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eBook Category: Family/Relationships/Romance
eBook Description: Retired screenwriter Jack Turley looks back at his long-suffering relationship with a stunning Hollywood woman-child half his age. He'll take you along on his emotional rollercoaster ride down Memory Lane--and it is a trip, indeed. This bittersweet true story is beautifully told in Turley's lyrical trademark writing style.

eBook Publisher: The Fiction Works/LifeWorks, Published: 2006
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2006

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [784 KB], eReader (PDB) [195 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [186 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [163 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [159 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [219 KB], hiebook (KML) [387 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [224 KB], iSilo (PDB) [153 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [190 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [217 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [238 KB]
Words: 56149
Reading time: 160-224 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

About this business of "May-December" love, I can only speak for the "December" side of the connection. You see, I was a robust and virile "older" male who suddenly found himself mumbling unexpected commitment to this flashy little heart-crusher still in her twenties. I was twice her age, forcrissakes.

When a man like me has reached a place of supposed enlightenment and suddenly finds himself in a candy store with a license to steal, believe me, there's trouble ahead. No matter how strong his resistance, how prudent and cautious his intentions, he's still going to reach for the sweet goods. I did. When that young and beautiful temptress gazed deeply into my world-weary eyes and convinced me she had spent her tender years searching only for me, I was a fool without hope. All the supposed smarts which had taken so long to wedge into the space behind my age-dated forehead seemed to disintegrate. I became, under the hot-bodied domination of this nubile invader into my well-ordered life, a rubber ball bounced to the max.

HER. I don't think I could have ever conceived that such an improbable relationship would happen to me. No, not ever. Falling in love with her, a malady that might aptly be described as the "Lolita Syndrome," is simply not my style. I'm a plodder, a thinker, a wary hesitator not known for plunging headlong into chancy endeavors; let alone, forcrissakes, serious romance. I simply wasn't prepared--my own fail-safe system didn't emit one lousy warning blip. There I was, minding my own celibate business, sort of in a state of romantic disconnection so to speak when, with silken finesse, she plunged herself into the workings of my life. She zapped me with full phaser power while I was still bent over picking up the soap.

We're talking world-class female here, Captain. HER was a beguiling butterfly, a neon charisma of devastating charm and personality who had, for all her adult life, fluttered from flower to flower seeking the nectar of love. She was sexy and gorgeous and totally irresistible--and I was amazed by how it could all be packaged in such a neat container. And if that wasn't enough to ensure my surrender, there was that cascading bouquet of honey blond curls spilled ever so carelessly around HER's damnably-perfect face. I was convinced I had discovered the jewel of creation; all that is desirably female and wonderful in this world.

Now the smoke has cleared from the battlefield and there is time to look inward to the twisted debris. I was the only prisoner taken in this war which raged over nearly four years of ecstasy, bewilderment, castration and despair. I speak of it in the past tense now, like a wounded soldier lying flat on his back as he recites uncertain words for the nurse to write down and mail home. After "Dear Mom--" what do I say? Where do I start the story?

At first, I perceived this child/woman as nothing more than a harmless and momentary intrusion into my life. I was fascinated, oh yes indeed, but not that fascinated. In the deep-down marrow of my rusted bones, I knew I could dismiss this tantalizing nymphet whenever I chose. I also knew that once I decided to take an honest look at the hard reality of it--the vast difference in our ages was the hardest of all hard realities--I would kiss off the whole business as a hopeless fantasy.

You see, Captain, I had deluded myself with the immutable certainty that I could handle whatever she dished out. Just go with the flow, that would be the wisest and safest course. And above all, don't get into any emotional complications--don't let HER get inside where I keep the soft stuff. She would thrust, I would parry. Forever the unchallenged master of my own fate, I knew I would ultimately retreat from this young and ravishing thing and leave her in a heap of heartbreak.

