The Female Mid-Life Crisis

What was I thinking? The truth is, I was unable to think.

My body was going haywire. A wrinkle was forming between my eyes and grooves growing beside my mouth. Hot flashes slammed me day and night, heart palpitations banged at my breastbone. He had merely to hit the send button, and half a continent away my hormones would surge like those of a teenager, but of course I was going (as I was so depressingly aware) in the reverse direction.

I was dying. He was my terminal boyfriend. Happiness? I couldn't remember it. It was as elusive as sleep. All that remained was longing, as visceral and cruel as when I was 13 years old, writing poems, listening in the night to the lonesome train whistle and thinking about the redhead in math class who'd never notice me.

We agreed to reconvene at another conference in another city.

After two days of keeping him at bay, I invited him to my room on the final night, and we at last did the deed. He lay beside me, naked, talking dirty, but…with a bendy dick. I didn't know what to do, so I pretended, and so did he, and eventually we fell asleep. In the morning, he skulked off before daylight, with the excuse that he didn't want the other conference attendees to see him leave my room.

Did his impotence repel me? Did it jolt me to my senses, remind me that I had a loving man in bed beside me every night? Oh no, it did not. My aging Orion, my flawed dream man! Now I adored him even more!