Hey Nineteen

DISCLAIMER: Everyone in this story is over 18, and everyone is faithful to their spouses. Maybe I take the name of the category too literally...

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I'd been thinking it was still too soon, but now that April had nearly brought me around to seriously considering getting back out there, I was starting to worry that it had been too long.

She almost had me convinced that forty-nine was not too late to start again, to build a life and start a...

"Relationship", that was the word I'd been shying away from.

I'd had a relationship, one that was everything I could ever have dreamed of. Saying it was perfect seemed too much like idealizing it. Saying Annie was perfect was easy to do now that she was gone. But, honestly, I had to work really hard to remember anything about her, about us, that was not perfect.

Even the few imperfections were perfect, just the right dose of reality to keep it from being... Being what? Too perfect?

My life felt over. I still wasn't convinced it wasn't, despite the utterly sound logic of April's argument to the contrary. I'm not in prison, or on death row, which would have been the case if the drunk driver who so violently tore Annie from me, tore my perfect life to shreds, had not died instantly.

It happened practically outside our front door. Annie left to pick up a last-minute ingredient for dinner. Two minutes later, I heard a crash. It sounded like it came from where our side street opens out to the main road. Something told me to run to that sound. I got there before the ambulances. It was too late, but just in time.

I wouldn't have hesitated. I would have torn him apart with my bare hands, right in front of the cops, and to hell with the consequences. That moment when I watched the life go out of Annie's eyes was the moment I had nothing left to lose. Sitting in a cell going through the motions of life wouldn't be that different from what I had done since.

"I need to know that you'll live," she'd managed to say just before the eyes that were my life stilled to stare into forever. I promised her, then stormed away to break that promise, only to find the man being covered with a sheet by one of the cops. He'd done to himself what I had come to do to him. I never saw his face.

So I lived, if you could call it that. Our only child, Claire, was my only reason for going on, though she hardly needed me anymore. She had just graduated college, building herself a life from scratch. She mourned her mother, but she took Annie's last words to heart, knowing they applied to her as well.

Losing a mother is a horrible thing, but kids are resilient, and they know, deep down, that it will happen eventually. They know, and Claire, intelligent as she is, certainly knows that they are expected to leave the nest and build something on their own. It hurts, but not like this.

I hope she never has to know what it means to lose someone who is that life that she'll build. Someone synonymous with home, someone you knew you could come back to every day, who would share your bed, your ultimate sanctuary from the world. Someone who you thought of as part of you in a way even a child could not feel for her parents.

It wasn't just the sex, though that was wonderful with Annie. Sex, with someone like her, with something like what we had, was an extension of a bond that made us like one person. The physical act felt like making the single whole we were together into a physical reality for a too brief, magical moment.

What's the proper period of mourning for something like that? A year? Two years? Ten years? A century? None of those answers seemed long enough, but April, she disagreed. Two and a half years was long enough, she stated without doubt, without hesitation, without leaving room for argument.

---

My best friend Mickey had a fantastic marriage the second time around. The first was rushed, a shotgun affair justified by one rash moment of carelessness and little more. Everyone around him knew it wouldn't last.

When the woman disappeared one day, leaving nothing more than a perfunctory note and a bawling infant, Mickey had felt relief more than anything.

After everyone was proven right, he met April and won the lottery. Almost as big a jackpot in his thirties as the one I'd hit with Annie right out of college. They had two kids now, the son that had been the impetus for his first marriage, had almost redeemed it, and a much younger daughter.

He was in his late thirties when he met April. At 25 and gorgeous, it looked like she would be just another fling, an older man reliving the glory days. But it quickly emerged that it was much, much more than that, that April was much, much more.

April loved their son like he was her own. In a way, he was. She and Mickey became the same kind of single whole that Annie and I had been, and a son of Mickey's was a son of hers, no ifs, ands, or buts. And a best friend of Mickeys was a best friend of hers.

Now, at forty-nine and thirty-eight respectively, it was clear how much more April was, and how much more their marriage was. They were the perfect couple, and April was a force to be reckoned with. She's a doctor, just for starters, an ob-gyn and urologist.