Somehow, I made a slight miscalculation. HER hit me with everything in her arsenal--brains, beauty, personality, guile, and an infinite appetite for all that is erotic and/or illegal. An unfamiliar exhilaration began to overwhelm me; I recklessly convinced myself that this was finally the real thing. I had found the woman of my dreams--or rather she had found me. This glorious young prize had materialized smack in the middle of my bachelorhood as if Zeus himself had shot her down to me on one of his private thunderbolts.

A wide gap in the ages between a man and a woman, no matter how much they may think they love each other, can be an impossible dream. I knew right up front that the years separating HER and I were a balloon payment that would have to be paid somewhere down the line. This is the guaranteed price for temporary togetherness; it was the one provision in our love contract which could not be X'd out. Someday, we'd simply have to pay up. In spite of my lunatic impulse to abandon all sanity and go blindly and giddily into an unconditional state of bliss with HER, a wiser part of me kept saying, "Forget it, not a chance ... not even a maybe."

I became deaf to the shouts of truth that ricocheted through my head: "Listen up, dummy! Your version of Dolce Vita is headed straight down the toilet." It was simple arithmetic, very plain and very obvious. We wouldn't have a chance in hell for the long run because I was already too many miles down the road ahead of her. I was walking to slow it down; she was running to speed it up.

This realization of how it was, how it really was, made such clear and logical sense. Forget HER's fervent pronouncements that she loved me and wanted me forever--and all those other tasty bonbons she so deftly stuffed down my willing throat. I knew our relationship was only a loaner while our separate lives were in the shop being repaired.

Both of us were fairly fresh from broken affairs, both of us needed healing. So what better way to heal than with a new and temporary love? After all, wasn't I the wiser member of this improbable teaming? Wasn't I the more experienced in matters of the heart? Still, I refused to listen to that little inner voice which harps at me in times of parlous decision. Love is where you find it, I reminded myself, let the inner voice choke. I had stumbled into paradise, shout it from the rooftops. A beautiful young creature had fallen in love with me and there was nothing to do but capitulate to the tender joy of it. Okay, call me a pushover--but come on, Captain, admit it. What "older man" among us would not feel a flush of runaway male ego at such incredible fortune?

The trouble was, when I met HER, I was a superannuated misfit. I never did completely belong to the age group I was in; I always gave the physical impression of being younger. For years, this was a bragging point for me--and no small consternation to my male friends. I simply didn't seem to age as rapidly as everyone else. I used to say it was my "clean living and good genes." In truth, it was luck. I didn't live any "cleaner" than anybody else. I could drink and party with the best of them, and I didn't know "good genes" from apple butter. Things just worked out easier for me in the aging process, and I'm not altogether sure why.

As the years passed, most of the guys I knew got a little fatter around the middle and a little thinner on top. Not me, I was beating the rap. Dorian Grey wasn't the only one with a portrait in the closet.

I like to think that when I met HER, I looked pretty good for my age. I was tall and lean and didn't have any wildly bad habits. Maybe that was the problem. Without a few bad habits to keep life in balance, I was also acutely bored. There was no special woman in my life at the time, no one who cared when I had a cold. I remember I used to say that particular statement with a profound resonance to all my bachelor friends who chased around enjoying themselves in loveless abandon.

"Don't you see what an empty life it is, not having anybody who cares when you have a cold?"

It was a comment about life which I thought had a lot of impact--and it did. My friends got where they didn't like to be around me very much. Not only did I look younger than they did, I was also a bore.

There was another problem too. The women of my era, that is to say the ones closer to my own age, somehow didn't measure up to my Procrustean standards. They were, like me, no longer qualified to compete on a younger and faster track. Maybe this is why the old bulls mosey closer to the fence to gaze over at the greener grass where the young heifers romp and prance.

Let me say this right out, Captain, let's not have any misunderstandings here. This isn't a whiney lament about getting lost in wonderland. This is serious stuff I'm trying to explain here; it's about anguish and stupefying hurt. Locking heartbeats with a woman half your age is like, well, let me put it another way: You'd be better off contracting a nice terminal disease. At least you'd know where you're heading and there wouldn't be any surprises when you get there.

