ONE-01

“Asshat”, I think, staring at my phone screen, “asshat, asshat, asshat!“

He’s got a lot of nerve. Posts a comic of a crying Neanderthal woman being comforted by another with the text “He broke up with you with a cave painting? What a bastard!” On the wall behind you can see two stick figures – the female one is painted over with a big “X”. Funny ha-ha, if the “asshat” himself hadn’t broken up with me three weeks earlier via text message. Hellooo?! But maybe that’s only logical in a relationship that was almost exclusively conducted via text? Idiot. I comment with something like “As women have known since ‘Sex and the City’, it’s even worse to break up via a ‘Post-it’ note.” …

But let’s stop here and move a few steps back in time … because the story actually starts quite differently. The “asshat” doesn’t actually play any role at all. Rather, it was the casual remark “Maybe you should find yourself a lover.“ made on a sunny September morning by the man I’d been married to for over 26 years that got things rolling.

Our “last time” was about three years ago. A quickie in the afternoon on vacation. The raging Atlantic Ocean outside the floor-to-ceiling window. Actually romantic, if I hadn’t had the feeling that I was sleeping with a complete stranger. We never talked about it, but he apparently felt the same way, because since that day, neither of us has wanted to do anything like that again. Not that there hadn’t been longer sexless phases before, but this last time felt absolutely final.

And now this remark. It’s not that I don’t know what’s behind it. His desire for just such a “carte blanche” stems from a crush on our mutual assistant, which he assumes no one realizes. But the whole company – myself included – has suspected exactly that for some time. Men. Eyes roll. “Yeah, big time,“ I think to myself. What I say is “In the last 10 years, I haven’t come across a man who has even remotely interested me … but OK … maybe that’s changing now?”

Somehow I communicate that I see this as a mutual agreement and, after a moment of noticeable surprise at how easy it all went, he drives off to the office. I’m standing in the kitchen and hear myself saying “Well, at least f*ck her finally!” and in a strange mixture of relief, defiance and curiosity, I, female, 44 (a number that describes both age and dress size), switch my men’s radar back on after 26 years and 4 months.

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