So I’m in bed with this lawyer…
How did that happen? Well I’d asked if she’d ever wondered what it might be like to sit in the dock and I guess she misheard. Okay, no she didn’t. I just couldn’t resist that. It’s like saying I once dated a comedienne for a laugh. Nah. I haven’t really done that either.
Yet.
Anyway, so I really am in bed with this lawyer. But how it came about isn’t all that important. Suffice to say that despite my recent good intentions I’d reverted back to what I seem to do ‘best’. In other words the result of an increasingly rarer night out with Joe (marriage has confined him to a degree) where he goes home earlier than he used to and I stay for one more drink with someone I’m unexpectedly flirting with at the bar while I’m meant to be buying our final round.
To be fair I haven’t been this indiscriminate in a while. Instead bar that slip up with that unforgiving client a while back it’s all supposed to be about one’s good intentions now isn’t it.
But you see this is the kind of thing I’m prone to do when I’m smarting (yep that ‘date’ and dangerous stuff has got to me a bit). I’ve still not told you the pole-dancer story that kind of became my Damascus moment have I. However I have told you about Amber, she who once upon a time used to be my ‘solace’ whenever I questioned my personal appeal. Well I’ve come a long way since Amber. The BD effect if you like has permanently adjusted something I used to call the ‘Nice Guy Variable in the Que Sera Sera Quotient’, so that with the help of a little more confidence I’ve since been able to seek out said ‘solace’ through other means. Or so I like to kid myself anyway. I mean it’s usually just the same result, different bed.
I’ve noticed something else too. Actually it’s not something I’m that comfortable talking about; and certainly something I didn’t mention to said lawyer post you know what. Let’s just say that instant state of blissful lucidity you’re supposed to feel once the earth has stopped moving has been usurped by instant disillusionment. But I’ve talked about that shutdown before. I guess it’s just getting worse. Anyway I think it was that perceived ‘distance’ which prompted the conversation we had later, afterwards, as this post-coital malaise secretly kept me cold.
It started when, to lighten the mood (with myself mainly), I jokingly (and perhaps foolishly) asked her if she often dallied us younger men (she had said she was forty going on forty-one). She immediately took umbrage to this in luckily only a playful sort of way, and responded that our mere five and a bit years’ difference hardly warranted any such comment. We were practically the same age. In fact did I really see her as an ‘older woman’, she followed up with, given her previous comment.
I thought a lot about this. Well it was high speed thinking really because she was the type who liked fairly immediate answers, meaning any sort of hesitation might see her go in for the kill (typical legal eagle; although to be fair she was a solicitor rather than barrister which was probably just as well). Look I know you might think I’m stereotyping here but I just had this hunch she was less likely to take any prisoners (so to speak) than even Jane at her sharpest.
And actually here was an interesting comparison that raced across my pontificating as I sought to answer her. When I met Jane I was twenty-nine, and our age difference was roughly the same if not less than the one existing in this current scenario. But while I did feel very much the ‘younger man’ back then, my jurisprudent bedfellow was right, this time in truth I wasn’t (metaphorically speaking that is). Interesting. But surely that’s what I’ve invented the toyman for isn’t it.
Still, having made this something of a cause celebre I realise I’m now in danger of sounding like a broken record so I’ll desist from rattling on about that pet subject of mine for the moment; besides it’s a side issue in this particular instance. What ‘is’ the issue is that despite not feeling so much younger this time, I nonetheless did indeed regard her as an ‘older woman’, even though there clearly was hardly a credit card’s width between us on so many things. And yet when you couple this with how I’ve lately started noticing those in the slightly opposite numerical direction too, as it were, I suddenly found myself staring right into the very heart of my quandary.
Meanwhile, her own case against me gaining more credence, she persisted with her thankfully mock-inquisition. Was this it then, had I dismissively written our dalliance off as a mere ‘younger/older’ seduction that wasn’t supposed to go anywhere. Okay yes she was teasing me a bit here. But only kind of, because she could see I didn’t have an articulated answer for what I actually want. Thus in presenting her evidence she countered that in her opinion biology appeared to be pulling me in one direction now because here I was, circa mid-thirties, dealing with all that hardwired procreational stuff that we chaps get too, while at the same time there I was in bed with someone where all that kind of stuff might not be an option. And although she wasn’t ‘older’ in her eyes (or mine really), she knew I seemed to perceive this differently purely because her digits were greater than my own, which, as she’d just pointed out, carried with it certain implications.
Because you see, she summed up, this wasn’t just about the sex. If it was, a swift callous getaway would be a doddle every time as it’d just be the stereotypical Mrs. Robinson shag that’s more about fantasy fulfilment than feelings. On the other hand, in my case she sensed that perhaps this strange battle I was having with myself was about ‘who’ I really did feel more comfortable being with. And until I sorted that out, there wasn’t going to be any kind of settlement as the pattern wasn’t going to change.
Blimey.
I mean, don’t you just hate lawyers…
By Bastian Dash Read more of his musing about life and love on your personal home page.
