L.A. Affairs: Graham Nash isn’t around? New idea: Date an engineer

I was a single woman in my mid-40s and enjoying the active outdoor life of the South Bay beach communities. The place teems with people having a good time, and I was one of them.

Of course, I would have preferred to be in a one-on-one relationship; it just didn’t seem necessary or worth the trouble of trying. At the beach, throw on a tee and shorts, wander barefoot, hang on the Strand or with the neighbors, and spend nights alone. A lot of people live that way.

One day while I was running on the Strand, I spotted an old friend skating. He grinned while describing a class he was teaching at the South Bay Adult School: Each week he took folks around to local artists’ in-home studios. “There’s a lot of good art here,� he said. “Like, we’re going to Graham Nash’s digital print studio.�

“Graham Nash?�

“Yeah, he has, like, the No. 2 studio in the world for serigraph prints, you know.�

“So your class is going to meet Graham Nash?�

“No, not likely, but we’re touring his studio.�

That was enough for me. I signed up for the next semester that same night.

My social circle thought they were onto me: “Taking a night class� is a cliche for finding marriageable guys, right up there with “doing some volunteer work� and “joining a church.� But I knew it was really about Graham Nash. And I felt above any man-hunting suspicion on the first night. The class was a large group of older women and two men, both middle-aged engineer types.

Southern California is full of engineer types. My daddy was an aerospace engineer; my friends’ daddies were aerospace engineers. I’d lived my ‘70s childhood in an Orange County enclave of them and my young adulthood in Pasadena surrounded by swarms of them learning their profession at Caltech. They were ubiquitous in the South Bay too, since many had settled there in the 1960s near defense industry employment. They share the sunshine and ocean views with the young, physically oriented society I preferred. So I’d known engineers my whole life.

On the second night of class, one of the two engineers asked me out for coffee. I declined, using an excuse that’s polite but unmistaken code for “Don’t ask me again.� It worked.

Engineer No. 2 didn’t ask me out, but he followed me around annoyingly whenever our class was allowed to wander in the various studios. He gasped in shock the night I touched some art — a piece of pottery for sale. Another time, he interfered with my negotiations to buy a painting, claiming he liked it too and suggesting we “share custody.�

After six weeks, on the last night of class, he hinted around that “someone� might want my phone number. I don’t know why, but I gave it to him. We hadn’t met Graham Nash, but I’d gotten a date after all.

He still had a lot of my prejudices to overcome, though. It didn’t help that I figured out, just before our first date, that he was 10 years older than I had pegged him to be. I went ahead with our date only to be polite. I had a miserable time too — bored visiting an artist we’d met in class and window-shopping in Riviera Village.

But then, at Coffee Cartel, the date took a turn. This boring engineer type speculated that cats might land feet-first on the ceiling if tossed high enough. I laughed out loud. Then I went out with him again to see if he had any more amusing ideas.

Three weeks later, I was in love. He was nothing like anyone I had ever taken seriously, nothing like anyone I was even mildly attracted to. He was an engineer through and through, and, I found out, he had lots of interesting ideas. When he didn’t have a new idea, he was full of outlandish stories about old ideas. He grilled salmon and eggplant deliciously. He was shy but a lot of fun. And adventurous — the first time he flew in an airplane, he parachuted out of it. He raced his Austin-Healey on the amateur circuit and a Renault as a semi-pro. Turns out engineers can be interesting. Lucky for me, he was interested in me too.

We’ve been married just over 10 years. We still live in the South Bay, still share whatever new ideas pop into our heads, still run into friends around town.

The other day at Costco, I struck up a conversation about Hawaiian shirts, art and guitars with a beachy stranger — a tall, good-looking guy with a beautiful accent. It was Graham Nash.

Cooper is a hospice social worker living in the South Bay.

L.A. Affairs chronicles romance and relationships. Past columns and submission guidelines are at www.latimes.com/laaffairs. If you have comments to share or a story to tell, write us at [email protected].