,” he said, “I’ve been busy helping a lady in Guthrie fix her forced air heat. She has one of those old houses like yours, it’s a tough job, I’ve been there all week, but I’m figuring it out now.”

“That sounds complicated,” I said.

“It is.”

“But I guess you are proud of yourself for figuring it out. Most people would not know how to do a job like that,” I complimented him.

And not unduly. One time my pool filter exploded during an ice storm and he drove over in his pickup truck at 3 AM and figured out how to fix the situation.

“I guess I am a little proud,” he admitted humbly.

“How much is she paying you?”

“Oh, well, she’s a friend.”

“A friend? You mean she’s not paying you?”

Long silence.

“You’ve been there all week, neglecting your company and she’s not paying you?”

“Well, you know.”

“What kind of a friend?”

After an awkward pause, he said, “Every kind of friend, I guess.”

“OK, “ I replied, “Gotta go, bye.” I hung up, went upstairs and screamed into my pillow for hours.

But there is something about Frank. A certain obtuse instinct to be considerate. Even though it had not occurred to him that a woman like me who would never in a million years expect him to fix my heating system for free while neglecting his own source of income for an entire week would care (or even need to be informed) when he dumped her, he still seemed to sense that some kind of attention was due to me.

A week later he knocked on my door to pay me a visit. He sat in my living room, and I gave him a glass of Chardonnay. Being the curious old witch that I am, I got him to tell me all about his new girlfriend. I pretended to be disinterested, but of course I was really rabidly interested.

How this went down was that he pretended (or thought?) we had always just been casual friends and I played along. I didn't pick up on the theme which has been discussed at some length in this blog, that a woman who acts as if she needs the man gets him in the end. But in fact this was a classic illustration of that concept, so take notes students.

I was working on another hypothesis about why he had dumped me. The one that was most obvious to me at the time. So I got stuck on his description of his new girlfriend's beautiful breasts, and maybe I could not see the forest for the trees.

You may wonder how I got my ex-boyfriend to describe his new girlfriends breasts to me less than two months after he dumped me without mentioning it to me? This required me to be incredibly calm and unemotional under duress, and it also took every ounce of conversational witchcraft at my disposal, I assure you, and it also required Frank to be.....

....a guy.

When he was ready to leave, he gave me a tender kiss. It upset me that I could not tell any difference between that kiss and the ones that I used to think meant something very special. Still, that guy was (and still is) one great kisser, so I tenderly kissed him back, pretending my eyes were not filling with tears.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked, noticing my tears and pretending to be surprised that I might have any feelings. Or maybe he was sincere. Maybe that’s how stupid and insensitive he is. Thank God.

“Allergies,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

He left with his illusions intact and mine faking it pretty well, and that was how I preserved my dignity intact and thereby managed not to kick him out of my life the first time. Please believe me, it is always better to keep people in your life if you can. But they have to play along.

My fourth internet date, almost a year after the first two that had come before Frank, was with the psycho in Barnes and Noble.

This man was obviously a writer. His fake name on the dating site was Terry Dactyl and his entire profile was an undisguised fake, in an instructive kind of way, sort of the way my column currently is.

He claimed that he was married, and only going online to experience internet dating so that he could write a book and make lots of money. He promised if any women were willing to go out with him he would change their names in his "tell all" novel. And, since he was married, he promised not to try to sleep with any of us.

Dear Mr. Dactyl: I wrote.

Here are the reasons you might like me:

1. I tell all

2. I made up my name, so you won't have to change it.

3. I am nice

Here are some reasons you might run screaming away from me:

1. I travel a lot, and I might not be in town for your birthday.

2. I am sometimes absent minded, and not very good at finding my car in parking lots. However, I have a mind like a steel trap when it comes to lupus or dinosaurs.

3. One day, I was minding my own business when I developed breast cancer. Due to gross negligence on the part of several physicians my life was saved. In due course some radical surgery was performed. However, thanks to a talented plastic surgeon I am sporting the silhouette of a thirty year old.

Then I deleted the last two sentences. Since he was pretending to be married it was none of his business. Even if it was true, now.

He immediately wrote me back and I wrote him back and in a short time we were exchanging daily e-mails. He was the smartest, funniest, quirkiest most lively-minded potential date I had run into in a very long time. And with him for a foil, so was I! In case he did make a lot of money with our correspondence, though, he did not share it with me, so he is out of luck if it upsets him when I tell you what happened next.