She was the kind of intelligent who could discuss the literary subtleties of Shakespeare one day and theoretical physics the next. She was no expert on either, but she knew a little about a lot, and at minimum could formulate intelligent questions when she encountered somebody who was.

So when she told me it was time to get back in the saddle, I had to listen. She could easily have overwhelmed me with a solid wall of impenetrable logic, but she didn't. She led me along a simple, gentle path that ended in what seemed like the most obviously correct conclusion in the world.

All that was left was the guilt. Guilt that my first, and so far only attempt to get back to life had only seated more firmly.

I'd made a lot of bad decisions. My attempt at self-destruction had taken varied forms, a full suite of self-sabotage that seemed guaranteed to produce a complete carpet-bombing of all my remaining chances at a future.

I won't bore you with the details. You could guess at them, and you'd be right. The one pertinent detail was my choice of... the only word I can think of is "vessel". That's all she ever was and ever would be. A vessel into which to pour my grief, my anger, my growing self-hatred, and the increasingly undeniable physical needs that could never come close to satisfying the one real need I had.

She was the opposite of Annie in every possible way. Dumb as a post, fat and sloppy, easy as a leer and a drink at the bar, and probably a Petri dish of every infectious organism known to medical science. And some not yet discovered.

Somehow, April had found out. She confronted me, a low boil of anger in her eyes. I'd seen her angry once before, also at me. A seething, roiling fury that time. I'd told her once that I was just hoping to stick around long enough to walk Claire down the aisle.

She slapped me. Not a playful slap, not a warning slap, but the kind of slap that left me flexing my jaw - honestly believing she might have broken it - and checking all my teeth with my tongue. The kind of slap that not only could leave a bruise, but actually did.

"Don't you dare do that to her," April hissed. I understood what she meant only later. I was thinking of myself, never seeing it from her point of view, what it would do to her.

I never want to see that look in April's eyes again.

Thus began the intervention. It wasn't the typical come home and find all your friends sitting in your living room to ambush you kind of intervention. It was more subtle, but no less a full-court press.

It was Claire's tears and her telling me that she still needed a father, even more so without her mother there, that eventually tipped the balance.

It was a miracle my dick hadn't rotted off. And if it wasn't for the trickle of royalties from my mid-tier novels and one moderate option from a movie studio that was probably never going anywhere, I would have been out on the street.

I haven't written a thing since the accident.

As it is, I'm still recovering financially, but the rest of it, it was the bottoming out that everyone says has to happen before you can start crawling your way back up. I was getting there when April made her proposal, the one that led to me getting a raging hard-on when she stuck a finger up my ass.

---

"Come to my office." April had said while the three of us were having a dinner together, long after I'd gotten over myself and had stabilized what was left of my life. "I'll give you the full workup, make sure you're good to go."

"To go?"

"To go, sexually," April stated plainly and simply.

I looked at Micky. His eyes twinkled, as they always did. "To get laid. You need it bad, dude."

"Is it that obvious?"

"It is," said April. "Even if it wasn't, it is completely predictable. You're a healthy male, older yes, but far from too old."

I couldn't deny it, but it was still among the last things I really wanted. Needed, yes, wanted, not so much.

"Masturbation doesn't satisfy you, does it?" she asked.

I goldfished in the restaurant, looking around to see who had overheard. But nobody was reacting. April knew how to gauge her voice perfectly.

"We'll take that as a no," Mickey said. "Trust me, I know. Doesn't cut it even in a pinch. I can't imagine relying on it exclusively for years."

April went on. "You need companionship. Intimacy. For a decent human being, which you are, that is as important as the physical release, even more," April said.

She was right of course. But that brought us back to the big sticking point. It was the companionship, getting close to someone, intimately close in ways that meant far more than sex, that felt like a betrayal of Annie, not to mention the hopelessness of finding what we had anywhere else.

