I reflected on the difference between young women and older women, and young men and older men. Young women want to be cuddled and appreciated and respected and foreplayed. Young men just want to get to it. But as they age, young men learn that if they want to get to it on any kind of regular basis, they’d best learn how to cuddle and appreciate and respect and foreplay.

Should a young woman be fortunate enough to encounter an older man who has indeed learned his lessons well, she finds him to be the most wonderful, considerate lover ever. Such matches are fortuitous for both parties. But if none of these matches stick, if one finds no happily ever after with that one perfect Mr. Right, as one ages, one can become bored. One discovers to their chagrin that men who would adjudge themselves to be thoughtful and considerate lovers are just as likely as not to in actuality be simply inept and stultifying.

So it only follows that, when a woman reaches a certain age, a certain state of mind, she would just as well dispense with all that thought and consideration and just do it. The expression fast and dirty comes to my mind. Here is where the young men can shine. Since they are young, fast and dirty can also be over and over. What better amusement is there than that?

Especially when one is not looking for happily ever after. When one is just looking for a glorious way to kill an evening, like I was.

Now Maxine wanted to introduce me to someone new. He was definitely no boy, as she had promised, but if all men his age (my age) looked like this one, I would have no use for boys.

Funny what a narcissist I’d become in my old age; perhaps I’d always been one. But I didn’t think about the man – who was he? I only thought, What had Maxine said to him about me?

She’d obviously told him that I was single; had probably told him that I was long divorced. She might’ve mentioned that I’d recently sworn off a penchant for young men.

Facepalm. I thought, Oh, no, surely she hadn’t told this man about all that! That was just too mortifying to be considered, that Maxine, in her charming, youthful naiveté, would discuss something like that with this devastatingly attractive, grown man, something that might seem quite normal to her, but which was, or at least should be, an embarrassment to me. I looked through my fingers, hoping she’d left all that out.

About the Author

Video Interview with the Author

Email the author