One thing was clear: I would never find anyone more attractive than Eliot, my 27-year-old lover, whose sleek, taut body was built like a Rolls-Royce.
But I hated myself for being in his clutches. I was just as bad as those horrible middle-aged men who constantly leer at young women.
Eliot trained as a footballer before giving it up to work in graphic design (too much pressure, he said), but he would sometimes waddle down the street and, arms outstretched, jump over an imaginary ball.
A chasm of longing would open up inside me. I could never possess this child or keep him for myself. He was too young; he would want a family of his own.
Writer Annabel Bond, a mother of three in her 40s, talks about her date with a much younger man, aged 27.
Since we met two months earlier, we had only had sex twice—in a hotel and at my friend’s house—because he had roommates and I had three kids and an ex-husband still living in the same house.
But in between we spent hours saying goodbye in subway stations, kissing and holding each other until I thought I would go mad with desire. I was obsessed, desperate, trapped by the force of my longing.
That’s why, while I was drunk at a house party in North London, I decided to have sex with someone else.
I hoped I could distill my possessiveness into a more manageable form, such was my fear of the intensity of my feelings for Eliot.
I had known Henry since I was in my early 20s; he was part of a group of friends I had had for years. He was now almost 40, like me, and separated, like me.
Henry had always thought me attractive, I could tell by the way he looked at me and the compliments he gave me. To Henry I was still the sexy girl he had always wanted, not the older woman worried about her flabby neck.
It was easy to start kissing Henry as we swayed to the music playing on the expensive sound system in the kitchen extension; too easy considering I’d never really liked him.
However, at the end of the party I let him properly take my hand and lead me back to his.
“I didn’t think the night would end like this,” I said, squinting at him from across the marital bed. I’d had too much to drink, but I was sobering up fast. “Yeah,” Henry said. “I always knew that.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, it was like he’d been waiting to pounce on me, but it was still nice to strip down to my underwear and strut around under his admiring gaze. It was brutal to categorize him like that, but if Eliot was more attractive than me, I was more attractive than Henry, and there was a certain pleasure in that.
I was fitter than ever, I had been going to the gym very regularly since my marriage failed over a year ago, and I was also losing weight; my obsession with Eliot killed my appetite.
Henry pulled me onto his lap and kissed me. He had thin, determined lips and a shock of graying hair that I didn’t want to get my hands into. He also had a mustache and his skin felt dry compared to Eliot’s velvety softness.
Pushing that thought aside, I let Henry unhook my bra. What we were doing was exciting, I told myself. We had been thinking about it for a long time and now we were finally doing it.
In his underwear, Henry looked like a deformed centaur, with hairy legs that reached down to his completely bald chest. I closed my eyes. I told myself it was sexy how much Henry wanted me. I shouldn’t think about Eliot, not now, with his firm biceps and perfect body hair.
Now that he had his chance, Henry wanted to try every position imaginable; he wanted to get this over with.
I should have said enough, but the weight of our long friendship made it easier for me to continue at the time, a decision I now regret.
Henry pulled me onto his lap and kissed me. He had thin, determined lips and a shock of graying hair that I didn’t want to get my hands into.
Skipping foreplay, I put Henry in the missionary position and just lay there waiting for him to finish. It was weird and lonely, but Henry didn’t seem to find it strange at all.
After her orgasm (mine didn’t even make it past the starting line), I ran to the bathroom and washed up. I tried to normalize what had just happened by talking about her vacation plans, but things weren’t going well.
In the Uber home, I called Eliot, but he didn’t answer. I couldn’t see him. There was no way he could know what I was doing. Would he care? It’s not like we had said “I love you” to each other yet or like we hadn’t defined our relationship. It was a “related” one, but I felt terrible.
Henry texted me the next day: “I miss kissing your beautiful lips.”
“It was a mistake,” I said. “I’m sorry. Let’s be friends again.” But we weren’t really friends anymore. Sex is never anything, even if I had wanted it this time, and that was both our faults.
■ Annabel Bond, left, is a pseudonym. All names have been changed.
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