Life

He took her to this same spa, again. It's a spa because it's called one, but it's more like a one hour quick hook up. Each room came with a hot tub, a sky light or a sauna, and a bed with no blankets or pillow. It charged on an hourly basis. Though the sign listed "child rate, $7 / hour", she doubted any child had ever set foot into this place. It was the second or the third time for her. It costed $39 for two people per hour, and the sign said, "We prefer single dollar bills. Cash only." The rooms had numbers. The casher behind a bullet proof door asked which room he preferred, the guests were then given two white towels and a key, and a deposit of $20 or a valid driver's license. 

She had gone to hotels with him, or his house, when his wife was out of town; he had gone to her house, when her then husband was out of town. He had once left a condom, an open condom on her dresser, which was stupid, because her husband came home the next day and she forgot to remove it. By the time she saw and removed it, she noticed that he had set his car key next to the opened condom pack, but he said nothing. She imagined he saw it but did not nothing. They did not have a sexual relationship by then, it had been 20 years since they were married, their children were grown. She was a young 48 year old.

The man she was with was younger, significantly younger, and taller. He was 32. He was a math major in college, but he was doing engineering work, software engineer, at a start up that focused on food write-up down the street from her. She was a brunette who was petite yet busty, she could still pass to be a mid thirties woman. The two of them did not exactly started to date at first. They met at a networking event, she ran a non profit organization, and he did coding for a living, and the networking event was to bring people who were working in startups together over wine tasting. She spilled drink on his foot, his giant, size 14 foot, and they started talking. 

After a few lunches, they went on to have dinners. Eventually dinner became a pretense for getting together so that they could find a place to fuck.

In this spa they did two things: soaking and fucking. He liked to fuck her in the water, and outside of the water, on the bed or in the sauna. She loved anal sex and he would prep for it by licking her ass until she would come, and then he entered her forcefully, and when she cried with joy and pain he would come inside of her. This went on for a while until she began to like vaginal sex again. They fucked and kissed and they parted ways not like lovers but as friends. 

One year he took off for six months to travel the world with his wife. She did not hear from him during the six months, but when he returned, he called her and they were back together again for these hook ups.

They never talked about the future. There was none. No one knew that she was seeing a younger man. She thought that it was not kosher among her conservative but caring girlfriends. 

Three years ago she fell in love with a man who was more age appropriate. He was 48 at the time, single, childless, never been married, and she was 45. They dated for a year, while she continued to see this young man. Then, this age appropriate man got the cold feet and disappeared. She told her young lover about this man, but not so much so that he thought she was actually physically involved with this man, or as her young lover called, "the old dude". Her young lover thought she was being pursued but did not act on it. This age-appropriate man claimed that he loved her. They had boring vaginal sex, he came in ten minutes, and if he smoked pot, he'd come in twenty minutes. She never orgasmed, but this man got her, he ran a company like she did, though his was for-profit. They both moved here from Michigan and they had the same middle class, middle of America childhoods. He liked kinky sex, sex like tying her up in nautical ropes and putting her in dog collar and dog leash to walk her around. He liked to meet her in fancy hotels. Upon arrival, she was ordered to take off her close and he'd put her on a dog collar and leash, she was on her high heels and stockings, and on knees. She would service him until he was about to come, and at that point she was ushered to the bathtub and he would piss on her until he was drained. Then they'd proceed to have regular missionary sex like two most normal persons in the world. He would kiss her piss-covered face and tell her that he loved her. She would cry and tell him that she loved him too. 

One day he went on a business trip and said that he'd call, like he always did when he landed at his destination. He never did that time. She called him and he did not call her back. She called again. She tried to text him. She left messages at the hotel. She wrote emails. At first angry but then worrisome emails. She then declared love. And told him that she would do anything to be with him. And nothing. Nothing at all from him.

After two weeks of absence, she realized that perhaps he had moved on and he was with another person by then. She stopped contacting him. Six months later she got a note from this man, he said he had missed her and wanted to see her. Out of curiosity she went to meet him at their usual hotel meet up. She saw him under the broad day light, which was highly unusual - previously they only met up during evenings. He offered no explanation for his absence or his disappearing act. He told her that he missed her, and acted as if she still dated him. She wanted to ask him if he got hit by a bus and consequently forgot about the last six months of absolute silence, but instead she just sat there, sipped her cocktail and watched his mouth move.

