Free The Adventures of a Love Investigator, 527 Naked Men & One Woman by Barbara Silkstone Page A

The little girl scrunches down engrossed in drawing crayon pictures. Sitting across from me, John begins our chat by interviewing me. “Why did you start your quest? What’s your motive?”
    Surprised, I verbally stumble then answer, “I wanted to find out all about love. Who men love and why and how they stay in love.”
    As I gaze into his bright blue eyes I wonder why he’s so comfortable with me. What did I do to inspire such confidence that he lets me into his home and around his children? This is the good part of the interviewing – being welcomed as an authority or an old friend.
    “Why did you agree to this interview?” I ask.
    “When we spoke on the phone you said you were collecting thoughts about men, women, and love. I have some unusual thoughts and I care enough to share. You sounded sincere. I go by my gut a lot.”
    “Mind if I record?” I give him my professional smile as I blot the drips off my ice tea glass.
    “First,” he says, “I believe we carry around love-frames that come from our childhood or lost first loves. We spend our lives trying to fit people into these frames. This forced perspective can really mess up our lives.”
    The baby fusses. He lifts her up and into his lap. Balancing his time lovingly between his daughters and my questions, he never loses a beat.
    I feel light headed with the surrealism of the scene. I’m expecting something edgier. The last time I saw John, he was beating some guy into a bloody mess on a wide screen, now he’s coaxing burps out of a tiny infant.
    John continues, “Love-frames can work if we find someone who is on a parallel journey, but frequently the journey changes. One partner doesn’t continue to back the other’s dreams.”
    “Do you think marriage sometimes stifles growth?”
    “I think a lot of people make a commitment to marriage not realizing all the implications. They begin to think there’s something better out there. The frame starts to squeeze the picture. I guess that can cramp your growth. That and a partner who’s not one-hundred percent in your corner.”
    He strokes the light blond fuzz on the baby’s head. “I think they should really make it harder to get married, as difficult as they make it to get divorced. People have been saying that since they first invented marriage, but no one’s perfected the system.”
    “Is a happy marriage the hardest thing for a man to achieve?”
    “No, the toughest challenge a man has to face is raising children and making sure they’re equipped for the world.” The baby lets out a protest. He raises her to his shoulder and rubs her back. She relaxes into a quiet sniffle.
    This tableau sets a mind-scene I will replay when I see a particularly great piece of acting. How awesome to hold so much love and yet be able to portray so much anger. Good actors are worth what they get paid. The only way I could pretend to beat the poop out of someone was if he looked like the judge who granted my ex his cushy divorce.
    A question pops into my mind and out of my lips. “Tell me about your mother and how she may have affected your relationship with women.”
    John looks down at his little artist who has nodded off. Her blond head rests on the picnic table, her small fist clutches a red crayon. The baby is asleep in his arms.
    “I was five years old when my mother was taken from me, so I never really related to a woman in that way. I knew my mom loved me, but she was someone I had to come to understand. It was hard.”
    There is a yearning in his voice. He hesitates and then decides he can trust me with what is a really painful memory. “My mother was permanently institutionalized because she was schizophrenic. Two decades she spent staring at walls and hearing the screams of the other patients. I would visit her and come away with a cold lost feeling in my heart. She would rarely recognize me. The final weeks before she died, she was the most lucid I had ever seen her in my life. I thought