The One - No one said it would be easy (20 page)

Number Nineteen surprised me with a little picnic by the swimming lake. Oh, very romantic and worth at least another hundred Brownie points. I remained fully clothed since I didn’t feel like sitting around in my bikini, but Number Nineteen suddenly took all this clothes off right in front of me, except for his shorts, and actually leapt into the lake. Which made me feel uncomfortable, I hadn’t planned on being faced with that much of my potential new love interest’s naked skin quite this early in the proceedings. I pretended I didn’t care but of course I inspected him from top to bottom. He was slim and athletic but there was no hiding the fact that he wasn’t twenty years old anymore. Something bugged me, and I couldn’t really say what it was. Maybe his extremely pale skin? Or the sparse, gray chest hair? Or maybe his butt, which was flat instead of crisp and rounded? All in all, his appearance was something I’d have to get used to – I’d never been faced with anything like this before.

In spite of the big romantic set-up – golden convertible, swimming lake, cool graying guy with aviator glasses, picnic, summer evening – there just wasn’t any romance in the air. But I really wanted it! I wanted to fall in love with this fine gent immediately! How the hell hard can it be? So I helped it along. Self-reliance is the name of the game: I didn’t have time to wait around on the off-chance that a romantic feeling might come along. So I made my own. All I needed was the gentle help of a few hallucinogenic herbs. After all, I was still in my post-traumatic I-want-to-get-over-Number-Sixteen phase, and ably supported by my friendly spliffs. They turn everything into a foggy softness and make reality much less real. So, let’s give it a try, maybe I’ll have a flash of romance with my graying companion after all. Such was my strategy. I pulled out my little dope-box – I never left home without it – and Number Nineteen nodded approvingly. Oh good, he’d join in. There’s no mileage in smoking alone when you’re in company. The spliff didn’t take long to roll or to smoke, and who’d have thought – it worked immediately! I suddenly felt all cuddly and cozy and in happy anticipation of things to come. In an instant, I was hot and turned on. Number Nineteen and I were lying next to each other and we started to stroke each other as though it was the most normal thing in the world, and before long we were at it full-blast in each other’s arms. His kisses were so-so. Nothing catastrophic, but not wonderful either.
 They were kind of sloppy and vague, that much I could tell even in my spaced out state. That aside, his hands were suddenly everywhere and his breathing got more and more labored. Not heavy sex-type labored but hard-work-type labored. Oh dear! My old man seemed to be overexerting himself. Ever watched turtles having sex?  They make the grossest noise ever. Totally crass. Check it out on youtube. Anyway, that’s roughly what Number Nineteen sounded like. Luckily the effect of my herbal helpers was wearing off, otherwise I’d have had a laughing fit. That would have been embarrassing! How’re you gonna explain that? Darling you sound like a screwing turtle? All of a sudden I had my seven senses back under control, more or less, and asked my turtle to relocate matters to my home. I didn’t feel like al fresco sex anymore. I wanted my bed.   
No sooner said than done. We got to my place and took up where we’d left off. Not without the aid of a second joint. Which was necessary because I knew that otherwise I’d have a real problem. Number Nineteen just didn’t turn me on. But since I absolutely wanted him to turn me on, I made it happen. Completely nuts. I know. Number Nineteen embarked on part two of his turtle concert. And I acted aroused and turned on, which I was. This was solely due to the disinhibiting effect of the joint, which reliably makes me horny. Soon Number Nineteen and I were in the buff and the copulation part of the proceedings followed quite quickly. He slipped into a condom and then into me. As penises go, he was furnished with quite a substantial specimen. The thing was truly massive but it didn’t shock me – by now, monster-penises no longer frightened me. I had experience!

