I come home alone, by choice. We kissed as we said goodbye in the parking lot. She asked me to come back with her. Her brother watched from the window of her car as we stood out in the cold.
I sit in the driver’s seat for a long pause, watch her car drive away, and then finally check my phone. There’s a line of text messages that I scroll through. A multitude of people, mostly women, had written. I had resisted the urge to check my phone during the concert. But she stood pressed against me, and felt the texts vibrate in my pocket with the same frequency that I did.
My sex life is like Prague in it’s heyday. Except that in Prague, I had an existence that was tailored for that kind of lifestyle. This, I don’t remember signing up for. It crept up on me. And a sense of dread persists, because I’m old enough to know how rapidly it can go from feast to famine. Each of the connections that I’ve made, that I rely on to keep some semblance of composure, instead becomes a liability.
And so I wade deeper into the ridiculousness, and the debauchery, and the self-destruction. With a caution from experience that can only check me temporarily, but never stops me.
