Chapter 33
33
In bed, with the light off, my thoughts wouldn’t stop. Angelo and I hadn’t had sex for a long time before we’d broken up. After we had “set each other free” (his phrase, but please don’t judge him, he’s the best) I knew that, sexually, I didn’t want to shut up shop.
Perhaps it was a post-pandemic response, perhaps it was my libido-boosting testosterone gel, perhaps it was because the world had become a dumpster fire, but my age felt irrelevant and living to the full felt necessary.
The three or four months when I’d been closing down my life in New York felt like a gift of time untethered from consequence.
Online was the only way I knew how to meet men. Straight away, business was brisk, just like my early days in the city, when Jacqui and I had been swamped with men—almost none of them viable.
Back then I’d wanted to find The One; this time round I just wanted fun. Even so, I had to sift through liars, adulterers, grifters and men who wouldn’t date anyone over twenty-five, before I had a brief connection with “a younger man.” Although, at forty-one and forlorn about his divorce, he seemed older than me.
Then I really did meet a younger man. He claimed to be thirty-two but when we met for coffee, I suspected he’d inflated the number by ten years. He mumbled that he was “down to fuck”—and straight away I was out. I hadn’t expected love sonnets but there had to be some romance.
After that, I expanded my age limits up to sixty, because I hoped that the “less young” would be better at human connection.
And so it had proved. Robert was sixty-ish. A blue-eyed biker, he was interesting and full of questions and compliments. He also took longer over his hair than I took over mine, was deliberately vague about how he made his living and the longest he’d ever lived in one place (Montreal) had been three years. Only a masochist would fall in love with him. We had five amazing dates. When I texted, hoping for a sixth, he didn’t reply. I endured a nervy forty-eight hours before having to accept that that was that. Because I wasn’t a sociopath, I was desolate for a couple of weeks. Then, still in the spirit of grabbing life by the lapels, I bounced back.
Everything this evening, starting with Vivian’s proposition, had churned up too many feelings. Eventually, I clicked the light on again and rummaged in my underwear bag, until my hand closed around my wand. I’d thrown it in at the last minute when I was packing and, oh my God, I was grateful.
I hadn’t felt like this in a while; as my access to HRT had dwindled away, so had any interest in sex.
There was an ethical site, to which I had an annual subscription, for women-friendly porn. There was so much in life to feel guilty about and at least I wasn’t giving Pornhub any traffic. But tonight none of the videos were right. The men were over-muscled, the squealing noises from the women were embarrassingly fake and all of them looked too young. Was a hot older guy too much to ask for?
Squeezing my eyes shut, I thought about Ike Blakely, imagining him standing over me, flinging his tool belt to the floor, then slowly unzipping his work jeans. Pulling them down, wrapping his big hand around a thick erection… This was definitely having the right effect.
Thinking about his hands on my hips as I lowered myself onto him. Him growling words of lust, thrusting upwards, grabbing me, speeding up…
The sound of my own gasps surprised me. After a burst of fireworks, my whole being was flooded with relaxed joy. That was gorgeous .