He had not put his picture on the website, but I didn’t care what he looked like. He was so charming in print, that he could have looked like a gorilla and I would not have minded. I was dying to meet him, but I patiently maintained the online correspondence and never suggested we take it to the next level, letting him have the lead. This went on for several months. Diva told me to forget about him, he must really be married.

“You aren’t doing this to get a pen pal,” she sniffed at me on the phone. “Especially some married pen pal.”

Finally, he invited me to meet him in the coffee shop at Barnes and Noble. I was excited. I was in cyberlove. I changed outfits three times preparing to meet him, made uncharacteristic use of hairspray and lipstick, put on my slimming jeans and used Spanx underneath, wore a sexy blouse, but not too sexy. Conservative, but sexy.

My mystery man was sitting at an empty table, and stood up when I approached him, rudely giving my body the once over. I figured he was joking. He was about three inches shorter than me, completely bald, and was wearing a short sleeved white shirt and black pants. His biceps were hypertrophic. All he needed was a pipe and he would look just like Popeye.

“Hi, I’m Terry, you must be Della,” he said looking me up and down again, frowning appraisingly.

“Shall we get some coffee?” I asked. I wondered, could I love this goony looking guy? Well, yes, I thought to myself. Who cares what he looks like, his mind is adorable!

“Oh, do you really want to drink coffee?” he asked me, sounding surprised.

I laughed. “Well it is a coffee shop,” I said.

“I don’t want anything,” he said, sounding annoyed, sitting down with a twitching jaw. I paused uncertainly. If this was a joke it was falling very flat.

“Well, I want some coffee,” I said, figuring it might be a good idea to take a breather. “Be right back.”

I got myself a low fat latte and sucked in my stomach as I walked back to the table under his intense scrutiny.

When I pulled my chair up to the table, he said, “Do you always pay for yourself?”

“No,” I said. “I try not to always do anything.”

I smiled at him. He stared back at me coldly.

“Uh...what do you do for a living?” I asked. Our emails had been a rapid exchange of one liners, but I realized I knew very little factual information about him.

“Engineer,” he replied.

“What kind of an engineer?”

He didn’t answer me. He stood up and started doing bicep curls with the sugar container.

“You have very well developed arm muscles,” I complimented.

“Yes,” he said. “It is very important to me to stay in shape.”

“I can see that.”

“I guess you don’t work out, though.”

“Sporadically,” I said with dignity, sucking in my stomach again, and shifting in my chair so my thighs would not look too big.

He eyed me up and down again disapprovingly, while switching to tricep extensions with the sugar container. I decided that the half hour courtesy rule did not apply in this case, any more than it had on my second internet date, a year ago. He was not being nice.

Besides, the two girls behind the counter were beginning to snicker at the little bald gnome doing exercises with the coffee shop accessories.

“Well,” I said. “Enjoy your workout. I‘m going to buy a book.”

“A book?” he asked, surprised.

I refrained from saying, “Well it is a bookstore,” and walked away.

“What book?” he called after me. I kept walking, pretending not to hear him.

I went to the mystery section to see if there was anything new by Lawrence Block. Suddenly he was right behind me.

“Is that Block guy a good writer?” he asked

“My favorite,” I told him. 'When you read his books there is always a mystery and you get totally sucked into his writing, you hardly know it is writing, so it's like watching a movie."

“Which of his books should I start by reading?”

I recommended When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

He took a copy for himself off the shelf.

“Well, great to meet you,” he said. “I will call you at 8 PM this evening.”

“Sure you will” I said to his retreating back. But I was pretty sure he could not hear me.

That night was one of those incredible winter anomalies in Oklahoma when it feels like late Spring. I was rocking in the hammock in my yard with only a light sweater on, listening to the waterfall of my pool when my cell rang.

“Hello?” I said.

“It’s Terry.” he said.

“Hi Terry, “ I said, staring at the mouthpiece in some surprise.

Think about this. If I like a guy and he says he will call me he never does. Is the opposite always true, even if he made it clear he thought I was fat? I glanced at my watch. Not only had he called me, he had called me at exactly 8 PM when he said he would. To my great surprise at the time. Extraordinary.

“I thought you might like some feedback,” he explained.

“Feedback?” I asked.

“First of all,” he said, “I found it to be very disappointing that you would show up for a date wearing blue jeans. It does not suggest that you care very much about your appearance.”

Oh, Lord. Everybody in Barnes and Noble in Oklahoma City on Saturday afternoon except him had been wearing jeans. He was the one who was a fish out of water, he looked like a guy who had come to fix the computers.

