I'm 50 years old, and I've spent nearly my entire adulthood in relationships, a series of them, mostly one right after another.
A long time, for me - the longest in my life.
I'd been celibate for six months before CC and I came together. When we'd finished, CC curled himself to me like we were two cats in a patch of sunlight. Running my hands over CC's strong chest, pinning my mouth, tender from his kisses, to his hard abdomen, I felt something unmooring inside me. His hands were roughened from carpentry work. We used our fingers and mouths to pleasure each other. When the bars closed, as even on Nashville's Lower Broadway they must, I brought CC back to my hotel room. We spent the rest of the night moving from honky tonk to honky tonk, songs of busted love or rowdy love or love slow and steady trailing behind us, like smoke, as we sauntered down the neon-lit street, laughing and clutching hands.