Rumpelstiltskin

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I have it on good authority that a certain type of man, upon getting divorced, will run out to buy himself a motorcycle and will then begin dating nineteen-year-old girls. Me, I had the dent taken out of my Karmann Ghia’s fender, had the entire car repainted a muted beige that blends well with the sand on Calusa’s beaches, and didn’t date anyone at all for the six months following the final decree. My partner Frank insists this was abnormal; he is the “good authority” who offered the Honda-cum-Pubescent-Girl Theory.

But the ritual postures of “dating” are not easily recalled or reenacted by a thirty-seven-year-old man who was married to the same woman for fourteen years and who himself has a daughter not too far removed in age from all those long-legged, long-haired nineteen-year-old beauties. Joanna — long-legged, long-haired, and beautiful in her own right — has just turned thirteen and has finally begun sprouting the breasts she’s been coveting for the past eternity of her life. I love her to death, but I get to see her only every other weekend and for half the duration of her school vacations.

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