A beautiful 17-year-old patient once asked me to a boat party. Perhaps having spent too much of my life staring at books and playing with transistors, I had no idea what a boat party was, so I asked her, “Ah, what's a boat party?”

Tara explained, “It's where we get together on a boat at night and drink!” Cognizant that I am somewhat of a nerd, I was certain that I—28 years old at the time—would have very little in common with a group of drunk teenagers. It would also make for quite a scandal; I can hear it on the TV, “Doctor parties with group of intoxicated teens. Story at 11.” I passed.

Nevertheless, Tara was not easily dissuaded. I'd originally seen her in the ER for a minor hand abrasion, and ordinarily one ER visit would be more than enough for something like that. However, Tara would have her Mom bring her back to the ER at least once per day, ostensibly so that I could check her wound and change the bandage. Tara made quite a spectacle out of the fact that “only Dr. Pezzi can touch me,” so the nurses had a great time teasing me about this impossible puppy love.

One of the ER techs, who apparently wanted to get me fired, kept telling me that an 11-year age gap was not a big deal. He thought that I should ask her out because “she's cute and seems like a lot of fun.” I may not have the wisdom of Aristotle, but I certainly have enough sense to steer clear of jail bait. No way, I told him.

And that was that, or so I thought at the time. Years later I bumped into Tara in a grocery store, and I learned that she'd been married and divorced. “How ‘bout you,” she asked, “you married?”

“No, not yet. I'm still looking.”

Actually, that was something of a lie. I wanted to get married, but a couple of years before I'd concluded that every intelligent, attractive, kind woman who had her head screwed on straight was already married. After deciding that, I thought I might as well move up north where there is even less chance of finding a desirable woman but a heck of a lot more snow on which to snowmobile.

Tara smiled. “You want to go out sometime? I'm not dating anybody. Tell you what, I'll call you. You're in the phone book?”

She never called. Instead, she showed up at my home on a warm summer day. I heard the doorbell ring when I was in my downstairs shower, and the second I heard it I regretted not installing an intercom from my porch to that room. I threw a towel around me and left a trail of water as I headed upstairs.

I was more than a bit surprised to see her, and I couldn't believe that she had not called first. Oddly enough, she didn't look the slightest bit fazed by the fact that I was standing before her half-naked. “I was in the shower.” As if that needed to be said.

“Go ahead, finish your shower. I'll wait.”

When I returned upstairs, she was sitting on my couch, thumbing through a book. She asked if we could sit on my back deck, and I agreed. Perhaps I'll get a clue, I thought.

No such luck. After speaking with her for a few hours, I still did not have any idea why one of my neighbors warned me not to become involved with her. He did not know that she'd been a patient of mine in the past, but somehow he knew her—or knew of her. I told him that I'd met her in the grocery store, and as soon as I mentioned her name he cautioned me about her. Somehow I never got around to asking why, but as Tara and I sat on my deck I secretly mused about how he knew her. Since my neighbor was an attorney, that opened up many possibilities. Bad possibilities.

About the only thing that Tara seemed interested in discussing that day was her stretch marks, which she was ashamed of because she thought they marred her otherwise flawless body. Perhaps because I was a doctor, and perhaps because she wanted to judge my reaction to them, she pulled up her shirt.

“Do you have a child?” I asked.

“No, she's gone, but I still have these marks to remind me. What do you think of them?”

I wasn't sure what she wanted from me. A couple of the women I've dated were reluctant to show me their bodies because they feared they would not match up too well against the thousands of naked bodies I have seen as a doctor. Evidently they imagined that every ER patient who needed a breast or pelvic exam was a Scandinavian teenage supermodel. Little did they realize how different the bell curve really was.

I gave Tara a few tips on what she could do to minimize the stretch marks, but I explained that there were not any highly effective treatments. Going back to the still-unanswered question in my mind, I knew that my neighbor hadn't counseled me to avoid her because of the stretch marks. A suspicion crept up in my mind, but there was no courteous way to ask her about her missing baby and whether she'd gotten off on a technicality. Or perhaps that wasn't her dark secret after all. But what was?