“Well, thanks,” I said. “I’ll keep your advice in mind next time I dress for a date.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Not at all. I’ll buy a dress.”

“The other thing,” he said, “is that I am not at all attracted to you.”

“OK,” I replied. “Cool.” I was too amazed to be stung.

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“No, hey,” I said soothingly. ” It’s OK. We can’t help who we are or are not attracted to, its fine. ”

“All right,” he said. “In that case, I do have some more feedback for you, but I have to warn you this isn’t necessarily going to be pleasant for you.”

“You know,” I said regretfully, “I have to go now. I’m late. Maybe we can talk some other time.”

“What are you late for?” he said.

“Uh....dinner,” I hurriedly came up with.

“Try not to overeat,” he replied. “I think you outweigh me.”

“Thanks,” I said, “I’ll be careful. Bye.”

That night I was on my computer, and he emailed me.

Dear Della: the email said. I am very sorry if I hurt you very badly. I could tell that you were extremely attracted to me, by the way you smiled when you sat down, and I just did not feel the same way. There is just no way I could date a woman who does not work out on a regular basis and eats too much. I hope that you do not hate me for this, but it’s just the way it has to be. Terry.

I wrote him back:

Dear Terry: I enjoyed all your letters to me, you are a gifted writer, it is a little odd, that in person you seem very different than the guy I was corresponding with for the last many weeks. But no harm done. I will just remember our letters and in that context I will never hate you.
Love, Della.

Two days later another email came:

Della:

This will be very hard for me to put into kind words. Sometimes it is best tto be direct. You must never write to me again. You are obsessed with me, and I can’t tolerate it. I am sorry that you are in love with me, but there is no way that I can help you in any way. Please do not contact me again.

Terry.

PS (I am not the same person you were writing to before. That was my brother. He is married. Stay away from my family).

I stopped using that dating site, but thought I could try some others. That is when I met Will and for the next eighteen months I had a beautiful relationship with a wonderful man of quiet habits, gentle good humor and high intellect. He really did like Art museums, in fact he was an Artist. But he was not effete, no way. He was my type.

He drove a pickup truck, he fixed stuff around my house, and he ran a 900 acre farm and helped his cows deliver babies and went out in the middle of the night to rescue them from ice storms, and repaired his own fences, and harvested hay and made silage, although I am not entirely sure what that is but it sounds macho, doesn't it? Silage. Then one evening, out of the blue he dumped me while rubbing my feet.

This has been described in some detail in my previous column entitled "Take Charge When your Man Dumps You." There, you will find detailed advice about how you can twist the breakup around to get him to say your lines while you say his lines. You will still lose him, but your dignity will remain intact and he might even admire you as he runs screaming away.

A few months later, still a little under the weather because I really loved Will, I found a website that caters to successful professional people, I saw a profile from a nice, reasonable-sounding guy who was unlikely to be brilliant, married, or an artist.

Hello, he wrote. I would be interested in making friends with a nice lady who enjoys some of the same things that I do. I like a quiet cup of coffee on the veranda, long walks, movies, and antiques.

Hello, I wrote him back.

Here are the reasons you might like me:

1. I like coffee

2. I am a good walker

3. I am nice, although not yet an antique

Here are some reasons you might want to kick me off your veranda:

1. I travel a lot, so I might not be in town for your birthday.

2. I am sometimes absent minded.

3. One day, I was minding my own business when I developed cancer. Due to gross negligence on the part of a surgeon my life was saved. My life history is not very orderly.

He immediately wrote me back and invited me to meet him that night at Toby Keith’s Bar.

I arrived at dusk. I had to get to the airport very early the next morning, so I knew I should not stay too long even if I liked this guy. It was extremely windy, so I sneaked in through a side door and sidled into the ladies room to pat down any bald spots in my windblown, thinning hair. Actually I looked pretty good that evening. Ever since my date with the psycho in Barnes and Noble I had been jogging. I was not exactly slender, but I had a healthy glow, a nice shade of lipstick, my tummy tucking jeans, and the conservative but sexy blouse. My best look, regardless of the opinion of Popeye the engineer.

When I came out of the ladies room, I saw a few people in the bar, but most of them were couples. The only single man was a six foot tall behemoth with orange skin, his face partially obscured by a larger than life ten gallon hat.

He was also wearing a neon blue shirt with fringe along the arms, and a purple lanyard that said “Budweiser.” His huge belly was protruding over skinny legs encased in chaps. He saw me and limped across the room in two toned, high heeled cowboy boots that went clackety clack but perhaps were too small for him.

And did I mention his skin was orange?

