Blog Romance ???

I don't know what to say. I'm as giddy as a Skidmore coed. Let me explain. I received a message today:

Nickie, I need to talk with you. Since you are in Los Angeles for the week, can we meet? Phone me at - - - - - - ,
Opus #6 (Opie)

I'm only human, and not unfamiliar with the exotic intoxicating courtship dance, so I phoned her. Opie's low breathless voice resurrected memories of warm beaches and cool Tahitian nights. Nickie knows how to set the hook, so I insisted she pick the swankiest joint in town where we could meet for a chop and chowder. Her suggestion was Roger Moore's Olde Worlde Joust House in Hawaiian Gardens, a theme restaurant offering an ambiance blending medieval sport and Chaucerian bawdiness. It was just the ticket!

I arrived a little late thanks to a transmission that, if there were any justice in this world, would turn up one morning, oozing fluid, under the covers on the king-size mattress of Lee Iacocca. But that's another story for another time.

Opie was waiting patiently for me. She had the whole package. Blonde hair down to here. Legs up to there. She was the kind of dame who'd make a vegan ravage a flank steak. Opie was six foot tall and about a hundred and ten pounds of youthful ivory-faced femininity barely poured into a scarlet lycra chemise. Her eyes were bluebirds in flight, her cheeks looked as soft as ripe peaches with just a hint of their color. She was smoking a cigarette in a red holder that was not quite as long as a Mazda Miata. She said:

"Nickie, I need a man!"

I was in the right place at the right time. The evening seemed to fly by. I can only recall it now through the vaseline-smeared lenses of passion and testosterone. It was all going swimmingly until Opie's elderly companion, LL, stopped by the table.

He was white and shaken, like a dry martini. To be fair, LL's a fun old guy, a hairy diminutive elf who freely shares lengthy anecdotes of his 51 years in retail menswear. His knowledge of serge and mohair merchants is encyclopedic. His epic 27 minute long tale of selling Sam Yorty a vented sports coat was made a bit tedious, though, by his heavy stammering and sweating. Tonight's rendezvous ended abruptly when LL felt a stinging shooting creeping cramp in his left calf requiring Opie to fetch the car to deliver him back to his basement bedroom at his daughter's house in Pico Rivera.

As LL wedged himself into the passenger seat of Opie's sporty coupe, repeating an earlier rant about the inability of today's young men to properly wear houndstooth, Opie and I exchanged a fleeting glance that clearly predicted rumpled sheets and country strolls.

Those are my memories of the evening. Have I imagined too much? Have I incorrectly recalled her blushing and eye-batting? Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a roadside restaurant. It is best not to stir them. Tonight I will sleep lightly with her sweet name on my lips.