Act One, Scene One

A moderately upscale seafood restaurant amid high rise office towers in uptown Charlotte, North Carolina.

The McCormick & Schmick’s that John chose is at the corner of Tryon and 4th Street.  It’s on the ground floor of one of those glass and steel office buildings that were so popular in the boom.  I like this restaurant, and thought it was a good choice for the evening.  It’s not incredibly fancy, but it’s nice enough that we could have a pleasant, “sophisticated” evening.  I didn’t want to meet him in a burger joint, and was glad when he suggested a place like this.  I thought it showed we have similar tastes.

I told the lady at the door that I was meeting someone at the bar, and she merely smiled and gestured over her shoulder.  Looking past her, I saw John immediately.  That is, I saw his hair.  He certainly stood out, with what I was glad to see was a rather unruly shock of brown curly hair on his head.

During the five seconds that I walked across the room toward him, my first thought was that I was relieved to see that he still had his hair, and in pretty much the same style – although tamed from high school, of course.  It was rather long and his curls fell down around his ears, from the back of his head to his shirt collar, and even over his forehead.  It gave him a bushy appearance that might, in fact, have looked unkempt and unattractive in some ways.  But to me, it brought back memories of high school and I found it very intriguing.  It was one of the many things that were inviting to me, that made me want to get to know him better.

One of my pet peeves about men is how they so frequently cut their hair short.  This bugs me because it’s one of the ways men so wrongly deny their own sexuality.  It’s almost as if they neuter themselves, I think.  So the first thing I thought, after the simple relief that John still had his wonderful hair in the first place, was to be happy that John had left it long.  It was a sign that he knew how attractive he was, which is something that I wanted him to revel in and enjoy, rather than deny.  I only hoped that he would feel the same about how I had let my own hair grow rather long over the summer.

I walked up to him without saying anything, but he must have heard me approach in the quiet restaurant.  He turned around and I remember being just a bit overwhelmed by the way he smiled at me.  It was warm and genuine in a way that I hadn’t quite expected.

“Hey, Mark, it’s great to see you.”  He reached out and gave me a confident, comfortable hand shake, and put his other hand on my arm.

It was all so much that I didn’t say anything at first; I just settled onto the barstool next to him.  In that first two seconds of seeing him, it hit me all at once.  He was the same person I knew from high school, I was sure of that, but he had changed – in a positive way.  His face had matured, and I would have to say that he was now more handsome than cute.

As I looked at him, I realized that I was far more confident about appraising a man on the basis of his appearance than I would have been in high school.  I didn’t feel any reluctance in allowing myself to notice his dark brown eyes, his thick eyebrows, and even the eyelashes that Emily had thought were so attractive.  I also noticed his nose and lips, and thought to myself that he has rather prominent features, almost a “heavy,” Mediterranean look to his face.  That can be off-putting to me sometimes, but it was attenuated by just enough delicacy to result in an attractive balance.

You know, looking back on it, I can say for sure that upon first seeing him, I liked him more because he was John, the guy I remembered, now grown into a man, rather than because he was flat-out good looking.  John wasn’t attractive in a drop-dead, motion picture idol kind of way.  But I thought right away that he was a very handsome man, because of features, like the heavy eyebrows and prominent nose, that are appealing to me.  (Probably because I associate those features with him!)  The last thing I noticed at first is that he had very nice skin.  Smooth and tan, but with crow’s feet around the eyes that didn’t bother me.  In fact, I find them to be attractive – on men or women – because they reflect an experience with life that I see as a point of commonality with myself.

We just sort of sat there for a moment, looking at each other.  I gave a little laugh, looked down at the bar, and then looked right back up at him.  There wasn’t anyone else nearby, and I was glad that we had just a moment of quiet to enjoy seeing each other for the first time in so long.

He broke the ice.  “You haven’t changed at all.”

I laughed.  “I was going to say the same thing.”

I paused.  I looked at him closely, and noticed the way he was smiling at me.  He seemed so direct and open.  It emboldened me to be a little more honest.  “I mean, you have changed, of course, but I can still see the same you.”

As I said this, I was instantly afraid it sounded lame, and maybe too forward, but he took it the right way.  He seemed to think for a moment and then smiled.  “Yeah, it’s been a long time.”  He laughed, looked away, and then back at me as he reached over and sort of shook my arm for a second.  I liked the way he was confident in touching me like that, and was aware of trying to let him know so with my body language.

“So how long has it been?”  he asked.

“It’ll be our 25th reunion next spring,” I replied.

“Wow,” he said, and he seemed to be thinking of something.  I thought about the date, too, and was suddenly apprehensive.  Next spring would be 25 years after graduation.  That meant that 24 years ago was the summer after graduation.  That summer when he, when we ….  That time in his car, it could have been 24 years ago tonight, for all I knew.

I changed the subject.  “What’re you drinking?”  I tried to say it lightly, gesturing toward his glass.

“Jack and Coke.”

“Jesus Christ.”

He laughed.  That was what we and the guys would drink to get drunk fast.

“I can’t touch that stuff,” I said, which was true.  “I can’t even look at the label without getting nauseous.”

“Doesn’t bother me,” he said, grinning.  “I love the stuff.”

“You’re a stronger man than I, John.”

The bartender approached us.  She was a pretty young girl in her twenties.

“What’re you having?”  she asked me, brightly.

I looked at her and thought for a moment.  Should I try to prove how strong I am?  No, that’s one aspect of my high school days with John that I’m not interested in reliving.  “I’ll have a gin & tonic,” I said.

“Tanqueray ok?”

“House brand is fine, and lemon please, not lime.”

“English-style, huh?”  She smiled.  “On the rocks, right?”  She wanted to get this right.

“Yes, please.”

“I’ll have another one of these,” John added.

“Ok, coming right up.”

We noticed she had to step away for more supplies.

“This sure brings back memories,” I said, “except we had to be our own bartenders.”

“That’s right,” he smiled.  “We did a pretty good job.”

I looked at him and thought for a moment.  I knew what I most wanted to say to him so I decided just to say it up front.  If this wasn’t his style or he thought it was weird, at least I would know so right away.

“You know, looking back on it, I feel really lucky to have met Gary and the rest of those guys.”  (I said it that way because I knew John before I knew Gary and the others, so John and I sort of met them together.) “They were a really good group of people.  Most of all, they were inclusive, you know.  They never made anyone feel left out.  I understand now how rare that is and how important that is.  I’ve been thinking a lot about it these past few years.”

He looked over at me, and maybe I was flattering myself but I think he was sort of impressed I’d say something like that.  It wasn’t the sort of small talk someone would make right off the bat like this.  What’s more, I liked the way he smiled at me, the way he looked right into my eyes.

About this time, the bartender was approaching with our drinks.  He raised his glass with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Plus, they started us off on a life-long healthy relationship with alcohol.”

I laughed.  “Here’s to that!”

With perfect timing, the bartender held out my glass to me and I clinked it against his.  All three of us laughed.  She was probably thinking that this was going to be a good night for her.

As she took John’s empty and handed him his glass, she asked, “A little reunion, huh?”

John turned to smile at her.  “That’s right, 24 years.”

“I could tell,” she said, smiling at us.  Then she added, “Well, there must be some kind of preservative in this stuff because you two have certainly kept well!”  She added a little wink at the end.

John and I looked at each other and laughed.  The evening had certainly started out on the right foot.

We kept talking at the bar, but we didn’t dwell on our high school days.  I was glad for that.  We changed the subject to what we’d done since.  John told me he’d gone to work for General Dynamics after college, as an engineer.

“In materials science?” I asked.

“That’s right, how’d you know?”

