Dating Women

“You do date men, right?” a new-found friend, Trish, recently asked.

“Who else would I date?” I reply.

Trish cocks an eyebrow at me.  I pause, turning her question over in my increasingly feeble mind.

Oh!  She wants to know if I date women, I slowly realize.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Did she think this dinner is a date?!  Did I give some silent signal that we are a couple?

If we were a couple, I would be the cradle robber.  Trish is at least 20 years younger than me.  For a minute, I congratulate myself.

In this increasingly genderless world, I feel like a horse facing the wrong direction as the rest of the herd thunders past.  I want to run with everyone, but I keep tripping over my own hooves.

My father was a jazz musician, so I was exposed to many different folks as a child.  I knew some were a little different than my parents, I just didn’t have words for it.  They just were who they were.

Then came college where free love and alcohol gave me the words.  So many words.

Although some of the newer televisions shows and movies are answering questions I had about the how.  Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

I don’t care if or how people are having sex, I just don’t want to hear the details.  Most of the time, anyway.

“I only date men,” I tell Trish.  I hope she is at least a little disappointed.

“Me, too,” she says, digging into her salad.  “I had to ask.  These days you never know.”

It’s not just these days, I want to tell her.  Since humans crawled out of the sea (and probably even before that) there have been many, many ways for people to connect.

I just don’t want to hear the details.