The Adventures of a Love Investigator, 527 Naked Men & One Woman Read Online Free PDF Page A

power over Mark.
    “Make a man prove that he’s a man. A woman does a great favor for a guy when she makes him strive to be a man.”
    Rick pulls a small red carnation from the vase on the table and hands it to me as we leave.
    Strive to be a man. I carry that phrase with me for a day and a half. I hear it in my head over the light jazz on the car radio and just before I go to sleep at night. Did Mark try to be a man in the face of his mother’s tears? I think back and recall his words. “When I come home after I’ve been on a date with you my mother’s always crying. It breaks my heart.”
    “But you’re breaking mine. If she met me she’d like me. I know it.”
    “That would make it worse. No amount of liking will overcome her only child marrying a shiksa. If you did meet her then you’d always wonder if it was something about you, personally. It’s better this way. It’ll hurt us less. I’ll never forget you. I promise.”
    I feel Mark’s presence around me. His hand on my weary shoulder, his smile to lighten my pain. Who did you grow up to be, my love?

CHAPTER SIX
    “Men will talk to strange women. They just find it strange talking to familiar women.”
    ~ JR 48, divorced
    Case 204 / JR
    It’s one of those golden South Florida days. At JR’s suggestion, we conduct his interview in a small park near his beauty salon. We sit on the edge of an old stone bridge that crosses a timid little brook. Eighteen months have gone by since I began interviewing. I’m embarrassed I thought I could accomplish one thousand interviews in one year. I was so naïve.
    JR begins before I can set the tape. A Truman Capote character, slightly effeminate and way too dandy, he’s forty-eight and a bit overweight. He wears black slacks and a black tee-shirt. His sand-colored hair is perfectly groomed and doesn’t wilt in the humidity. Mine is hanging like wet straw. There’s something creepy about JR’s body language but I’ve been lucky so far and brush off the flash of intuition that shimmies down my backbone.
    The birds are singing and a gentle breeze is blowing. I’m feeling what I felt with James. I start to look around for an escape route. How can a park be this deserted on a weekday? I push dark thoughts from my mind and begin to tape the interview.
    JR jumps on my request that he share a vulnerable moment with a woman. Vulnerability hasn’t been an emotion easily accessed by the guys. JR has no problem unloading his story. He speaks in a rapid Carolinian drawl.
    “My ex-wife ... we had broken up. It was my fault. I walked out. And then I finagled her into letting me back into the house. My son was a little boy then and I really loved him. I wanted to get back with my family and straighten out my relationship with my wife.”
    I notice JR looking at me hungrily. Ick – I brace my right boot poised for flight just in case.
    “I got back into the house for about six months. It was bliss. Sex every night. I told my friends and clients how much I had fallen in love with my wife again.”
    I inch away from him wondering what I’m sensing below the surface.
    “One night we went to a group therapy. The therapist went around the room talking to the married couples. When he came to me, I told him how everything was wonderful. I was in hog heaven. He asked my wife how she felt. She said, ‘I want a divorce. I want out of this marriage.’ She was getting back at me. She waited until I was comfortable, until I told everyone I had fallen in love with her again. Then she dumped me... publicly.”
    He slumps and in slumping, he moves closer to me on the stone wall of the bridge. I look away as if processing what he has told me. I am, in fact, looking for other people. We are still very much alone.
    “Sorry, JR. Time has just zipped by.” I click off the recorder and stamp my boots to get the circulation back in my legs.
    JR appears frazzled. He produces a camera from his pocket. “You can’t go... until I take your