"Good morning, Connie," I say to my administrative assistant as I enter the main office. As usual, I'm right on time, and she's already at her desk. She returns my greeting and stops typing to watch me hang up my coat and start to make the coffee. I never expect her to make the coffee; in fact, I don't let her. I've been woke since before that was a term.
"You look relaxed this morning," she comments, and I look over to see her knowing smirk. Connie can always tell when I got laid last night. Every single time. It's become something of a joke between us.
"It's a beautiful day," I deflect, and then ask her about her evening. She talks about family stuff, her son's baseball game. I chat with her long enough to be polite, then excuse myself to go into my small office. She's right, actually. An evening of sex usually does put a figurative spring in my step, and more importantly, it seems to clear my mind. As soon as I clear e-mail, I should be able to tuck in to my planned day of lecture notes and the next chapter of my manuscript with great focus.
The focus will last until this evening. Then I'll go home, feed my demanding cat, make a martini, and settle into the sofa with my laptop and start obsessing about what happens next with last night's date.
A college campus is a good place to be a middle-aged single man. Lots of professional women and support staff, many of them divorced; and ample time and excuse to wander from department to department and flirt with them. And of course, the occasional star-struck graduate assistant. I know it's a clichΓ©, but I've had my share.
The thing is, I do have a weakness for getting into relationships. I should stick to friends with benefits and booty calls. And from what I can tell, Anna, the research assistant from the Chemistry department who took me home last night, might be completely happy with an arrangement like that. I'll still send her a "thanks again for last night" text, of course, but then I'll obsess about reading between the lines of her reply. The fact is, I do like the pursuit. I enjoy getting to know a woman, the energy of a budding relationship. But that invariably eventually leads to awkward conversations about "So what are we doing?"
So after a quick polite text, I log into one of my kink sites and start scrolling through my feed and my discussion groups.