BoDog and the Blue-eyed Blonde
by John Earp
from Caligynephobia: A Collection of Stories and Reflections
First time I fell in love it was with movie stars. Next to them local women were too plain, too rural, or too much like mom. Audrey Hepburn stole my heart when she played the neurotic, vulnerable pixie, Holly Golightly, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I wanted to wrap her up and protect her. Then I fell for Anne Blyth. When she sang, “Baubles, Bangles, and Beads” in Kismet, I wanted her more than I wanted a motorcycle. But then Suzanne Pleshette, lithe and sultry before she got that raspy smoker’s voice, went to Rome looking for love. In Rome Adventure she hooked up with spoiled surfer boy Troy Donahue. I hated Troy Donahue. I dreamed of Rome Adventure for years, and no fantasy short of that did it for me.
When you learn the early lessons about youthful love and the enigmatic ways of women, and you learn those lessons in a small town, the lessons come fully equipped with edges and blades. You find out that love is a grown-up’s game with lasting consequences, with scars that never heal and memories that never fade. Everybody knows everybody else and gossip is a blood sport. Girls run wild and boys run away. And unfettered infatuation has a price.
In high school all the local beauties were far beyond my grasp. The first girl I approached, Micki, was a shy girl with a Playmate body and bad skin. She was a leggy baton-twirler who danced for half-time shows in a white swimming suit with silver sequins. I must have said something crude because she kicked me so hard I limped around school for half a day. This was back in the time before you could talk to girls like they were one of the guys. I figured that girls who dressed like that and pranced around were looser and more…energetic. I was wrong. That particular beauty had a bite.
Micki literally kicked me out of her life, so my first lessons in love were learned at low light dances in the gym after football games. If I got lucky there was some tentative making out in the back seat of my old Falcon station wagon. A really good night featured painfully awkward adolescent groping.
There were four or five girls in high school I drooled over. They all had that sassy, spunky “I know I’m really cute” attitude. Three of them were ignorant and careless and wound up pregnant. A bunch of less-than-tens had standards that did not include geeky me. There was one steely-eyed dad waiting up with a shotgun. They all helped me learn that an addiction to unavailable beauty can ruin your life and destroy your familial relationships. In our senior year my best friend, Terry, knocked up a trailer park girl. They got married the day after graduation. Not long after that they got divorced, and he joined the Navy. Last I heard he was living on some tiny volcanic island next door to Borneo. You sure pay a high toll to roll down the highway of love.
Maybe that was what made me leery of beautiful women: the unintended and unforeseen consequences. You get involved with one of them, and you think all your dreams have at long last come true. But then there’s a relationship to sustain, the sour tasting fear of pregnancy, the never-ending nag of destructive self-doubt: Did she just “settle” for me? Am I as good looking as Billy, the defensive back? Am I as talented as Jim the Drum Major? How long will it be before she pops my fragile bubble and dumps me?
Growing up I also had an advantage over the average dork boy by having a popular sister seven years older than me. I was just a little kid when she was in high school. So when she had sleepovers I got to spy on her and all her friends. They would sit around a circle talking cruelly about using their beauty to snare and torture unsuspecting males into doing their bidding. They taught me that pretty girls can be cleverly manipulative, vicious in their scheming, and callous in their heartlessly critical assessments of boys.
From the movies I learned that pretty girls can be precious and lovable. From my sister and her pals I learned that pretty girls can smile their way into your heart, then carve you up and leave you bleeding on the floor. Never underestimate the acidic jealousy of teenage girls. They are devoid of ethical refinement.
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By the time I got to Gainesville the damage was damn near irreversible. These weren’t girls anymore. I was dealing with women, women who were smarter, edgier, cagier, more self-assured than anything I had seen growing up in the Tampa ‘burbs. In my junior year there was a brunette in a couple of my engineering classes. I had high hopes for this one. I let myself get trapped by her trim and tanned good looks. I mistook long legs for character. We dated for about three months, but when it became clear to her that I was never going to win any awards, or get hired by a prestigious Miami firm, she left me for a god-like Phi Delt who drove a new Beemer convertible, and whose daddy owned a measurable percentage of St. John’s County. Women. Who knows why they behave like they do?
Of course, when I did finally fall in love, I was the beholder blinded by beauty. I'm sure it was the blue eyes. Darla’s corn-colored hair framed her striking features like holy hands. Her eyes, blue as lake water, glistened with natural kindness and laughed through her exquisite intelligence. I went into this relationship with my defenses honed to a razor’s edge. Was she beautiful? Beyond words. Was she attracted to me? Inexplicably so. Have we been married for 32 years? Oh, yes, and it’s a miracle.
My friend, there is a mysterious and devious law of nature at work here. It’s the immutable law that explains why male Black Widow spiders can’t resist those long, black, silky legs, even if, in the end, all will be lost. Some women will seduce and then poison you. And you can’t tell just by looking which ones they are.
BoDog McPhillips was raised in Tampa. He earned a degree in electrical engineering
from the University of Florida. Since 1983 he has lived along the banks of
the Kissimmee River in inaccessible eastern Polk County as a gentleman farmer
raising rare Palms and Cycads, and producing an exquisitely clear moonshine.
His wife of 32 years, Darla, is the administrator of an old folk’s home
and a member of the Haines City Chamber of Commerce.
This interview was conducted on an 18-foot flatboat, trolling for bass on Lake Hatchinehaw.
John
Earp
Author of "Sweet Heavenly Daze", a lighthearted, witty, profound, and poignant glimpse at religion that is a little different from popular faith.
John's website: SweetHeavenlyDaze.com is a delight to explore.
Thanks John for the story... J.
Wolf
