This week I got lucky: Three women. I felt like this was some kind of reward from the Almighty for all of my years playing by his rules. Finally, Heaven’s Little Black Book was opened and my name was called and God was going to give me my choice of mates. As the fortieth anniversary of my existence on this big ball of mud loomed on the horizon, I felt ready. Each of the women I was going to meet and possibly unite with in the bonds of holy matrimony was everything I looked for in a wife: gorgeous as a cover model, with the brain of a rocket scientist and the personality of a UN goodwill ambassador. But life had a way of mocking me, as I was to learn one more time.
“What has gotten into you?” Rie asked. “All of a sudden you’re meeting all of these women.” Her big eyes bulged as their socket struggled to contain them and her thick red lips remained parted when I told her about my imminent amorous adventures. Rie is probably the best female friend I have if I took the time to analyze it. But I had stopped doing that a long time now. At my age I was cynical and things like ‘best friends’ were just convenient labels – quickly removed and re-applied to someone else as the earth continued to spin on its axis, and with it, spinning people across my path some for a longer season than others.