Six months after moving in together, Julie and I had adapted to domestic life together amazingly well. For one thing, Julie loved living in New Yorkāthe theaters, the dance clubs (I took her dancing regularly), Central Park, the restaurants, and just the variety things that were available. But most nights we just stayed at home like normal people. That might sound pretty mundane, but I think that's where May-September romances often fall apart; the things that interest people born of different generations can be quite different, and the inability to find things to do together on a regular basis can doom a relationship. Julie and I found things we both likedāAdult Swim, for instanceāand when we didn't, I would surf the web or play one of my geeky MMORPGs while she would watch TV or play around on Youtube or Myspace.
The way that we earned a living had evolved as well: we had learned that the best stock tips came not from fancy restaurants, but at the health club. We were doing fine before, but now we were doing very well financially; we were able to move out of the hotel and into a rented brownstoneāwe wanted to buy, but on paper it looked like I hadn't worked in a year and Julie hadn't held a job since she was 18. It was going to be a while before the combination of down payment and credit the bank was willing to give us added up to enough to buy the kind of place we wanted.
But as our trading accounts grew, my fears of Julie leaving me increased. I always felt that she was too attractive to stay with someone like me, and now that she didn't need me financially, it just felt like she was slipping through my fingers. One side effect of these feeling was that I didn't always leave Julie enough room to operate; if a guy looked like he was getting the wrong ideas, I tended to interrupt them. Julie was frustrated with me, because she interpreted it as that I didn't trust her. I suppose in a way she was right, but it wasn't because of her; it just reflected the fact that I didn't feel like I had much to offer her anymore.
Then one day the reverse occurred. Trolling for tips at the gym, a young and hot but flighty thing started chatting with me andāperhaps because I was standing around the weight room doing nothingāasked me to spot her. Julie saw that, and this time SHE came over to interrupt ME. It was clear that we both had issues, insecurities about each other that needed to be aired out. We tried talking about them, but somehow it always seemed like something was going unsaid. On my part, I couldn't just come out and say that I was sure Julie would eventually leave me, it was a slap in the face when she was telling me she loved me and didn't care about anyone else. I just didn't feel like that was going to stay that way. And there was something she wasn't saying either, but I had no idea what it was.
Julie came up with a novel way to get things back out in the open between us. One night she suggested we go to my favorite restaurant. Over dinner, she said she wanted to play a game tonightāa variation on truth or dare, she said, using our mindreaders. We had agreed that we would only use mindreaders on each other if we were both using them; it was a foolproof way of getting the truth out in the open, and we were the only people in the world who could do it. I was all for itāI didn't like the fact that it felt like Julie was pulling away from me on account of our mutual insecurities.
After dinner she went to the bedroom and came out wearing a lacy lingerie vest and panties. "This game is like truth or dare, but with mindreaders," she announced. She had a stack of notecards and two Sharpies. "I'm going to give you a notecard with a question on it. You don't have to answer, I'll be able to see your answer with my mindreader. Then you get to write a question and use the mindreader on me."
I swallowed hard. This was a darn good idea on her part, but it also promised to end up revealing a lot of intimate thoughts. If any of those thoughts disappointed the recipient, it could be very bad. Part of me wondered whether this wasn't actually a backhanded way of initiating a breakup.
"I anticipated that you might be bit nervous about how this might turn out, so I have a little extra incentive for you," she said. "What's truth or dare without a dare right? Well, see this little vesty-thingy I have on? It has just three little ties holding it together. And these panties," she continued while demonstrating, "have only two. For each question we get through, I'll untie a string. When we get through five questions, there'll be absolutely nothing keeping my clothes on. I KNOW you know what to do after that. So what do you sayādeal?"
I was going to go along with it anyway, but I certainly couldn't pass it up now. I was already eyeing the little bit of cleavage showing above her top, and lusted to see more.
"Okay, who goes first?" I said.
"I'll go first on the first question, you go first on the second, and so on," she said. "So, here's your first question." She took a notecard, wrote something on one, turned on her headset mindreader, and handed it to me. It said:
What do you really think of me?
Thoughts don't lie. They told her I really loved her, not just as a sex partner but as a person, that I had never been happier than I was, and that I hoped our relationship would never endābut feared that given the age difference, it was inevitable.
She turned off her headset, pleased to confirm that I really loved her, but more hard questions were to come. "Okay, your turn," she said.
Rather than write anything new, I handed the card back to her, put on my mindreading glasses, and said "I think this is a perfectly good question."
Her thoughts confirmed that she loved me too, that as far as she was concerned I was the only person she had ever met that likedāor even cared to find out aboutāall of her as a person. Furthermore, she was living a life she had never even dared to dream about, and she owed it all to me. I disagreed with the last part, in that it had taken both of our talents to amass the fortune we were continuing to grow, but this wasn't about arguingāit was about discovering.
Good to her word as always, Julie undid one of her tiesābut she undid the bottom one, little fucking tease. Well, at least now her belly button ring was peeking out.
It was my turn to pose a question. I had an idea; I wrote it down on a notecard and handed it to her.
What is your biggest fear or disappointment in me?
She had no disappointments; sure, it would have been nice if I was younger and more attractive, but it also would have been nice if she wasn't a former sex worker; that's just the way it was. She had a strong fear, however, that I would leave her. We were now well-off, and there were always young, attractive women gunning for guys with money. She was afraid that eventually I would find one that was more attractive and/or better able to satisfy me (as if that were even possible) and that I would leave her for the younger woman.
It never occurred to me that she might have fears that paralleled my own.