Passing Ships

The years I spent hanging out at the boy club are a blur. When women became less rare there, couples often came looking for a third. That was annoying. I danced with anyone, so I met a lot of couples. Once I met an escort. He was handsome, charismatic and a very good dancer. I thought he was gay. My closest friend thought the same, and he pursued the guy with enthusiasm. 

One night during a trip to the "car bar" (I started keeping a cooler in the trunk for those hours between last and first call), handsome escort guy asked me to tell my friend to leave him alone. I was surprised. I was even more surprised a few weeks later in the car bar when he asked me to run away with him and start a new life somewhere else. I declined. 

I avoided the club the following weekend, and he called me at home. In front of my boyfriend, while we were lying in bed, I tried to be both kind and unyielding. The few seconds separating the end of that call and the beginning of the argument that followed were pregnant with insecurities that the boyfriend and I were trying desperately to keep from coming between us. It was the beginning of the end for that relationship. Fast forward through a handful of embarrassing drunken impromptu appearances in front of my friends, family and coworkers and I found myself single again. 

I've thought many times since then that perhaps I should have gone with the handsome escort, but I did not love him. It would have been wrong to encourage him to believe otherwise.