by Paula Deen
The fact was, I had me a boat.
When I moved to this property, I would not shut up about getting me a boat. Talking to my closest and dearest, I was like a woman on a mission, just crazy with the idea that we had to have a boat for the family. I knew nothing about boats, but that didn’t stop me one bit. I would not get off Bubba’s back. I told Bubba I wanted a boat that I could jump in and take out myself without having to ask anybody for help. We wound up buying a gorgeous twenty-seven-foot, preowned twin-engine Blackfin fishing boat. I just loved it. It had a top that covered a fly bridge and you could drive it from there, way up high over the water. On the move, the wind just hit you in the face, and you had a clear shot of the dolphins down below. But listen here, I had insisted that we have a boat, and I could not even crank up the engine by myself. The only thing I could do with that boat was turn on the CD player, and at night when I would get through working, I’d get on that boat and turn on that CD player. I’d just sit there waiting for maybe another boat to come by and break a wave so that I could feel like I was moving and going somewhere.
That’s why I asked this shaggy man, whose name was Michael Anthony Groover, a fifth-generation Wilmington Islander, “Do you know anything about boats?”
He chuckled and said, “A little bit.”
I said, “Well, what do you do for a living?”
He said, “I’m kinda semiretired.”
I said, “Well, what do you do?”
He said, “I’m a harbor docking pilot—which is a kind of valet parking for big ships.” Later, much later, he teased me that he was sure I’d found him so attractive that I’d done the research on him and already knew he was a docking pilot. He said he thought I was setting him up for the kill so I could get my hooks in him.
It wasn’t the truth.
Then I said to him, “Look—I’ve made a mistake here. I have a boat I can’t crank, much less drive. Would you mind taking me out to see if you can teach me how to drive this boat?” He said, “Yeah, I can do that.” We made a date for the next day.
I took special care with a shower, my makeup, and my hair. His beard had not been groomed, but he’d certainly had a shower and put on a fresh shirt. I believe we were both thinking that we wanted to put forth a little better foot than we had on the first two meetings. A neighborly foot, of course.
So we got on my boat, and it was clear he’d done this once or twice before; he just melted into the captaining. He took me out to Wassaw Sound and, oh my goodness, we were flying through that water. It was a brisk, breezy day, and a rough kind of ride, the water was foldin’ in high waves like I like it. I was laughing and screaming and it was just wonderful. We saw the porpoises diving about, and he turned us around before we went into the real ocean. Then he drove us back into the most magnificent sunset I’ve ever seen, and that boat was still just pounding hard; it was a passionate ride.
We were almost home, almost to my dock, when I looked hard at him. You know what? At that moment I knew that my life was never going to be the same again once I got off that boat.
I invited him into my house. I was on a low-carb diet because I had eaten so many sweets while I was making that book. I don’t know how much weight I gained, but there were some serious pounds involved. I had no food in the house. I never wanted to see another dessert as long as I lived.
So he came in and I fixed us a diet drink and we sat down.
I was sure he thought I was pretty cool and sophisticated. Wasn’t I a restaurant owner? The truth is I’m a bawdy woman with a loud laugh and colorful language; but I am all talk and not much do. The do had happened early on, but I didn’t have nearly the experience that people might have thought I did. So I was a little nervous about how to start talking to this interesting, docking pilot guy. On my coffee table, I had a great little book, the If … book. It’s a wonderful way to get to know people, so I picked up the book and read, “Okay, if you were stranded on a desert island, what would you bring with you?” “If you could meet anyone from olden times, who would you want to meet?” It worked; we sat on the sofa for hours and hours, just talking and “if-ing” and finding out about each other. Being a good hostess, I asked him if he would like a snack or something.
And Fat Boy’s sitting there thinking (he later told me), “I can’t wait to see what her snack is.” He knows what my business is, he’s expecting great food. I go to the cabinet, and I pull out a box of microwaveable pork rinds. They have no carbs in them. That’s what I was living on. I’d dip ’em in cream cheese for real excitement. The look on his face! I could tell he was disappointed. He was nice and said yes, he would like some of those, but inside I knew he was in shock.
