The two old friends from university were sitting on the back porch of the summer house Stephanie had rented for the month, in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, looking east out over the Atlantic, blue water sparkling forever into the distance. The next land-stop was England. Stephanie reached for her glass of iced tea and stirred it before sipping.
For many years she had not paid much attention to birthdays.
"I'll be thirty-five years old at the end of the month. The end of this summer, Jed."
Jed shrugged and vaguely waved his pint glass of ale. "So? You're not twenty anymore? Regardless of the years it seems to me you've got just about everything you want, all under control at that."
"Thirty-five. What is the life expectancy of a female in the United States these days? Seventy something? Seventy-four?"
"I think it's a little more than that, but that sounds about right. So you'll be thirty-five at the end of August. You've got a superb job, a nice place to live. Lots of folks can't say that."
"You forgot the other part of Mona's Law." Stephanie issued Jed a challenging look.
"Mona's Law? You'll have to remind me."
"An Armisted Maupin character, from 'Tales of the City.' Mona opined that indeed it was possible in life to have a good job, a good place to live, and a good lover. Just never all at the same time."
Jed's smile was familiar, indulgent. "Okay, so you are missing a lover. But that's your choice, and as far as I can tell this summer, you are not lacking for love, or physical intimacy anyway."
Jed was not only an old friend but a former lover of Stephanie herself, back in their college years at the University of Massachusetts. He resisted the urge to reach over and put his arm around her, knowing how ambivalent her feelings were about their time together.
Stephanie regarded him carefully, recollecting a copulation event with a local fisherman in the dunes scarcely a week earlier.
"You're right. Of course. And I shouldn't be complaining. But regardless of the exact actual life expectancy, it feels to me like I am about halfway there. And of course just because life expectancy lies somewhere into the seventies, at least here in America, that doesn't mean I'm going to make it that far. But halfway through life? Does make one think a bit."
She pushed a loose strand of her darkly blonde hair back behind her left ear. Normally her shoulder length hair was thin and straight, but the ever-present salty ocean air made it thick and frizzy, which both pleased and irritated her for different reasons.
Jed looked at her evenly. "You're mid-thirties, yes. Still playing tennis. Still with strong legs and shoulders." He squeezed her right leg just above her knee. "You look good Steph, I'm not just saying that out of politeness."
"The thighs are thicker, Jed. Everything else too. You know that as well as anyone."
Jed shrugged again. "Not by much and doesn't matter. I am speaking of the whole package. I see guys on the beach, younger guys, staring at you in your bikini. No question to me there's hunger in their eyes."
He regarded her carefully, not wanting to say the wrong thing. "And you're smart as hell and I don't even want to know how much you earn at Random House."
Stephanie leveled a look at Jed that didn't leave much room for discussion. She'd gotten that position out of her own hard work and determination, and maybe Jed could have as well if he'd applied himself. So she was at a big mainstream publisher and he was stuck at the SUNY imprint in provincial upstate New York. There was no need for him to spotlight their income disparity.
"So what is it you want, Steph? You want a guy? You've said over and over that after your first marriage, and even before that, with me even, that the entanglements weren't worth it."
"No, you're right again. I don't want a guy. I am thinking for this birthday, this final birthday on the Cape, that I want a last blast of summer. Not a guy, but guys. Plural."
Jed put his head back and laughed long and loud.
His eyes twinkled when he returned his gaze to Stephanie.
"You're serious. And ever since I've known you there was never one guy who could keep you happy anyway, myself memorably included. Unlike work, or any other aspect of your life, on the romantic level you're like a pogo stick with ADHD, hopping from one fellow to another, never landing for long."
"Yep. That's how it's gone. And I don't mind it for the most part. It's a feature, not a bug."
Jed spread his hands. "Okay. That's fine. But you just said 'guys' plural. I can guess what that means, but is that really what you want?"
Stephanie leveled a look at him and neither spoke for a moment, both minds at work.
"You're simple, Steph."
"Oh? I was sure you'd never think that. How so?"
"You want unconditional love. All the time."
"Doesn't everyone?"
"Maybe. But most of us know how unrealistic that is and adjust our sensibilities accordingly."
"You don't think I do that?"
"I am sure you do. But I get the feeling you would never grow tired of being worshiped on a continual, even perpetual, basis."
She laughed. "Well said. And you're right, I wouldn't."
