I’m really not looking forward to the prospect of being single, if that’s what BC and I eventually settle on, or are already. At the moment, we’re separated–you know, Big & Little Chrissy style, which means we talk only 8 times a day and aren’t sleeping together. I’ve been sampling the waters, the electronic waters, that is, that have risen since last being really single, and am daunted by the ease of access to physical intimacy, of which I have not partaken, mind you, and the challenge of what I like to think of as old-fashioned dating.
You see, I am a dater. I like dating and getting to know someone. I imagine eyeing someone at an opening, blushing, maybe setting up a date for tea in my garden, and maybe then, after he’s sat through Berlin Alexanderplatz with me and still seems interested, maybe then…
All of my prospective online suitors seem fixated on incredibly specific physical characteristics. They’re looking to give form to their fantasies, and I’m looking, too, although my fantasies are a bit more involved and take years to unfold, if not hours to explain. Like I look at a picture of a naked guy on Bear-licious and imagine us throwing back martinis with Gore Vidal and Cy Twombly at our villa outside of Rome before slipping upstairs and ripping our clothes off to celebrate our 15th year of making love twice a day.
And since I’ve been in mostly monogamous relationships that have been mostly monogamous, I haven’t had protected sex in years, decades, and I do not look forward to plastic, latex, sheep intestines, or anything else between me and sensation.
The other day I put on a different pair of glasses, not my goofy ones, but my little wire-frames, and I don’t know what convergence of hormones, star-alignment, weather patterns and pollen made it possible, but I felt sexy–like for the first time in my life, somehow really sexy, like John Travolta in the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever. I strutted down Castro, heads turned, sunglasses came off, high fives everywhere… it was magical. 40 year old men are my thing, and I’m finally one of them!
I deviated significantly in that last paragraph from my opening trepidation about being single, but I suppose it’s a good thing to feel good about oneself, jyes? Remember my utter despair just a few months ago when I looked in the mirror and saw the middle-aged me for the first time? And when have Chris and I been able to really leave each other anyway? We’ve pledged our devotion to each other, and now comes the tough part of deciding what’s the best way for us to express that devotion. And stick with it. Whatever happens, I’m so comforted by the security of his love.