Dating : Read To Me

I Might Fall In Love With You

The first time he read to me was on the phone. He promised it would be funny. We had only recently connected through OkCupid and been on a few dates. This happened after my husband of 28 years told me we were going to open our marriage. He was already involved with a woman in another state and I suppose he thought he was being honest and fair to me.

Charlie told me he often read out loud to the kids in the house. He lived with a girlfriend who had joint custody of three kids. Charlie shared custody of his two sons with his ex-wife who lived nearby. Everyone loved listening to him read.

My husband was home and by now I found him annoying to be around, so when Charlie offered to read to me on the phone, I was only too happy to step outside, recline on a chair on the deck and listen.

The selection was an essay by L. Rust Hills called “How to Cut Down on Drinking & Smoking Quite So Much” from a book called:

Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times edited by Sara Nickles and Bob Shacochis.

I was aware that Charlie had a drinking problem, and I wasn’t too sure this would be funny.

His voice was deep and sexy, like an actor’s. His pace and delivery were impeccable. The essay was a satirical commentary on the universal struggle of the addict, whether the addiction was nicotine or alcohol. The writer never suggested quitting drinking or smoking, but only proposed ways to cut down. It was amusing to listen to the addict’s rationalizations for their habit. I had once been addicted to nicotine, so I understood it well.

As I listened to Charlie, I was certain he had some acting experience in his past he hadn’t mentioned yet. His delivery sounded too professional.

Being jilted by my husband made me a bit too receptive to being adored by a man I knew would not work for the long term. I knew he was an alcoholic from the first date, but I overlooked that fact in my haste to find another relationship.

The next time we were at the lake, I asked Charlie to read me the story again. He gave a repeat performance as good as the first, but this time I was able to watch his handsome face as he read. He had an actor’s good looks in addition to a sonorous voice. He resembled a mix of Cary Grant and Kevin Spacey. In fact, strangers often approached us in public to ask if anyone ever told him he looked just like Keven Spacey.

Charlie brought Pema Chodron’s “When Things Fall Apart” to start reading to me and gave it to me to continue reading on my own to help heal from the dissolution of my marriage.

He was also reading “Prodigal Summer”, by Barbara Kingsolver. He referred to this book as “environmental porn” for its characters’ involvement with the natural world and the stories of romance interwoven around the stories of their work in nature.

Amazon.com describes it here:

“Barbara Kingsolver’s fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel’s intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.”