We sat there eating pork rinds until about ten at night, when he finally got up and said, “Well, I need to go home. I need to check on my children. I need to say good night.” And I thought to myself, Dad gum it! This is the moment I’m dreading, my least favorite part of the day.
But I barely knew the man. How do I say good night? How do you thank somebody for teaching you something big? I was so grateful that I now knew how to run that boat. My instinct was to stick out my hand. Michael told me later that he thought I wanted to kiss him, but he was wrong.
I did not want to kiss Shaggy Man because that afternoon, as we were hitting the waves, I dipped extra low in my seat because I was very curious to see what he had in his mouth (remember, his mustache came down to here) and I could see nothin’ in there. So when we were saying good night, I’m thinking, This man has got no teeth or he’s got a mouthful of rotten teeth.
I couldn’t figure out which was worse. So we go to stand up, and he looks like he’s about to make his move. He’s gonna ruin a perfectly good night. He thinks he’s gonna kiss me, and I try to act real worldly and cool, like I’ve been around, when indeed I have not been around a whole bunch. So, we’re standing up there and his mustache is covering his mouth completely.
He goes to make his move, and I cover my face. Then I had to say something.
I said, “I am so sorry, but I’ve never kissed a man with a beard and mustache before.” And he looks at me with that smart-ass smirk on his face like a lot of Southern white boys can get, and he says, “Well, thank God, ’cause I ain’t neither.”
So, finally, I said to myself, This man has taken his time to take me out on that boat. I knew I had to give him a little peck good night.
“I am so sorry,” I said. I grabbed his hair and lifted his mustache and then laughed with joy because, thank the Lord! My neighbor had teeth!
Michael says now that when we met, his idea of a long-term relationship was about thirty minutes, so teeth were not real important to him. Actually, he says, he was looking for a woman who owned a boat and specifically had no teeth. He told me that after a long, bad marriage, he was happily unmarried and that his goal was to get any woman with whom he had a short-term relationship to keep her toothbrush at her own house. He’d made a vow never to marry again, and whenever a woman started to talk serious to him, he’d definitely do something to piss her off.
But then, when he’s not kidding around, he admits that we were a match made in heaven. Our first meeting was because of the dogs—we both love animals—and as we started talking, we realized that we had so much in common—family, the water, food—that he really knew it was clicking from the very beginning. Oh, of course there were some differences, and as time went by we discovered them. He was raised Catholic and I grew up Baptist, but it never did matter a bit because we honor the same God. More important, what did matter was that I was a child of the sixties and I loved my romantic Motown music and those Platters and, oh my God—Sam Cooke and Otis Redding and Barry White and the Temptations. But, when Michael, who came up in the seventies, put his junk on my CD player—Led Zeppelin and Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath and AC/DC—I remember saying, “Who the hell is that and what are they screaming?”
Let me say right now, we were growing so close. We didn’t care about anything but being t
ogether. We began to love being in bed; we came to realize how much holding each other meant to us. I’m not talking just about sex but about cuddling, nurturing, whispering, telling secrets, getting to know each other real well. Night after night, we’d lay up in that bed and talk and listen to his music, then my music, and sometimes, sure, we’d play hide the sausage—and then the music was great, whatever was playing.
Grace, pure and simple, had poured into my life, and there was no room left to be lonely anymore. We started in dating seriously. By now, I was on him like white on rice because, oh, he was a breath of fresh air. For starters, he was available 100 percent of the time except when he was on the ship. This seemed strange and wonderful to me, being used to dancing to that other guy’s married-man schedule. We could be seen in public without worrying that an angry wife’s friends would spot us. We could go to dinner in a restaurant. We could go to a movie. It was all right if we touched or kissed in public.
