Aleyne Larner - Fragile

 

Not long after my 53rd birthday, I decided that it was time to be in love again, and that the way to go about doing it was to internet date. Why not? I had been married, divorced a long time. I'd been in a couple of relationships that had fallen apart. And at the end of all of those things, all I felt was hurt, betrayed, disappointed. But still, I'm a pathological optimist. [audience laughter] So, I went on match.com and eharmony. And because I was 53, SilverSingles. [audience laughter] None of those things were very successful for a while. 

 

I had a number of dates. I made lots of connections, but for the most part none of them were thrilling at all. I had repeat dates, but nobody I wanted to spend more than 24 hours with. And then, I got this one connection. It didn't seem like it was going to work in the beginning, because he was in his mid-70s and I was in my 50s. [audience laughter] But his profile was interesting to me. When he wrote to me, he used a word I'd never heard before and I had to look it up. And that doesn't happen with me often. So, that was intriguing and it made me laugh. And so, I reached out to him. 

 

We connected a couple of times online and then we decided it was time to meet. And so, we did. We had already discovered with our chats online that we had a number of things in common. We were both Midwesterners. He had grown up in St. Louis. I'm originally from Chicago. We had both come to LA for jobs. He was an advertising creative director and he had just retired after 40 years. For over 20 years, I'd been in TV sales. And so, we had that in common. But when I saw him, all I could think was fragile. He looks fragile. 

 

Now, what did I think a 70-year-old white guy was going to look like? [audience laughter] He was tall, much taller than I expected. He was thin. He was well dressed, casually well dressed. He wore aviator glasses. He had nice blue eyes. He smiled really nicely. He had a soft voice. But I kept thinking fragile. We went on a couple of dates. And what we discovered when we began dating was that what we really had in common, besides coming from the same general geographic area, was that were jazz lovers. And I mean, real jazz, straight ahead, serious jazz. And that bound us together. 

 

We would see each other two or three times a week. We'd meet for dinner. We would go to jazz events. And that went on for a few months. The holidays started to come and I thought, oh, maybe I should go home to Chicago. My daughter was still living there. I would see my daughter. I would see family and friends. But I hate cold weather and I hate snow. And 20 years in Southern California had not changed my mind about that at all. [audience laughter] And in the end, I decided, okay, I'm just going to stay in LA. When I told him that, he was really pleased, and we made plans about how to spend our holidays, our vacation together. But what that made me think about was, oh, if we're going to spend all this time together, we better talk about sex. 

 

I couldn't quite figure out how I was going to handle that, because I realized I liked him. I really liked being with him. And if he wanted something I didn't want or I wanted something he didn't want, it could come to an end. And that would really be sad. So, I went about this the same way I go about most things. I just jumped in. We were sitting in my apartment a few days before Thanksgiving, sitting on the sofa, playing Scrabble. And I sidled up to the question, I said, “So, as this relationship continues, have you thought about intimacy? And does that mean a sexual component?” 

 

He had a glass in his hand and he almost lost it and he started to choke. [audience laughter] He coughed and he said, “Yeah. [audience laughter] Are you okay with that?” And his voice was like a little boy's kind of voice. And I said, “Yeah. But I want to make sure that oral sex is part of this, because if it's not, we got nothing to talk about.” [audience laughter] He started to choke and [audience laughter] cough and sputter. And I thought, oh my god, he's going to die. [audience laughter] We aren't even going to get to sex. [audience laughter] And he said, “You are really something. That's all I can tell you.” And he said, “Yeah, that's really okay.” He leaned over to me, he put his arm around me and he kissed me with a slow, warm, soft kiss. And he wasn't fragile at all. [audience laughter]