She wasn’t self-conscious when I told her to undress. In fact, she seemed to enjoy stripping before me. The way she looked at me as she pulled off her shirt – I’ll never forget it.
I know Cynthia too. Sure, we don’t sit around and have deep conversations about our life stories, but I’ve gotten a sense of her as a person over the last two years. She has such a good head on her shoulders, and I know she’s a good judge of character. So the fact that she wanted me meant something. I felt chosen, in a way.
There was something electric about our physical connection. It’s not because she was young or because it was her first time. It was something about her. I’ve had good sex before, but nothing that incredible the first time I’ve slept with someone.
I think back to my ex-wife. Lianne and I had physical chemistry for sure. In retrospect, it might have been all we had. But even the two of us had to work our way up to it. It wasn’t amazing right off the bat. Part of it had to do with how young we were, but looking back, there was also a lack of trust.
I used to get jealous. It wasn’t just that I would worry that Lianne would cheat on me, I was possessive of her time as well. When she spent too long away from me, I worried. She didn’t trust me either. She was always accusing me of lying or dodging questions. If I didn’t tell her every detail of my day at work, she would say I was hiding something. I don’t think either one of us was a bad person, we were just young. It was our first serious relationship, and we were so unsure about so much in our lives, that we clung to each other. We clung on too hard. It would have been helpful for the both of us if we learned to let go as well. To trust. No good partnership can be formed without trust.
It was an issue inside the bedroom as well. I was hesitant to fully reveal my desires to Lianne, and she sometimes held things back from me in the bedroom.
Cynthia, on the other hand, gave me complete trust, just like that. It’s a sobering thought, really. What have I done to earn that kind of trust? I’m not sure, but I want to live up to it.
I lay down in bed on my back with my arm underneath my head. I don’t even want to compare Cynthia to Lianne. They are two different women from two different parts of my life.
I’m different too. I know what I want and how I want to be. I’m not going to throw everything away to rush headlong into a commitment.
Neither is Cynthia. If I’m willing to bet, she’s not really looking for anything long-term either. Not with me, anyway. She graduates in about two months, and then she’s moving to the city for med school.
A sly grin overtakes me. So maybe we could have some fun. No strings attached. No talk of the future. We could just explore our connection. I imagine late night meetings with Cynthia, and I get carried away considering everything I can teach her.
Then the image of Cynthia clutching her bedsheet to her chest, her eyes wide as she told me she was fine, surfaces in my brain. I can dream about “no strings attached” all I want. It’s not realistic. People get feelings. Young people get feelings.
I suppose I could get emotionally invested as well. I’ve kept all women at arm’s length since my divorce, but I have to admit, I’m not as poised with Cynthia.
Something about her worms its way into me. I want to take care of her. I want to just be with her.
If she had said the word earlier, I would have gladly spent the rest of the evening with her. I wouldn’t have wanted sex, I would have been happy to just make sure she was ok and share a meal. I squirm with discomfort at the thought. The last thing I need is to get attached.
In fact, I shouldn’t be thinking about myself at all right now. I should be thinking about Cynthia and how to best approach her. I definitely don’t want to act like normal. I’m not going to pretend like nothing happened, and I’m definitely not going to resort to pretending to take the trash out whenever she’s coming and going.
We need to talk about what’s happened. Or rather, I don’t need to talk about it, I’ve been around long enough that I know how I feel and what I want. Cynthia is younger and less experienced. She’ll need to talk, and I want to help her with that. I’m happy to be communicative. We can talk, and then we can have more sex. That’s my agenda.
I wince. I probably shouldn’t use the term “agenda” with Cynthia. It makes me sound heartless and calculating.
It’s just that now that I’ve experienced her once, I’m willing to do anything to have her again. And again.
It’s sudden and a bit strange, so I know it could get tricky. I mean, if one of my guy friends told me he was sleeping with a twenty-year-old chick, I would tell him to stop being a sleazeball. I know how I sound when I insist to myself it’s different with Cynthia. I sound like some man hitting his mid-life crisis who is drowning in self-delusion.
I shake my head. Mid-life crises are for men in unhappy marriages. And that’s at least one good thing from my disastrous early marriage: I dodged the bullet of hitting my later years stuck in a miserable union. In a way, I was lucky to get it out of the way early. It was a hard lesson,
