"Where?" she said, turning around to see where I was looking. There were no less than fifteen guys in the room & I didn't even have to point him out.
"Oh..." she said.
He was very tall, ruddy-cheeked, wearing a sweatshirt & jeans. Something about him was Ashton Kutcher-ish. The perfect face, the laughing eyes, the messy brown hair. The girls ogling him from all sides.
But I wasn't going to let them stop me. The gin martini, half-carafe of sake, and nip of Bushmills I'd had earlier was doing its thing. I was feeling great. I went over to him & asked him if they were going by the list for pool. He said yes, so I put myself on it, & from then on just sort of attached myself to his general vicinity.
It worked. I wasn't even next for pool but he informed everyone that I was, & we ended up playing each other, hitting it off amazingly, & when I lost (scratched on the eight ball tho he had 4 balls still on the table) he made me his partner & we played some more. We smoked, he bought me a beer, he was funny & smart & everything was amazing. Never mind that I'm kinda sorta seeing someone at the moment ... I'm quite sure my kinda sorta boyfriend would make an exception for the female equivalent of this creature. We were outside smoking & he asked me if I was in school. I told him I'd finished and had a job. And then my Ashton revealed that he was in school, at Columbia. Grad school?, I asked. No, he replied. With a sinking feeling, I asked the question I now dreaded...
& here's where it all falls apart. It turns out he is NINETEEN.
Nineteen. As in, six years younger than me. As in, when I was his age, he was THIRTEEN. & yes, when I am ninety he will only be eighty-four, but he won't look like Ashton anymore either.
I think I said faintly, I have to go home now.
He laughed at that. It didn't bother him. I guess nothing does when one is nineteen.
I didn't go home. I stayed for another beer. And when I said I really was leaving, he asked me for my number and I gave it to him. Saving my ageist qualms for another day -- if he actually calls me that is.
I've often thought about my older-significant-other cut-off point (which is scarily high, at sixty), but haven't given much thought to the other end of the spectrum. I guess because I've always been on the young side relative to the dating populace, & I don't have much contact with high school boys. But now apparently I'm getting up there. Apparently I socialize in the same places that people six years younger than me do. God! Don't we have a legal drinking age of 21? Who let a beautiful college boy into SWEETWATER of all places, to tempt an old lady like me? Can't Bloomberg get his mind off the smoking ban & enforce something that would actually benefit me???
Anyway.
- IF - he calls.
I think I might go out with him. My Nietzschean motto since the age of fifteen (when I would have loved to have met this guy, tho he never would have spoken to the pimply, pudgy, black-fingernail-polished, flannel-shirt-wearing version of me) has been to say yes to all of existence. Taste the rainbow & all of that. But I won't sleep in a goddamn dorm.
