Attendance at my community 12-Step support groups has been almost daily for the past two years and is starting to feel compulsive if not self-destructive. For more years than that now, meetings have represented wholesomeness of thought and deed, sobriety from mind-altering substances, and abstinence from compulsive overeating and anorexia. But lately they are also a tether for my spirit as I dive deeper and deeper into the world of online dating applications, on the prowl for Mr. Right or maybe even just Mr. Right Now. The New England school marm in me is mortified by my own prurient interest and I have not spoken to Kate, my best Massachusetts girlfriend, in a long time because I know what will happen: I will have to confess. I am Jewish, she is Catholic, and that’s just what we’ve always done since meeting in the seventh grade.   

I was blessed to be married to the love of my life for over 30 years, a man I met in a community support meeting. Despite our nineteen-year age difference, it was a match made in heaven for many years. Until the adversities started to pile up. Throughout the reversals, for richer or for poorer, we remained in love, best friends, each other’s rock. We had lived beyond our modest means and run up the credit card debt until we could only afford housing in a tacky suburb, hours outside of Los Angeles, our former comfort zone. In sickness and in health, the last four years of Terry’s life were marked by his ever-declining constitution: loss of balance morphed to needing a cane to walk, then a spiffy walker, followed by two falls with broken bones, a pacemaker procedure and ultimately a lightweight transport chair when he became unable to stand any longer. He had survived his youthful excesses in the 1960s music business where many of his contemporaries had not. He always claimed he knew a lot of dead people: his own bass player Brian Cole, Tim Hardin, Jim Morrison, who once leaned over to speak with Terry at dinner but instead vomited into his lap. And then borrowed $20.

My participation in my recovery programs shrank with my husband’s health. Eventually we hired a home health aide so I could attend the rare meeting now and again and chill out. Friends brought meals until he stopped eating, and if a few of us were gathered together, we made an ersatz meeting in the living room. While I got a certain thrill from handling the morphine and Ativan for him, Terry wasn’t big on his free pass for “permissible” doctor-prescribed substances. He dourly monitored how frequently I was dosing him. Hell, he even rejected marijuana edibles that might have helped his shallow breathing, complaining that the Peanut Butter Cup flavor was nauseating. My mouth watered but I did not partake in this mind-altering substance.

I dosed him with enough morphine to help him breathe and be comfortable enough to sleep; and I came to cross that caregiving threshold where I surprised myself and helped to toilet my own beloved husband.

After he passed, one of the ways I cared for my own exhausted ass was by getting up and out to a meeting every day. In my grief and in my recovery, those meetings saved my sanity. 

So, this thing had happened: my husband’s failed health, my need to retire early to be available for round the clock caregiving, his eventual death. What was next for me? There was no plan. Just as I had during caregiving, I continued to sleep in two-hour shifts, only when I woke, there was no one there to gloat over Jell-O snack cups in the middle of the night. The moment I stopped doing what was right in front of me and contemplated the cliche of “moving on,” the weight of the grief was suffocating. I hadn’t moved on without my husband since the late eighties. I wouldn’t even know how to do so if I tried.           

And then it occurred to me, my next best idea: find a boyfriend. Find a boyfriend! It was a sin against my Santa Cruz feminist college education to say so, but I had been partnered for so long, wasn’t it possible I couldn’t really function without a partner? So, for six months I subscribed to several online dating services: two for people over fifty-five, one for people who are sober, and one for widows and widowers. They yielded exactly two dates which occurred over two different weekends out of town, so technically I suppose the accumulated total is more like six dates with the same person: a Federal employee in Sacramento — the state capital seven hours north of where I live — a few years my senior, who captured my intellect and my sense of humor.            

I spent a lot of time listening to his very pressured (and highly gifted) speech while holding forth about his subjects of specialization: Gold Rush history; rivers, bridges and lakes; the Transcontinental Railroad. These topics stemmed from his career as a bureaucrat, and they began to make actual sense to me. His monologues felt a bit like being back in lecture hall and were outside my area of expertise, and this got my full attention.

Ernest was the first man I met on a dating app. In no time were we exchanging hilarious, sarcastic text messages. He is politically liberal and so is outraged on a regular basis by current events, all except the cryptic “fork in the road” emails he and his officemates continue receiving from the Department of Government Efficiency.                                    