“I remember you telling me one time that was going to be a big field.  Ceramics and all that.  You were going to get in on the ground floor.”  I was remembering John’s geeky side.  In contrast to his laconic way with girls and other, well, personal stuff, he could be very intense and dynamic when talking about scientific topics and all the crazy schemes that guys are into.  I was sort of curious whether he’d maintained that boyish enthusiasm.

“That’s right,” he said, smiling as he realized I had remembered this about him.  I think he was flattered.  “It has turned out to be a great field.  Ceramics, carbon fibers, all that stuff.  That’s pretty much what I do every day.  Play around with it to find ways to make it stronger, more versatile.”

I enjoyed letting him talk about this for a while.  I pride myself in an ability to converse on just about any subject, so we talked about the tech side of the defense field.  He got all excited and I saw that he hadn’t lost any of his enthusiasm.  If anything, he was more confident about expressing it now.  And that is always attractive, isn’t it?

Look, I’ll freely admit it:  I like talking to an attractive person.  Sitting next to a good looking person and speaking with them is always enjoyable for me, especially if they are well spoken and interesting, but even if they’re not.  Up to this point those people had been almost universally female; John was one of the few guys that I ever had that feeling with.

Angie (that was the bartender’s name, we learned) brought me another G&T, while John sipped his second Jack & Coke.  The subject changed to what I was up to, and I told him how much I liked my job in Charlotte – the trips to New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere, and the other things that made it so interesting on a daily basis.  He especially perked up when I told him about all my experiences in London (where I had worked for two years in the nineties) and the rest of Europe.

As we wrapped up all that, I said, “Talking about Europe always reminds me of great restaurants and makes me hungry.  Why don’t we get something to eat?”

At this point, we’d already been in the restaurant for nearly an hour.  Neither of us seemed to be in a hurry.  I, myself, knew that I had all night, and John had nowhere he needed to go.

We settled up with Angie, and she was happy to steer us in the right direction.  “Lisa will be glad to take care of you for dinner.  I’ll arrange a table for you.”

As we got up to follow Lisa, another twenty-something cutie, to our table, I’ll be honest that I deliberately let John walk ahead of me.  I’m serious when I say that it was important for me to get a good look at his butt.  I just had to see if my memory was correct or if for all these years I had been remembering only an embellished reality.  As he walked toward the tables, I didn’t care if anyone else noticed – I took a nice long look at his ass.

I was not disappointed.  His khaki slacks were, naturally, not as tight as I remembered from high school, but they still fit very well around and across his round, well-muscled butt.  He had a very nice butt, I have to say.  Small, and yet well-developed.  And now, combining his mature, attractive personality with that ass, made it look only better.

What’s more, I was reminded, as I let my eyes travel up his back to his shoulders, that men typically continue to add muscle into their twenties, and I saw that he had certainly done so since I’d last seen him.  My memory of him was of a well-developed 18 year old; but the person now before me was a man – a very athletic, muscular man.

I haven’t mentioned yet that he was wearing a light yellow, fairly tight polo shirt.  It showed off his muscles well.  His shoulders in particular were a little wider than mine and very well developed, while his chest was similar to mine but bulked up to match his shoulders.  He had very nice biceps, which were emphasized by the stretch of the elastic around the short sleeves.  As he stood up, I noticed that there didn’t appear to be any excess on his midsection, and I found myself curious to know if he had kept the six pack abs that I still remembered so vividly.

While John is certainly very fit and attractive, to give you the right impression I have to say he’s not overwhelmingly so.  First, since many people say tall men are attractive, I should point out that he’s only an inch or two taller than me – say, 5’10”.  Overall, he has the physique of a 42 year-old man who has kept in shape, not a body builder.  He’s not really muscly or bulked up in any way.  In fact, I would say that he’s rather slim, except for the muscles around his shoulders, chest and arms, and he’s built pretty much like me around his hips.  I guess that he weighs about 15 pounds more than me, or 180 pounds.  In my eyes, those 15 pounds are pure muscle – wrapped around his entire torso, concentrating especially on the shoulders and arms, and leaving just a bit of muscle to accentuate his ass and legs

We settled down at our table and Lisa left us menus and a wine list to peruse.  It didn’t take us long to make our selections, and he let me choose a bottle of white wine (Sancerre – one of my favorites).  I told him how happy I was that he didn’t fuss over the menu.  In fact, even given how attractive he was, it could have been possible for him to really aggravate me if he ordered his meal the wrong way.

Allow me to digress for a moment, because if you understand this, you’ll understand what I liked about John.

My pet peeve, that which drives me absolutely crazy, is when people go to a restaurant and it turns out they have no interest in the food.  They have all sorts of weird questions about everything, and they can’t touch half of what’s on the menu.  You know what I mean.  I’m not talking about a legitimate interest in knowing how a dish is made, or a food allergy.  I’m talking about an inability to know what you want, or to make a decision not knowing exactly what you’ll get but trusting that it will turn out to be good.  What I hate about this behavior is that I see it as a neurotic need to hold yourself back, to keep your options open, to maintain a distance from the world and avoid making a decision.

“I say, dive in, order the fucking food and get on with your life!  It’s a restaurant for God’s sake.  The whole point is that someone else is going to cook your food for you.  Let it go.  That’s why you came here!”

He was just looking at me, and laughing.

“I’m sorry about my rant,” I said.  “Thank you for letting me say that.  Really, I just can’t stand it.”

“It’s ok,” he said, still laughing.  It seemed like he enjoyed it.  He looked down at the table and said, “Better not tell them about the dirty fork, right.”

“Exactly,” I said, thinking that Monty Python has the answer for everything.  I looked at him for a minute.  “Really, I’m glad you aren’t like that, John.  I’m happy to see that you’re someone who has gone out and lived your life.”

“Well, you too, man.  I mean look at all you’ve done – your job, that time you spent in London.  You certainly haven’t held back.”

I felt flattered and almost shy about looking at him when he said that.  I started thinking to myself, “Here’s a guy I could really spend some time with.”

So, dinner with John got off to a great start, but I have to say it really got into high gear when our pretty young waitress brought our appetizers.

John had ordered the oysters (of all things!  I got one of my favorite dishes - fried calamari), and when our waitress put the plate in front of him, she said “You better watch out for these things, I hear they give you super-powers.”

John looked up at her, gave her a winning smile, and said “Nothing you couldn’t handle, I’m sure.”

Without missing a beat, she came back with “Oh, what a special compliment,” while looking over at me and rolling her eyes in mock sarcasm.

Looking back at John, I could see that he was momentarily worried he’d insulted her, as the smile faded from his face.

She looked back at him, smiled, and put her hand on his shoulder.  “That’s ok, hon, you enjoy your oysters, ok.”

During the moment they remained like this, I was struck by two things.  First, that she had said “hon,” as if she were some old-timey waitress, even though she was at least 15 years younger than us.

The second thing was that although it may have looked like she was simply patting him on the shoulder, I noticed that she was actually quite delicately and teasingly running her fingers along his deltoid muscle.  She was actually making a very erotic and subtle move on him.

This interlude passed in a moment, however, and we both turned to enjoy watching her walk back toward the kitchen.

I looked over at him, laughing quietly, and said teasingly, “Ladykiller.  You’ll have to give me lessons.”

He laughed too, and we looked at each other for a second before turning to look at her again.  She had stopped to look back at us, and seemed flustered when we both looked at her at the same time.  She regained her composure quickly, however, and headed into the kitchen.

I looked back at him.  Despite the humor of the situation, I was impressed, and more than a little turned on, when I thought of the reaction he’d provoked in her.  It seemed so natural that she would be attracted to him, not me

But again, I was determined to keep the evening positive.  “You must get that a lot,” I said, lightly.

He looked at me and smiled.  I think he was trying to gauge my reaction.  To see if I was just teasing or whether I was mocking him.

