Requiem for a Heavyweight Ch. 04

It had been an unseasonably mild, spring day and the Esplanade was filled with people sunbathing along the Charles and trying to rush the season by squeezing in their activities in the late afternoon before darkness fell. With her gaze hypnotically transfixed on the dozens of docked sailboats bobbing with the roll of the water, a cool breeze from the quickly changing air chilled her. She wrapped her arms around herself with a shiver.

Permeating the air with a beating melody of clanging ropes chiming against metal masts without sails echoed an eerie song. She looked out to the paths that ran along the esplanade while watching the steady stream of bicyclists, joggers, and rollerbladers. She scanned the sun worshipers rushing the season and enjoying the warm, sunny day practically naked. She watched the sailboats and college rowing teams that dotted the Charles River meander their way back to shore before the close of the boat club.

"I hope he's for real," she said talking to herself. "It would be wonderful to finally meet someone special. It would be great to finally have a good, kind, sincere, and respectful man in my life. I'd love to fall in love again. I'd love to get married and have children."

She looked over the Charles River again to watch the late afternoon sun begin its slow descent in the horizon.

"Only, I must take care not to ruin this by being guarded to not allow myself to see him for who he truly is, a catch. I must take care not to ruin this by being desperate to not allow myself to see him for who he truly is, a cad. I need to find a normalcy somewhere in the middle and not be so judgmental as I sometimes can be," she said giving herself the lecture that she obviously needed to be open, vulnerable, and ready for love.

Having had only one serious relationship several years ago that ended abruptly when a drunk driver took the life of John, her fiancé, she was still grieving over the loss of him. Like all women still single at her age, she wanted to find someone to love. More desperate with each passing year, she wanted to get married, have children, buy a house, and raise a family. At thirty-five-years-old, she was running out of time to have a baby of her own.

She was tired of being pressured by her mother, by her married sister, by her married friends, and by all the married women in her life who wanted to know when she was getting married and having a baby. If the women who pressured her weren't enough, men wondered why someone who was as good looking as she obviously was, was still single. More than once she heard rumors that people thought there was something wrong with her or that she was lesbian. Only, she was as normal as any other woman being picky when wanting to find someone special, and she wasn't lesbian.

Perhaps if she told people that she was lesbian, even though she wasn't, they'd stop pressuring her long enough to mind their own business. Perhaps, if she told people to mind their own business, they'd leave her alone. Only, it was better if she just ignored them. It was better if she continued to allow them to vicariously live their lives as a single woman in the way that she sometimes vicariously lived her life as a married woman with children.

Suffice to say, she was lonely. She was horny. She was sexually frustrated. She wanted someone to love and someone to love her.

Tired of meeting the wrong type of guys, the guys who were only after one thing, she had wasted enough of her time in bars and didn't want any more one night stands. She had it with guys who didn't call her the next day and who couldn't commit. For a while, she had summoned the belief that she was better off alone but, when her loneliness and horniness reared its head, that didn't last very long.

To be continued...

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