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During my year of major life changes (divorce, left job, started seminary, moved twice, sold old house, purchased new house, lost friends, made new friends), I began dating again.
My ex-husband and I were together for eight years, five of them married. So I was a bit rusty. I dated a lot in college, but that was college with college boys and a college schedule. This was big-girl dating, and I wasn’t sure how the process worked in the big-girl world.
Fortunately, the first man I dated was a friend. We met while performing in a play, and truthfully, I had a crush on him then. He was gorgeous, intelligent, and he made me laugh all the time – even at spiders.
Over the run of our show, I told him about my arachnophobia in the green room while we were getting into makeup and costumes. Then we’d chat after the show about nearly everything from Star Wars to failed marriages to spiders. It was so easy to talk with him, like we’d known each other for years. I felt safe in sharing my dark fears, and he did the same.
After seeing each other for a few months, he invited me to his office party at his bosses’ new estate in Surry County. This was a big step – being introduced to all his office friends and co-workers, including his boss and his boss’ very snooty wife. It was a ritzy affair, so I dressed in a conservative-but-attractive cocktail dress, smiled at everyone, and bantered appropriately. The day was a bit stilted, but I made a good impression.
After the “official” party, we went to the after-party at a co-worker’s house in suburban Williamsburg. The house was in a subdivision of similar houses, set back in the woods for a “natural” look. The hosts made everyone feel at home offering lots of food and drink, and opening their expansive deck with a hot tub. Small pockets of conversation broke out in each room and on the deck, and I felt comfortable enough to wander from my date and chat on my own with his friends. Still, we stayed in glancing distance, not because I was nervous – I just liked looking at him.
I ended up chatting with one of the secretaries and her husband. The husband seemed nice enough – funny and silly, not very mature, but entertaining in a good-ole-boy kind of way. I’m pretty sure his pick-up truck had a gun rack. I don’t mean that as a judgement, but to explain that he was a country boy and proud of it. Most of my kin in North Carolina are good country, farm-folk, and my father’s side of the family comes from that stock too. So even though I’m a city girl, I fell right in with his banter and his jokes, all the while sneaking flirty glances across the deck at my date.
The conversation drew to a natural close, and we moved on to mingle and chat with other people at the party. Everyone was having a great time. I felt very comfortable with my date’s friends, and they seemed to genuinely like me. Life was looking good – I had a drink in my hand, people glad to have me in their home, a hot date who couldn’t keep his eyes off of me, and a crisp evening on a deck having more fun than I’d had in a very long time. For a brief moment I was in heaven.
It was a short visit.
Question: What lives in the woods, is attracted to light, and crawls across decks at night? Answer: Daddy long legs.
The events that followed seemed to happen in slow motion, seemingly all at once, then they converged into the perfect arachnostorm.
I was speaking with another couple, listening to a story I no longer remember, when I discretely stole a peek at my handsome date, standing only ten feet away. He seemed to be at ease, happily talking with friends. I hoped he would hear good things about me when he got back to work. I smiled, not believing my amazing luck at being with him there that night.
But something felt wrong. Sensing the weight of my stare, he glanced away from his conversation to me. At first his eyes were warm and affectionate, returning my smile. Then, like a kaleidoscope turning slowly, his eyes changed, widening with alarm and horror.
All at once, I was cognizant of everything and everyone around me. The air was suffocating, people spoke but the night swallowed their voices, and a small snigger from behind seared itself into my brain.
Without turning around, I flashed back to the second grade. I knew what dangled just above my head. But this time I was so gripped in terror that I couldn’t move my feet. The couple I with whom I’d been speaking gawked at me in bewilderment.
The spider was on my head. ON. MY. HEAD.
This was so much worse than second grade.
Adrenaline pumped through my veins, shutting down my major organs. I needed to be as small as possible so I sunk down, wrapped myself around my legs, and began to rock like a Rhesus monkey.