No, I'm not claiming innocence; I saw the trap before I stepped in it. It was laid right there in the middle of my traffic pattern. I could have walked around it on that warm summer afternoon when HER came into my life, but I didn't. You see, I was just finishing the second act of a TV episode, I'm a writer by profession, and the script was going pretty well; I liked the words I was putting on the paper. Then that fateful knock at the door....

Normally, interruptions annoy the hell out of me when I'm writing. But since the second act was only a few lines from being finished, I didn't much mind getting up from my desk to answer what I assumed would be nothing more than a summons from a salesman.

When I opened the door, there she was--HER--my gift from the Devil. This ultimate creature of the universe was standing there smiling at me with her dazzling array of radiantly white teeth and in my mind's sudden and reckless fantasy, beckoning me to fly away with her to heaven. Yeah, fly now, pay later.

HER's excuse for the unexpected visit was flimsy; but never mind, who needed a reason. I was already boxed and wrapped by this young vision of forgotten ecstasies. In the course of the afternoon which followed her appearance, she convinced me that "older men" were so much more interesting, so much more "alive." Being of mortal cloth, and perhaps a tad more susceptible than most to these kind of honeyed words, I recklessly placed my foot squarely on the trigger of the trap and it instantly sprang shut--and stayed that way for almost four hurricane years until ... until....

But before I get to that colorful experience, let me tell you how HER happened to be in my neighborhood in the first place. You see, Captain, she was living with this guy down the street--uh-huh, sharing his bed and board. I understand the guy was once a well-known jock and he had big muscles, which she could understand. Unfortunately, fame is a fragile thing. The ex-jock was no longer living in glory, but grinding out a modest living as a real estate agent.

HER was into her gypsy period at the time, bumming her way around the world, dropping off herself and her toothbrush with friends and ex-lovers; anyone who could supply the necessary accommodations at the moment of need. This was only part of her eternal charm. She could instantly adapt to any circumstance ... anywhere ... any bed. It's called "living in the passing lane."

When she first knocked on my door, that was actually the second time I had seen her. The first time had been several months earlier, when a lady writer friend of mine--who is somehow vaguely related to her, I never did figure out exactly how--coerced me into an introduction. I was working on a script at the time and I didn't want to meet anybody; but my writer friend was insistent. Leaving my computer in neutral--I wasn't planning to be gone that long--we journeyed down the street to the ex-jock's house where HER was currently in residence. I was to learn that she and the ex-jock had had an affair back in their mutually-shared hometown. This was merely a loosely-interpreted continuance of that affair.

Well, I met HER and truth will out, I was knocked senseless by this smiling Goddess who told me she did glamorous things like modeling and TV commercials. "I'm an actress."

"Really?"

"That's why I'm here in Los Angeles. Thought I'd try my luck."

My writer friend and I stood there in the ex-jock's living room--he was off working--watching her flit around barefooted in her tight jeans searching for keys she had misplaced. I had recovered my equilibrium enough to convince myself I was being very cool and conversational:

"You shouldn't have any trouble at all, I mean getting into commercials."

"I hope you're right."

"Yeah, no trouble at all..."

My gaze fumbled over to a grouping of photos on a nearby table. (HER, I would later learn, was very fond of grouping photos on tables.) There were poses of her taken at the beach and at parties, a living Venus with the ex-jock at her side. She saw my attention riveted on the pictures and moved closer, cranking that laser smile of hers up to maximum power.

"You're a writer?"

"Sort of."

I had picked up one of the photos, a candid shot of her at the beach. It could have been an ad for suntan lotion. "This is you--?"

"Uh-huh."

"And this guy next to you, uh ... he's, uh--?"

