Crazy for Loving You
by
Trigudis
Amanda
I was bored, uncomfortable and couldn’t wait until this silly shindig was over. I wouldn’t have been here at all had not my friend Cindy insisted, then practically dragged me. “Look, Amanda, you’re divorced,” she had said. “You haven’t had a date in lord knows how long. It’s about time you get out of the house to at least mingle. It’ll do you good.”
She was right. It was the summer of 1995. Mid-June to be more precise. I was thirty-seven years old and had been living with my mom since my divorce three years before. Sure, I had needs like any other healthy woman still in her thirties. And yes, I wanted to meet that special guy who could make me happy. But I was also soured on relationships. I had been in a terrible marriage with the wrong guy and was on guard about repeating the same mistake. Cindy said that I hadn’t had a date in lord knows how long. Well, it hadn’t been that long ago. A few months, actually, and it went the way my other few dates had gone, nowhere.
So there I was, wearing my red dress and low heels and sitting at one of a dozen or so round tables around the room in this glorified barn in a rural part of Carroll County, not far from the Mason-Dixon Line. Cindy had been to one of these “Corn Husk” mixers, as they called them, before. I was a first-timer. They held them once a month on Friday nights. Cindy looked like she was having a grand old time, sitting at my table, mingling and talking and dancing with whomever asked her. I had danced once also, but only because I had to. See, that was one of the silly cardinal rules here. If someone asked you to dance, you had to dance with that person at least once. No first-time rejections, in other words. At least I didn’t have to say yes again to the dorky-looking guy who had approached me.
Dorksville this place might have been, but not all the guys here fit the mold. One sure didn’t, a hot-looking dude I was checking out while sitting there, sipping my Zinfandel in a clear plastic cup and hoping he’d ask me to dance. He looked a bit different from the mostly rural-based, farmer folks around here. He had longish brown hair, wore chinos and a polo shirt, and from the look of his muscular arms and slim waist, he looked like he took care of himself. He looked so cool, standing a few yards from my table, drink in hand, surveying the scene. So far, he hadn’t asked anyone to dance. He hadn’t looked my way, either. Maybe, like me, he didn’t really want to be here. Or maybe he did, but none of the women he saw appealed to him.
I got the feeling that meeting him would require me to make the first move. I wasn’t normally that assertive. And wouldn’t you know it, when the DJ began spinning Patsy Cline’s Crazy on his sound machine, Mr. Dork was coming toward me for a second dance. He was just a few steps away, when I sprang up and practically leaped over to Mr. Polo Shirt. “Wanna dance?”
“Sure,” he said, then set his drink down on the nearest table. Then he took my hand and off we went, strolling along with the other couples who couldn’t resist slow dancing to this classic song.
Right away, I introduced myself. “Amanda Wright.” (my maiden name, changed after my divorce).
“Nathan, Nathan Detroit,” he said, grinning.
“Really? Detroit is where I’m from,” I said. From the impish gleam in his hazel eyes, I thought he might be putting me on. “Come on, is that your real name?”
He laughed. “The Nathan part is. The last name’s Traber. Nathan Detroit was a character in the musical Guys and Dolls. Ever see it?”
“Don’t think so. But it sounds familiar.”
Then he said, “What a talent Patsy Cline was. She left us much too soon.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Walking After Midnight. Sweet Dreams. I Fall to Pieces. I could listen to those songs forever and never get tired of them.”
The small talk went on like this until the record ended. Then he picked up his drink and followed me back to my table. The conversation got more personal.
“So you’re from Detroit,” he said. “Where? Grosse Point?”
I laughed. “We should have been so ritzy. No, I grew up in the city. It was a good neighborhood then. Not so much now.” I then told him I lived with my mom in Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania. When he told me he lived in Baltimore, I began thinking ahead, wondering how the commute would work out. We could visit each other’s place on alternate weekends. But that wouldn’t work because living with mom didn’t give me much privacy. Which meant we’d have to get a hotel when he came north. Or. I’d come to see him most of the time. I felt ridiculous thinking like this. I mean, at that point, I hadn’t known the guy for more than fifteen minutes. But I also sensed that guys like Nathan “Detroit” Traber didn’t come along every day, especially in places like this.
So yeah, you could say I had the hots for him. And he seemed to like me, too. He was impressed when I told him I was a corporate secretary. Unlike me, he’d been to college and had a government job in human resources. “Look, I know that being a secretary today entails more than just typing and shorthand,” he said. “It’s gone high-tech. You people have to be literate in the whole Microsoft Office thing. I’ve seen it where I work. Maybe you can teach me Excel and Access sometime.”
“Anytime,” I said. “I actually taught myself before my company sent us for training. I already tutor some of the college-educated staff where I work in that stuff. They also rely on me for Power Point demonstrations.”
“So why no college?”
“My parents couldn’t afford to send me. I have three siblings and my dad worked on the assembly line for GM. He made a decent living but not so decent that he could afford college.”
He nodded and lowered his eyes. He actually looked disappointed. “Well, that’s too bad,” he said. “If you can master that kind of complex software, you’re no dummy.”
I didn’t tell him that in grade school, I was in a special class for mathematically gifted children. Or that I once wanted to be a doctor. In fact, a boy from that class actually became a doctor. But that was water under the bridge and complaining to a guy I hardly knew that I missed my calling, that I sometimes dwelled on dreams unfulfilled, didn’t seem right.
I changed the subject. “So, see any good movies lately?” He mentioned The Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump, movies I’d seen and liked also.
After a few minutes of movie talk, he steered the conversation once again into more personal territory. His divorce and mine. Neither of us had kids. I had wanted kids, I told him, but my ex couldn’t have any. “Maybe for the better,” I said. “I think he would have made a lousy dad.”
We didn’t exchange phone numbers until I walked him out to his car. “Can I kiss you?” he asked.
“I insist,” I said.
And then we did, on the parking lot in the dark. It was more than a stranger-to-stranger goodnight kiss. More like an I’m-crazy-about-you-and-can’t-wait-to-see-you-again kiss.
By the time I went back in, my panties were soaked, and I wasn’t shy about telling Cindy. “I need to wipe off,” I said, and made a B-line for the ladies’ room.