Crashed and Burned: Will I Ever Learn?

By Gordon D. Jensen

An older man single and living alone was looking for a committed partner. He found a younger woman, and brought her to live with him. Passing shops, she asked for several pairs of high heels. He bought them. Requests involving more money followed like to buy nice clothes, pay installments on her car, and pay her back taxes. She promised to pay it back which she never did. She caroused the neighborhood (on a beach) and hooked up with a young dude. It was easy being seductive and pretty with big boobs. They ended up living together. He felt double crossed. His lingering thoughts were: will I ever learn?

He was mystified.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796090192

Gordon D. Jensen

Gordon D. Jensen is a qualified psychiatrist, pediatrician and sexologist, and holds professorship at a prestigious university in California. He is in clinical practice and does research. He is father of four children.

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Copyright © 2020 by Gordon D. Jensen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/25/2020

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Contents

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

DEDICATION

To the spirits of my parents who believed in me.

One

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I left her off at the curb of Delta Airlines departure destined for her home in Rhode Island. She was dressed in white with a low cut blouse the same as when she arrived three and a half weeks ago—cute as could be. She gave me one of her deep mouth kisses that swelled my jeans like she had done the first day we met at baggage claim arrival three weeks ago. It didn’t make up at all for the last week and a half of hell.

Where did I go wrong? Why did this disaster happen? It had to be more than fifty percent her causing it. My brain searching for answers kept spinning. Will I ever know? And me a clinical psychologist who knows the minds of the mentally disturbed!

An older woman, Beth, seventy to be exact (also originally from RI) who swims in front of my beach house in Santa Cruz had told me about her friend she had known for some years. A single woman, fifty three, had been deaf since birth, but reads lips, and had visited here in Santa Cruz for a month two years ago. At the time, Obama was taking office in a flurry of hope. May it last.

What’s she like? I asked.

Name’s Ruth. She’s about my height, like 5-3, and busty, busty as she moved her hands over her torso in a sweeping bulging motion with a grin on her face showing embarrassment with a tinge of blush. I know my eyes rose in wonder at the mental image of my favorite aspect of a beautiful woman.

Why don’t you give her a call? I know she wants to come back here. Beth took out her cell and wrote down the number.

If she’s deaf how can we talk on the phone?

Oh, she seems to be able to hear somehow? Puzzling—a deaf person who hears? Give her a buzz. I know you’ll like her.

It occurred to me: she’s got some deafness and I’ve got a hearing problem, we have at least that in common. It just might work out.

Two

"H ello Ruth? I’m George, a friend of Beth here in Santa Cruz."

Oh, I visited there two years ago, and love the place. I hope to come back. The voice had the New England or maybe Boston twang but was clear and loud, the response was quick. Can she possibly be deaf?

I had treated a patient Ruth’s age at the State Hospital, short, attractive, long blond hair, totally deaf, but communicated quite well by lip reading. I got used to it. She was a bit mentally ill with a mood disorder, but most pleasant. I flashed on her bust with cleavage as I imagined Ruth on the phone.

We talked for a few minutes. She seemed to have the time available, as did I. The usual questions, I asked if she worked, and at what. She had her own business in helping disabled persons. She had her own car and drove to the homes of a lot of clients.

This tripped off her garrulous description of the hardships in RI. The economy is terrible here. There are no jobs. Lots of people have lost their jobs. People are moving out of the State—24 percent in the past few years. Houses can’t be sold. There are more and more thieves. The weather is horrible in the winter—snow and ice. Summer is too hot. I hate it. I can’t wait to get out of here. She owned a two-bedroom apartment in a 150-year-old building. Her 20-year-old son lives with her. She has quite an extended and close family—five brothers and sisters. Mother is alive; father died suddenly seven years ago. Both were immigrants from Portugal. Seemed to me like a pretty good background. Maybe she’s of sound stock? Her mood was cheerful, and we seemed to hit it off—an auspicious start.

Being a psychologist, I monitored her voice tempo and content. She speaks loudly and assertively without hesitation. Curiously, she often repeats herself in the same conversation and in subsequent ones. Is she unaware that she had already told me once or more? Could this indicate lower than average intelligence? Hardly since she runs her own successful business. She also earned two Associate degrees at U RI. Maybe it’s because the way she was taught to repeat sounds as she learned to speak when deaf? I don’t know, but I’ll just take it her way. I can adapt to her little idiosyncrasies if the big things refuel me.

To my inquiry of her deafness and learning to speak, she explained. I was born deaf—the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck. I was in an incubator for the first three months. Because I didn’t talk at all by age three, my hearing was tested, and it showed I was completely deaf. I began in a school for the deaf. It wasn’t until age seven that a teacher began to teach me to talk.

How did she do it?

"She put her fingers on my throat as she made a sound like’’a ``. At the same time, I put