I tried to explain.  “I mean, I’m sure you’ve had your share of opportunities, what with travelling for work all the time.  How do you cope with the temptation?”

He hesitated, then he made some little joke like, “I lead a monk’s life.”

It seemed like he didn’t want to talk about this, but I wasn’t sure why.  I didn’t know if he really didn’t want to talk about it, or if he just thought I didn’t want to hear about it.  I tried to indicate as sincerely as I could that I was interested.  “No, seriously, I’m curious.  I’d like to know.”

“Why?”  he asked.  “Do you feel that temptation?”

A reasonable question, I guess.  After all, he didn’t really know me now and he would want to know more about who he was talking to before he would open up about something like this.

“To be honest, yes, I do feel temptation,” I said, in a serious tone.  I hoped I wasn’t bringing him down, but frankly I was tired of rarely having the opportunity to talk about the things that are important to me, and fed up with small talk that I found to be superficial.  I wanted to reach out to him and see if he had any of the same experiences and feelings that I did, and if so, how he handled them.  “I bet you feel it too,” I continued, “and I’m wondering how you put up with it.”  I paused; he was listening.  “I mean, I don’t really have anyone to talk about this with.”

He could see I was serious, and he gave it some thought and then responded.  I really liked that.  I had never before been able to have a conversation like this with a guy.

“Sure, I’m tempted,” he said.  “All the time.”  He looked over at our waitress, then back at me, and smiled.  “And I’ve had my share of opportunities.”

“Oh really?” I said, in an over-the-top, teasing tone.

“Stop that,” he said, laughing.

“So how do you deal with it?” I asked, turning also to look at our waitress, who was busy with something at the service station not far away from our table.

He kept his eyes locked on her for another moment, then turned to look back at me.  “I think, in the end,” he said, “I can hold myself back because my wife keeps me happy, and I’ve got all that out of my system.”

He stopped; he seemed to be almost daring me to ask him to continue.  Not challenging me, but daring me in a friendly way.

For whatever the reason, whether it was the cocktails and the half bottle of wine we’d already finished, or the bond we had already developed, or just because it was John and I was very eager to hear whatever I could about his sex life, I was bolder than I have ever been with any other man.

With any other man, this topic would have made me very (no, extremely!) uncomfortable.  But with him, that night, I simply said, “I’d like to hear more about each of those topics.”

He looked at me, started to speak, and then took a sip of his wine.  “You would, huh?”

“Yes, John,” I answered, smiling, “I would.”

“Well,” he began, obviously happy to have been asked, “let me start at the beginning.  This goes back to just after the last time we saw each other.”

It was significant to me that he put it like that; I was glad to know he still remembered when we had last seen each other.

“My life changed when I went to college.  I bet it was the same for you.”

I nodded, but didn’t respond directly.

“There were like, three guys for every girl there, you know.”

I knew what he was referring to; he had gone to a typical engineering school.

“But this also meant that there were a whole bunch of guys there, all looking to get into trouble, right?”  He paused.

I thought, “A bunch of guys, no girls?  Where is this going?”  But he quickly made it clear for me.

“So all the girls who lived around the school all knew this.  To them, it was like a big pot of honey surrounded by a bunch of bee hives, or something like that.”

We both laughed.  “I never thought of that,” I said.

“Yeah, it was pretty much of a shock to me too.  But looking back on it, I can see it from their perspective.  It was like, ‘Crew Slut,’ you know?”

I knew.  That’s a Frank Zappa song.  I sang the key words back to him.  “So you’re gettin’ kind of tired of all the local clowns ….”

“Exactly,” he said, laughing.  I could tell he was enjoying the memory.  “Like every weekend there’s like a hundred girls swarming to the parties on campus.  They can get away from the local clowns and party with a bunch of horny, frustrated, geeky guys who are gonna be thrilled to see them.  Then, after the party, they can just head on home and not be bothered by the guy.  It’s like,” he paused, “no consequences, man.”

He paused to let this sink in for me.  I have to say, I was impressed by the mental image this conjured up for me.  I could see John, as I knew he was at that age, being very popular with those girls.

“I could see you with a girl like that.”

That was the first thought that went through my mind.  I thought back to the image of the “librarian” in the Playboy we had looked at so long ago.  And I thought of what I had said, that time, as I finished my story for him.  “… and you’re fucking her.”

I also remembered the college girl he had taken home, the last night I saw him that summer.  How eager she had been to be with him.  Ok, I’m being polite.  I was really thinking about how eager she was to stroke his cock in his car that night.

Yep, I was sure he was very popular with those girls.

He continued.  “I’m tellin’ you man.  That’s what it was like.  Nearly every weekend for four years.”

“You do the math,” I thought to myself.  I mean, he could have had, like, a hundred women.

But all I could say, without a trace of sarcasm, was, “Wow.”  I didn’t know how to say that I wanted him to continue, that I wanted to hear more details of his conquests.  I could only sit there and hope he would indulge me.

Still, my reaction must have been obvious to him, because he continued with his story, adding the details that I craved.

“And it’s not like they were desperate girls who couldn’t get a guy any other way.  For some of them, it was quite the opposite.  Some of them were the queen bees of their little hives, and they’d make a competition out of it.  A group of them would come to campus on Friday night and it’d be like, which one of us can get a guy in bed the fastest.”

He looked at me again.  I was sure that by now, he knew how much I was enjoying listening to him.

“And they were all ages, too.  A lot of them were our age, just not in college.  Some of them were older.”  He paused to let that sink in.  “And some were in high school.”  He paused for an even longer time.  “I mean, high school girls, Mark.  High school.”

The last two words were only a whisper.

We sat there for a moment, just sipping our wine and looking at each other.  My mind was going a mile a minute.

About this time, a busboy came to clear away our appetizer dishes.  I was glad it wasn’t Lisa, our waitress.  I’d have been embarrassed, given what I was thinking.

After a moment, I just shook my head and smiled at him.  “That is so far beyond what I expected you to say, John.  So far beyond.”

As if on cue, our perky waitress appeared to say, “Everything all right for you guys?”

We both just looked at her, then looked at each other, and laughed.

“Oh, I get it.  Inside joke.  Well, don’t let me bother you,” she said, in a mock-hurt tone.

“No, no, wait,” I said.  “We’re sorry.”  I looked at John, then back at her.  “I think we’ll have another bottle of wine.”

“My pleasure,” she said, pouring half of what remained of the bottle into each of our glasses, then turning to slowly walk away.

We both turned to watch her, and after she disappeared into the kitchen, I turned back to John.

“So what about your wife?”  I asked.

At that moment, John had taken a sip of his wine, and he pretended to spit it out in mock surprise, “My who?”  he asked.

“She must have been quite a lady if she took you away from all that,” I said jokingly but also suggestively.  I wanted to hear all the details.

“Well, she didn’t.  Actually, I didn’t meet her until I graduated and was working for General Dynamics.”

“So, what’s the story?”

“It was weird, you know.  Feast or famine.  When I started working I had loads more money, of course, and more free time, once I settled into a routine, but, well …” he trailed off.

“Well, what?”

“Well, nothing could compare to college,” he said, laughing.

“The girls didn’t want to make the trip to the big city?”  I joked.

“They probably would have, but it would have been a lot different, wouldn’t it?  It wouldn’t be ‘no consequences’ any more, would it?  So that’s when I learned, you know, it’s easier with girls when it’s not going to lead to anything, right?”

“Right,” I said, noncommittally.  I hadn’t had the same experience with young women that he had.

“I’m not complaining,” he concluded.

Lisa returned with our main courses and our second bottle of wine, and we exchanged more “pleasantries” with her.  She was having an easy time earning her tip tonight, I thought, but I was happy to do my best to make her evening a pleasant one.