Oh, yeah, April had covered that ground thoroughly too. "You'll never again find what you had with Annie," she conceded with her usual brutal honesty. "Don't even try. Find something else, something special in its own right. At least allow it to be possible."

She was right, of course, but it wasn't going to be easy. It might take years. Years that were in increasingly short supply for me. She had an argument for that as well, the obvious one, obvious because it was right.

"I guess," I said at the table. "but the prospects aren't so good at my age."

"They'll be even worse next year, and the year after," Mickey said, in his lighthearted tone that I knew was anything but.

"And there's the lingering guilt," April added, not letting anything I'd rather not talk about go unsaid, "Despite Annie's last words, it will feel like cheating on her, like defiling her memory."

That was April. No beating around the bush. Face it, face everything, head on. Feel the feelings you feel -- they're neither right nor wrong -- but examine them fully.

I just nodded. We'd been over that, over and over. Claire had even piled onto that argument, making sure I knew that the only thing that would ever defile her mother's memory was another terrible decision like that skank at the Holiday Inn just off the interstate. Or if I died miserable and alone.

She wanted her father to be happy, to live a long and happy life, and to find someone special. Someone that would honor her mother's memory, and honor what her her mother had seen and treasured in me all those years. "Don't make her into a fool," Claire demanded.

She was right. All of them were right, but that one stuck with me. Honor Annie. Honor her final wish. Honor her good judgment in choosing me to spend the rest of her life with.

She had literally spent the rest of her life with me. That I couldn't spend the rest of mine with her wasn't her fault, and it wasn't my fault. She lived her whole life with the happiness we shared. I don't get to.

---

I'd been trying to meet women. Even for a one-night stand, so long as it was with someone who was at least respectable. But I knew, and everyone else knew, that my dismal failure so far was not because of my age or my looks, but because I constantly threw off "keep-away" signals like a lighthouse on a foggy seacoast.

"You need to experience it. In a way that there is no pressure, no expectations," April said. "With someone you can care about, even if that's just for a night."

"Especially if," Mickey added.

"You mean get a whore?" I said. "I don't think so. I don't want to go there."

April nodded. "Understood. And I agree, generally, but on the other hand, whoring can be an honorable profession. Think of it as therapy, not indulgence."

"It doesn't feel right." I saw April start to object, but cut her short. "I don't mean because of the guilt. That actually doesn't play into it, if it is purely physical. I mean because, well, I don't want to stoop to that."

"You mean stoop to the purely physical?"

"I mean to the kind of woman that typically does that. It's not my pride objecting. At this point, I'm fully willing to concede that I'm reduced to paying for it. It's my dignity. And her dignity, whoever it is. I won't do that to somebody."

"So don't. Go to someone who is doing it for the right reasons, who is a decent person in her own right. One you can respect. Someone with whom it can be more than just physical, but only a little more."

"'Hooker with a heart of gold'? Such a mythical creature doesn't exist in the real world."

April smiled. "Lets start with an examination. Make sure everything is still working."

"Yeah," said Mickey. "Make sure nothing has rusted out. And that there's no creepy crawlies in there."

"You know I've only been with one woman since I met Annie. And that was a while ago."

"That's all it takes if you're unlucky. And not everything you could have caught would show symptoms, even now. And that one was not particularly respectable."

"Just the opposite." I conceded. "I was in a bad place." I'd thought I wanted just that, thought I needed it.

Boy, was I wrong.

---

That is how I found myself in April's exam room dressed in nothing but a hospital gown. I was laid out on a gynecological table, because that is what she had available. My feet rested loosely in the stirrups, doing to my legs what those damned things are designed to do, while April examined my reproductive system inside and out for anomalies.

"Still works." April pointed out when her gloved finger felt my prostate for lumps and made me hard as a rock. I was just glad it was a beautiful woman and not some sixty year old fat guy. At least I had an excuse.

"It's a little enlarged, but nothing serious yet. We should keep an eye on it though."

She noticed me grinning at her. "Your prostate, I mean."

"Sure," I replied more timidly, embarrassed as hell about my demeaning posture and state.

