“Nice,” I said, even though he seemed young to have kids. “How old is she?”
“Five. She’s . . .” He sighed. “Amazing.”
I was about to ask how long he’d been divorced when he cut me off.
“I want to be honest here, Leslie. My wife and I are separated. She’s still in our house with my daughter, and I rent a condo near my office. I don’t think we’re gonna make it over time, but I care for her. I love our daughter. I still have dinner with them every night.”
Dylan paused as a truck rumbled by. Dating a married man was not something I’d ever considered doing. Separated, however, was okay, especially because he was being up-front about his marital situation, and I wasn’t technically divorced yet myself. I sat motionless in my car, stunned by how transparent he was being. And he wasn’t done.
“The thing is, Leslie, I didn’t date much in college. I’m from a small town. I was shy and playing lacrosse all the time. She was my first girlfriend. It felt right at the time, but now . . . We’ve been separated for about six months. I got married too young. I’m figuring out what to do. How’s that for a lot of honesty from someone whose coffee you knocked over in an airport?”
I’d been pressing my cell phone so hard against my head, my ear felt like a slice of Velveeta smashed between my skull and the phone.
“Hmm . . . actually, I’m into honesty, Dylan.” I tried out saying his name. I liked the way it sounded. “I haven’t had much of it in my life lately.”
Taking a deep breath to relax, I decided to be as blunt and bold as he’d been. Leap and the net will appear was one of my favorite new sayings. I leapt.
“So, have you ever been with anyone else, besides your wife, since you got married?”
“Fair question, I guess.” Dylan didn’t sound uneasy anymore, either. “The answer is yes. Last year. Someone at work. Which was stupid.”
He laughed painfully, like he had rocks in his throat.
“When I ended it, she called my home. My wife said if I ever did it again, she’d leave. We live in a small town, like I said. My mom and dad own a house up the block from us. My job, my kid . . . my wife would take everything. So, we’re doing this separation thing so that both of us have time to figure out what we want.”
“Oh, that’s pretty extreme.”
“You have no idea, Leslie. My wife saw this therapist on Oprah who says I have to give her my phone and computer passwords and she can check all my emails and texts twenty-four seven. You know, because I betrayed her, and this is how we rebuild our trust.”
“Wow. I’m not sure that’s the way to rebuild trust, Dylan.”
“Tell me about it. And trust—I can be trustworthy. But that’s our second-biggest problem, not the first. The real problem is I cannot live the rest of my life in a monogamous relationship. I’m too young for that.”
Another truck roared by in the background.
“Anyway, I want to let you know something else about me. It’s about you, actually. You realize I’m younger, right?”
“Um, yes.”
By twenty years, Dylan. I didn’t say that part. I hoped he didn’t know how much older I actually was.
“I’ve always wondered about older women. A woman like you. I’m twenty-nine. Is that a problem for you?”
Was he kidding?
“No, it’s actually a plus, Dylan. A big plus.”
Dylan laughed.
“God, you’re beautiful, Leslie.”
Me?
Me?
Me?
I couldn’t remember the last time Marty had told me I looked pretty. Possibly never. It felt as priceless as finding a red diamond to hear a man—a younger man, beautiful himself, someone who’d met me only once—tell me that.
“You look like you’re from Manhattan,” he added.
I stopped myself from bursting out laughing. Dylan Smyth surely didn’t know it, but that’s the one compliment every woman from Philadelphia secretly dreams about hearing.
“My rule is that no one gets hurt here,” he continued. Clearly, he’d thought about this, and had already decided that he wanted to sleep with me. “Not you. Not me. Most especially, not my daughter. But I want to see you. I come to Long Island for monthlies, the second Friday of the month. Can we meet then?”
That was in two weeks. It was obvious what we were going to do when he got here. I took a deep breath and exhaled two decades’ worth of sexual frustration.
“Dylan, I can’t imagine anything I’d enjoy more,” I said.
If my grandmother could have seen my face as I hung up my phone, she would have said I was the cat with a canary in its mouth now.