He looked surprisingly his age: his hair was gray, he had severe bags under his eyes, his faced looked disproportionate wide, his nose appeared to be too large for his otherwise, once upon a time, delicate face, and when he went to the bar to fetch another drink, she noticed that his pants were loose and his butt looked sagging, like all old men were. She realized that at that moment she no longer loved him. She still wanted to have sex with him, despite all that. She wanted to know if their sex was still appealing to her. So they went from the hotel lobby to his room.

That meeting was the first time he fucked her in the ass and it was the last time they had sex.  She was strangely relieved that he finally got to have her in the most natural way, but at the same time she thought it was the end she was looking for - there was nothing left for her to give, and she no longer felt attracted to him. 

For a while she thought about writing to him, asking how he was, telling him about her non-profit's progress: they received another round of federal funding, their project won a prestigious San Francisco reward, and her husband of twenty years had finally left her: he moved in with his mistress, apparently he had already bought a house in Seattle, and all those allegedly business trips were in fact masking his true destination - he was flying to his other home to spend time with his mistress. She was relieved that he had finally left her. The best thing ever happened was that she got to keep their California king size bed. It was a commissioned piece from this local artist in Marin. She loved it and bought a super firm mattress to outfit this gorgeous wooden bed.

The ex husband took the dog but she kept the cat. The lonely black and white cat who seemed to be always stealing neighbor's cat food all the time, even though she bought the same brand of cat food. One time she swore that she caught the cat taking out a bird out of the corner of her eye. She secretively admired the cat's strength, she wished that she could kill something, someone, but she had no such hatred or passion. She just liked to go to her yoga class after work, attend a sewing class here and there, and see this younger man for sex, once in a great while. This young man whom she neglected to mention to her 48 year old lover about. She thought about writing to this man whom she thought she loved once, to tell him that he was never the one and only, outside of her marriage she had not just one but two lovers, but these were such trivial stories. And it would not change a thing. It would not change the fact that she no longer loved him. 

When the hot tub / fucking trip was over, she often took the young boy to a nearby Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. One year when she was working in Ethiopia, she ate nothing but wat and injera for two weeks straight, Then she missed cheese burgers. She missed it terribly, and french fries. This young lover was an adventurous foodie, and it reminded her of how she once was when she was his age. As he stuffed his mouth with injera, scooped up with his hand, she would graciously sip her tea and tell him how much she enjoyed him licking her ass before he penetrated her. Then she'd move onto other course of business, like how her staff was being difficult and one gal had to leave every day at 5:15 to pick up her young daughter from the day care. What had the world become to? Why did they get to feel so entitled about child care when back in the day she did whatever she could for her job, and sacrificed her family life for her career? 

The young man would then tell her that he loved fingering her to orgasm and eating her out before sticking his equipment inside of her ass, and then he'd complain about his job, "Too mundane, lack of excitement and too predictable. When is IPO anyway?" He would add. His wife and he had been trying for a baby casually for a year. He wanted a kid but not that much. He concluded the conversation by complimenting her skin. She had the after glow. She smiled and wiped her lips with the edge of the white dinner napkin. 

Next week she would be traveling to Washington D.C. There was a very good Ethiopian restaurant near the DuPont Circle, she said. She wished that he could come with on one of her trips. She could show him D.C. and they could then take a train to Philly, where she often visited when she was still with that age-appropriate man. The "older dude" had an office on Arch street in downtown. and she would often meet up with him in his hotel when he traveled there. But she did not mention it to her young lover in the end.

Her young lover grew up in Southern California but was of Scandinavia and German decent. His father grew up in Mariefred, just outside of Stockholm, while his mother grew up in Berlin. His parents met in UC Santa Barbara and he was born shortly after. He had visited his mother and father's homeland but had never traveled to the east coast. 

They parted ways via separate cars. He texted his wife to tell her that he was finally done with work, and she had to go home to see her cat.

When she arrived home she would find a piece of snail mail. It was a notice of an upcoming funeral. She would found out that her age-appropriate ex lover had died at age 51. He died, apparently due to a strange sudden brain aneurysm at work. He was survived, the note said, by his wife Lucy, and children Luke and Liam. 

That evening she hugged her cat. She felt somewhat a kindred spirit to her cat. She finally understood why the cat had to catch the bird. It was the nature. Just like her life.