Resuming our conversation after she had served us, I asked, “So there you were, frustrated and deprived …”

“That’s right, man, you put it like that and I know what my wife took advantage of!”

We both laughed.  Then, John continued his story by telling me how, at the time, his future wife lived with two roommates.

“I liked all three of them,” he continued, “which I know can be a really dangerous situation.  But I lucked out, I think, because it turns out my wife likes a challenge.  It’s like, she set out to prove she was the one for me; that she could make me happier than either of the other two could.  She really made me happy.  She still does.”

He paused.  It seemed he was thinking about all of what he had described for me, and then he continued, “So, I have her to keep me happy, and I remember that … well, you can have too much of a good thing.”

I just sat there for a moment, looking at him.  I was thinking, “How could I possibly top that?”  It was a little bit intimidating, actually, to think about all the experiences John had with women.  I had enjoyed hearing about them, for sure, but what would he think of me?

Still, I didn’t want to bring the evening down.  I was happy for him, really.  In my book, he got exactly what he deserved.

After we sat silently for a minute or two, he seemed to get a little nervous, as if he was worried he had shared too much with me.

“Is something wrong?”  he asked.

“No, no, not at all.  It’s just …”

“Yeah?”  he asked.  He seemed to be genuinely trying to encourage me, as if he were truly interested in what I had to say.

“I mean, it’s just that my experience hasn’t been like that.”  I trailed off.

Looking back on it, this was really a crucial point in our conversation, and what he was about to say became one of the reasons I liked him so much, as a person and as a friend.  I realized from this how much he had changed since high school, and why he was special.

“You know, I’ve figured out that there’s really no point in comparing myself to other people.  They are them and I’m me and we can both be ok.  There’s some things they’ll have a lot better than me, and some things where they’re a lot worse.  You can’t change that.”

It was more the way he said this, than what he said.  He wasn’t preaching to put me down or trying to cheer me up.  He just said it, matter-of-factly.  Then, he looked me in the eye and said, “So what’s been your experience?”

I looked at him, and couldn’t help smiling.  “You really wanna know?”  I said, teasing just a bit.

“I do,” he said, laughing.  Then he stopped.  “No, seriously, tell me.”

How could I resist this opportunity?  I couldn’t, of course.

“Well, you could say I was a late bloomer.”

“Ok, you were a late bloomer.”

“No, seriously.”

“Ok, you were a late bloomer,” he said, in a mock-serious tone.

I just gave him a look, but I appreciated what he was doing.  It really brought me out of my funk.

“I had my first girlfriend freshman year,” I began.  “It lasted a few months.”  I didn’t have to tell him that I didn’t have any girlfriends in high school.  We left that subject untouched.

“What was her name?”  he asked.

“Jennifer,” I answered.  I smiled at the thought of her, like she had just joined us at the table, to listen.  I looked across the room and saw Emily enjoying a meal with a friend, too.  She looked over at us, and raised her glass in an encouraging toast.

“My school wasn’t like yours.  It was 50/50 guys and girls.  They were all great people, and looking back on it, it was a huge missed opportunity for me, when it came to girls.  It’s weird, because I had a great time, lots of friends, but after I broke up with my first girlfriend, I just didn’t make the right connections with girls in freshman year.  Not for lack of trying.  It was sorta frustrating.

“Anyway, everything else was beyond great.  I went to France for a summer program after that first year, and fell in love with Europe and the history there and everything, really.”

“Must’ve been girls there,” he said.

“Oh yeah,” I said, smiling.  “I’ll tell you a story.  That summer, I’d just turned 19, had been in the country only a few weeks.  We’re staying at a hostel out in the countryside.  Must be somethin’ about those country girls, John.”

He smiled at me.

“Anyway, they invite a few kids from the local university to come over, have a glass of wine, and visit with us Americans.  It would have been one of the first times I sat down to talk with someone from another country, and I’m sure the same with them.  We talked an hour or two; you know, like you do so much in college.  It was fun, there’s probably two dozen of us in the room all together.

“When they get up to go, the custom in France is you always say hello and good-bye directly to each person in the room.  So they get up to go and one of the girls walks over to me to say goodbye.”

“And?”

“Well, a girl in France says goodbye by putting her hand on the guy’s shoulder and leaning in to brush her cheek against his, and then the same on the other cheek.  It’s called a bisou.”

“A bisou, huh?  Nice custom.”

“I’ll say.  But I remember being momentarily in total shock that a girl I barely knew would just walk up to me and do that.  Everyone in the room laughed; me too.  They weren’t laughing at me, and I wasn’t embarrassed, it was just funny.”  I paused, remembering.  “For me, for a girl to do that – well, it was quite an event.”

He smiled at me, letting me enjoy the moment before I went on.  I looked up, and I was almost sure I saw that French girl walking out of the restaurant.

“So that will tell you something about how I was at that age,” I concluded.  “A little different from you, I think.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I understand.”  He seemed a bit wistful.  In a strange way, I guess we each desired a little more of the other’s life.

“So,” I continued, “I came back sophomore year with high expectations of applying to my college life all the sophistication I had developed that summer in France.  But that didn’t work out, exactly.  Everything was ok.  I don’t mean I had any huge problems.  But I think I was still just sort of awkward, like I had a hard time fitting in.  I’m sure I’m the only person who’s ever had that problem.”

He smiled at me.

“I don’t know, maybe it put girls off in some way – my ‘worldliness,’ that is.”  (I did actually make little air quotes with my fingers.)  “I was pretty intense, emotionally, and I guess kind of romantic in ways that a 19 or 20 year old girl just isn’t going to expect.”

He looked at me, and it seemed he was thinking about something.

I guess a kind of curious expression crossed my face – I know I was eager for any feedback he would give – and he said, “It’s nothing.”  But I could tell there was something on his mind, so he continued, “It’s just that, looking back on how I remember you … Well, I could see how …” He trailed off.

“How was I?”  I asked, smiling at him.

“You said it yourself.  You were intense.  Now go on with your story,” he chided me, and I knew he didn’t want to go further with this.

I was still curious, but I didn’t press him.  “So skip to my junior year abroad in England, and I started dating the girl I would marry.  She was on the program with me.  We’ve been together ever since.  She’s the one for me.”

“That’s nice,” he said, sincerely.

“Yeah, it is.”  I paused.  “But she’s the one if you know what I mean.  The only one I’ve known.”  I paused again.  “In a biblical sense,” I said, trying to make it sound like a joke.  I wasn’t sure I succeeded.

He ignored any negativity in my tone.  “But something tells me there’s more to this story,” he said, encouragingly.

At this point, our waitress came over to clear away our main courses.  “We’ll look at a dessert menu,” I said.

Then, we had a good 20 minutes just to talk, and finish our wine.

“So, I was with her for about 10 years before, well, you know – my mind started to wander.”

“Wow,” he said.  I think he understood how different our lives had been.

“They were great years, don’t get me wrong.  We both went to graduate school, moved to Charlotte and then started working.  Had the total ‘young-professionals-in-love’ experience.  We had plenty of money and bought our first home.  We travelled the world together.  That’s how I spent my 20s.  I was living the dream, literally.  It was fantastic.  She’s amazing.”

“But?”

“But after 10 years or so, it was like I woke up from that dream and realized that something was different, and now I was caught up in this humungous catch-22, where women were concerned.”

He looked at me like he sort of understood, and was trying to understand, but he was puzzled.  I could also tell from his reaction, though, that he was intrigued.

I tried to explain further.  “It’s like I now had all the opportunities that I didn’t have 10 years earlier, but at the same time, none of those opportunities were really available to me.”

“How d’you mean?”  he asked.

“It’s like this.  Imagine that we were having this dinner 20 years ago – you know, around the time my future wife and I had been dating for a while and were thinking about getting married.  If Lisa was our waitress then, the only thing we would think when we saw her would be … well, you know.”