Weeks passed and it got so we didn’t go anywhere without the other one, and my staff at The Lady & Sons was the happiest crew in the state of Georgia because I had gone from bitch to drooling teenager.
I was hotter than a two-dick dog. You know that’s hot. I had been leading a very unhealthy life for the last ten years, and now I’d turned the corner at a 180-degree angle.
Happiness shows.
One night, before Michael entered the equation, I’d drawn my life as a pie on a blank sheet of paper. Up at the top of the pie I’d actually written “Paula’s Life.” Then I started trying to slice this pie to give me something visual to connect to: I wanted to see my life spread out in black-and-white. I saw it all right. In one huge piece of the pie, actually, seven-eighths of it, I’d written “work.” In the tiny sliver that was left, I’d written “family,” “worship,” “love,” “fun time.” No matter how many times I looked at this drawing, I couldn’t honestly give any more space to family, worship, love, or time for fun. So there was my life: a huge slice of work and a tiny slice for everything else.
No wonder, I’d said to myself that night. No wonder I am so tired. I’m really a very sick girl. It was clear my life was very unbalanced.
Enter Michael. He entered laughing, and he made me laugh so hard I thought I’d break. He was this big old virile guy, different from anybody I had ever been with. Michael didn’t have the prettiness that I had always been attracted to, as in Jimmy Deen, but he had something that was far more than pretty. He was sexy—he was his own man. He knew who he was, what he wanted—and, my stars, he seemed to want me. Still, this is not to say he wasn’t a little rough around the edges, not to mention stubborn and hardheaded, but all that made him irresistible. Best of all was his wicked sense of humor. I can’t say it enough—it was so important to me—he made me laugh! Michael is very soft-spoken and you have to listen to him hard so that you wouldn’t miss his zingers because he kind of mumbles, but those zingers—priceless! This son of the sea was literally a breath of fresh air: when he entered the room, I found myself gasping with pleasure. He was no longer Mr. Shaggy Man; he was somebody I could talk about with my friends and family. I felt so proud of him; he was the manliest guy I ever met, and he was so very divorced. I could bring him into the restaurant and show him off. We could snuggle together without me feeling guilt. We could make passionate love together. My days and nights all of a sudden became very healthy. I loved him so much.
Wasn’t long before we settled into a very comfortable lifestyle. He and I stayed in my condo, just a stone’s throw away from his house. My tiny dogs, Sam and Otis, were in heaven, because now they had Cody, Michael’s big old black Labrador, to bully. Michael’s children were pretty grown. Michelle was nineteen and lived in his home, as she had all her life, a very responsible young woman who was really concentrating on getting her nursing degree. Anthony, Michael’s sixteen-year-old son, was away at military school. I loved that my neighbor was in daily contact with his children and was completely in love with them, just as I was with mine.
Then disaster almost struck. We were that close to ending it all. God, life is a roller coaster and words can hurt like the devil.
We’d been together every night for a month or so, and one weekend, my best friends from Albany, Susan Dupree and Ann Hanson, were visiting and staying in the upstairs bedroom. I was so proud to introduce Michael to them. One early evening, after dinner, we all said good night and went to our rooms. Michael and I were lying naked on our bed and just talking—that slow, easy, confidin’ kind of talk. We felt so close, so tied together, that it seemed it was the right time to tell him about this long dead-end affair I’d been having. So, there I was, making nervous chatter, trying to get into confession mode big time, talking and talking, trying to explain why I’d stayed in a terrible relationship for ten years. I hoped Michael was hearing how desperately I wanted him to tell me it was going to be different with us. He said nothin’. So, I asked him, “This friendship you and I have started, is it going anywhere? Is there hope we can build a solid, lasting relationship? Would you like me to totally close the door on this married man?”
Well, let Michael tell you what he heard.
