Conventional wisdom says that women over forty years old have trouble finding sex partners. Well, I'm not Miss America and I found sex over forty. A lot of sex. I had twice as many sex partners in my forties as in my thirties. To toot my own horn a bit, I went from being an ugly ducking as a young woman to an attractive swan as a middle-aged woman. Praise the Lord, there is justice in life. If you wait long enough for it -- and work hard enough to get it. I work hard.
When I was forty six I went back to my home town of Kansas City for a visit and there, at a reunion of college buddies, I re-met a man I had not seen for twenty-seven years. Away back in Chapter One, if your recall, I mentioned a wonderful one-night stand I had when I was nineteen. That was John. But we were both cheating -- and we both had attacks of conscience and we didn't repeat the experience.
So suddenly, and by accident, I met this wonderful man again. John was happily married; he had two children, a dog named Spot, and a good job. It sounded like what Republicans call "family values" -- and was very appealing despite the different trajectory of my own life. I didn't tell him I was a recovering alcoholic nor allude to sex experiences with more than one hundred men.
The words pouring out of John. The idyllic marriage had a problem. He told me his wife had multiple sclerosis and as he talked I realized that sex in their marriage had become impossible. He was tied to his home and his needful wife, celibate through loyalty and the demands on his time of a job and his children.
He had no self-pity. It was a frank talk between people who had once been intimate and recaptured that intimacy. When we parted that day, however, his last words were what I wanted to hear. "It was so good to see you again, Becky. Can we meet again? For lunch? Or...uhh...more?"
"I'd love too," I answered without hesitation, "but it has to be soon. I have to go back to work in Thailand in a week." I worked overseas for the State Department as an accountant. "When can we meet? I paused. "For more." My conscience didn't bother me in the slightest. John needed me and I needed to be needed.
His voice lowered and he said confidentially, "How about this Thursday afternoon? Do you want me to arrange something....for more?"
"No need for you to arrange anything," I answered. I'm staying at the Westin downtown, Room three forty seven. Two p.m.?" I pecked him on the cheek and he grinned crookedly, as if he were out of practice at smiling.