“Has that changed?”  he responded, smiling.

“No, not at all, but that’s my point.  We haven’t changed at all.  Wait, that’s not it.  Our goals haven’t changed, but we have.”  I was getting a little excited.  This was important to me, and I wanted him to understand, but since I had never talked about this with anyone, it was hard for me to express.

It seemed like he wanted to help me along.  “How have we changed?”

“I guess that’s it,” I answered.  “That’s a good question.  We’ve gotten older, of course, married, and everything that comes with it, but the weird thing is, this makes us more attractive to Lisa, not less.”

He had a thoughtful look now.  I think he was beginning to understand.

“So if we were here 20 years ago,” I continued, “I’m sure Lisa wouldn’t treat us the same way.  Not with the same respect, you know, the same attention.  And we’d be looking across the room at the old guys getting her all hot and bothered and we’d just be thinking to ourselves that women don’t make any sense.  You remember thinking that about women, right?”

He nodded, smiling.  Now I was sure he understood.

“I’m not saying that young women actually like older men more than younger guys.  Of course not.  And I’ll admit that Lisa would probably be more likely to leave with those young guys than she would with us.”

“Hey man, don’t knock my chances,” he interrupted.

“Present company excepted,” I said, smiling back at him, and I had to wonder if he knew how much I meant it.

After allowing the image of John and Lisa together to float pleasantly through my head for a moment, I continued.  “What it is, I think, is that the situation between women and men sort of flips around.  When we’re young, the women think they’ve got it all figured out, and the guys are pretty much clueless; but as we get older, the guys start to get a clue, and so young women are intrigued by older men.  Older guys aren’t as easy to peg, and there’s nothing more attractive to a girl than a challenge.”

He nodded, but I could tell that he didn’t quite get what my point was.  “You still haven’t said what the catch-22 is,” he said.

“The catch-22 is, we’re older, we’re married, and so now there’s not much we can really do about it, right?”

I paused.  Up until now, I had just made some generic observations about life that, I admit, were not especially insightful.  To really make my point, I’d have to talk with John about things I’d never talked about with anyone else.

“Now this is going to sound stupid, I know, but bear with me,” I said.

To his credit, John gave me the best look of encouragement he could.

“I mean, look at me,” I continued.  “I’m, well, I would say fairly attractive for a guy just over 40.”

Ok, he couldn’t help it.  John had to laugh.

I had to laugh too.  I now understood why I had never talked about this with anyone else, but I was in too deep and had to keep going.

“No, seriously,” I said, half to myself really, because I couldn’t stop laughing any more than John could.  “I mean, I have a job, I’ve accomplished a lot, I’m in shape, I’m smart and funny.”

“Sounds like you’ve been reading too many personal ads,” he said, still laughing.

“Probably,” I answered, but it did seem I’d gotten through the hardest part of what I wanted to say.  “But, whatever, my point is that whether or not I’ve accurately described myself, I know that even if I have, I’m not really going to get anything from it, am I?”

He looked back at me, and stopped laughing.  I think that what I said struck a chord for him, and I was relieved (if not happy) when I realized that he’s probably thought the same thing.

“I’m not saying I’m angry about this.  No doubt about that.  I know how good I’ve got it.  It’s just the catch-22 aspect of it that gets me.  At the same time that women seem to have an increasing interest in me, it’s pretty much impossible for me to do anything about it.”

“You’re right,” he said, giving me a look that convinced me I had made my point.  With that out of the way, it was much easier for me to continue.

“So here’s how I see it,” I continued, now eager to share what I had kept pent up inside for so long.  “Young women, for example.  Which for me is anyone under 30.  Like I said, they love guys like us, right?”

“This is a problem?”  he asked, smiling.

“Of course not,” I continued.  “Let’s just say, we can have a lot of positive interaction with young women, and leave it at that.  But I think it really boils down to what Groucho Marx said, as far as they’re concerned – I wouldn’t want to be a member of a club that would have me for a member.  You know what I mean?”

“Not really,” he laughed.  “But yeah, I guess so.  Go on.”

“Maybe I’m just too much of a goody-goody, but in my book, young women shouldn’t be with guys like us.  They should be with young men, or, even better, other young women.”

This got a smile out of him, and I paused for a minute before continuing.

“So I’m sort of suspicious of any young woman who would really want to spend any amount of time with me.”

“This happens to you a lot?”  he asked, teasing me.

“Ok, not a lot, but it happens.  Like there’s this girl, Rachel, in my office.  I say ‘girl,’ but she’s 25.  We flirt with each other in the office and we have coffee together every once in a while.  Which means that I sit and look at her and think about how gorgeous she is while she prattles on about the things that seem so important to a woman of 25.  ‘Will my boyfriend and I get married?  Should I stay in Charlotte or move to the big city?’  It doesn’t matter to me so long as she tosses her long brown hair over her shoulder every once in a while.”

“You’re pathetic,” he said, laughing.

“Am I?  You’re different?”

He didn’t have a response for that.

“So I can go on?”  I asked, pretending to take offense.

“Sure,” he said, “tell me about your other conquests.”

“I wouldn’t use that word,” I continued, smiling at what I took to be a veiled compliment from him, “but you know, it has been interesting.  It took me a while to put this together, but it seems like once I passed age 30, let’s say, that’s when it really changed.

“Since then, in the past 10 years or so, there have been a few times when a confident, assertive woman would notice me.  You know what I mean, right, the sort of young, attractive woman that, well, for obvious reasons, may not be too popular with the other women in the office?”

He nodded.  He knew the type.

“Well, like I said, I could tell that she noticed me.  Maybe because of something I said in a meeting, or just the way I carry myself in the office.  I think it’s what I said before.  Over the years, I’ve matured and gained confidence.  It sounds like a total cliché, but when I look back on the times this has happened, it was obvious from the look on her face.  It’s like she said to herself, ‘Now there’s a man I want to get to know, I wanna be a part of what he’s got going on.’”

“You’re thinking of someone specific,” he said, with a note of triumph in his voice.  He was right, I knew, he had me figured out.

“Ok, I’ll admit, it happens rarely,” I continued, ignoring his comment.  “But it has happened enough times that I’ve realized I like it.”

I felt the hesitancy returning; the feeling that I couldn’t believe I was telling him this, but I had come so far that I couldn’t stop without saying what I really wanted to say most.

“I like the feeling of being pursued, I guess,” I said quietly.

We were both quiet for a minute.  In fact, I was afraid to look at him, for fear of seeing his reaction, but what he eventually said reassured me.

“Everyone does,” he said simply.

I looked up at him, and we smiled at each other for just a moment.  It’s difficult to describe, and it may sound schmaltzy, but at that moment I really felt nothing for him but a feeling of camaraderie.  It felt to me as if I had just expressed something that we had each been through, and thought about a lot, over the past decade or so, but just had never had the chance to talk about before.  It was a good feeling.

“So these are all young women?”  he asked, brightly.

“No way, man,” I answered, encouraged to go on by his tone.  “I don’t discriminate.  Let me tell you, I think it’s a myth that somehow all women over 30 struggle with their appearance and that men give up on them.  I see lots and lots of women in, let’s say, the 30 to 50 range, who don’t seem to me to be struggling.  But, let’s face it, where’s it going to go?  Who are these women?”

I paused, and then answered my own question.  “There are co-workers, obviously, but I’ve seen lots of office romances and they’re always the subject of disdain and derision, in my experience.  Plus, I spend enough time at work.”

He gave me a look that had just the hint of a suggestion that maybe his experiences had been different, but I decided to let it go.

