May

     May Carlisle got out of bed every morning except Sunday at 6:00 a.m. and ran, not jogged, two miles before breakfast.  She never missed, even when it rained, except for once during the winter when there was a blizzard going on and the snow was too deep and the wind too strong and cold.  She was quite proud of the fact that she could do the two miles, when the whether was fit, in just under fifteen minutes.

    She ran in a vacant field not from her apartment, and she knew it was two miles, because she had taken her car down one Saturday afternoon and driven around twice to check the mileage on the speedometer.

    Her roommate, Sally, though she was crazy and said so every chance she got.  Sally believed in sleep in the mornings.  She had her toilet routine timed down to the minute so that she knew exactly when she had to get up and start in order to get to her job at the stroke of eight.  She was very cranky in the mornings.  May was cheerful and boasted of how good she felt in the mornings, and sally suspected that she felt just as lousy as she, Sally, did but was too damned stubborn to admit it.  The mornings were the only time when they did not get along.  The rest of the time, they were best friends and were quite happy in each other's company.  They had shared their apartment for over three years, and they were accustomed to each other's habits by now.  Sometimes Sally worried, because they were like a couple of old maids, and she didn't want to become and old maid.

    May, on the other hand, was an activist in everything that she did.  She did not appear to worry about things, when she saw a problem that needed fixing, she got to work and fixed it.  She was involved in all sorts of activities and organizations, and sometimes Sally suspected that a good share of the groups were working for diametrically opposed goals.  But May didn't care about that, it was the participating that counted.

    May's only real handicap, and it was the one that she could not conceal, was her love life.  She was atrocious with men.  She either scared them to death, or else she got into raging arguments with them about such absolutely unromantic things as politics, or business, or even, of all things, sports.  May had had more first dates than any girl in the city.  And she had had an equal number of last dates.  Sally knew that her lack of success with men bothered her, and she tried to counsel her about how to act with one of the elusive creatures, but May was, among her other attributes, stubborn.  She was convinced, or rather she had convinced herself, that the reason that men were not turned on to her was because they were somehow inferior men that she had been dating.  She stated that she was confident, that when the right man came along, he and she would fit together and mesh like two cogs.  If she were to change her personality just to attract men, then she would be dishonest and would wind up being unhappy besides with the mate that she finally settled for.

    Another of May's problems was that she was good at most of the things that she attempted.  She skiied well enough to show up most of the men in the ski club that she belonged to each winter when they took their ski vacations.  Her bowling average was 175, she had studied on her own and could speak quite well, German and French; she was a member of a sky diving club, she shot skeet, and she was one of the best sports car rally drivers in the city.  She was also a competent skin-diver and held a private pilots license.  It was no wonder that May had trouble with men.  She could do everything better than most men, and that is an almost impossible handicap for girl to overcome.  To make matters even worse, she was an excellent tennis player, and her gold handicap was 14.

    Her friends had arranged dates for her with every sort of male that they could think of.  They had talked to her beforehand and cautioned her to play submissive, and to let the poor guy win at least occasionally.  But May was a competitor.  There was something about a challenge of any kind that drove her beyond the edge of restraint.  Competition of the most ordinary sort kindled her spirit and, like an alcoholic, or food addict, there was nothing that she could do to stop herself until she had mastered her opponent.  She usually ended her dates standing at her front door while the relieved young man scurried for the elevator promising himself never to be caught in that section of town again.