Beware Of Mr. Right

WOMEN

I have run away from home. I threw some clothes into a suitcase, grabbed the dogs, got in my truck and drove to San Francisco. Now I have checked into a hotel. I am really frightened. Whenever I go outside I keep falling, bumping my head on trees and poles. I keep going blank.

The city is too much to cope with. Homeless people frighten me. Dead-eyed rich women madly shopping frighten me more. Victorian houses painted mauve with orange trim make me think I'm in Pennsylvania, hallucinating. I am not myself.

I can't decide what to do about my wedding ring. Put it on, take it off, repeat for an hour. It's such a beautiful ring, from Tiffany's, too expensive, too elegant.

I married one year ago. It was so perfect. My husband and I became friends on the phone first. He led me to believe he was a fat, ugly, soft, pasty computer geek, so I thought, OK then, friends. When I first saw him, in the parking lot in front of the bookstore where we were to meet, I thought, Damn, what a gorgeous, brawny construction worker. If only he had brains.

Three weeks after we met he was to pick me up at the airport. I got off the plane and saw him standing there in the terminal with a huge bouquet of red roses and a tiny blue box. I got dizzy. He led me to a chair in the waiting room, got down on his knees and proposed marriage.

"Yes," I said, yes, oh, absolutely yes, I want to be married to you, my wonderful dream man. No more confusing connections, no more nausea brought on by doomed expectations. You are smart, you are totally hilarious and you are beautiful. Absolutely. There is no doubt about it. Yes.

Today is my birthday. My friend Bev got a party together fast. I wore my wedding ring. All these lovely San Francisco friends, saying, "Happy birthday! Where's that darling husband of yours?" I made up bright chirping lies. I put on a paper tiara.

I didn't marry him for money, or for fear of becoming a lonely old maid. I can't wait until the day I am an old maid, trolling through the Oxfordshire countryside with a pack of dogs and a wicked tongue. I was not only content on my own but often downright festive as well.

Then I fell in love with this man all the way to my reptilian brain.

We laughed and laughed. We squabbled over shelf space and forced each other to read favorite books. In the supermarket he liked to grab me and start fox-trotting. We each thought the other was madly sexy, even as I was putting on weight, then more weight. And got headaches. My cholesterol count rocketed out of control. And we laughed and laughed.

Yesterday I left the hotel and drove into the country, to a tiny town at the edge of California. A hotel was the marriage counselor's idea. "When it gets like that, pick up your purse, go to a hotel," she said. The driving for seven hours was my own twist.

How do marriage counselors sleep at night, knowing all they know about marriage and not screaming it to the world? They should stand on their rooftops in their pajamas with megaphones, shouting, "Citizens! Heed my words! Never marry! Marriage is bad! Marriage is a bloodbath!"

But no, everyone keeps mum. No one tells you about the sniping in the kitchen, the words like grenades flung across the bed, the radioactive silences in the rose garden. It's a big state secret that the merest ghost of a grimace of disapproval can cause cold-blood rage.

My husband and I looked right into each other's souls and felt the urge to kill each other. I don't know why. I don't know how I ended up locking myself in the bathroom and puking into the toilet for the sake of love.

When I see into a beloved friend's soul, I am full of affection, forgiveness, acceptance. But a beloved friend doesn't shriek with abandonment fear when you start to walk out the door. A beloved friend watches calmly as you go away for days or even months. A beloved friend shows no interest in scrutinizing your every action for a clue to some sort of secret betrayal.

It's the sex, of course. Primordial-ooze ! sex, the people's choice. i The conspiracies of the selfish gene make the machinations of the military-industrial complex look like a game of tic-tac-toe.

I decided when I was in the cardiologist's office and the technician was pasting electrodes all over my body that perhaps this marriage wasn't working for me. My reptilian brain had come up with a sudden new agenda: Get the fuck out, now.

So I have rented myself a little cabin with a record player and actual 30-year-old vinyl records. Right now I'm listening to the Band sing The Shape I'm In. I feel OK. Well, awash with grief, but no longer insane and a danger to myself and others. I have walked on empty beaches, staring at the shark-riddled ocean. I have discussed my life with the ospreys and the night herons, who are good listeners.

Women have, of course, taken over. They're feeding me, massaging me, giving me acupuncture and Chinese herbs, finding me places to stay and telling me to start crying already for God's sake or I'll never feel better.

Men have stayed politely in the background, the pharmacist solicitously filling my prescriptions, the mechanic silently changing a flat tire with a "she could blow at any time" demeanor.

My jeans are looser. I am healing nicely. As soon as I'm better I am going to drive back into the city and get myself a honking huge tattoo of a snarling canine alpha bitch.

I can't wait to show my husband.