How Much For 4 Hours of your Time?

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These eight words sealed my husband’s fate for the next forty years. Gentlemen, think carefully before speaking to that woman who makes you so nervous you can barely breathe whenever you’re near her. Maybe that’s a sign you shouldn’t be playing with fire.

In my youth…a long, long, long time ago, as this is the eve of my 70th birthday, I used to dance in nightclubs all over the Eastern United States and across Canada. My dream had always been to dance for a living and, by golly, I was doing it. I hate to blow my own horn but here I am, doing it anyway. I was good. Very good.

Beginning with ballet, modern jazz, and gymnastics, I added my own flair to these dance steps, creating a style of fluid grace and flexibility that no other dancer at the time could copy. Add to that my penchant for perfection when it came to creating unique themed shows with costumes, music, and make-up, I was commanding a whopping $1,000. a week, while dancing on the road in 1985.

My career was going very well but it took a toll on my personal life, causing me to reach the point where I was done with men. Simply done. Forever. If someone was foolish enough to fall in love with me, that was their problem. I’d call a booking agent and be out of town before the next morning.

In 1985 I turned 31 and planned to retire, as more and more 18-year-olds kept crashing my dance party. I was good. But getting younger was not an option and expiration dates on strippers were tough to re-negotiate.

My Mom was a professional baker and cake decorator, running her own business in my hometown. She generously shared her training and expertise with me and I fell in love with baking. I was ready to ditch the G-String and dive into the batter.

The summer I turned 31 was filled with double shifts, cleaning bars in the morning and cooking lunches before climbing onstage in the afternoon and dancing until the wee hours of the morning. Determined to reach my goal of opening a bakery, I was putting away money hand over fist. That summer also brought Beeper Bob into my life.

Beeper Bob was a talkative, friendly fellow the other girls and I would sit next to between dancing because he was polite, even when drunk. He never grabbed at us or treated us like prostitutes, which was a pleasant change.

Somehow or other, Beeper Bob became infatuated with me. He said it was my smile. But I recall being in a G-String the first time he laid eyes on me, so I wonder. He chatted with me about business ideas and encouraged me to pursue my baking business, always asking how he could help. We became friendly and would often go out to breakfast after my shift in the early morning hours.

It was nice to have someone who treated me like a lady. However, that was short-lived when one evening, drunk as a skunk, he nervously said, “How much for four hours of your time?”

That’s when I began ducking him whenever possible. Beeper Bob’s here… out the back door I’d run after my shift. Beeper Bob would pull up into my apartment complex parking lot and, once again, out the back door, down the drain pipe, and through the woods, in heels. Not him. Me.

One night he stood outside my apartment, writing love notes on his business cards and sliding them under the door, then retrieving them with a comb for editing. I was in the bathroom watching, horrified at the thought of being caught at home.

He was no longer safe. He was one of them.

I had called my agent, planning on dancing out of town to get away from him, until one night when he told me he had heard my Mother was ill and found her address to send her a card. That stopped me dead in my tracks and I rudely asked, “Don’t you have a mother of your own to bother?”

He informed me that he did not. Both his parents had passed away when he was young. Something in my icy heart broke and I remember stroking his cheek, thinking perhaps I had him pegged wrong. Then he explained his reasoning behind the request that repulsed me.

“I asked you what it would cost for four hours of your time because I know how hard you are working to save for your bakery. If I took you out to dinner you’d lose hours and I wanted to make up for it. That’s all.”

We both got a good laugh out of it. That’s when I realized I would miss him if I left town. By November he had moved in with me and I told him that four hours of my time would cost him his paycheck for the rest of his life.

Two children and six grandchildren later, he is still paying for that fatal mistake.