What do you expect? Ernest is fond of saying. We live in a fact-free world.? Ernest had until 9 p.m. on March 19, 2025, to accept a Department of Government Efficiency offer of early retirement from his forty-year employment with the bureau in exchange for continued pay until the end of September. He decided against it, to not “play the game.” Such emails are apparently persistent and consistently confusing to his officemates. For example, one can opt by 9 p.m. on a given night for the government buyout at the end of September, but then there is a clause stating that final employment may in fact be extended until the end of December. He is very carefully preserving his external hard drives so that the Elon Musk team doesn’t scrub all of his computer files, which is in fact happening on a regular basis in Federal offices everywhere. Like something out of Kafka, you are terminated in an email and locked out of your computer.

You would have thought I was heading to the G20 conference when I set out for Fresno to meet Ernest for the first time, an approximate halfway point four hours northeast of me. To a one, my girlfriends melted down when I proudly announced this positive outcome: a real, live date. My own brother blanched and said something about pimping myself out. Kate made me swear to not get into Ernest’s car with him. Mandy, one of my support group friends, made me promise to bookend the first meetup with a call or text on my way in to — and again, on my way out of — lunch, but then retracted her offer because she “couldn’t take it.” Another friend who had known my husband for sixty years was flabbergasted that I would take this level of risk and then sighed,

Well, just be careful, I guess.

Visions of “murder porn” a la Dateline NBC danced in my head: so many women, so many abductions. I hunted and texted around until I located a friend willing to withstand the stress of being my security contact. Then I drove over the winding, mountainous stretch of the Interstate 5, nicknamed The Grapevine, and headed into the San Joaquin Valley.

It was then, once I got over The Grapevine and dropped down into the valley, that I myself got scared, akin to waking up out of an alcoholic blackout. Where was I? Whose idea was this? Since getting sober in 1987, I had learned that I had had a history of blackouts. To wit, I’m told that I once saw Ella Fitzgerald perform in a small San Francisco nightclub. What was my reality now?

After eliciting a text assurance from Ernest that he would not abduct me to Yosemite, he had replied,

And it’s going to be an adventure, right?

And as I passed Bakersfield, I told myself I was going on a widowhood adventure designed to get me off the couch and away from using MSNBC for company.

None of my girlfriends thinks this sounds like a good idea, I had texted Ernest preemptively.

Oh my, he replied, are they going to be joining us?

The night passed. The next morning, I attended an online support group meeting. Of course I did. Then I went to the IHOP to meet Ernest for our scheduled lunch. At the door I received a text with directions to his table together with a photograph of the area of the dining room he was seated in. Once I found him, he struggled to slide out of the booth into which he was wedged, a bit paunchier than one could tell from online photographs, and stood all of his six feet up to give me a hug. Great. Another man struggling with his weight.

This is the scariest thing I think I’ve ever done, I told him.

What? he said, eat lunch at the IHOP?

 

For lunch, Ernest ordered an enormous plate of breakfast. I can’t tell you what I ordered as I have no memory for meals already consumed, but I can tell you that I did the best I could to stick to the foods on my recovery food plan. Ernest began to regale me with rapid-fire data regarding the rivers, lakes, bridges and dams that he oversaw for the federal government. There was something called Yankee Jim’s Bridge, which may or may not have anything to do with the Yankee Jim who was shot and killed in San Diego in Gold Rush days. He used the word ‘spavined.’ My head spun as I pushed my food around the plate. Every so often, he would bring himself up short and say,

But what about you? I’m on a nervous rant, sorry about that. Tell me about you. And now that I had the floor, I was tongue tied.

I don’t know, I demurred, suddenly feeling shy. I feel like I’ve never done anything like this before. Are you nervous?

Yeah, Ernest said, tucking in to a bite of blueberry pancake.

I needed more Diet Coke.

We sat for hours at that booth at the Fresno IHOP, just around the corner from the in-town Kaiser Medical Center. An industrial office park. I was swimming in Diet Coke. Suddenly my security friend’s text lobbed in,

Are you still with him or can you talk?

I’ll be right back, Ernest said squeezing himself out of the booth. It was five o’clock.

Still having lunch, I typed back to her before Ernest returned to the table. As he slid back into the booth, I saw that a question mark had been texted back by my lifeline friend.

 

What kinds of fun things can we do together tomorrow? Ernest said, his face lighting up.