* * *
Was I thirteen again?
For the next two weeks, every weekday afternoon around five thirty, Dylan Smyth called me from his Silverado on the drive home to have dinner with his daughter. It was like high school, when a boy calling me was the apex of my week. One night, I actually wrote I ♥ DS on an old Citarella receipt while talking to him.
Even though we hadn’t met up yet, I felt like this was Gone with the Wind, with me playing Belle Watling, the wise madam who intuits that men need someone to listen to them, even more than they need sexual variety. I was learning a lot from Dylan about unhappily semimarried twenty-nine-year-old men. Plus he had a very arresting phone voice.
“You are helping me so much, Leslie,” he told me one evening, his pickup truck stopped by the side of the road so we could finish our conversation before he pulled in the driveway. “It’s like that Zach Brown song, ‘God didn’t make me a one-woman man.’ And Zach Brown is married with something like five kids and he sings all the time about how much he loves his wife. Can’t I love my wife and want another woman, too?”
If my own husband had asked me this, I would have wanted to cut his vocal cords. Maybe I was being naive, but as far as I could tell, Dylan had no desire to hurt his wife. He’d gotten married a few months after college and become a father right away. He wasn’t even thirty years old. He’d had sex with three people. I’d be going crazy myself. Maybe anyone would be. And although perhaps it was unethical for him to pursue me, given that he might stay married, I saw that as his choice and his conscience to wrestle with, not mine.
I didn’t know how much I was helping him, but I was pretty sure he could help me when he came to Long Island, which was in four days, six hours, and twenty-seven minutes. First, though, I was going to have to buy at least one new bra. Mine were all worn-out beige with sturdy straps, married-mom armor bras, not a seductive stitch of black or lace anywhere. However, except for an excuse to buy new lingerie, I didn’t want anything material from Dylan Smyth. I did not want his money. I certainly didn’t want to make babies with him. I didn’t want to ride in his pickup truck. Or go out with him on Valentine’s Day. Or wake up in the morning next to him.
I didn’t want any of that from Dylan or any man.
I’d married two husbands full of confidence, hopeful and in love, and both marriages had eventually made me feel as if my hands were nailed to a Formica table. As KC often says, Marriage is a sucky institution for women. The last thing I wanted was to be someone’s wife again. But I also was looking for far more than a one-night stand. What I needed is hard to admit because it sounds egotistical, but it’s the truth and it goes a lot deeper than mere ego: I wanted men to desire me. I wanted to feel good about myself, attractive and valued, after the heartbreak of my early abusive marriage followed by almost two decades of Marty’s sexual negativity and betrayals.
How could that be too much to ask?
* * *
A Victoria’s Secret dressing room is not the ideal place to rebuild one’s sexual self-esteem. Especially at forty-nine. A few days earlier during plank pose, a yoga teacher had poked my abs and told me to suck in the small, flesh-covered pouch of marbles near my belly button. “That doesn’t suck in,” I whispered back, humiliated. But surprisingly, in the Victoria’s Secret dressing room, my potbelly, framed by six
ty dollars’ worth of black lace push-up bra and matching lace thong, looked passable. Possibly even cute.
On the drive home, it occurred to me, with a jolt, that Dylan might expect oral sex. A wave of anxiety made my gut flip. It had been three years since I’d given a blow job. Had I forgotten how? Did I ever really know how? Fortunately, you can Google anything. I couldn’t wait to get back to the beach house and my computer.
Once home, surrounded by pink Victoria’s Secret bags, I typed “How to Give a Blow Job” and waited for guidance from the universe. Awash in paranoia, I actually looked around to see if anyone was monitoring me. Of course, no one was. But I felt like Mom was slut-shaming me from heaven.
I scrolled down a page of links to porn sites. A blog by a former dominatrix caught my attention. I double-clicked. The first thing she wrote was, “Ladies, your grandmother was wrong. The way to a man’s heart is not through his stomach. It’s through his dick.”