My boyfriend was beside me instantaneously. Over and over, like a mind mantra, I whispered in a high-pitched rasp, “Get it off of me. Get it off of me. Get it off of me.” The couple backed away, assuming I was having a grand mal seizure. I heard my boyfriend talking directly into my ear, calm words of reassurance and but I couldn’t comprehend their meaning. There was a spider on my head. Until it was gone, nothing mattered, nothing existed, nothing registered…
Except one thing: the sniggering stopped.
And then it dawned on me. The spider hadn’t fallen from a tree. It wasn’t dangling from the roof. Someone put it there as a joke. I was whimpering on a stranger’s deck, curled in a fetal position, tears streaming down my face and uncontrollable tremors wracking my body. Whoever delivered this spider as a joke was now anathema.
All eyes landed on the good-ole-boy standing directly behind me. No one moved except my boyfriend, who gently lifted the daddy long leg from my bent head and tossed it over the railing. He stood slowly, never once leaving my side. He looked directly into the eyes of the uncomfortable young man, and said with a gracious and considerate voice, “You didn’t know. She’s arachnophobic.”
This one kind statement made wide the road to reconciliation. It was an olive branch to a man who was about to find himself in exile. Good-ole-boy saw his chance to make amends. Unfortunately, he shut it down. “Oh, man! I didn’t know that! But – it ain’t a spider. Y’all know daddy long legs ain’t spiders, right?”
Wrong words. Wrong time.
Arachnophobics aren’t concerned with the species or class of an arachnid. If it has eight legs, creeps, skitters, crawls, or otherwise dangles it is, for our purposes, a spider. Many of us can’t look at crabs because they resemble spiders. So trying to explain away the spider-trueness of an arachnid that you just threw onto a hyperventilating arachophobe will not justify your actions.
I’m not sure what was said after that. My boyfriend ushered me inside the house so I could regain my bearings. The rest of the evening was spent in quiet conversations with anyone other than Good-ole-boy. The rest of the party avoided him too. Even his own wife wouldn’t speak with him. Still, rippling beneath the din of the party for the rest of the night, I heard him plead with anyone who would listen, “It ain’t a spider. Really, it ain’t a spider….”
I walked away with two realizations that night. First, not all men are men. Some are still six-year-old boys, struggling to exist in a grown-up world, not knowing precisely how to navigate. These are the men who will throw spiders on the somewhat attractive girls who talk to them. It isn’t a mean gesture, it’s a desperate attempt to belong, no matter how immature, inappropriate, or misguided.
Second – some men get silly, funny, goofy… they still play with toys, still run around in laser tag like they are GI Joe, still challenge you to a game or Scrabble or Boggle or Monopoly or Clue… they will roll on the ground with a dog, will beg you to go on the tallest waterslide with them, will dress up for Halloween, will buy Bullwinkle juice glasses… they cry at sad movies, run outside with their sled on the first snow day, insist on watching The Great Pumpkin every year, and stand in line for days to see Star Wars, Episode I…
Despite the boyish behavior, these men are real men. The test of man-trueness is this: mercy, compassion, and empathy for the helpless – even at the risk of losing friends. It is the strength and confidence to stand up to those responsible for a thoughtless act, and, without violence, hold them accountable to themselves and others. It is recognizing your own pain, so you can alleviate the pain of others. And it is being vulnerable to love and be loved in return.
This is the man you want to be the father of your children. This is the man with whom you want to build a home. This is the man with whom you want to share your life, so long as you both shall live.
And so I did. My date, turned boyfriend, ultimately became my husband and the father of our beautiful son. He has protected me from spiders and other real-life monsters in all our years together. With exception of the spiders, he lets me do the same for him. He’s my inspiration to become a better person – a me that matters. We are each other’s guides on the road to accepting ourselves, phobias and all. And he’s an incredible example to our son on what it takes to become a man.
My husband still plays and jokes around like a little boy, but that’s just his everyday disguise. He’s really a brave and noble spider-slayer, a responsible father, a romantic husband, and a true man. I am head over heels in love, eighteen years and going strong.
And he’s really hot. Did I mention that?
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