“I thought you were asking me,” says Michael, “if you and I should continue to date even if you were still seeing this other guy. I didn’t hear you asking me if you should cut it off completely with him. And I’m thinking, Here I am lying in bed with this woman who has to know I feel something deeply or I wouldn’t be coming back every day. Why would she even ask me that insulting question? I wanted to say, ‘Yes, it’s damn foolish to date a married man, much less ask me if I think it’s a good thing.’
“You put me in a terrible position,” Michael says. “I knew I felt love for you, but I also felt that if you didn’t know the answer to that awful question before you asked it, your feelings might not be as real as mine.”
So Michael answered my question about what he thought I should do.
“I don’t give a shit what you do,” he said.
I was heartbroken.
“Oh,” I said, and got up and got dressed. He also got up, dressed, and left.
That, I thought, was that. I couldn’t catch a break. So, I did the only thing that seemed reasonable, which was to gather up my girlfriends and go out to the mall and shop. And cry and cry and cry.
“What happened?” they wanted to know. “Where did he go, that wonderful Michael?”
Well, it was wonderful, I told them, but he does not give one plug nickel about me. “Why do you say that?” they asked. Because, I answered, he told me so just before he left an hour ago.
Then my cell phone rang and it was Michael.
Oh, I was so happy, I just bubbled into the phone, “We’re shopping, but we’re coming right home now. Oh, stay right there, darlin’!”
When we got back, he was waiting for me at the house.
“I like a little competition,” he said, “and I think I would win over any married guy.” That’s all he said. We didn’t talk about it, except he promised me he’d never say “I don’t give a shit what you do” ever again. And he hasn’t.
So we settled into this fabulous life. We had the water, we had our animals, we were eatin’ good, our kids were well situated in their own lives, and I had him pretty much all to myself. The scene was set for true love.
But now I had to deal with the married man I thought I loved before I knew what true love was. For the last couple of years, I’d been living for the crumbs that the other man threw my way, the crumbs that the pathetic sop of a woman I was thought were all I deserved. Before I’d started making my nightly prayer for a neighbor, I’d also prayed for the strength to end this relationship that could only hurt a lot of people. Truth is, I had long been uncomfortable with the man and the whole situation. I wasn’t raised that way. It was not in my nature to be with a married man even if he protested that his marriage was terrible. But my selfish needs overrode everything else because I’d so craved adult time with a partner even if it was just st
olen moments here and there. Frankly? I secretly always felt this man really didn’t care for me, but he stayed around because I was convenient. I helped him out on occasion. I was a good friend to have because I always stand by my friends. At the same time, I knew that if the man had to make a choice, he would rather I be out of his life than his wife.
So, even before Michael came on the scene, I’d quit calling him. There was silence on his part.
And then Michael came to me.
Soon after we moved in together, and Michael said he didn’t give a shit what I did, and I found out he really did give a shit, my phone rang.
“Hello,” said the man.
“Hello,” I said.
“What’s his name?” he said.
How did he know? I guess because I’d stopped calling.
“Michael,” I said.
“What does Michael do?” he said.
“He’s a harbor docking pilot,” I said.
“I’ll go home and get my things and move in with you—in less than an hour,” he said. “I want you,” he said. “I’ve been a fool. I thought you would always be there. I’m heartbroken,” he said. “I’ll get divorced,” he said.
“I’m so sorry, but it’s too late,” I said.
The man kept calling me, maybe six times a day. He told me that Michael, who was ten years younger, was far too young for me. Another time he told me Michael was probably a pauper out for my money. Then I heard he did a background check on Michael, and I’m sure he saw that my love wasn’t out for my money, because Michael had plenty of his own.
I was shed of the man at last. What I did for what I thought was love. Now, praise God, I had the real thing.
It was coming up on our second Christmas together, and I was dying for a ring, but I thought this shaggy river man don’t know nothin’ about no diamond rings. I confided in my niece, Corrie, “You know, I’m almost hoping for an engagement ring. I’d so wish I’d get that for Christmas but I know he would never do that.”