I’ve been kind of looking forward to being outdoors with you, I answered. After all, I did buy that new pair of hiking boots for this visit.

As long as you agree to protect me from wild animals, Ernest quipped. I’m no good against them, he said. And you can carry me up the steep inclines in those new boots.

When we parted in the parking lot at 6 p.m. I moved in very close to him, stood on my tiptoes and planted a how-do-you-do kiss on his mouth. He looked shocked from what I could see of his face but neither did he back away. See you at nine, I called out as I walked over to my SUV. For dinner I ordered some local Thai food from GrubHub, saving fully half for another time. Not bad for Fresno. I caught up on the news from Trump world and got ready for bed, before texting Ernest who was staying with local friends, to tell him how much I liked meeting him. Familiar ground, our common mode of communication. After a few texts back and forth, we debriefed from that first meeting sufficiently enough to say good night.

 

Day Two. Ernest greeted me shyly at the Hampton Inn breakfast bar, so to have something to do, I got up to get him a cup of coffee, black. He was not in a talkative mood, and this is one of the things you might note on your list when you meet someone new. Then he escorted me out to his Toyota Corolla, saying,

Yeah, you got the beater car, without further explanation.

Ah yes, the state of a new man’s car: The whole back seat was stuffed with camping gear and quantities of apples and oranges, like food bank material.

There is no need for wasted food, was all he said.

When he handed me his sun visor CD organizer and asked me to pick some music, the feel of exhaustion hit me, how grueling it can be to exist in an unadulterated sober state. Here is this man I met once yesterday. Now it is Day Two and I hope being in his car is fair game today — and we’re so close to each other in our seats — and he says we’re going to a fish hatchery. I had absolutely no precedent for doing a fish hatchery on a second date, clean and sober or not.

I can’t tell you how utterly luxurious it felt to be in the presence of a grown-ass man again. What is it about grief after significant loss, where you feel the phantom absence of the departed? We walked down the steps to the San Joaquin Hatchery’s spawning shed and looked around inside, still strangers to one another. Vast rows of trout tubs filled the warehouse. Ernest took a photo of me standing next to the cross-sectioned model of the inside of a trout; I look a little peaked in my heavy turtleneck. Then we walked out of the shed and up the short hill toward the hatchery tubs. The way my distress rose up in me, I thought the ground might open up and drag me under. I righted myself.                                 

Here, Ernest said when we were at the outdoor set of trout tubs, pouring a handful of fish food into my hand. Your tax dollars at work.

That’s right, I thought, we paid for this fish food, just like we paid the taxes that subsidized this fish farm. This is going to make some swell first date story one day.

Finished with the trout attraction, Ernest drove us up the road to Millerton Lake, a manmade affair with a low waterline and a huge cement slab for launching recreational boats. He cackled to himself about things I then could not fathom, like the compliance with dashboard parking permits for the boaters and the lack of vessel quarantine precautions against the looming infestation of Chinese Golden Mussels into the state water system. It wasn’t the first time

Ernest referred to the Golden Mussels but in my haste to keep up with his narration, I found myself needing to code switch between muscles and mussels. Clearly, he was in his own world and I was only visiting.

As we traversed the parking lot together, I wondered whether a man like this would ever express affection. Was it possible he would touch me at some point? With a sense of purpose and officiousness, Ernest glanced at the empty dashboards, speaking somewhat humorously about people who are scofflaws and Fish and Game departments that enforce nothing.

The signs are clearly marked, Ernest snarled. Ever read a publicly posted sign, anyone?

He reminded me he had state and federal identification, if anyone wanted to challenge his authority.

How ya doin’? He greeted the two locals in a friendly manner. I guess you didn’t notice the posted signs about parking permits?

For Ernest, it seemed to count for something that he held claim to what was government business at Millerton Lake.

Yeah, oops, one of the guys answered sarcastically.

By the time the sun was almost overhead, the question remained: what was next to continue filling the day with compatible activities? I reminded Ernest that we had discussed the new Bob Dylan movie, so we navigated screen times and theater locations before setting off to the Maya Theater of Fresno.                                                 

Two seniors for ‘No Direction Home’, Ernest said at the ticket booth. The teenage theater clerk stared flatly with no affect.

After a couple of beats, I said, How about ‘A Complete Unknown’? And we were in business.

