In Ten Years

He removed my hair clip, and my long hair was let loose: it was getting too long for me, it's now to my shoulder. Some think I should have it cut shorter: “Short hair means power, you are a powerful woman.” Those who thought of me simply as a business woman would tell me. Men who liked me, who thought that I could be their object of affection, preferred it long, however: it was more feminine. He wanted me to keep it as it was. Against naked skin, my long, straight, sun kissed hair made men feel like they were hugging a real woman. But he’s not just any man. He’s my long term boyfriend. He's either on the verge of becoming the real deal, or falling off a cliff and never to be sighted again. Like any respectful French woman, which I always thought that I was, I had been engaged in a multi-year affair with him: over two, less than three. I could see this going on for a while. I had no intention to let him go, and every time I tested this subject on him, he did not want to end it either. 

In bed, he said that he liked to stay in hotels. In ten years he’d want to move into a hotel permanently. He hated laundry with a passion. He hated permanence. He already lived in a very transient world. He would never marry, never own a home, never make a meal. He was the opposite of me. I liked commitment. I feared change. I owned four homes: two in the U.S., one in Europe, and one in Asia. Yet he was my kindred spirit. I had always loved him. 

He had the means. He could make living in a hotel happen. It’s not that expensive, at $200 a day, a month was just $6000, that’s less than some mortgage, less than mine anyway. I knew someone who had done it. That someone made it big in building and selling technology companies. His name was P. P and I were close for a while, I never slept with P. In retrospect, I thought the intent was there. P was used to dating pretty but not smart women. I was what he called a “smart and pretty woman". He only knew two other women like me. One day, P told me about this, over a lunch at Town Hall. He bought me lunch that day, even though I didn't want him to pay, just to make a point, I didn't want to be thought of as one of his bimbo girlfriends. P had three, one lived with him, two he dated, seriously.

Over a decade ago, before P lived in a hotel, when I was just married, P asked me out on a date. That night I was sitting in a French restaurant and talking to P, I was looking out the window, worried about being seen by someone I might know, even though the dinner was just a dinner and he was just a friend, I felt guilty. As I was looking out, I saw him, my lover, walking by. He had not seen me, but I saw him, his profile. He was walking by with a male friend of his. He had not seen me with P, and that was the last known memory I had of him, and that was the last and only date I had with P. I did not see this man who became my lover until we reacquainted again a few years ago. 

In ten years, this man who was lying next to me, would be just like P, living in a hotel. P moved into Ritz Carlton five years ago. When P sold his last company, he had a $200 million pay day. He called me just when I was coming back from France. P wanted to know where A was, A was an old boyfriend of mine, who also made it big in the Internet world way back in the 90s, when he was just out of MIT Sloan.  A moved to Seattle when the payout came through. He claimed that he spent years trying to figure out where I was, whom I had married to, as I changed my last name. A found me eventually in 2011. P was moving there and he knew that he'd get along with A. Any ex of mine would be of some level of quality. P proclaimed. A indeed became a close friend to P. I made the connection for the two of them. I was always a relationship builder. I introduced people to people.  I introduced pretty much everyone to everyone, borrowing this man, this man who was holding me in bed. I would have, but he never gave me an opportunity to be introduced, and I suspected he preferred remaining in the shadows, just like he preferred me to be in his shadows. No one in his world had ever heard of me. He hid me and he made no mention of me to anyone. I was not important enough to be seen in his world. I was an affair buried deep into his skin, I was a woman who he could say nothing at all, but I would still know what to do when I saw him. Words of meet and greet were brief, and within 5 minutes, he would have removed the belt, and unzipped his pants. I would be in whatever position, sucking on his cock. We had that in sync. I wanted to service him, and he wanted to be serviced.

Speaking of "in ten years", I wanted to know what his biggest fear would be. Because I knew MY answer already. I feared that he'd still love me, he'd still not let me go, and I'd still love him back, and I'd have trouble letting him go. Everything should end. That was the law of nature. It was unnatural for me to still desire him as much as I did the first time we met. It was unexpected for him to still feel attracted to me. An unanticipated consequence therefore arose in our interactions: he was becoming more communicative, he was suggesting that he should go out with me, attend events, and even, maybe this time, meet my friends. His effort in being more communicative, and more forward thinking, made this fairy tale like secret affair, less gloom and doom, and more fun and refreshing.

I knew our worlds - my current, and his past, possibly current, as well, were colliding slightly. I noticed some people's names from when I was more attuned to his world, through his facebook connections, back when he was in my network, back before I defriended him, were starting to pop into my circles. I told him nothing thus far, and I tried to ignore. I knew it was only just a matter of time that some of his old friends, his current friends even, would be seen somewhere by me, and my friends. It was inevitable, the world was shrinking in front of our eyes. I needed to be prepared.

I feared that we would be like what we were like sixteen odd years ago: I met him because he was a friend to a close girlfriend of mine's ex, his best friend and I worked for the same consulting firm and staffed on the same project. It would be too much. I feared that we might actually belong together as he said. I feared that I would feel exactly the same about him as I did today.

In ten years, he'd move into a hotel, his clothes dry cleaned and linen laundered daily; in ten years, my children would have grown and I would be living in a state of constant disarray. And my fear finally came true: I still held his affection, and in return, I loved him, even more.