She said the key to a good blow job is a good hand job. I’d never thought of it that way. This didn’t improve my situation, though. Personally, I always found giving a hand job even harder than giving a blow job. But the sheer practicality of her advice reassured me. I felt like writing notes in pen on the back of my hand.
The subsequent, far more valuable, bullet point was, “If he likes what you’re doing, don’t stop.”
Absolutely. I could remember that one.
Her final tip was the best one. “Every man will tell you that enthusiasm for his dick, his most prized possession, is the critical success factor for an outstanding oral sex experience.”
After three years off the job, enthusiasm was not going to be my problem. My shoulders unclenched. Maybe this would be okay.
My phone buzzed with a text from Dylan that afternoon as I was writing in my sunny porch office. I looked down at the screen. It was the name and address of the hotel he’d booked. I looked the place up online. It was one of those boutique suburban chains, a Sheraton dressed up to imitate an expensive New York apartment, thirty minutes from my beach house and thirty minutes from his Long Island office.
I clicked through the website photos of conference rooms, vast inviting terraces, an indoor pool, and various suites. I tried to picture the two of us alone together in bed in the rooms. I had never met someone in a hotel to have sex. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like. Sleazy? Anonymous? Smoking hot?
Was I really going to do this?
The next morning, I woke up early, too fired up to sleep. I took Bella to the beach, then spent all day getting ready, because I had zero ability to concentrate long enough to write a sentence or do anything mundane like pay bills or fold laundry. I showered and shaved my legs and underarms. Walking through the living room, I caught sight of myself in the mirror over the fireplace and started hyperventilating, imagining what it would be like to see this man again. I gave myself a pedicure and painted my toenails fuchsia. I soaked my skin in body cream that smelled like bergamot oranges. I practiced deep breathing.
Was this finally happening?
I checked my phone in between ablutions.
This is crazy! read a text from Dylan. Then he sent a smiley emoji. I can’t wait.
At five o’clock, I dropped Bella at her friend Alice’s for a carefully orchestrated sleepover. Alone at home, I changed into my new lingerie and pulled on my favorite sleeveless black sundress and sandals. Right before I left home, and twice in the car, I touched up my eyeliner and lipstick.
I hoped I looked good enough, but honestly, I had no idea what he was expecting me to look like.
I was so jittery, I drove five miles under the speed limit, clutching the steering wheel like a grandma. A dump truck honked at me, and I flinched like it was a gunshot. At the postmodern hotel portico, I parked a few spaces from the entrance. Practically tiptoeing, I made my way into the air-conditioned lobby, sat on a Creamsicle-orange love seat, and began hyperventilating again. My fingers quivering, I texted Dylan.
I’m here but I can’t breathe.
He sent me another smiley emoji.
Be right down.
Watching the elevator doors, I tried to steady my heart rate. It wasn’t easy.
Then, the elevator pinged, announcing its arrival in the lobby. The two doors opened and there he was. Dylan walked toward me like Brad Pitt in a slow-motion movie scene. He was shorter than I remembered from the Philly airport. His eyes were bluer.
“Hi,” he said awkwardly as he stopped in front of me. He put his hands in his khaki pockets and then took them back out. I laughed, unable to move, frozen to the fuzzy orange couch like a panicky four-year-old waiting for shots at the doctor’s office.
He took my hands and pulled me up for a hug. His body felt strong and warm against mine, his brawny back slippery with muscles under his soft cotton shirt.
“It’s nice to see you again, Leslie,” he said, holding me at arm’s length, smiling like he was trying not to break into a huge grin. We were both obviously so happy to see each other, like teenagers on a first date, that my anxiety dissipated, replaced with a surge of adrenaline that made me feel as if I’d heard my favorite song on the radio.
We drove in his rental car to the closest restaurant, the Cheesecake Factory. I wanted to sit next to him in our teal Naugahyde booth, so our legs could touch and my forearm could brush his accidentally, but that felt geeky, so I sat across from him with my hands clasped together on the table to keep them still. To any outsider, it might have looked as if we were simply acquaintances. Not two people twenty years apart in age who met randomly at an airport and were going to shamelessly rip each other’s clothes off in a hotel room in less than an hour.