"Good news is," she said peeling the glove off her hand, "the blood test showed nothing, and manual examination reveals no serious issues." She gave a pointed look between my legs. "Obviously, you have no erectile dysfunction. The last thing I need is a semen sample."

That idea was embarrassing too, but the thought of being able to get off this table and into a private room was enough for me to grab at the chance.

"Sure, give me a cup. I'll get you that."

April smiled. "Most guys are a little more hesitant about masturbating on demand."

"Anything to get off this table," I said. She laughed.

"You can certainly go to a private room if you prefer."

I wondered what that meant. "What else would I do?"

"It is a little unusual, but not unheard of to extract a sample through manual manipulation."

My mind reeled. "I thought manual manipulation was the whole idea."

"I don't mean you."

"You mean....?"

"I mean stimulating you to climax and ejaculation myself. Observing the process will tell me quite a bit about your general health and your performance ability, your responses to various physical stimuli. It can sometimes reveal problems not otherwise apparent."

"Such as?"

"Such as difficulty maintaining an erection, weak ejaculation, testicular issues, possible cardiac or respiratory problems. A whole variety of things."

"You're serious?"

"Totally serious, and it's completely medically valid. I'm not interested in your penis; I get all I need at home. I'm looking at it as a medical professional."

She eyeballed my package and gave a frank, and overly clinical assessment. "Average length and girth, good symmetry without any worrying bends, firm erection that so far, you're well able to maintain. Your testicles are normal, without any unusual swelling or misshapenness. Purely as a biological set of reproductive organs, your genitalia appear normal and functional."

I got what she was doing. She'd established this as a strictly medical procedure during which any other thoughts would be entirely one sided. If I wanted to think of it as a hand job, that would be my problem.

"Yours doesn't stand out as anything remarkable, but it doesn't lack anything that a sexual partner would be looking for. It is not getting me aroused, though in other circumstances, I could see that happening."

I'll take any backhanded compliment I can get.

April was still a very attractive woman at 38, and I had no doubt that she and Mickey had a very happy and healthy sex life. I took a deep breath. "Does it mean I have to go back in the stirrups?"

"If you wish. It does allow the best access. And it's less tiring than holding your legs up."

"Jesus, April. You know I'm not into bondage fantasies." It was a lame joke and I knew it.

"Your fantasies are your own business. Please keep them to yourself during the procedure, but if it helps you to have them, you are certainly free to imagine anything you like. If you need visuals, we have a library of any kind of material you might prefer, and a wide screen TV. You can connect it to your phone if you have specific material you prefer to use."

I wondered if she was this matter-of-fact about sex with Mickey. Or did she go the completely opposite way, turning into a wild and very unclinical animal. For Mickey's sake, I hoped it was the latter. For my sake, I might just have to imagine that myself. I hoped Mickey wouldn't mind.

"The alternative is to focus on you, and what you are doing?"

"It is, but I won't provide any secondary stimulation, if that is what you are getting at."

I laughed. "I get it. Nothing personal. No tits and ass."

"No, nothing personal. When is the last time you ejaculated?"

"Last night."

April nodded, and wrote something on her clipboard. "Good, this will also be a test of your recovery ability. That can be an issue at your age. How often do you ejaculate?"

"Every other day, give or take. Maybe two days out of three."

April wrote on her clipboard, nodding. "That's fairly active for your age. Would you say your emission volume is diminished?"

"A little, yeah."

"OK. That'll be one of the things I'll look for. Shall we start?"

"Umm, just like that?"

"I don't need you to buy me dinner first."

I laughed again. It was nothing personal, but April was still a friend as well as a doctor. "This is weird. I sat at your dinner table, with your husband, less than 24 hours ago."

"You did. And we both enjoyed your company. But that is unrelated. Do you want to use the stirrups?"

"It's pretty embarrassing, but I guess, given what you're going to do...."

April helped me move my feet back up and took her gloves off. She brought out some lube and rubbed it over her hands before squeezing a large dollop onto the tip of my cock.

"Just relax, let your mind wander to whatever works for you, and don't hold back."