Yvonne Maher was
a fifty-one-year-old divorcee and Tom
Haggerty was fifty-two and a widower and they were both spending there latter
middle years alone.
Neither of them had children
from their respective marriages and had no extended family to speak of.
They also shared the dubious
honour of having dallied with younger lovers, since they were left alone, much
younger lovers.
Tom had had a short
breathless affair with a 25 year old yoga teacher which he ended, but since being
on his own, truly on his own, he had harked back to his youth and the days
before his six pack became victim to too many six packs.
His middle-aged physique tended
more towards the party seven than a six pack.
He also reflected on his old girlfriends
of the day with their firm buttocks, flat stomachs and gravity defying breasts
which stirred his loins in his lustful nostalgia, part of him wanted to return
to those carefree days of youth.
When all that teenage sex was
so wonderful, when he had such limited sexual experience, and so much of the
fun was in the learning.
All the reminiscing left him
with a certain longing, but he knew the past could not be relived or
recaptured.
Yvonne had gone through a
long exhausting affair with an estate agent 20 years her junior and although he
stimulated every cell in her body with monotonous regularity, for the sake of her
heath and sanity she decided she would look after her own wants and needs and
kicked him into touch.
What she craved was something
he couldn’t give her, she was looking for a companion, a confidant, and a
friend and not just someone to bang her brains out.
One of Tom’s biggest gripes
at having such a young girlfriend was the dullness of her pillow talk, Lisa was
born into a generation that had so many means of communication at its disposal
yet she still had nothing meaningful to say.
There was a lot to be said
for being with a woman who was wrinkle free and supple, but it was what was
said afterwards that he craved.
Yvonne was immensely
flattered at her age to attract the attentions of such a young lover
But the price for such toe-curling
sexual encounters was too high to pay.
What she longed for was to be
with someone with life experience, someone she could have a proper conversation
with in between the love making or even instead of it.
It didn’t have to be deep and
meaningful converse just a bit more than he said/she said.
What they both wanted was
someone they could talk too, not about anything earth shattering, it could be
as simple as a common history or shared knowledge, someone who knew the name of
the dragon in Ivor the Engine, or someone who watched Brief Encounter and
didn’t think it was funny.
Someone who remembered being
able to play music at the wrong speed on a gramophone and who remembered having
to wait for the black and white TV set to warm up.
Just someone who understood
what the other was saying and wouldn’t stare vacantly at you when you mentioned
an event that happened pre 1990.
Both of their wishes were
answered one day when a mutual friend introduced them to each other at a dinner
party.
During the course of the meal
Tom leant over and asked
“Do you remember 8 track stereos?”
Yvonne smiled and nodded and
all at once realised the significance of the question.
“Very acceptable” Yvonne
thought to herself after they had made love for the first time.
There may not have been any
risk over her being orgasmed to the point of unconsciousness but, nonetheless.
“Very acceptable indeed”
At the same time Tom was thinking
that while Yvonne may not have been as agile, pliable or have the same stamina
as a woman half her age she was just what he was looking for and as they lay
breathless in the darkness they had the most banal and trivial conversations
into the small hours and when they had finished instead of making love again
they just cuddled up and went to sleep.
There would be plenty of time
for more love making and many interesting conversations.