I couldn’t follow our conversation thread. Maybe there wasn’t one. My effort went into breathing normally and proffering small talk about his work and my writing. We ordered, dishes arrived, and we ate. I didn’t taste a bite.
Then the pace screeched to super slow motion. We drove back to the hotel. We got into the elevator. He pushed the button for the ninth floor. The air in the elevator felt suctioned up by our silence. We walked down the hallway to his room.
Inside the twilit hotel suite, the door banged shut, and we turned to each other a few feet inside the room. I dropped my purse on the floor. He cupped my face in his hands. Then, for the first time in years, I was being kissed, slowly, softly. And kissed. And kissed. His mouth was delicious.
Without stopping, we moved to the couch by a window. His hand inched up the soft inside of my left inner thigh.
I folded my hands over his to stop him.
“Dylan, wait a minute. I need to go slowly. Because . . .” I paused, my cheeks flushed like a child with fever. “I haven’t had sex in over three years.”
I was afraid of how he’d take this news. I needn’t have worried. His cobalt eyes lit up like he was getting an expensive present.
Incredulous, he asked, “You’re a MILF virgin?” Whatever a MILF was. He took my hands and held them, looking honored. Then his face lit up. “A virgin with about a hundred times more experience than me.”
He took me in his arms and started kissing me again. After a few minutes, he reached under my dress and paused with his fingers under my lace thong.
“Can I take this off?” he asked. I nodded wordlessly. I didn’t trust my voice.
I unbuttoned his shirt and slipped my hands inside. His tanned chest was hard and smooth, the kind of skin I remembered from making out with eighteen-year-olds in high school. I would have been happy to kiss him and bury my head in his neck and slide my fingers over his muscular pecs for the entire night.
Dylan Smyth had other ideas. He pulled me up to stand about halfway between the king bed and the couch. In one fluid movement, he reached for the hem of my black sundress. Before I could stop him, he’d lifted the dress straight up over my head.
I froze. I was standing in front of him wearing only my black heels and the black lace Victoria’s Secret bra.
The lighting in the room
came from two flattering yellow wall sconces. But embarrassment made the hairs stand up all over my body. Had he ever seen a woman my age nude? I had given birth to two eight-pound, full-fucking-term babies. My belly showed the telltale signs. I’d nursed both babies as well, and at times my breasts looked, from my view at least, like wet paper towels.
It felt as if a strobe light were scanning my body, accompanied by a police megaphone booming, Step away from the old wrinkled lady now! I looked down at my saggy breasts in my bra and the cellulite on my belly. I wanted to scream in horror and cover myself in shame.
He took a step back. “Oh. My. God,” he said.
What was he thinking? Was he going to leave, even though it was his hotel room?
“Oh my God, Leslie,” he said again. “You . . . you have a spectacular body.”
Me? The same person Marty told, again and again, you don’t meet my needs sexually? The one whose husband insisted she wear a robe so he didn’t have to see her naked? I did not have a spectacular body. How could he see it that way?
I felt like Dylan might be joking. Were we even looking at the same physical entity? I started to tremble involuntarily. How could I possibly trust this stranger, even if he was the best-looking man I’d ever kissed?
“Leslie, you have to know this.”
He paused and looked right at my face. He grabbed my hipbones and squeezed them, and then moved his hands behind me to cup my ass with his palms. He drew me to him, and then buried his face between my breasts. I could feel him getting hard against me. He took a deep breath and then let out a full-body sigh. He looked up, his eyes blue and sincere.
“You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”
He’d read my mind.
“Your body isn’t perfect,” he said, cupping my very imperfect breasts. “Although maybe it was when you were eighteen.” He smiled, and ran his hands slowly down my rib cage and over my hips, as if he wanted to absorb my skin with his palms. “Your life . . . makes you even more beautiful. Every inch of you.”
The Naked Truth Page 5