Days 11 & 12 - Goodbye Miami Beach

I drove from Miami Beach to Santee, S.C. to Baltimore. More than 1100 miles. One long assed drive. The memorable sights numbered in at zero. It was sunny and cold. Record cold. Am I in Michigan and don't know it? So what's a guy to write about?

I've mentioned eye contact a couple of times lately. And I related my best eye contact story. Here's another one, sort of. It was December in the early nineties and my company needed to close one big deal (big for us was $500,000) to make our sales goal. One of our sales guys who I'll call Mark, because that is his name, had a deal in Singapore that he thought he could close if he went there and did the deal face to face. He wanted me to go to write the license agreement and negotiate the terms other than price. I believe it was the week before Christmas. So our boss sent us off to Singapore to close the deal. At the time I had never been to Asia nor taken a flight longer than 10 hours, so I was psyched. Fortunately we flew business class so there was room enough to sleep -- even though I couldn't sleep on planes back then. We flew from Columbus to San Francisco to Tokyo to Singapore. On the San Francisco to Tokyo leg we sat upstairs in one of those old 747's with the upper deck. It was great. There were 16 seats and we had a flight attendant all to yourselves.

Let me pause and inject some context. As you know by now, I am preoccupied by women and in my younger days I was beyond preoccupied. For example, guys try to have great peripheral vision in sports. My sports peripheral vision was on a par with my athletic skills -- I sucked. But there are two things I can spot anywhere in 180 degrees of vision -- a woman and a Sale sign. I walk into the men's department of any store any I zoom in on Sale signed like a Tomahawk missile. Likewise , if a women passes anywhere near me my eyes hone in with laser quickness. I tell you this to illustrate my preoccupation (obsession?) with women and my super powers to spot them and size then up in a nanosecond. Where I have no power, let alone, super power, is approaching a woman I don't know. I am so concerned that I will (a) look stupid and (b) my attention will be an unwanted imposition, that I do stuff like this: (segue into another layer of my psyche) One summer when I was a teacher I took the summer off for the first time. I was young and fit and every day I went to the pool at my complex to tan. I was looking pretty fit and tan. I wore a navy blue Speedo and actually looked good. I was always careful not to camp out too close to any women (the whole fucking reason for being there!!) for fear of appearing aggressive. Every day I watched the singles play pool co-ed volleyball and wanted to be invited into the game. When they finally they asked me to join them, guess what I said. "No thanks." Idiot! That is how inept and shy I am about meeting strange women.

Back to the airplane. Our flight attendant was Pat. And she was staring holes through me. She was an attractive woman around my age who was articulate and seemed pretty refined. It was so obvious that she was interested that Mark says to me "She really likes you." Remember we are on a 12 hour flight and there is a l-o-n-g time to go. So for something like six hours I'm struck dumb and dumbfounded at what to do. She no doubt lives in San Francisco and . . . well I don't know. Sean Connery would be so ashamed of me. As we landed I stammered goodbye and that was the last I ever saw of Pat. The point is that in twenty-five years of business travel I have never come close to a liaison because (a) there are so few attractive single women traveling alone and (b) that doesn't mean shit because I wouldn't know what to do if she flat out propositioned me.

Mark and I made it to Singapore and closed the deal for a half million bucks. Since we were there for less than forty-eight hours, we didn't see much. I do remember that downtown looked like any huge U.S. Metropolis including signs in English. And it is immaculately clean. And they cane people. Before I could blink we were home, having spent 56 hours traveling and about 44 hours on the ground.

One postscript to my lack on meeting strange women skills, once I get past the introduction I my skill level rises considerably.

Tomorrow is my appointment at the Sarcoidosis Clinic at Johns Hopkins. The doctor I'm seeing is the top guy in the world. We'll see if he has anything that can improve my quality of life. My expectations are low; that way anything he hjas for me is all upside.

Thanks for reading.