Adventures of a Salsa Goddess Read Online Free PDF Page B

later. I wanted to have ideas and columns ready for “La Vie” when I started in September.
    “For the first two years after my divorce, I was looking for a real man who would treat me well. But over the past year, I’ve downsized my criteria. Now I’d be happy with a man whose picture isn’t hanging on the wall of the post office.”
    “So the dating scene here is bad?”
    “It’s not great, but I suppose it all depends on what you’re looking for,” she said. “Let me see if I have this straight. According to your boss, you’re supposed to find a college-educated, professional guy, attractive, but preferably movie-star handsome since it will make for a better cover shot, never married, or if divorced, no kids or skeletons in the closet, right?”
    “Basically,” I said. She made it sound like I was in the market for a luxury sedan with all the standard equipment plus all the options.
    “Good luck,” she said, as she played with her left hoop earring.
    If gorgeous, smart, and sexy Lessie had been looking for three years without much luck, I’d be lucky to have one good date this summer.
    “I’m going to be publicly humiliated. In September I’ll be revealed to the nation as the loser who couldn’t find a husband.”
    “Your boss doesn’t seem to have a clue what it’s really like out here in the bowels of singlehood,” Lessie said.
    She didn’t know Elaine Daniels. Of course Elaine didn’t have a clue, and if she did, she wouldn’t care.
    “So what’s your plan of action?” Lessie asked.
    “I thought I’d go through the white pages alphabetically,” I told her. “Hello, my name is Samantha. If there’s a single man in your household between the ages of eighteen and seventy-five, could I speak to him please?”
    “Aren’t you limiting yourself a little with that age range?” asked Lessie.
    “Okay, I’m supposed to do the video dating thing, Internet dating, personals ads, three-minute dating, singles volleyball, a singles’ cooking class, baseball games, stuff like that,” I said.
    “Are you going to have time for any fun this summer?” she asked.
    The waitress came by and Lessie ordered another glass of wine. A toddler in a high chair at a nearby table gurgled happily at his parents.
    “Do you still want to have kids?” I asked her.
    I knew that the kids issue had been the main reason Lessie had divorced Steve. After years of trying, Lessie hadn’t gotten pregnant so she’d gone through all of the tests, which she’d passed. Then, after begging Steve for years, he’d finally gotten tested. They’d found out he was sterile due to a case of mumps when he was fourteen. Lessie had wanted to use a sperm donor or adopt, but Steve wouldn’t even discuss it or go to marriage counseling.
    “I’m not sure I want to have kids anymore. I think I’m getting too old,” Lessie said.
    The waitress brought her glass of wine. We both passed on dessert.
    “How about you, Sam, do you want kids?”
    “Yes,” I said, “but I don’t see myself as a single mother. Every time I go to the gynecologist’s office, I get that look from my doctor like ‘what are you waiting for?’ I want to tell her, I’m waiting for the whole package and in the usual order, the husband and then the kids.”
    I used to think a lot about the children I would have. David and I had had it all planned out—two kids and then maybe adopt one. But then, everything fell apart because of a chicken wing.
    Just three months before our wedding, David and I were having dinner when I’d made the fateful mistake of wondering out loud how many eggs I had left. I was only thirty-eight at the time, practically up to my eyeballs in eggs, but I thought I was getting too old to have a child. When I told David I wanted to get pregnant right after we got married, he inhaled a chicken wing and started choking. He grabbed his throat and turned beet red. I watched in horror while the waiter saved him with the Heimlich