He was well under way now and groaning away with his eyes closed. It scared me, the way he overexerted himself above me. His gray hair fell gelled and oily across his face, his face was distorted, his skin was pale, his butt was flabby and to top it all, the turtle noises. I froze. That wasn’t a nice sight! That was an old man in and above me. A really old man. Butt naked and devoid of all disguises such as aviator sunglasses and youthful outfit, he really was nothing but an old man. Good grief, Number Nineteen wasn’t exactly a senior citizen! He was “only” forty! Forty really isn’t any kind of old age, but if you manage to look old at that age, what on earth are you going to be like when you really are old? I was ashamed to feel so horrified. None of us is going to escape the passing of the years unscathed, and I too will not be spared sagging shriveled breasts or thighs with skin like crispbread. And since I absolutely plan to be sexually active even in old age, I find it deeply distressing to think that my future senior bed-companion might have a similar reaction to me. Maybe I should after all consider plastic surgery? Youth culture be damned: what happens when even dimmed lights can’t make up for the missing fountain of youth? There was only one thing for it now: close your eyes and get on with it. Number Nineteen discharged into me, groaning and convulsing, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t interested in having my own orgasm anymore. And it’s exactly this moment that comes to mind every time the tabloids parade some celebrity couple with a huge age gap. Have fun in bed with the old man, I always whisper to the ladies. It won’t be so bad if you keep your eyes shut
   

But despite the, well, not exactly overwhelming bedroom experience with Number Nineteen, I wasn’t prepared to write him off just yet. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, you need to give things time. One had to have a chance to get accustomed to one another. Number Five, the love of my life, looked like a Pekinese during kissing, and it irritated the hell out of me to start with. But soon enough I didn’t care about it anymore and everything was fine. Which is what I was banking on with Number Nineteen. The plan had only one slight problem: I wasn’t actually in love. Which took me a while longer to admit. To start with, I tried like crazy to fall in love with Number Nineteen. I generously ignored the old-man-in-my-bed factor. I only had sex with him when I was stoned, and that took care of that. He never spent the entire night with me, always dashed off halfway through, since he still shared a house with his freshly separated ex. Despite being separated, he couldn’t get himself to stay away overnight. At first I wasn’t too bothered by this strange behavior, but the more time we spent together, the more it grated on me. Mr. Super-Successful didn’t have the balls to tell his ex that he was amusing himself with a luscious twenty-something, with whom he wished to spend his nights, let alone holding a gun to her head and chucking her out. I neither wanted to pressurize him nor did I want to be the patient understanding not-the-bitch forever more. If I didn’t start raising the alarm, nothing would ever change and every night, after slipping into me, he’d drive home and slip into the ex-marital bed with his ex-girlfriend, which was a pretty weird notion indeed. On top of that, our liaison was kept secret, because Number Nineteen didn’t want anyone to know. Was he embarrassed about me? Wasn’t I good enough for him? Was he scared of the obligatory must-be-having-his-midlife-crisis-or-why-on-earth-would-he-hang-out-with-some-young-bimbo-like-that gossip?

After a few weeks with Number Nineteen I’d successfully convinced myself that I was in love with him. I’d convinced myself with all the emotional manipulations I kept subjecting myself to. I was ever nicer and purrier with him, sent him emails and text messages which stated unequivocally how wonderful I thought he was. He never once replied. And once again it became apparent that whoever invented this nasty game of love was a total nutcase. Because here’s the thing: the less Number Nineteen reacted to my obvious declarations of high esteem, the more I suddenly wanted him. I did everything I could to conquer his heart. Which, apparently, left him cold. One day I just couldn’t contain myself any longer and made it clear to him – by way of a tearful production that wouldn’t have been out of place on stage – that, if he had any intention of anything longer-term with us, he would have to set things straight with his ex. I said that I wasn’t prepared to put up with things as they were anymore and especially not with this stupid secrecy. I said he should be with me properly and face the consequences, or I’d be off. He didn’t say anything after my ultimatum. Nothing at all. Then he asked for time. Great. That told me all I needed to know: it was over. Number Nineteen didn’t have the balls to clear the decks. For a while we were out of contact, apparently the I-need-time sand was still trickling through his hourglass. During that time, I cooled off considerably. I was cross and my pride was hurt, after all I’d been given rather a nasty brush-off. But I wasn’t really suffering. No comparison to the hellfire and sorrow I’d been through with Number Sixteen, which sometimes still hurt even now. All of this was indisputable proof that I simply wasn’t in love with Number Nineteen.