Good save, Ernest said.

We enjoyed the movie and the opportunity to sit in closer proximity to each other than in the Corolla. I refrained from the popcorn according to my food abstinence — because I can eat a bottomless pit of the stuff without flinching — but the pepperoni pizza Ernest brought back from the snack bar was still fair game at that time in my abstinence. Ah, fatty protein. Timothée Chalamet was beautiful if not a tad too young for a senior like me.

After watching the credits roll at the end, we adjourned to the lobby and plopped down on the oversized cushiony sofas. Like people who didn’t know each other, I quizzed Ernest on how he liked the movie and asked him to elaborate, not sure whether he could conduct a discourse on something unrelated to, say, water.

But it turned out Ernest could speak quite knowledgeably about Bob Dylan and The Bitter End, those early club scenes in Manhattan where the rooms were blue with cigarette smoke, and everyone we came to love started out solo, on a single mike, playing acoustic. The nostalgia for my late husband pumped a surge of affection for Ernest into me, and slumping against my cushiony sofa back, I said,

I wish you would kiss me.

I mean, what the hell, right?

To which Ernest replied, You WHAT?

So I had to repeat myself and I said it again.

Yeah, I said I wish you would kiss me.

You mean HERE, at the movies, in front of everyone? he stammered with incredulity.

Oh, do you know any of these people? I said looking around, suddenly sarcastic myself.

No, he protested, but this is a very public place, and suddenly it clicked: the dating app anagram PDA, Public Displays of Affection. And while I was sorting through the phenomenon of Ernest not being into PDA — as opposed to my sensibilities, which hadn’t even clocked the lobby of the Maya Theater of Fresno as being at all public — Ernest took off his baseball cap and held it over one side of his face like a camouflage.

OK, here, he said, leaning over from his cushiony sofa to mine, and he zeroed in to kiss me. It was a nice kiss, a tentative kiss, something you might expect on a second date.

I can’t believe you wanted me to kiss you in the lobby of the movie theater, Ernest gasped.

And I thought, Oh dear. What have we got here?

But to Ernest I said, Thank you, that was very nice. He replaced the baseball cap on top of his bald head, and then shook his head from side to side with an harrumph. I giggled.

Let’s get out of here, said Ernest finally.

I should mention that the business known colloquially as Widow’s Fire has been upon me since even before my husband passed. It’s allegedly a common thing for widows and widowers alike, where the psyche sexualizes everything and everyone in order to displace the grief, and also because the loss leaves you so utterly barren of soul. In the course of my entire life, I had never had intrusive sexual thoughts like these until I was visited by Widow’s Fire.

But there you are, most of us of mature age and erstwhile respectable countenance, except for this now in addition to the grieving. The ‘Fire’ had propelled me to go to some lengths in the eventuality it turned out my date and I liked each other enough to, well, you know. A lacy bra with matching underwear and some extra, expensive condoms, to be safe, which was something relatively new since the days I was in the midst of my younger libido. As if I knew anything after 30 years of marriage to someone chronically ill at the end of his life.

As we walked towards the elevator through the lobby of the Hampton Inn, I brightened realizing that if Ernest walked me up to my hotel room, there might be an opportunity to make a move on him. But instead, Ernest jerked his thumb towards the end of the hallway, saying Restroom, and he was gone rather quickly. The elevator door opened and I got in alone thinking What just happened? Following another lunch at the IHOP tomorrow, I would be driving back to L.A. Now I panicked that, without an angle, PDA would be my only recourse for some enhanced kissing with Ernest.

Later that evening a plausible scheme to make my move occurred to me, and at bedtime I texted him an invitation to arrive at my hotel room in the morning earlier than agreed upon — whereas I had “some etchings” I wished to show him — both the cliché but also a reference to a small joke he had once texted. Immediately, Ernest concurred.

 

Day 3. When he announced himself the next morning, I hastily steered Ernest over to my laptop, open to his original Gold Rush research on a thumb drive he’d loaned me regarding county and federal land and deeds and water rights and the like. As soon as I asked him to sit next to me on the loveseat I knew I was wedged in and said as much.

Yes, I see that, Ernest intoned, and so I have the advantage. He put his hand on my thigh and we turned to kiss each other.

I asked you here to put the moves on you and now all of a sudden I’m feeling very shy, I said.

You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Ernest said leaning away from me by a hair.

