Prologue

Tuesday

This story starts at the beginning of a very good month for me, romantically speaking. Although, when the month began, I was still in a 5-month dry spell.

Which was fine, it was tech week, and I was directing my first musical at the Riverplains Community Theater. I was very busy, with hundreds of tiny fires to attempt to put out: Some of the lights we ordered for the show arrived broken and no replacements would be available before showtime; Our bass player got stopped with his 3rd DUI and would not be with us for the show; Two of the costumes ordered from New York arrived in drastically wrong sizes and the costume company wasn’t responding to emails or phone calls; Etc., etc. The point is, I was too exhausted every night to even miss getting laid.

One of the wrong-sized costumes went to Christy, the energetic singer in a supporting role. While she was super slender, the evening gown looked like a minidress on her 5’10” frame. She brought in a bridesmaid’s dress she owned, and while not the ideal color, it worked just fine for the part and looked amazing on her lanky frame. She’s 10 years younger than me, but I was thinking I was going to ask her out after the show was over. She’d been awfully flirty. And I hadn’t dated a college girl in ages.

Ok. I’m 31 and she’s 21, judgy-mcjudgepants. I’m not cradle-robbing. Am I? Well, she had to say ‘yes’ before I’d have to worry about that.

Yeah, I’m 31 and single. Never married. Never even came close, much to several ex-girlfriends’ chagrin. I’ve gone to therapy and understand the root cause of why I’m phobic of the institution, but I’m not going to get into it here. This is a sex story and not an exploration of childhood trauma.

Anyway, so, yeah. Most of my straight friends are married and have kids by now, so I have noticed that my hookup rate has slowed down and my prospects have thinned out as soon as my 20’s were over. So, now I’m eying a lithe college girl and trying to convince myself that I’m not a creepazoid for wanting to ask her out.

I’m not into Tindr or anything like that. I like the courtship and the dating just as much as the bumping and the grinding. And when I’m really desperate for affection, there’s always Jean. She and I have been on-again/off-again friends with benefits. Minus the “friends” part, though. We kind of annoy each other if we’re not in a prone position. It’s been ages since we last hooked up, though. I was seeing someone the last time she texted me, and then she was dating a guy two months later, when I texted her. We find each other attractive enough, and the half-dozen dalliances we’ve shared were largely satisfying and efficient (and twice, too drunk to be counted).