Gratifying

I am in my fifties.  I kinda think I am well preserved, but I am still in my fifties.  I am slender and fit, but I am in my fifties.  Tonight, a thirty-something man asked me home.  I mean he wanted to pick me up in a bar! 

The bar is a family thing, owned by a sister, bartended by a niece, and in a small community.  I was a stealth customer, there with other family members, and our presence unannounced.  A group of young men came in, some sang Karaoke, the others observed.  I really don't remember how the conversation started about scuba diving, but we traded stories.

Soon, my companions and I were ready to go home.  One young man who had been so attentive got really direct and assertive.  'Please come home with me.  You are the best thing I have ever seen.'  'I'm married.'  'Don't think, just come with me.  You are so beautiful.  You are incredible.  Be with me tonight...'  Blah, blah, blah...

I found myself embarrassed by the praise, and felt like it was so undeserved and phoney, there was no way it could be real.  Not that I would ever cheat; that is not the point.  For the first time in my adult life, I felt inadequate, like I could not possibly be the physical equivalent of this cute young man.  This is a person who I would not have looked at or thought twice about in my prime, and suddenly, I feel his attention as a mockery.  God, aging is cruel.  I remember my mother telling me how sad it was when men's admiring glances ended and they began to look right past her.  

Needless to say, I came home alone.  Code of the West, baby.  Cheating is not part of the Code. Not now, not ever.  But, how cute to be chosen by a darling young man and asked to be naughty together.  Wow. But I find myself confused.  Should I be flattered or offended?  Flattered because he thinks I am attractive or offended because he thinks I would be desperate enough to be a sure thing?  The callous words of my divorced forty-something brother came back to me:  'I love screwing older women; they are so grateful'.  No, not me.  I won't ever go there, even if I ever find myself without husband.  I would rather go without a relationship than to be grateful or feel somehow less than my partner. Equal, or nothing.  No fears.  No doubts.  No feelings of inadequacies.  Equal or not.