Age and Sex, Part I

Hugo Schwyzer has an interesting series of posts on relationships between older men and younger women, although I can't say I completely agree with his conclusions. I do have some relevant personal experience. When I was 18, I began an affair with a man 13 years my senior, which lasted for about about a year. The relationship could have been better in some ways, but seven years later, I don't feel as though he exploited me because I was young and naive. I did a most of the pursuing, most of the wanting, and all of the having my heart broken.

It was my first overtly sexual relationship. (Jesus, I find that hard to type without thinking how bad it all looks.) I'd spent my high school years in celibacy, partly for political reasons involving adult authority figures, and partly because I didn't like or respect most of the boys in my high school. So when I met this clever, clever graduate student with his hot, hot swimmer's body at a friend's party, the experience of white-hot seething lust was all rather new and surprising. I convinced him to share a bottle of wine with me and take me back to his apartment. Somehow, I managed to call my parents, with whom I was still living, and make up a story about where I was staying. I made out with him frenetically until dawn, but kept all my clothes on, suspended halfway between my lust and my guilt. Then I took the bus home and hid in my room. He probably thought he had seduced me.

I couldn't stay away from the man, and I felt like I couldn't stop myself from touching him. Ordinarily, I feel myself exerting effort when I move my body. With this man, I felt as though some strange compulsion had taken hold of me. My lips and hands seemed to seek him out of their own accord, without effort, and it was only with attention that I could hold myself still. He would put his head between my legs and made me feel like I melting. I wanted to turn into a puddle of molten wax and run down his chest, his back, his gorgeous, muscular legs.

The compulsion was all internal. He never pressured or nagged me into sex. When I wanted to stop, we stopped, and when I wanted to go home, he'd call me a cab. He also never lied to me about his intentions either: he was looking for sex, not for a relationship. I, on the other hand, lied profusely to myself. Nice girls weren't supposed to have sex, but the rules could be bent for cases of True Love, so I convinced myself I was in True Love. This involved a lot of looking out for the guy's well-being, which, since he was not a very self-preserving person, was a fairly substantial job. He had a big mouth and liked to piss off guys who were bigger than he was. He'd also get drunk and do physically dangerous things, though I repeat, he was never cruel or violent toward me. I worked myself into a furor of jealousy over the other women he slept with. (He was never forthcoming with details, but I'm sure there were several. He once came home with a hickey on his inner thigh, for which I demanded explanation, and which he steadfastly refused to explain. I fumed, but I was back the next week.)

It wasn't True Love, but I don't think it was just sex, either. I enjoyed the little intimacies: post-coital cuddling, making goofy shampoo hats in the shower (yeah, I'm secretly six years old), cooking together, the sarcastic barbs that he'd toss at me, and that I'd return. He'd eat as many hot peppers as he could, just to show off; it was sweet. I didn't Love the guy, and I probably shouldn't have lost much sleep over him, but I did genuinely like him.

Was I looking for some sort of father figure? I don't think so. His status as a clever grad student made him more attractive in my eyes, and I did enjoy the approval of someone I thought was smart. But he wasn't fatherly, really. He was more like a high-status, slightly unstable, bad boy type. I'm close to my father; I love my father; I'm probably his favorite kid; but I tend not to sleep with men who truly resemble my father. That would be... weird.

After a year, my first lover finished his Ph.D. and got a job on another continent. We parted ways amicably. I missed him terribly when he left, but I don't know whether he missed me. He sent me some mittens the following Christmas, and a note that said to keep myself warm. I didn't write back, and eventually I lost track of where he was. I hope that he's happy, and that he hasn't killed himself in some fit of drunken stupidity.

Well, that's been an awful lot of personal narrative and no discussion of Hugo. But I think it's important to add to the story, if only to say that yes, I had an affair with an older man, and yes, I was naive, and no, I wasn't filled with foresight, but I still own that part of my past. Nobody coerced me.

I'll close this ode to my lover with the last stanza of Theodore Rothke's poem "I Knew a Woman", a poem which always reminded me of him. Since he was a man and not a woman, I've taken the liberty of changing a few pronouns.

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay,
I'm martyr to a motion not my own.
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear, he cast a shadow white as bone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn his wanton ways.
I measure time by how a body sways.