“The others are female friends and acquaintances.  But, again, let’s be real.  For a guy like me, most of them are the moms of my kids’ friends and such.  Now I enjoy a nice MILF as much as the next guy,” (we laughed) “but no, I’m not going to go there.  As sexy as they may be, it’s not going to lead to anything.”

We paused for a moment.  I’m sure the many women who passed through our minds would probably be flattered to know what we thought about them, although they would never admit it.

“So where does that leave me?”  I asked, and then answered my own question again.  “Let me tell you where it leaves me.  I love women.  I cannot put into words how much I love women.  I’m fascinated by them and just love everything about them – looking at them, listening to them talk, reading about them.  And I have a pretty easy way with women and they like me too.  So, we can flirt and provide a lot of positive feelings to each other but, you know, it’s never more than … what’s the word here?  Ephemeral.  Yeah, that’s it.  It’s never permanent.”

I sat quietly for a moment, but I didn’t want to be a downer, so I continued.  “Ok, I think I’ve already gone on too long about this.  It’s really not as bad as I make it seem.  I know I’m luckier than the majority of guys.  I have incredibly positive interactions with women every day; I believe we do a lot for each other.  I should be, and I am, happy about that.”

He looked back at me, and I had the sense that he understood what I was saying and knew me better now than any of my other friends, even though I hadn’t seen him for all these years.

In fact, he knew me so well that he knew exactly what to say.

“I’ll say it again, Mark.”  He paused significantly.  “You’re thinking about someone in particular.”

He was right, of course.  And our dinner was going so well that I knew I really wanted to tell him.  But still, I wasn’t ready to just blurt it out.  I had to lead into it.  I had to set the scene for him, so he could really understand what she meant to me.

“It was 1998,” I started off, with a faux-dramatic tone, trying to cover up my feelings with a little forced humor.  “We had just had our first child, and I had been transferred to work in our London office for two years.”

“London?”  He said.  “That must have been interesting.”

“It sure was.”  I told him how London was really a happening place at that time.  It still is.  It has a reputation for being more open and welcoming to creative types than “ossified” continental Europe.  So it drew a lot of young people of all nationalities.

“Day-to-day living there was just out of this world.  Like, there was this one sandwich shop near my work.  You came in and ordered, then watched the girls who worked there make your sandwich.  It seemed like they’d all been hired together, because they all looked like East European fashion models, wearing these skin tight black jumpsuits.  It was one of my favorite lunch spots, that’s for sure.  And getting on the bus to go home every night.  I mean, there’s like a half-dozen women on this bus – a bus, for Christ’s sake – who look like those lunch girls.”

He smiled at me, but frankly, I don’t think he could really picture what I was describing.  You literally had to be there.

“She wasn’t a lunch girl,” he said.

Maybe it was his smile that did it, that I found to be irresistible.  But for whatever reason, I told him what I hadn’t been telling him before.  That is, I told him all about her.

I guess I should digress here and explain why I was comfortable telling him about her, given that I had only spoken vaguely about her with a few of my closest friends, and those discussions hardly went into detail about what I really felt about her.

The main reason I was comfortable telling John was that, as I said, he had a very charming, disarming manner.  His effect on me, after the atmosphere at dinner, the drinks, and seeing his smiling face across the table, was intensified a thousand times compared to what I felt when we spoke earlier on the phone.  The fact is, I really wanted to tell him everything.  He just had that effect on me.

Second, he had of course already confided in me, so I wanted to do the same.  This was important to me because, as I said, he was the first man I had spoken with like this in my entire life.  Other men, even my close friends, really wouldn’t talk to me about what they felt about women, and the experiences they had.  And I don’t mean just sexual experiences.  The thing is, I really like talking about women and I was excited to hear his story and I wanted to share mine with him.

Third, I hadn’t had any opportunity to talk about her with anyone in years, so I was just bursting to do so.  And I think that somewhere in the back of my mind I was worried that I would never have a better opportunity than this.

Which leads to the fourth reason, which was that he was the perfect person for me to share these feelings with – I knew him well enough to be comfortable talking with him, but he was not in my day-to-day life, he didn’t know my wife at all, and so forth.  So I had no reason to think our conversation would go beyond that table.

For all these reasons, I told him all the details about her, and what I felt about her.

“No, not a lunch girl,” I said.  “She was a woman that worked in the office with me, named Elizabeth.”

He smiled.  He could tell just by the way I said her name.  He knew.

Like most guys, I started with a physical description.  “She has these legs.  I mean, my God, long beautiful legs; perfect legs.”  I paused, to let that image sink in, and then continued.  “She’s about an inch shorter than me, and very thin – no buns at all and barely any breasts.  She’s sort of pale, and always looked sort of tired, but she has a very pretty face in an almost classical sort of way.  I thought she looked a lot like Liz Hurley, except that she was not as … well, ‘buxom’ would be the word.”

He smiled.

“She has vivid hazel eyes, and pretty, light brown, shoulder length, straight hair.”  I sort of drifted off, thinking about her, and then I noticed John looking at me.  He was almost laughing at the state that just the memory of her had put me in.  “Ok,” I continued, “I guess you had to be there.  I can’t describe it precisely, but the amazing thing was that when I would walk around town with her, I mean, I could feel the passing women staring at us.  It’s like they had this expression of …” I paused, looking for the right word.  “Well this mixture of fascination and desire.  It was unreal.”

“Ok, I get it, she was pretty,” he said.

“Right.”  In fact, that was really all he needed to know.  She was very pretty.  And back in 2010, when I was telling John about her, I just didn’t have the right point of reference for him.  For you, the reader today, I do.  She looked a lot like the Duchess of Cambridge, the former Kate Middleton.  Whenever I see Kate now, I always go into a sort of a swoon, because she’s almost exactly what Elizabeth looked like about a dozen years ago.  Especially her graceful way of moving, and her long delicate arms.  That was what was really beautiful about Elizabeth – she moved like a swan gliding across the water.

“But it’s more important that I tell you about her personality,” I continued to John.  “And the best way to do that is to say that she was sort of into men in the same way I’m into women.  She had the sexy English accent, in spades, and she’s the same age as me – in fact, only about two weeks younger.

“When I first started work at that office, it only took her two or three days until she gave me a look I’d never exactly seen before:  it literally was like, ‘Well, hello Sailor!’”

He laughed.  I think he’s seen that look before.  More than once, I’m sure.

I continued.  “So, we would chat for at least a few minutes every day, and we always flirted with each other.  And much as I’m comfortable that she liked me and was very attracted to me, I also always knew that there were plenty of attractive guys she liked flirting with.  Oh, and by the way, she had a boyfriend, but I won’t waste time telling you about him.

“We were both really into language and writing, and a lot of our work involved preparing various presentations for clients, so we got into talking about the meaning of different words.  We also talked a lot about politics, that sort of thing.  She would always take the artistic/emotional position and I would be the realist.  I mean, it was sort of like between Mulder and Scully, if you know what I mean.”

He nodded.  (The reference is to The X-Files, for those of you who don’t know.)

“Anyway, the day I most remember from those two years with her was the first time we went out to lunch together.  Like I said, we had talked all the time, but we had never actually gone out to a sit-down lunch, just the two of us.  I remember being nervous asking her, of course, but when I did, I remember she just said, ‘Sure!’ like it was an obvious question.

“We went to this neat little Italian restaurant I had walked past a few weeks earlier.  I remember thinking that it was perfectly natural that we have lunch, but this felt just a little bit different.  I felt a bit more confident and, well, aggressive.  Well, to be truly honest, I think I was feeling even more horny than I usually did around her.”

Ok, maybe that was an odd thing to say to John.  I decided just to continue with my description, without looking at his reaction.  “So I remember feeling relieved when we started our usual easy conversation.  We were just laughing, and I was telling her these silly jokes, but I got a bit raunchier than I normally would with her.  I remember finishing with my absolute favorite line.  It’s from Saturday Night Live, Chevy Chase did it.”