She turned to resume the search for her keys, the answer to my question tossed carelessly over a soft and supple shoulder: "He's just a friend. This is his house."

It was a summary of her present romantic situation delivered in one powerfully-succinct phrase: His house, as in "look but do not touch." Hastily, I put the photo back on the table. "Big, isn't he?"

She found her keys and reactivated that blinding smile again:

"He used to play professional football."

"Oh. That's nice..." Another one of my spectacular ad-libs.

HER had a marvelous go-to-hell vitality which seemed to energize everything she did and said. In that initial meeting, I remember, I was aware of a constant halo of light shimmering around her wherever she stood; a kind of glow conceived in the mind. It was disorienting for me to say the least, trying to maintain an appropriate detachment. But being the naturally wise and prudent male that I was, what better reason did I need to squelch any thoughts of her as potential romance material? She was, after all, a mere youngster. And if that wasn't enough to deter me, and it should have been, she was also living with another man--a very large and muscular man. I quickly dismissed any thoughts of hope. What chance could I possibly have with a woman like this? Besides, it would be pure insanity to even consider that she might have any interest in me. Having thus turned off my internal impulses, I pleaded the urgency of a waiting script and mumbled a hurried goodbye. At that point, it was still a relatively painless matter to dismiss this incredible woman I had just met.

I tend to work tricks on my mind like this. If I can't have something, or presume I can't, then I don't think about it. I shut it out of my mind. With only this brief introduction to HER and the exchange of what I later reviewed as my own less-than-sparkling dialogue, it was no special hardship for me to discard her as a contender and return to my work.

This was when I should have started the journal, the one I have now been writing for a year. I should have started it right then, right at the beginning when I first met HER. It was only later after she was gone that I could find the courage--perhaps I should call it sanity--to look in the rear-view mirror, so to speak; to step back from the scene of destruction and survey it with some kind of honest assessment:

October 17--Thursday. A bleak and grey day, good for the starting of projects such as this. A journal of my assorted miseries seems appropriate for a presently down-at-the-heels writer. Actually, I should have started this thing on my last birthday, the day I told (HER) to pack her clothes and find quarters elsewhere. She did too, and oh Lord, has life been sad for me ever since.

Maybe two months passed before I saw HER the second time, when she came knocking at my door. It was in a period of my life which could be described as an in-residence malaise. I remember I had vaguely tightened a romance with an older woman, one of those previously mentioned as being from my own "era." I had resigned myself to the hard conclusion that I needed a mature, no-nonsense relationship. Even my inner voice was getting in on the act. It told me I had to stop this dumb behavior of dating around and posing as the eternal make-out artist. I needed to attach myself to something permanent, or at least semi-permanent. Besides, the inner voice reminded me, an "older" woman always cares when you have a cold.

In the past, I had gone into romantic endeavors with a more or less pre-ordained attitude. The woman of the moment and I would make a grand coupling in a flash of love's brilliant light--which, of course, usually extinguished our affair and ourselves in a desperate fatigue. Or we would approach the relationship in orderly fashion, like standing in line at the check-out counter, seeking the practical values of togetherness as we nurtured a sane approach to commitment.

I have tried just about everything I can think of to find some sort of workable truce with (HER). No deal. She has rediscovered the glories of the single life, and she's apparently up to her dimpled knees in male admirers. So much for self-inflicted wounds.

I know also that I've been the culprit in many, if not most of my past relationships. It's as if I've always set up the affairs to self-destruct. It has something to do, I think, with my last wife (I've had two of those). SHE, my second wife, was another HER of devastating capability. I came away from the divorce with a crippling sense of loss and I knew in my heart of hearts that there would never be another woman who could possibly fill the void. Boy, was I giving myself a hand job.