Oh no, I quickly corrected him, this is exactly what I want to be doing.

His mouth opened and his tongue touched mine. We remained on the loveseat, carefully exploring each other’s tastes and preferences. His hand down the front of my shirt was sweet but respectful, nothing exposed or full-frontal. And although not water or dam related, my own research was dedicated to investigating whether there was any fire between Ernest and me.

But when it was my turn to explore, it was clear that Ernest had failed to get an erection, and I was terribly confused. I should perhaps count myself as lucky, but I confess this was my first encounter with an absent erection where one belonged.  

What’s going on, I whispered.

It’s been a long time, he whispered back, It’s OK, I’m OK.

I was primed for otherwise — for God’s sake, we were in a room with a bed. But this, this was like ringing someone’s doorbell when there was no one home. No springtime passion in Fresno. The kissing and exploring continued but the situation failed to resolve.

What time do you have to check out? Ernest asked at last.

Now, I said and we both stood up and brushed ourselves off. With the Widow’s Fire raging, nothing had been quenched.

Hmmm, that was nice, he said. I like your etchings.

The drive home to L.A. was not only long, it was filled with an unfamiliar longing: I was missing my husband deeply. This was not supposed to happen. All of the time I had spent traversing The Grapevine with my Terry came rushing back to me. This man Ernest was a far cry from my husband, the saint of my younger life with whom there had never been a moment’s ambiguity about who wanted whom.

Miss you already, came the text from Ernest later that night. Intimacy gets magnified so easily via texting.

I had a really nice time with you this weekend, I replied, and I can’t wait to tell my girlfriends about our trip to the trout hatchery.

Take that, you urban dilettantes, said Ernest, you who think we don’t know that we’ve got it going on.

Maybe that erectile dysfunction really was a case of a seventy-year-old man’s jitters, I thought, still hopeful. Maybe Ernest would initiate our next rendezvous so I could proceed with my investigation.

I kept up with my own witty text banter in hopes it would earn me an invitation to meet again, but the invitation did not come. Slowly I turned the conversation to Ernest’s interests in camping and hiking and the National Parks, and the next thing I knew, he was on board with a long-weekend meet-up in the Anza Borrego Desert State Park.

I like the way you think, Ernest texted.

I’m doing well with this, I thought, my confidence renewed.

 

Out of the plethora of personal connections made on the dating apps, Ernest was the only one of the bunch who actually followed through and showed up in person or IRL, In Real Life. He was also the only dude who made no sexual overtures. And it nagged at me that if he had been genuinely interested, he would not have equivocated about stretching out the weekend by one additional day. If he really were that “into me,” he’d offer no countervailing story about his

dysfunctional work superior who was never available or never signed Ernest’s personal leave requests. But my angling for more time over a longer long weekend was thwarted at every turn.

After all, I had the time and the bandwidth to look for lodging in this nine-hundred-sixteen square mile desert in Southeast San Diego County. Google said it’s the largest park in the contiguous forty-eight states. Despite its name, the Borrego Springs Inn and Spa had a dining room but no spa anymore (and no explanation for that.) It did, however, have a hot tub, one of Ernest’s requirements, so I booked it: a room for two adults with one king-size bed. Then I presented the arrangements to Ernest as a fait accompli while suddenly embarrassed about the ambiguous sleeping arrangements.

That sounds great, he said on one of our very few phone calls.

Sorry, I spaced on discussing sleeping arrangements, I replied. Do you think we should have our own rooms?

Now you’re getting into the weeds, said Ernest. Don’t worry about it: you won’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.

He sounded both fairly reassuring and marginally seductive. The plans were set.   

 

Day 4. When it became clear that Ernest would pick me up at home so we could travel on to Anza Borrego together, I went on making more assumptions, like the one about the potential that he might want to kiss me while I was giving him the short tour of my place. Alright yes, maybe it was a fantasy, but on the other hand, it could happen, you couldn’t rule it out completely. One of the myriad grief books I had read joked about removing your dead spouse’s photographs from your bedroom if you ever planned on getting laid again. So, I switched some of our portraits around for some free-floating framed artwork, just in case. Instead of staring down at the bed, now the portraits were staring down at the bed from across the room.

At the foot of the staircase, Ernest nodded and said,

Got to meet the cats.

