I thought that I had done away with her in the last
installment of my yet-to-be-published autobiography, a book that hopefully will
be a work in progress for a long time to come because I’m far from being
finished with this life. With any luck,
I’ll be lucid enough in my last hours to dash it off to my publisher, and it
will be my final wave to the world. But
the Ditsy Disco Diva popped up again recently, and she arrived arrayed in her
usual veil of obtuseness. Thank goodness
a friend was having none of it and saw to it that our girl was apprised of her
dim-wittedness and in so doing, made sure she experienced her just desserts. You see, the thing about the Ditsy Disco Diva
that is most disturbing to me is her blissful state of self-delusion, a
condition that so often blinds her to the truth about other people, as well as
herself, both good and bad.
By
now, you might have guessed that the Ditsy Disco Diva is me, and this little
incident reminded me of other times that I’ve been on the receiving end of a
much-needed comeuppance. I don’t know
about you, but episodes like this serve as life-shaping moments for me, and
although they are jarring at the time, eventually I regard them as little gifts
of grace that communicate to me that my old identity has worn out and that I’m
ready for a change. They are
breakthroughs, epiphanies. They are the
kisses that bring me to my true self; the someone, or something, that cracks my
wall of thorns; the fairy godmother that transports me to an improved existence. The following story is an example:
Finally, I felt confident that I had extricated myself
from an on again and off again relationship in which I had been involved for
far too long than was good for me, and I had begun to date other men
again. This was back in the days of
disco, and the city where I reside played host to a swinging disco scene (which
I loved, by the way…it is really great dance music). During the time that we were together, my
former boyfriend (I’ll call him “Tipsy”) and I frequented the several
discothèques on a regular basis where, because of his two left feet, he sat out
the dancing and drank to excess while putting the moves on other women, and I,
with my dancing-teacher-twinkle-toes, whirled and twirled with other partners
at will. I held my own on the dance
floor, which made me pretty popular, as well as pretty full of myself. All of this activity also kept me sober,
which for obvious reasons was a good thing.
In addition, my clear-headedness made it possible for me to weed through
the stable of gorgeous and studly guys ever-present in each of the clubs, not
only for the purpose of finding suitable dance partners, but also for determining
among them the most likely replacement for Tipsy. I might add that all of the guys were ready
and willing. I didn’t know then, as I do
now, that what is uppermost in the minds of guys like this is closing the deal,
and it isn’t until they’ve suffered the consequences of a few bad deals that
they learn to act cautiously around the corral.
Being
a bit timid following my long ordeal with Tipsy, my first candidate was safe Steve,
my good friend of many years, and my best dance partner. We had met in the early 1960s when we were
fellow teachers at one of the Arthur Murray Dance Studios in town. Subsequent to my one marriage and divorce and
his two marriages and two divorces, we had run into each other again at a
discothèque, renewed our friendship, and made a point of dancing together
whenever possible. My breakup with Tipsy
being official, Steve and I took to making the rounds at the clubs as platonic
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers wannabes.
In
the meantime, Tipsy wasn’t taking so well to my decision to break up with him
once and for all. He got it in his mind that
he needed to follow me, and wherever Steve and I went, a fuming Tipsy was sure
to show up. At the close of one evening,
as we approached it to leave, we discovered that the front tires of Steve’s car
were slashed. On another night, a
cocktail glass full of booze and cubes was hurled through the air and glanced
off of the side of Steve’s head. A nasty
gash and copious blood ensued. Needless
to say, Steve grew wary of being seen with me, thereafter.
Not
to worry—there were still plenty of studlies in my stable of Baryshnikovs. I chose Tony as candidate number two. With Tony, I got smarter than I had been with
Steve. I managed to steer Tony to nightclubs
on the opposite side of town where I was sure Tipsy would never find us. Three or four dates into our time together, Tony
and I were blissfully happy. Finally, I
had found my one true romance, and to top it off, I had managed to give Tipsy
the slip. Moreover, Tony and I were approaching
a turning point: all of the signs were
clear that we were ready to declare ourselves a couple before God and all of
His creation.
One
balmy evening, Tony and I were cozied up to the bar of an out-of-the-way
nightclub, and with heads touching, we whispered sweet nothings into each
other’s ear. A large and familiar shadow
sneakily slid up the side of my face, and lo and behold, it was…you guessed
it: Tipsy. Nonchalantly, Tipsy grabbed the backrest of
the barstool to the right side of Tony, scraped it away from the bar, and turned
it to face Tony. Lowering himself onto
the barstool, Tipsy commenced to stare down my date. Remembering Steve’s fate, I held my breath in
fear of Tony’s destiny at the hands of this crazy man with whom I had allowed
myself to be infatuated for a time.
“This is my woman, Guy,” Tipsy said
to Tony with a threatening jerk of his hand that I was sure was aimed at Tony’s
nose, but to my relief, Tipsy stretched out his right leg and plunged the hand
into the front pocket of his trousers. The
reprieve was short-lived as I realized the possible implications of such a move
and nearly fainted in fear of the gun I imagined would appear in his hand. Recovering my equilibrium, I screeched a high
c note that shook the rafters of the room while digging my long and hard
fingernails into Tony’s left arm. A
large roll of bills in denominations of fifties and one hundreds (Tipsy was
wealthy and always carried this kind of cash) appeared in his beefy palm
instead. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars
if you leave right now and never see Linda again,” Tipsy said as he slapped a
crisp bill on the bar in front of Tony.
One arm folded over the other in
front of him on the bar, Tony leaned forward as if to confirm to himself the
authenticity of the bill. His head
swiveled to Tipsy for a moment or two.
It swiveled back to the cash. At
long last, Tony’s head swiveled to me.
Dropping my hands from his gouged arm in readiness of our leaving Tipsy
in our wake as we exited the club, I raised my confident eyes to Tony’s. His head swiveled back to the bill just as
his right arm swiveled toward it, too.
As swiftly as a cobra making a strike, Tony scooped the money into his
hand, jumped up from his barstool, and high-tailed it out of the place.
Dear Reader: If
you find evidence of obtuseness in this posting, I implore you to have pity on
me and to let it slide. I promise you
that it isn’t intentional. I suspect it
is the loss of a slew of brain cells that occurred with each bad choice of a
man in my life. No, no, I’ve changed my
mind. Please let me have it, if you are
of a mind to do so. I can take it! If I survived Tipsy and Tony, I can survive
anything!
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