The safe friend

A pal took me to lunch the other day, introducing me to a little place right around the corner from a place where I used to regularly meet Hilary, the adorable doctoral student. My lunch friend knows Misty, and I’m not about to let him in on my other life. But I did make a comment about always having women friends who remain, unfortunately, platonic.

He laughed, and said “You know, of course, that’s because you’re married. Makes you a safe guy.”

That little exchange stuck with me, including when I awoke with a start at the ungodly hour of 5 this morning. I’m not just safe because I’m married; that has always been true.

All through high school, I had very close girl friends, but never a girlfriend. In at least two cases, if I’d had the balls to make any sort of move, I know I would have gotten somewhere. But (especially for an early-blooming porn hound in the early 80s)I had peculiarly old-fashioned ideas about how to interact with girls, and didn’t ever take chances.

Then came college. A chance to reinvent oneself, right?

Hardly.

Had it not been for an older woman taking me into her bed (well, the back of her camper, at any rate) the summer before college, the sum total of my experience would have been a chaste good-night kiss after my senior prom. A kiss initiated by my date, no less. But I had every intention of getting some action as a big, bad college freshman.

So first there was Kim. Cute blond from North Dakota. We spent some time together through the fall. Finally, in what in retrospect was probably her frustration, one night in November she suggested we go for a drive out of town. She parked in a lovely spot, and we sat in her car. And sat. And talked. And talked.

We then went a bit farther, up to a summer camp where she had worked, now closed for the winter. We walked around a clearing, looked up at the sky. And kept talking. And walking. And, finally, we drove back to campus.

She left at the end of that first semester to go back to North Dakota and try something different. The day she left, we stood in front of the chapel and hugged goodbye.

“Well, see you,” I said.

“Probably not.”

And she turned to go.

Then there was Wendy. I met her in our first week of orientation. Taller than me, she had a cool New Wave haircut, and sweet as she was, I was completely intimidated, sure she wouldn’t be interested in someone like me (whatever that was supposed to mean).

I hung on to that thought, even as, in the spring, I started helping her study. She, her roommate Lori and I all shared the same major, and Wendy was the least-experienced of the three of us. Lori could have helped perfectly well, but Wendy accepted my offer to work with her.

So I was over in their room pretty regularly that semester. Lori would leave, and I would help Wendy, who never really did catch on, despite my best efforts. (She, too, would leave at the end of the year. We kept in touch a bit through the summer and fall, and then, no more.) But again, I never picked up on what in retrospect were obvious opportunities. I was interested, but had no idea what to do next.

That explains in part why, when I had my first real relationship the next fall, it seemed so natural to marry the girl. No one else, I was sure, would ever be that interested again.

Pretty tame oats, I’m afraid. And here I am, married again, and “safe” as ever. Heh.