The cats are on the bed, I said getting butterflies in my stomach. Here it comes, I thought. Though he stuck his head around the corner of the bedroom door jam and greeted Flora in her ‘tuxedo’ and the toothless Mojito, I came around from behind Ernest to welcome him into my bedroom.

C’mon, we’d better go, he said looking at me.

Traffic on the freeway south was heavy as usual and about three hours in, we agreed to stop for a late lunch in Lake Elsinore, kind of a strange and dusty working-class town that time forgot. Starving, we pulled over on the barren main street to the first raunchy looking Mexican restaurant on our route. It turned out that the kitchen was pretty good and their fare authentic. I had some crunchy tacos, and Ernest ordered a huge combination plate, just like my husband would have, with a Chile relleno, an enchilada, chips and salsa and rice and beans. For lunch. On a hot day. With a Diet Coke.

The next man I’m with can’t have an eating disorder, I thought as we ate.              

I liked that Ernest was an environmentalist, an aged one-time park ranger and river rafting guide, because it portended a possible outdoor companion. Thus, I had bought the hiking boots in anticipation of — no, like the old-time spiritualists used to say, as a demonstration in faith that — dating Ernest was going to mean outdoor time with fresh air. There had been years of confinement in our modest townhome, first hunkered down with my husband when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and we all were shut in and disinfecting our groceries. Later, because for most of his last two years, Terry was confined to a hospital bed in our front hallway and needed me with him. The great outdoors. I needed out of the house.

From Lake Elsinore, the drive down to the desert floor took another three hours. I don’t know why, except that once we got off the freeway, we were on winding two-lane country roads. When we crested the cliff’s edge, the sun had already set, casting a pink and purple hue against the mountains and the sky. I had never seen such beautiful ambient pastel color.

Yep, I climbed these mountains when I was nineteen, Ernest bragged.

I didn’t know what to say. Clearly this chunky seventy-year-old, with feet so swollen he wore flip flops as a matter of course, had once been a specimen of manhood. Like fifty years ago. Hmmm, more echoes of my husband’s relationship to his storied youth.

Here’s the part I don’t want to write: the part where we padded around each other in our suite, modestly changed clothes and went to dinner, came back and changed into swimsuits and went off to find the hot tub. The part where I didn’t know how between the two of us, we were going to swing sharing a king-size bed. The part where there was no part of Ernest that apparently had any orientation about what you did with a woman in bed. If this were a baseball game, the tie would have gone to the runner at second base. Although I am retired from clinical counseling and Ernest is not under my care, it has been impossible for me not to see him as someone on the Autism Spectrum, under which category the lack of sex drive comports. I was patient, but again, he was not aroused. He did, however, have a C-Pap machine for sleep apnea, and now I had to explain to myself how I came to be sleeping with a masked man to whom I wasn’t even married.

 

Day 5. Upon awakening, Ernest removed his C-Pap mask, and we fooled and fumbled around again for a little while.

I can’t have my neck touched, he said matter-of-factly.

Fair enough, I thought, but then his jaw wouldn’t relax and he kissed me close-mouthed. No good. It became clear that he was more interested in starting his day than remaining in bed with me.

We drifted into the town of Borrego Springs and found a huge and far out cafe with a full bar and Day-Glo drawings of the planets on the walls. Hipsters in Borrego Springs.

Some time passed. We parked in Coyote Canyon in an open space within eyeshot of a detached camper unit. As I shut the car door, Ernest bristled. There’s no need to slam the door shut. Did I hear correctly? I looked up but his back was already turned, and he was heading out to sightsee. Another hour or two passed, and damn if he didn’t comment again with a startle that I put too much topspin on the car door when I shut it.

No need for extra noise, he said again. No slamming necessary.

I had never considered that I had a style of car door closing.

We sat together on a boulder on the ancient desert floor, eating apples and huge Costco cashews out of the backseat of his car, but when I joked about something, Ernest put the kibosh on the volume of my voice. OK, I thought once and for all, this is a weird guy.

There are people right over there, Ernest said gesturing to my stunned expression. They’re probably only YouTubers or influencers but still, we all have to share the park, said my date Mr. Park Service. I lowered my voice to a whisper but continued munching my apple. Now I felt claustrophobic on the desert floor with a noise monitor who didn’t open his mouth when he kissed.                                    

Hard to believe I climbed these cliffs when I was nineteen, he said.

