Date Thirteen: The Dog Whisperer

This is a testament to not judge a book by it's cover. This cover was really nice. No nicks, tears, or stains. In really good shape for being 44. He has a great job, and we have history. We dated in high school. In fact, he was the older brother I was trying to make jealous by going steady with his younger brother.

We never did seem to find ourselves on the same page when we were younger, but a comfortable friendship was there. Always some cute thing distracting one of us away from the other, so we never did actually date on a serious level, but once we graduated things might have gone a different route had he not decided to marry. Before he proposed he came to me and asked if I would be his "last sexual adventure" before his marriage.

Let's see...

Flattered?

Offended?

Flattered?

Offended?

OFFENDED! If he wanted an adventure he needed a whore, even a stranger, but not someone he referred to as his best friend. I was pretty shocked by this. We were friends, after all, and friends don't do the deed. OK, so he was 20 at the time of this indecent proposal, so I'll cut him some slack.

I have married just a few weeks after they did and they came to my wedding. However, his new wife can't stand the fact that we are friends and puts her foot down regarding our friendship. Time slips by and we keep in touch annually via holiday card. Somehow, after a few years, we managed to keep in touch for a while without any problems from either spouse.

Years pass and we lose touch again. We both find ourselves the product of divorce. He finds me through Classmates.com and we begin our new beginning. A romantic one. Kyrptonite is out of the picture momentarily, again, and I'm having a low moment. I'm tired of the freaks I've met and dated and I just want a normal one to spend some time with. Is this too much to ask? He tells me how he wanted to stand up during my wedding when the minister says 'speak now or forever hold your piece....er.....peace' and that his wife grabbed his hand and kept him in his seat. He even had tears in his voice as he told me this over the phone. He said I was the one who got away. The only woman he had ever truly loved or would ever love again. blah blah blah Is it starting to smell in here? The story was nice, but hard to believe. He said he sent 50-60 letters and I never answered them and it hurt him desperately. Letters I never received. Mind you, I'm basing my judgment of him on the friendship we had 20 some years prior and he was credible at the point in time, so I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt.

He lives far away and we start slow, and it takes us a few months before I decide to agree to his coming out for a visit. And of course, Kryptonite is on my shit list again so I give the go ahead. He flies out for 6 fun filled days in Fabulous Las Vegas! He looks amazing. Less hair, but the body and the style are so there. There's chemistry. There's that word again. We have a wonderful time together. He cooks for me. We play house. He proposes. I turn him down, but we decide to relocate to see if we have what it takes to go the distance. And then ... it happened.

One night when I got home from work, I found he had been drinking. A lot. An entire liter of the captain's finest rum. I did my nightly routine, bath, jammies and came into the living room and curled up next to him. I wasn't aware of how much he had drank at this stage. My Chihuahua jumped on his lap, stood on his chest and went nose to nose with him. This is her usual stance when she wants out.

"What, Gracie?" He grabs her face in his hands and she jerks away.

"You need to tell Mommy about the red rock." Gracie bails off of him and runs to the back door, asking to go out.

I looked at him and a single tear slid down his cheek.

"What's wrong?" I ask. Something ain't quite right here.

"She doesn't want me to tell you about the red rock. She's mad at me, and that's why she ran to the door."

"No," I say as calmly as I can. "She does that when she needs to shit..." I got off the sofa and let her out and she promptly went to her favorite spot and left me a nice toostie roll.

"See?"

He's not convinced. He proceeds to tell me that Gracie, the chihuahua, was left by a red rock when she was just a puppy and she was very scared by the incident. And somehow she has deemed him worthy enough to tell her ordeal to, but me, the pack leader, doesn't need to know. Huh? And things were going so well right up until that point.

He started rattling off dates. 1827. 1830. 1822.

"Are you writing these down?" He seems so intense and lost in space..er...a trance.

"Should I be?" I'm not so sure I want to be in the same room.

"YES!" He practically yelled it at me.

After about 20 minutes of this, he collapses on the sofa and whispers, "I'm done." He had no idea just how done he was. He tells me he is like Dr. Doolittle and can communicate with animals and Gracie is actually the reincarnated spirit of my Aunt Catherine.

It was an uncomfortable night for me. I knew it was over. All the wonderful, romantic feelings were killed by 20 minutes of irregularity. He goes to sleep and next to him I kept thinking about what makes someone drink like that. No one can drink that much without practice and I know I have to cut my loses and move on...quickly.

I have never driven to the air port faster than I did the next day when I took him back to the place where he would leave to return to his own planet.

Oh, and just so you know? I don't HAVE an Aunt Catherine...