“Which one’s that?” John asked.

I repeated the joke to him:  “The government released a new stamp today ... commemorating prostitution in America.  It’s a ten cent stamp, but if you want to lick it, it’s a quarter.”

I laughed.  John did too, but he said, “I’ll say it again – you’re pathetic.”  But he was laughing.

“Well she liked it!”  I said, in mock defense of myself.  “I remember she said, ‘Who writes this kind of stuff?’ and I said, ‘A bunch of guys about 50 years old who look like our clients!’

“So, you get the drift of the conversation.  But you’ve got to know, even though we talked and flirted in the office, we had never really had a conversation like that.  I mean, I had never told her a dirty joke before.  So this was like … well, it was like nothing I had ever done before.”

John was still smiling at me.  I think he could appreciate what a special memory this was for me.  I hope he understood how happy I was just to have had that one opportunity, to have had that lunch with her.

“Anyway,” I continued, “all in all, it was a pretty good lunch.”

I paused, for a moment, just to think about that meal with her.

“So afterwards,” I continued, “we walked pretty slowly back to the office.  I remember that when we were almost back, she just kept on walking directly away from the office into the park across the street, until I called her to turn around.  I’ll always remember the grin on her face.”

I was still smiling now, and John was smiling too.  Not laughing, just smiling.

“We didn’t go straight back to the office.  We stopped and had coffee at a café right next door.  I remember watching her bracelets jangle as she pushed her hair back over her ear.”

My voice just trailed off.

“You’ve really got it bad for her,” he said.

I smiled back at him.  “Well can you blame me?’” I asked, rhetorically.  I was probably too embarrassed to look at John directly, but when I did he was looking back at me with an expression that seemed to show that he was happy for me, happy that I had had this experience, in the same way that I was happy for him when I heard about his experiences in college.

Without us saying anything to each other, my mind sort of wandered through my other memories of Elizabeth, and eventually it settled on another of my fondest and most intense memories of her.  I just started talking without trying to explain, and John just listened.

“So there was this one day, probably about a week before I was to leave London to return to the US after having been in the office for two years – after having seen her nearly every work day for the past two years.

“She had to go out of the office to a meeting, and by that time we would have always gone to a meeting like that together.  Even if the other one had absolutely no reason for being there, we would just go.  So I remember her ‘begging’ me to go with her, but I had some other commitment and just couldn’t do it.  Much as I wanted to, of course.

“So, to make it up for herself, I guess, she comes into my office and is just idly talking to me and she starts brushing her hair.  My office had this huge mirror in it, like the older offices in London would have.  Our office was in this funky old building.  So anyway, then she starts putting on her lipstick, and I’m just sitting there, looking at her get ready for this meeting.  And thinking how incredibly beautiful she is.

“And I’m also thinking about how she’s going to go downstairs and get in a cab.  One of those classic London cabs.  And she’s going to get in that cab and drive out to the suburbs to the office where the meeting would be.

“And I mean, I was ready.  I was so ready.  I could have just got up from my desk, put my arm around her waist and said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ And she would just look at me, and smile, and we’d go downstairs.  We’d get in that cab and start heading to the meeting but we wouldn’t stop.  We’d just, disappear together, you know.  Like in the movies.”

I sat back in my chair, remembering that moment.  I looked over at Elizabeth, who’d joined us at the table.  She looked at me and just gave a little nod.  She’d been thinking the same thing.  Then she and Jennifer smiled at each other, conspiratorially.

John was thinking, too.  Somehow, he didn’t notice Elizabeth and Jennifer.

After a moment, it seemed that he had come to a conclusion about what I had told him.  “You know, you think I had all these great experiences, but … you know, I don’t think that the best pussy I had really compares to London with Elizabeth.”

I just looked at him, and laughed.

“We’ve each had our good fortune,” I said.

As we were laughing, our waitress brought our dessert order – a slice of chocolate cake and a glass of cognac for each of us.  Let me digress here one more time and say that, as John and I each ate the variation on chocolate cake we had ordered, we didn’t swoon over it.  We didn’t say it was the best cake we’d ever had and insist the other person try it.  We just ate the damn cake and enjoyed it!

When we were halfway through our desserts, John looked up at me and asked, “So did you ever do anything about it?”

“What d’you mean?”

“You know, with Elizabeth.”

I thought for a moment.  I knew the answer, but I guess what I must have been thinking was whether I wanted to lie, and make something up for him.  But for whatever reason, I was comfortable telling him the truth.

“No,” is all I said.

“Oh,” he responded.  I could tell that he knew I would say more.

“I mean, of course I wanted too.  But, you know,” I paused.  “I’m married.”

“Yeah,” he said, and I could tell he understood.  I was sure that he’d been through the same thing, one way or the other.

After a moment, I decided I would try to explain the real reason I never tried anything with her.  “I’m sure she wouldn’t have liked it if I had.”

He seem surprised.  “Really?” he asked, with a hint of humor in his voice.

“No, not that,” I said, laughing too.  “I mean, I think the reason she liked me was because she knew I wasn’t going to do anything about it.  That’s why she was willing to give me that ‘Hello, Sailor,’ look in the first place, and then do everything else we did.”

I paused for a moment, thinking back on it, and then decided to mention something else to him.

“I heard some stories, though.”

“Yeah?”  he asked.  “About what?”

“Some she told me, and others I heard around the office – about guys coming on to her.”

“So?”  John seemed curious.  I couldn’t tell if he thought I was going to spill some juicy details, or what.

But I had to disappoint him.  “Yeah, well, when you hear the actual stories, about some of the shit she had to put up with, it’s pretty – disturbing, I guess.  Let’s leave it at that.  After hearing her talk about it, I was sure that I didn’t want to be any part of stuff like that.”  I paused.  “It’s not what I wanted to be for her.”

“Right,” he said, and again I knew he understood.

“Plus,” I continued, trying to lighten the mood, “I don’t know about her, but I always had the feeling that if we did touch each other, even innocently, we wouldn’t have been able to control ourselves.”

He laughed.  “Probably not, from the way you describe it.”

We laughed together for a moment, and then quieted down.  I guess we were each lost in our thoughts, and memories.

Eventually, John broke the silence.  “Did you ever see her again?”

“Oh sure,” I replied brightly.  “I called her soon after I returned to the States, and we continued to talk on the phone every once in a while.  Since we worked for the same company, all I had to do was dial her extension and she’d be there.  But you know, it was different without seeing her in the hallway, or getting coffee together in the kitchen.  And it just sorta faded away.

“I did see her again though.  About two years after I left, I returned for a visit to London, but we only talked for a few minutes in the office, and we didn’t go for lunch or anything.  I didn’t get the feeling that she was mad at me, but I could tell that she didn’t want to get too close.  I suspect that she didn’t want to go through the same goodbye as last time, and maybe I didn’t either.  I don’t know …”

My voice trailed off, and I guess John realized I didn’t have much more to say.

“So?”  he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, conveying finality with my tone of voice, rather than in what I said.  “So we went from occasional phone calls to a few emails.  She never really seemed to like email.  And then a few years ago I heard that she left the company without leaving any kind of goodbye email or contact information.  Maybe something happened in the office.  I never heard anything.  So that’s it; she’s kind of dropped out as far as I know.  I don’t know what she’s up to or even where she is.”

At about this point, our waitress came to take our dessert plates; we were still sipping our cognac.  I think it was clear they would have to kick us out, and they weren’t closing up yet.  We weren’t anxious to go anywhere.

After John and I sat silently for a few more minutes, it seemed that John had reached a conclusion.

“I guess I can understand the way you felt about Elizabeth, and why you didn’t do anything about it.  I mean, in some ways what you had sounds about perfect.  All the desire, but none of the responsibility, right?”  He paused.  “That’s the way I look at it.”