 

Outside the Visitor’s Center and gift shop, I Googled ‘autism spectrum and libido’ while I waited for Ernest to come out of the restroom. In part, it explained that for the neurodiverse, “difficulties in understanding and expressing emotions, interpreting social cues, and forming emotional connections can impact sexual desire and intimacy.” The next thing I knew, I could hear Ernest chatting up the tall, blonde Visitor Center’s volunteer while prominently displaying his State Parks badge, clipped onto the front of his shirt.

Have you ever known anyone who climbed those mountains? he said nodding over his shoulder at the cliffs.

Oh my God, I thought, is he bragging to a stranger? I walked over and stood next to Ernest while the volunteer eyed me suspiciously.

Ready to go? I said brightly.

Once in a coffee house, a small girl client had approached a pretty Asian woman with frosted hair. Frozen in place, the girl asked the woman What are you? As with Asperger’s juveniles many times in my clinical career, here I was, rescuing an unsuspecting stranger from an awkward social encounter, trying to smooth it over as I backed away with my charge.

After the mandatory hot tub soaking — during which Ernest opined to all present about the Gold Rush and the resultant opium dens that sprung up in Northern California — the second night in bed did not vary from the first. Later, a friend scoffed at the idea that Ernest had attempted to mask the hum of the C-pap machine with a small hand towel. One thing you could say for Ernest: he was good-tempered and even a bit affectionate when he awakened. Though there was some warm hugging and more closed-mouthed kissing, I wasn’t even curious about the erectile issue. I was done investigating. We had a long drive ahead of us.

Our texting and weekly phone calls continued, however, but the man was evasive and elusive about planning the next meet up. Eventually I was able to pry out of him a confession that in fact he was in treatment, not for prostate disease as I had surmised, but bladder cancer. No wonder he couldn’t get an erection, said Google. He anticipated a rather heinous-sounding surgery in the not-too-distant future and would need two weeks’ sick leave to recuperate.

My last gasp at convincing him to be my boyfriend was a link I sent him to the old Bread song, “Make It with You” after a long driving trip through Arizona. The music of Bread seemed so akin to the barren desert landscape. Not a word from Ernest. Ever. I may be past my prime now, but I can certainly count on one hand the number of times I’ve been refused by a man, and I’ve been known to hold a grudge. But Ernest’s texts kept coming: the Chinese Golden Mussels were infiltrating the American River and for only a day, Fish and Game had quarantined recreational boats. Hardly a long enough quarantine.

In the Program, the principle behind Step Three is the relinquishment of one’s allusion of control to some power greater than oneself. Sometimes we short-hand the principle, calling it ‘surrendering’ or ‘turning it over.’ Once I released my wish that Ernest would reciprocate my feelings for him, we were able to enjoy each other better than ever. A few months later, he decided to visit me and be my houseguest. Of course, I was intrigued by the potential for a little cat and mouse play, but at the same time I sincerely put Ernest up in my guest room, which is where he spent all three nights of his visit. He gave me a pro forma goodnight kiss on the first night and nothing more. We drove up into the Azusa Wilderness Park and took a daylong survey of the San Gabriel River, the Morris Dam and reservoir. He couldn’t have been a happier camper. It was stiflingly hot in the mountains, but we found a picnic table with some shade where we could eat our protein bars and nuts. A teenager carving a watermelon at the next table brought us each a slice, just being neighborly.           

I took Ernest out for a fabulous barbecue dinner in honor of his long-awaited retirement from Federal service, I took him shopping in the Big and Tall department of our local J.C. Penney, we watched some silly, salacious television together and when it was time for him to leave, he grabbed me by the hips and gave me two dry kisses goodbye. So confusing.

Men in your age group are either looking for a nurse or a purse, said Kate. You earned that purse, baby, and you simply cannot do anymore caregiving, Heid. You’re done.

Ernest will always be the one that got away, the one who caught my Widow’s Fire, volleyed it briefly, and then successfully dodged it. Technically he had no business offering himself as ‘available’ on any dating app, since the company he most enjoyed was his own. When I signed up on the apps, the universe had sent me a brilliant, odd, impotent man — a man I might have been able to arouse, given the time and fortitude to wait the whole thing out. I had neither.

And what will I do with all this lingerie and paraphernalia? Nothing that I’ll be sharing about at a meeting.