"I am intensely fond of male appendages," she continued, "just don't much like the fellows they're attached to."
Jed's snicker was short and knowing. "Well, I suppose that's a problem then, isn't it? You need your own basement glory hole then?"
She glared. "That's about the most insulting thing you could suggest to me. What a stupid idea."
Jed spread his hands. "How so? All the cocks you could want, no personalities attached? A constant stream of erections? You know I would be happy to feed the fellas, keep everyone hydrated and ready for you."
"A constant stream of semen maybe." Stephanie almost smiled. "All right, so maybe not so stupid, although the idea of glory holes makes me puke." She thought for a moment. "But no, cannot get into that part of it all. Can't Be That Impersonal."
"So you want some closeness, not one-night stand stuff, but not too close? Such as a lover that you'd have to please? Accommodate? Admit that he has some agency himself, and needs and wants and desires that would, might, maybe, involve you? You're dreaming, kid." Jed shook his head.
"You're probably right."
Stephanie's annoyance with Jed had always gone up and down the scales, although in recent years, since they were now unattached and just summer friends and housemates, it was only a one or two note deviation. Jed was hard to dislike, and that was almost the problem. Too much a people-pleaser and not assertive enough himself.
Their last fight on breakup night back at UMass wasn't even that dramatic. Jed had hardly stood up for himself, reason enough for Stephanie to think she'd made the right move.
Their discussion that afternoon veered away into different areas, but the topic didn't exactly go gentle into the good night.
****
At lunch the next day, over sandwiches on their picnic on the Marconi Beach, even the warm on-shore breeze hadn't been enough to coax the sand-and-surf crew to a sizable crowd. Stephanie lobbed another barb Jed's way.
"I take it you're the kind of person who thinks the word 'fuck' is a copulative conjunction?"
Jed leveled a weary look at Stephanie. Another taunt, however witty, about his not taking linguistics at UMass, while Stephanie had taken every elective possible in that department while they were there. And then she'd gone on to the Big Job at Random House. Why the constant bombardment?
The zinger hadn't quite come out of nowhere. They had been discussing authors they'd had to edit who had exaggerated notions of their own grammatical excellence. But it seemed Stephanie's graduate school competitive nature had kicked into gear again. Jed elected to respond with a tangent.
"That sounds like something Edmund Wilson would have said to Mary McCarthy."
Stephanie laughed. "Sorry. You're right. I can actually hear him saying that."
"Amazing marriage. Archetypes of the creative/crazy couple. Passionate one minute, fighting like tomcats the next. They loved their summer place here, what, two miles from where we are?"
"Yep. Pamet Road. I'll take you by some time. McCarthy did her novel 'A Charmed Place' about Wellfleet. Wilson wrote about Gull Pond. They'd picnic there and then copulate out in the sand beyond the pond."
"Booze, the art scene, famous visitors. Wilson's caustic intelligence making him a fierce critic. Mary the sometimes spellbinding author, although in her Wellfleet novel, written after they divorced, she savaged the character clearly modeled on Wilson."
"John Dos Passos lived not far away, right?"
"Yes. And other literary figures flitted in and out. Beaches, oceans, hedonism, an open sky, all drugs to the muses and their charges. Cape Cod has launched a lot of literature, Jed."
Jed thought about Stephanie's own contribution to the field, her monograph "Colonial Rectification: Punctuation Evolution and Imperialism in English Orthography from Medieval to Modern." Jed had been thrilled to be included in the book's dedication, "To Jed and Zeugma," even though his name was paired with the name of Stephanie's Persian cat. But he reckoned that if he ranked as high as the feline in her life it was a compliment and an honor.
They ate quietly for a bit, staring off into the Atlantic.
With a dessert apple in hand, Stephanie began her complaints anew.
"Tired of this flab, Jed."
Stephanie grabbed her belly and held a roll of fat.
Jed eyed her carefully. "I know plenty of folks our age who don't look as good as you in the type of bikini that your wearing, Steph."
Indeed it was plain white, contrasting nicely against her bronzed skin, the top designed to make for a nice breast-valley of cleavage, and the bottom rode low on her hips. As they were sitting cross-legged facing the ocean on their beach-blanket, Jed noted, not without interest, a few dark pubic hairs poking out from the seam next to her groin.
"I would not worry. Your boobs have filled out since college, nothing that's gonna bother anybody but you."