In truth--and truth is the purpose of this dubious memoir--I've always felt more in control with younger women; in control of myself, that is, as well as the relationship. I thought it seemed to be an equitable arrangement, me being the older one. The women I knew and loved usually thought so too. After all, we both agreed that my added years gave me an aura of maturity and special insight; qualities that, as I now flash back to those times, I possessed more in fantasy than in fact. But the "smartening up" had to come. Retribution for my chauvinist leanings descended as an avenging angel--and HER was wearing the wings.

November 1--Tuesday. Funny about (HER), she won't respond to my letters pleading for honest and straight talk, what she wants, what she intends to have, etc. But after a month of no contact, she showed up last night at my door wearing a leotard with a gossamer apron over it, witch's hat and carrying a bottle of Mumm's Champagne.

She identified herself as a good witch of the Halloween season, said she missed me, wanted to see me. We drank champagne, I fed her dinner, then we went to bed for some glorious and unfettered sex.

The pattern for my life's future was finally forged, I thought. I had long since nearly forgotten about that brief encounter two months earlier with the young live-in beauty down the street. HER was nothing more than a faded memory of what I could never hope to have anyway, so why should I cling to an impossible dream? I had decided I would submit to the beckoning of seniority and go peacefully into my dotage, an "older" woman at my side waiting for me to catch a cold so she could care. This was, as I perceived it at that particular dolorous time in my life, the aging process sticking it to me and then breaking it off at the hilt.

November 2--Wednesday. (HER) was most responsive to me and stayed the night. We made love again the next morning, then went out to the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena for lunch, took a walk around the grounds, came home and made love again. Delicious. Somewhere in the course of this nearly 24 hour experience, she said she wanted to see me again later in the week. I did my usual fast mumble, asked for her to call.

I have to admit that it seems pretty well over. I mean she's discovered that being attached to me is not nearly as invigorating as bedding down the multitude of younger, stronger studs who ride the singles fast-track out there.

And there I was, typing away when I heard the front gate open and close and that fateful knock. It was HER, the essence of female perfection who lived with the ex-jock down the street. This fascinating young Aphrodite had delivered herself hot to my door; explaining that she took the chance I would be home and thought she'd "just drop by and say hello." She was beautiful in a warm summer afternoon's casual way, even more beautiful than I had remembered. And there was that soft hint of light glowing around her again, that magical nimbus shining ever so brightly.

HER already knew--but I didn't, not then--that it wasn't an impulse which had brought her to my door; it was manipulated destiny. When she leveled that armor-piercing smile at me, her golden brown eyes glistening, my senses were instantly strip-searched. I listened enraptured as she told me the first of what would prove to be a remarkable and infinite collection of lies which followed me relentlessly through all the days of our togetherness.

Without excessive elaboration, she explained that she'd been traveling around a bit after we first met, visiting friends here and there (she had a lot of those); and she had somehow lost contact with the lady writer I knew--the one who was related to her and who had first introduced us--and would I happen to have the lady writer's phone number?

It was an electric surprise, having this lovely baby woman standing there being so, well, familiar ... as if we had been in constant touch since our first meeting.

November 15--Tuesday. Woke up very early this morning, back into the heavy thinking and feeling miserable over the loss of (HER). I'm quite sure this is a residuum of seeing her and taking her to bed--and knowing that she views it all as just another orgasm. Will I ever glue it back together for myself? So what now? I can't force myself to hit the bars--mainly because I've had to acknowledge that I'm not exactly primo male material for the kind of ladies I find interesting.

Did I stop to think that I never told HER where I lived--so how did she know? Did I stop to think that losing the lady writer's number might possibly be a contrived excuse? No, forget all that. My mind was already sorting through forgotten strategies which might help me get this nubile temptress into bed. I knew I was woefully short of expertise with younger women. It had been a long, long while since I had made love to a woman who didn't need to wear a bra for support. But what the hell, I figured that if she didn't know another way to contact her own relative, then who knows; she might have chosen me because she was--well, it could be possible--actually interested.

Of course I had my lady writer friend's number someplace and I invited this beguiling vision into my house while I did the obligatory fumble through the Rolodex.