One of the most common questions I get from my readers is if I ever cheat with younger men. Those of you who have read my other work, know that I have a strong preference for older men, for all the reasons I've mentioned there. To be honest, I don't really see too many younger men during my escapades, and I don't seek them out ever. However, I have encountered a few younger men over the years, always unplanned, and always underwhelming, but since the interest is so high, I thought I would take the time to describe one of those encounters.
Another frequent question I receive is, "what causes me to give in and accept a man's advances?" How does an interested man take me from flirting, to behind closed doors? I've mentioned often that cheating means different things to different people at different times. I'm really no exception. Something as innocent as a stern look, the perfect turn of phrase, or a touch that completes a circuit can draw me out from the casual to the intimate. Other times its completely situational, which is a polite way of saying, I'm just feeling really horny. It could be the weather, it could be some sort of anxiousness, it could be the intoxication of a situation, it could be regular intoxication, it could be nothing in particular. Horniness isn't always a decision, and because of that, most of the time I don't give it too much control.
This is one of the times I gave it control.
I remember reading a quote somewhere from some Italian renaissance thinker, something to the effect of: "the purpose of all travel is sex." Which, while I understand conceptually, it never made perfect sense to me. I've traveled a lot, and I enjoy travel, but the majority of the time I manage to complete the travel without any sex, or feeling obliged to have sex. Sometimes if I'm lucky, my husband brings me along on his work trips, but most of the time I'm traveling by myself. I'm not such a wanderer that I travel just for the sake of it. I'm often visiting an old friend, doing some sort of specialty shopping, or attending to some family obligation.
The destination for this occasion was Germany, more specifically Frankfurt. The occasion was a visiting a friend, more specifically, supporting a friend during her father's recent passing. Erica's father had met a German woman after divorcing Erica's mother, and chose to live in Germany with that woman. He was never close during Erica's upbringing, and I remember only seeing him once in the small town we were from. Like many military dads, Erica's father endeavored to be a better grandfather once he retired, but fell ill before he was able to make a real effort at it. He'd spent the last few years languishing in and out of German hospitals, before the family received the long expected, but still unhappy call.
Funerals are not fun occasions, but I felt very strongly that I needed to support Erica. She is a good friend, and she was there for me when my grandfather passed just a year before. I otherwise had no reason to go to Germany at all, which was what I was thinking as I packed the night before flying out.
I met Erica at the hotel, which was stony, and had a sort of insecure grandiosity to it, like it couldn't decide if it wanted to be classical or stylish. She opened her arms, like one does for a child who just got hurt, and gave me a hug as I ascended the stairs with my bags. Her expression was that mixture of shapeless sadness that comes with an expected loss, the joy of seeing an old friend, and the awkwardness of having those feelings blending so obviously in public in a strange place. Her eyes were reddened and puffy, doubtlessly from evenings spent in confused sadness and staggered sobbing. I held her tightly and long in my arms, trying to show her how much I was there for her.
A pair of heels came tapping down the stairs towards us, and a blonde woman in mourning dress reached out her hand towards me:
"Let me get your bag please dear," she said in a German accent, her face also red with recent tears, but nothing so much as Erica's.
The blonde woman waived over a bell boy, who surprisingly enough, actually looked German. A tall, skinny blonde man in his early 20s arrived, wearing all black, poorly fitting clothes that I could tell was a uniform. He gestured as if to ask if he could take my bags for me. I agreed, and my bags were whisked away while I helped Erica and the blonde woman, who turned out to be her stepmother, up the stairs into the hotel.
The days that followed involved the usual and sad work of funerals. I stood as quietly and supportively as I could in my black dresses and pearls. Seeing Erica handle the burial of her estranged father served as a sort of memento mori for me, and it wasn't long before I began to wonder if living life was, as they say, "vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas." After the reception, I let the family be with each other, and retreated to the hotel.
