What Shall I Do?

As I write this, I’m watching him sleep. He arrived around 2 o’clock in the morning, after driving more than four hours—on top of a day packed with work and an evening commitment. All to spend three days with me while I vacation.

He didn’t show up exactly as I’d planned it. In fact, he shouldn’t have shown up at all. After meeting more than 50 men following weeks and weeks and weeks of responding to e-mail inquiries, I’d found a swing partner—Meiplé (you’ll understand why he fits this name by listening to this song). We seemed to mesh really well together, albeit he was 21 years younger in age. Some day I’ll formally introduce you to him.

But for now, suffice it to say in a prescient moment, right before breaking his arm and needing a box full of screws and a plate to fix it, Meiplé gently nudged me to find a few more partners. For some reason, I’d never considered having more than one. Heck, it’d taken all I had just to find him. Actually, he had found me. And now he was encouraging me to “stay on the market” and continue my search.

Given that the only rule I knew at the time about swinging was that “no” means NO, I started e-mailing men who expressed an interest in partnering in their online profiles.

One particular day, a profile popped up that I’d not seen before. My little fingers quickly hit the keys of my MacBook Pro.

Hi,

When you say you are seeking someone to share this lifestyle with, are you looking for a girlfriend who is into the lifestyle – or merely a steady swing partner? I ask because I seek the latter. While I have two swing partners (one local, one outside the state), both have very busy lives so I find I still have unfulfilled playtime on my hands :-) Please let me know if this holds any interest for you –

Thanks!

Randi

The next day I got a reply.

Hi,

My name is Tank and I wanted to thank you for writing to me. I am definitely looking for a steady swing partner. It is a lot easier to have fun when it is shared and single guys get a lot less hits then a couple. I would love to help you with your unfulfilled playtime. Just write me back if you wish to meet and we can set something up. My number is … if you wish to call.

Sincerely,

Tank

Sincerely? Who closes an e-mail on a sex site with “sincerely?” I wrote him back immediately with my availability. And then, voila, I had a cancellation occur on Saturday evening. So, I took a chance and called him. I wasn’t about to let a perfectly good weekend night go to waste.

We set up a place and time to meet. I’d drive an hour to where he was located—not a problem since I had a bunch of time on my hands to kill. And then it dawned on me . . .

“Who are you? I just realized I know nothing about you!”

“Well. Who would you like to get to know? The man who rock climbs? Or the guy who has a teenage daughter? Or the one who works in healthcare?”

I was speechless. Who was this guy, really? No one responds like this to a question, unless he’s really smart. Ah, wouldn’t that be perfect!

I drove. We hugged outside the restaurant. After ordering dinner, I completely tuned out what he was saying. Ever have a billboard flash in your head with neon lights on it? Mine said, “Wow. I could marry this guy. And he’s not even Jewish.”

When I finally came back to my senses, I realized I’d agreed to follow him to his house to share a bottle of wine. We’d only known each other about 45 minutes by this point. Thirty minutes after that I found myself laying on the floor of his family room with my ass in the air—my right leg was pressed against his left hand while the left one was trying to resist the push of his right hand. You see, he’d noticed I wasn’t walking properly. An exercise injury I’d sustained almost three months earlier that no treatment had alleviated—up until that evening.

I arrived home the next day around noon, with plans to see him again the following weekend. He understood the “i” word: intimacy. That to swing well as a couple, we’d need to create a high level of intimacy between the two of us. Which meant spending time together one-on-one in addition to our playtime with others.

Hmmmm. The last time I saw Tank was almost two weeks ago. How shall I wake him this morning? Any suggestions?

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