As the sun slipped behind the western trees on my property the summer air quickly lost its heat, and Tara suggested going inside. She had on nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of short shorts. Before we had taken more than three steps into the house with Tara in the lead, she turned around and threw open her arms for a hug. One of the things I've learned as a doctor is that there is no good way to get out of a hug, but off the top of my head I cannot recall any patient who'd initiated a hug that I was not glad to give—except this one. I thought it was somewhat creepy that I was alone with someone whom I'd been somberly warned not to become involved with for a reason that still puzzled me. But what could I do? I hugged her, but I did not reciprocate with the same interest as she was expressing. As we separated, she mentioned that she was now unable to have children. I wondered what the intended effect of that revelation was. Was she suggesting that we could have sex without a condom while avoiding the possibility of pregnancy? Did she want sympathy and another hug, this one with a bit more zest behind it? I don't know. Figuring out women is not my forte, which may be one reason why I'm not yet married. I usually do not realize what women want until six months after we've broken up, and those relationships were decidedly more straightforward than my current situation with Tara.

I had to admit that I was tempted, though. “Delicious” was the best word I could think of to describe Tara's legs, and it had been a long time since I'd been with a woman. But, horny or not, I couldn't get over the fact that Tara had once been my patient, and that someone I trusted implicitly had warned me not to get involved with her.

Tara then gave me a puzzled look. I think that she was used to consorting with men who, when given the same hints as I had just received, would now likely be groping intimate areas of her body. But they'd not had the same baggage that I had to contend with: former patient, and dire warning from a well-respected source. OK, that's it, I thought. No sex, no Tara, no way.

I am sure my face revealed that I had something on my mind other than sex, so she said, “I'd better go now.” Finally, that was that, and she left.

As soon as she walked out my door I lost all interest in finding out why my neighbor warned me about her. I was content to put this matter to rest, but when I mentioned to a friend that I was writing about this story, she convinced me I had to find out more about Tara's past. That proved to be a greater challenge than I'd anticipated. I thought my neighbor would explain it to me, but he said that he couldn't because he was obligated as an attorney to keep information about her confidential. I didn't know how else to proceed, so I called her up.

“Gee, it's been ages. I didn't think you were interested in me, Kevin.”

“I thought I might be coming down with a cold that day, so I did not want to risk giving it to you,” I lied.

“That was considerate of you. So how have you been?”

“Busy as usual. How about you?”

“Fine, but I've had a frustrating weekend. I bought a computer a couple of months ago, but lately it's been crashing all the time. Do you know anything about computers?”

“I know a few things. Do you want me to take a look at it for you?”

She did. The only way I could think of to correct her problem was to reinstall Windows, and after that her computer seemed to work OK.

“How did you learn so much about computers, Kevin?”

“I really don't know very much, but I had one computer in the past that I could keep running only by reinstalling Windows every week or so.”

“Hey, I also wanted to thank you for giving me the tips on reducing stretch marks. They're not gone, but they look better. Want to see?”

The improvement surprised me. The marks were now just barely visible, but I knew that some of the apparent reduction may have been due to the fact that she now had a tan, and tans can temporarily camouflage stretch marks. But, temporary or not, I liked what I saw. She had been wearing an ankle-length dress, but to show me her abdomen she just unzipped the dress and let it fall to the ground. There were those delicious legs again, now looking more delicious than ever. Because of her bra and panties, I could not see much more of her than I could on the day she had unexpectedly dropped by my home, but I now felt a surge of blood in my groin.

“Well, do you like what you see?”

I could not answer that directly. While part of me was all too ready to forget about her murky past and give her redemption whether she deserved it or not, I still had enough functioning brain cells to realize that the decisions made by testosterone are often the ones that lead to regret. “They're much better. Did you follow all of my tips?”

“Every single one of them. Thank you, Doctor!” she said while stepping toward me as if for a hug.

Knowing that my willpower was tenuous, I knew this was a hug I had to avoid. I suddenly interjected, “Hey, I've got an idea. Let's go out to eat. Are you hungry?” Anything to get out of her place.

A flash of disappointment spread over Tara's face, then her mouth widened into a smile. “Yes, I'm starved!”

Tara seemed too ebullient for someone who was merely hungry. After all, she'd just finished her lunch when I arrived five hours before. I surmised that her vehemence was attributable to the fact that I finally seemed to want to do something with her that couples normally do.

As we ate dinner, I contemplated how I could pry into her past without seeming too nosy. Finally, I decided to begin talking about my neighbor, the attorney. “Bill is a great guy. I'll never forget the first day I moved to this area. I did not know anyone, but he and his wife came over and introduced themselves. I ended up going over to his home that night, and we spent several hours talking. It was nice to make a friend so soon. Normally, I am fairly shy and it takes me a long time to make friends.”