“Della girl!” he cried ecstatically, hugging me so tightly it knocked the breath out of me. “Surprise! It’s me!”

It was All Businessman from Starbucks, my first date through the internet, now wearing a cowboy suit and pancake makeup to cover his pock marks.

“Oh hi,” I said, edging out of his bear hug and hurrying to the bar. “I’ll have a beer,” I called to the barmaid climbing to safety on a stool. At least whatever he did next would be coming in sideways.

“I’ll just have a coffee.” My companion said, squeezing his massive stomach between the bar and the stool next to me.

"Coffee?" I said.

He grinned, apologetically. “I’ve been sober for 27 days,” he explained.

THEN WHAT WAS HE DOING IN TOBY KEITHS BAR IN A COWBOY SUIT AND PANCAKE MAKEUP?

“Oh, that’s great,” I complimented him. “I’ll have a coffee, too,” I said to the barmaid.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I like coffee." I said.

And here was my problem. It was an ethical dilemna when you get down to it. He was creepy and he hugged too hard, but he was trying to be nice, so didn’t he deserve a little courtesy in return?

Could I not be a better person than all those bums I had been dating? Have one cordial evening with the guy where nobody had to feel bad?

And he was going through a difficult time, joining AA and hanging out in cowboy bars drinking coffee with the misguided idea that this might be the route to love with the girl who got away?

I am a nice person. I did not have the heart to walk out on him, even after the thirty courtesy minutes were up. So I suffered through two hours of coffee after coffee, straining to make decent conversation.

“OK, well, as I recall you are a businessman.”

“Lately I have been running my dad’s Chrysler dealership.”

“Oh, that sounds interesting.”

“Not really, we’re in Chapter Eleven.”

“Oh...uh....so how does that work? Do people still come in to buy cars?”

“Nobody bought a car from us in the last two years. Not since they moved the exit ramp to the Interstate.”

“Oh....uh....wo what do you do all day?”

“I used to drink.”

“What do you do now?”

“Sit around, watch TV, argue with my Dad, go online and look at the purty girls.”

“Do you have any ideas about what you would like to do next?”

“Retire.”

“What will you do for money?”

“MARRY A RICH DOCTOR!” he laughed and poked me hard in the side.

“Oh, is that really what you want to do?”

“JUST JOKING!” he laughed even louder. “We aint doing so badly for money, Della girl! ”

“I thought you said you were bankrupt.”

“Well...” he lowered his voice. “my dad has a strongbox. And I can’t tell you what’s in it, but lets just say...” he whispered in my ear with breath that smelled like coffee and curdled cream. “Can you guess the price of these boots at Sheplers? These are the genuine leather ones. Now how do you think I could afford these?”

"your dad's strongbox?"

He winked at me.

At 10 PM I thought it would be polite to leave. “Well I have an early flight tomorrow,” I said. “I really should be going now.”

He followed me out to the parking lot, but I was a dating expert by then, and I had parked under a light, not far from the side entrance to Toby Keith’s.

“Can I just give you a little peck on the cheek?” he asked me like a gentleman.

“Uh, sure,” I said.

He wrapped his arms around me (twice I think) and I could smell the pancake makeup and the coffee breath and the curdled cream as he pecked my cheek, then slithered his tongue across my face and tried to get it in my closed mouth. It landed in my nose and I almost choked.

“Goodnight now,” I said sidearming my way out of his embrace. “I have to get up at four AM and I haven’t even packed yet.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I hadn’t ought to have done that. I guess you don’t want to see me again, huh?”

“I promise to email you soon,” I said, opening my car door.

“He leaned on the roof of my car. “I guess you really wouldn't want to see me again. Do you want to see me again?”

“I promise I will definitely email you during my trip,” I said, slowly closing the door to avoid crushing his fingers. Or taking any of them with me.

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, I flew to Dallas and changed planes for London. Cradled in my Business Class seat, I stretched out my feet and wiggled my toes in their fuzzy, warm airplane socks. The flight attendant brought me another pillow and some champagne with a couple of chocolate covered strawberries and asked me if I wanted to be woken up for dinner.

Who wouldn’t want to be fed a meal and offered cognac afterwards while flying across the Atlantic in a cozy reclining chair? Later, I fell asleep with Mozart wrapping himself around my brain as if there was a symphony orchestra under my Bose headphones. I was on my way to give an invited talk on “What’s Wrong With Clinical Trials for Lupus” which would turn out to be a pivotal event in my career, both wonderful and terrible.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik filtered magically through my dreams.