“Now you’re thinking of someone in particular,” I said, enjoying teasing him the way he had teased me before.

“Well, I guess I can say I’ve had my opportunities.”  He paused, and I thought he was going to say more, but then he seemed to rearrange his thoughts before he continued.  “But never with anyone like Elizabeth, so it didn’t work out the same way for me.”

As I listened to him, I thought to myself that maybe each of us had been lucky with women in different ways.

After another pause, he said, “You know what I think?”

“What?”

“Now maybe this is my turn to sound weird, but I guess what keeps me in check is that I don’t want another wife.”

He seemed to be waiting for my reaction.  This may seem, to you the reader, like a strange thing for him to say, but sitting at the table there with him, I knew exactly what he meant, so I said, “I know; that’s what I think too.  Like when I hear about a guy who left his wife and married another woman – even someone younger and sexier, whatever – I think to myself, ‘What’s the point of that?  Why go through so much emotional hassle just to trade one woman for another?’  It doesn’t make sense to me.”

After a moment, John replied, almost as if he were talking to himself, “Yeah, if I was going to do that, I’d want it to be with someone completely different from my wife.”  Then he paused, as if considering this further, and said, “Until that person comes along, I don’t think it’s gonna happen, so I don’t think about it.”

Just as he said this, Lisa approached us with the check.

“I’ll just leave this for you gentlemen.  I’m clocking out now, but you can stay as long as you’d like.  It’s been a pleasure serving you.”

John turned and smiled at her.  “The pleasure’s been all ours, Lisa.”

She looked back and forth at each of us and then seemed emboldened to say something.  “I hope you don’t mind,” she began, “but I did notice that you two have had a very pleasant evening.  I hope it was a nice reunion.”

We both looked at her with pleased, but inquisitive, expressions.

“Angie told me.”

“Aha,” I said, understanding.  “Well, thank you.  It was very nice.”  I looked at John for a second, and then back at her.  “Thank you for making it especially nice for us.”

“As I said, my pleasure,” she replied, with that tone of ineffable femininity in her voice, before she turned to walk away.

Our heads turned, to watch her depart for the last time.  Then, John reached over to have a look at the check.

He laughed at what he saw, then looked up at me and said, “Know what?  Forget everything I just said.  There might not be a need to wait any longer.”

He handed me the check, and I couldn’t resist looking at it, wondering what had elicited this reaction from him.

When I looked down at the little note that Lisa had written in a flowing script at the bottom of the check, as waitresses often do, I immediately understood John’s reaction.

“Thanks!  Please come again soon.  We look forward to serving both of you again.”  She had underlined “We” and “both,” and signed it, “Lisa and Angie” – and she had included a phone number beneath the signature.

As I said, we both laughed, but it was pride we both felt – a pride we had each experienced before, but which this time felt even better when shared.

“I’ll need to save this for my expense report,” John said, as he put the receipt in his pocket.

I was happy to let him have it as a souvenir.  “After all, his corporate apartment is only a few blocks away,” I thought to myself.

After talking a few more minutes, we settled our bill and left.

It was a pleasant summer night as we stood on the sidewalk around midnight.  There were still a few people on the street, exiting the various bars and restaurants in the neighborhood.  It was only two blocks up Tryon and over to the condo on Trade Street where John was staying.  I walked over with him.

It was a quiet walk.  We talked about how much Charlotte had changed since I moved there 16 years before.  During that time, I’d seen the boom arrive, peak and then fade into more difficult times.  It seemed to me we were both thinking about how much had happened since we’d last seen each other, and I felt like it was something else we could share – sort of a feeling of having seen it all, and now each of us being comfortable with (if not resigned to) where we had landed.

When we got to his building, we stood there on the street, talking a few more minutes.  Neither of us wanted to go.

Finally, I shook his hand, then he placed his hand on my shoulder, and we hugged.  I did have the guts to pull him tight.  I wouldn’t want to miss that opportunity.

After a moment we separated.

“It was good seeing you,” he said.

“You too, John.”

“I’ll be here for a while, and I don’t know much about Charlotte, so let’s get together.”

“Sure thing.  Just let me get through the rest of this week.  My wife’s going back to see her parents with the kids this weekend.  I’ll be free next week.”

“Sounds good.  I’ll see you then.”  He paused.  “Bye.”

“Bye,” I said, and finally I turned to walk away.  After a dozen steps, I turned around, and saw that he was looking at me.  That made me very happy.  I smiled, gave a little wave, and he turned to walk into his building.

I watched him walk away, which made me even happier.

* * *

I have to digress here for a moment, and explain that even though I remember that evening very well, I can’t say that I’ve accurately recounted our conversation word for word.  I definitely remember all the topics we talked about, and the interactions with our waitress and things like that stick in my mind.  But I’m sure I’ve embellished a little and I’ve made our discussion more organized than it actually was.  I’ve tried to get the tone and the topics right, but this is my memory of the evening, more than the evening itself.

Also, I left out other things John and I talked about, as our conversation wandered here and there.  For example, one of my favorite parts of the evening was when we got started talking about our favorite hot actresses.  It was tons of fun and something I’ve never really talked about with a guy.  His tastes run a little more blonde and perky than mine; he really likes the Kirsten Dunst, Elisha Cuthbert and Alicia Silverstone type.  Nothing wrong with that, and in fact I enjoyed picturing him with the three of them while he talked about them.  Although I said that I don’t really limit myself to a “type” of woman, Laetitia Casta will always be special to me, and I definitely have a preference for brunettes like Elizabeth Hurley, Keira Knightly and Evangeline Lilly; I was also more open to an older woman than he was.

He mentioned, too, that he had been to Charlotte before.  About two years earlier he’d had a similar assignment, working near the airport for a few weeks.  He told me that he had thought about calling me, but just hadn’t.  “I understand,” I said, and I hoped he could hear the sympathy in my voice.

We also talked about our workout routines.  He goes to the gym every once in a while, but he told me that he mainly keeps in shape by swimming in an adult league, and he has a pool in his back yard, so I was reminded again that swimming sure works to keep one’s body in perfect form – at least for him!  In response, I was eager to tell him that I had installed an Endless Pool in my home, and he was excited to hear about it.  For those of you that don’t know, an Endless Pool has a small motor in one end that creates a current you can swim against, like a treadmill.  The pool itself is not too big (14 by 7 feet, and 3 feet deep) so it can be put easily in your basement or whatever.

“I bike to work sometimes, and go for a run occasionally, but that’s my main form of exercise,” I told him.  As I said that, I remember wondering to myself if I was doing something wrong, because it didn’t seem to me that I was getting the same results from swimming that John was!

“Isn’t it hard to swim in place?” he asked.  “I’ve seen that online, and I even thought about getting one, but it seems like you’d be pushed all around by the current.”

“Oh no, it’s not a problem.  It only takes a few minutes to get used to it, and then you’re just swimming without thinking about it.  The cool thing is that you can swim continuously without having to turn.  I never did learn how to do a proper kick turn.  And whenever you get tired you just drop to your knee for a minute and then start up again.”

“Cool,” he said.  “So you can just go swimming whenever you want?”

“Yep, I just go down to the basement.  It’s built into the porch we have out back and enclosed by a room we added to the house.”

We smiled at each other.  I remember feeling so comfortable talking to him, in a way that I’ve never felt with a guy before.  It was as if I didn’t need to explain anything to him; I could just say what I was thinking and he would understand, and it was the same for what he told me.  It was a great evening, no about that.  We exchanged all our contact information (work, home, cell) and it was obvious to me that I would enjoy spending time with him while he was in town.

That’s what I was thinking as I walked back from his building toward my office to get my car.