in advance of ...something something

Cheating is socially reprehensible until a song about cheating becomes a number one hit in 1972.

Times have changed you say? The song was covered to great success in 2007.

Also David Lynch was a serial cheater and everyone loves him.

She touched you like no stripper has ever done.

You could swear you almost felt ... love.

or something approaching it.

You touched her back gently and she said:

we have chemistry

But the strip club is so far away.

so you couldn't see her as often as you like.

You painted her a picture and she said:

this is chemistry

You touched her back gently and you could swear

you almost felt ... love.

or something next to it.

You invited her to dinner.

She has a lover and she still said yes.

The time and place was agreed upon

but you backed out.

You used a poor excuse but your real fear

was that someone could recognize you.

Call you out and shame you.

And now you've lost out on ... love

or something like it.

and no one wants to talk about.

You wake up erect. You hear this is uncommon for men at fifty, yet here you are. Your eyes turn to the bathroom as that slight headache also wakes. You think about the escort you came across on Twitter and quickly attempt to push the thought from your mind. Instead, you think about how all of the world’s problems exist because no one is loved the way they want to be loved. Probably a dumber thought than ruining your life and spending money on a woman who will just resent you more than any unpaid companion has.

You get up and walk to the bathroom. You stand naked, hunched over your bathroom sink, headphones on, your phone in one hand and masturbating with the other. You’re listening to melancholic music that you’d oddly also like to make love to. You look at mostly naked women on Tumblr because you fear masturbating to real porn will hasten erectile problems already showing at inoportune times. You prefer short videos to photos. The way they move and look into the camera helps you convince yourself, for the slightest of moments, that they could actually want you.

Thankfully, your eyes aren’t bad enough that you need reading glasses, as that would only make this entire scene that much more humiliating.

Ultimately, the time spent curating the experience lasts longer than the experience itself. You finish in the sink. You turn the water on and want to cry, but you can’t. Immediately afterward, the depression washes over you. It’s as overwhelming as always. You feel worse than you did before.

This is your love life. This is all the actual “love” you will ever have.

Your thoughts then quickly turn to the bottle of Tylenol PM you have hidden underneath your bathroom sink. It’s not there to help with sleeping with a headache. Would the entire bottle with a heavy dose of tequila do the trick?