I’d practically given up on the whole thing when Number Nineteen suddenly reappeared with a grandiosely orchestrated comeback. He invited me on a secret quick trip, destination unknown and not to be disclosed. Bikini and summer gear a must. Wow, exciting! I was back in the running and managed to wrestle my recent realization of how I wasn’t even in love with the guy back into some hidden corner of my brain. I only learnt at the airport what was going on. Formentera. Very snazzy. We spent four brilliant days on the cute little island in the Mediterranean, lived in an amazing luxury finca and I felt as though I was part of an Elle-Decoration let-me-show-you-my-classy-abode photo-shoot. And I yet I couldn’t whole-heartedly enjoy it, because there was simply no denying it: I’d gone off the boil. Or rather, I had to admit that I’d never been remotely on the boil. The hunt-for-Mr.-Right experiment had failed due to a lack of real feelings. You could jiggle and joggle and moan and groan all you liked, in the long run this simply wasn’t an option. The sex became almost impossible to put up with, I just couldn’t get the old-man-image out of my head. And while I was maniacally trying to work out how to get out of this self-induced mess, Number Nineteen suddenly announced that he had been propelled into action by my admonitions and had finally managed to boot his ex out. She was in the process of finding somewhere else to live, and was so bowled over by me, he’d have never thought he’d fall in love again so quickly.

OH NO! SHIT!! The nasty clown that had invented the game of love apparently had another joker up his sleeve and he played it now: it was called “bad timing”. What exactly was I supposed to do now? On spec, I pretended to be pleased. I couldn’t very well turn around and go, ha-ha, too bad, we’re history. I was trapped. Back home the full extent of the debacle became ever clearer. Ha-ha, very funny. Whoever wrote the script for this story must have been a proper prankster, because while my heart was hitting Arctic temperatures, Number Nineteen’s heart was starting to glow with red-hot fervor. Now it was Number Nineteen who was writing the lovey-dovey emails and texts, and I was the one who didn’t reply. I just sat and stared at them numbly, he was writing really sweet and lovely things, but they just didn’t touch me at all. I was a block of ice. Not-in-love personified. And no idea how to get out of it.  
Number Nineteen was away for a few days and somehow his imagination seemed to have become unhinged. He suddenly started to write very crude emails, of which I remember a sentence that went something like this: “I want to pour myself all over you and cover you with my sperm from top to bottom.” Well. That was exactly what I’d been waiting for – my get-out-of-jail-free card! I made him wait for a few days, then sent my reply, an all-out assault: I staged a huge ruckus, acted disgusted and outraged, how could he write such gross things, I was shaken to the core, that was the worst repellent crap I’d ever had the misfortune to hear from any guy, he sounded like a slobbering sex maniac, and now he had wrecked everything and so on and so forth. Pow wham crash wallop, left hook, right hook and a fist driven into the stomach for good measure. Of course I’d pulled a face when I first read his email but, well, it wasn’t exactly devastating. He, on the other hand, was completely destroyed by my attack. He must have wanted the earth to open up and swallow him, he was so ashamed for the wet dream he’d shared with me. He called me, sent me a zillion emails, apologized a thousand times. When he got back, we met to talk things over and clarify matters. For the first time ever, he invited me to his home, huge proof of how serious he was about me.

But it was too late. Since I kind of liked him, though, I forgave him for his bizarre email and suddenly I had the courage and decency to tell him the truth. I confessed that, sadly, I wasn’t in love with him, that I’d tried everything to make it so but that the fire I’d kindled myself at the beginning just would not keep burning. He, on the other hand, confessed that he loved me, and that he was utterly wretched with it all, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Well done, Clown of Love! You really surpassed yourself here! Our parting was a tearful one because I really regretted that there wasn’t any chance of us being a couple. I cried buckets also because I felt so sorry for him, and for me, and because I was so damn angry and sad and frustrated and disappointed about the entire shit-assed bloody love thing in general. Sob-sob, sniff-sniff.  

Number Nineteen and I didn’t keep in touch. My girl friend told me that he really went through the mill after our break-up and was quite out of it for ages. Having managed to turn a grown man of forty into a jibbering wreck was something I put down to experience, but it didn’t make me feel good.