“I've noticed,” Tara said wryly. “Yeah, Bill is a great guy, and a sharp attorney, too. He really helped me out once.”

I wanted to see if she would take the bait. She did.

“Really?” I asked. “How so?”

“Remember how I asked you in the ER years ago if you'd go with me to that boat party?”

“I'll never forget it.”

“Well, I wish you would have gone with me that night. I didn't have a date, but I still tagged along with my friends. One of the guys who was there figured that if I did not have a date, then I'd automatically start messing around with him. Dave was not my type, but he wouldn't take ‘no' for an answer. He kept pestering me, and I kept telling him to buzz off. However, after I'd had a few drinks I stopped brushing him off. It felt really good the way he was kissing me, and before I knew it we were having sex. The booze then started to wear off and I began crying ‘cause this was my first time and it wasn't the way I wanted it to be. I told Dave to get off me but he wouldn't. After he came I got really worried because I knew I was in the middle of my cycle. My girlfriend Beth told me not to worry because I could go to the doctor and get a morning-after pill to prevent pregnancy.”

“Did you do that?”

“Yeah, but it didn't work. The doc told me it isn't 100% effective.”

“That's true.”

“I couldn't get an abortion because I think it's a sin, so I had the baby even though I didn't really want it. My Mom kept urging me to get married so the kid would have a father around. I wasn't crazy about Dave, but he'd gotten a job working for some really rich guy, taking care of his yard, and making pretty good money. Then Dave started having problems with his back. He called me from work one day and asked me to bring over his pain pills, and that's when I met his boss, Allen. I think Allen took a real hankering to me because after that he treated Dave as if he was a buddy instead of an employee. Allen would invite us to go boating with him and his wife on the weekends, and he was always taking us out to dinner. That's when we got to talking and Dave and I told him about our baby and how we both thought we were too young to have a kid. Allen and Liz—that's his wife—told us how they'd been trying to have kids, but couldn't. They'd both seen all kinds of specialists and had all sorts of treatments, but nothing worked. They were considering adoption, but they were very picky about how they wanted their kid to look. Then Allen asked if he and Liz could adopt our daughter—I guess he wanted a daughter that looked like me. Dave was all for the idea, but I was becoming attached to her, so I was reluctant. That's when Allen pulled out all the stops. He'd take us with him on his private jet on trips around the country, and we even flew to Europe once. He treated us like royalty. After all that, I couldn't say no. Plus, he'd offered us $100,000, and Dave and I planned to use that money to buy a new home. So we let them have our daughter. That's when I met Bill, who handled the adoption for us. Bill told us that Allen might pay even more, so he negotiated with Allen's attorney and we got $25,000 more. Allen wanted another child and Dave kept asking me to stop taking the Pill, but I didn't want to have another kid, not even for $125,000. That's when Dave and I started fighting all the time. I hated being pregnant, throwing up all the time, and the pain of childbirth was something I couldn't face again, so I had my tubes tied. My doctor didn't want to do it at first because he said I was so young and I might change my mind in the future, but I told him I'd had one kid and that was more than enough for me. Anyway, Dave and I ended up getting a divorce. He said I was being selfish, and I thought he was.”

The waitress then appeared with the dessert tray and inquired if either of us wanted to try one of their delicacies. Tara said that she was stuffed, and the waitress inquired, “How about you, sir?”

“No, thank you. I've had more than enough.”

Tara smiled, thinking that I was speaking of the food. Not the food, Tara. The explanation.

I will probably alienate a few readers by saying this, but I am always suspicious of mothers who do not live with their children. I once met someone online who was hot and blind enough to think that I was, too. She wanted me to fly down to New Orleans, where she lived, and spend the weekend having sex. I told her that I wasn't interested in sex outside of a committed relationship, so she tried to tempt me by sending several photographs to prove that she was even hotter when she had no clothes on. That she was, but my mind was focused on something else: why didn't her 9-year-old daughter live with her, instead of her grandmother? She explained that she and her daughter were friends, but not like mother and daughter. I thought that was odd, and I repeatedly pressed for an explanation why. She gave more evasive answers, and a few more photographs that I wish I could show you. Physically more tempted than ever, but fed up with her failure to clarify the mystery of why she and her daughter were just buddies who'd get together every now and then, I stopped writing to her.

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The beautiful woman syndrome will affect most men who pursue gorgeous women. However, most men won't recognize the symptoms of the beautiful woman syndrome, nor will they know how to effectively deal with it. Do you? Find out on: www.bwsyndrome.com