The evening I met Sean was in my favourite karaoke
bar, a place where I knew lots of people. I was well-known there because I had
been associated with a married couple, Will and Corrine, who owned their own
equipment and ran karaoke there on the weekends. The name of the bar was The
Red Lion. I’d been a customer in this bar and a karaoke fan for years, but when
I met Sean, I was not expecting to meet a guy like him.
Sean was so cute; he had dark-blond hair
that was neat and fairly short. Looking at him, he reminded me of Kevin Costner
when he played his leading role in that Whitney Houston movie, The Bodyguard. Sean was incredibly
attractive like Kevin. He had clear-blue eyes that just caught my attention. They
looked like “bedroom eyes.” I wasn’t accustomed to meeting many good-looking
dark-blond, blue-eyed guys that I found attractive, but he certainly caught my attention.
He was dressed in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, black
dress pants and black shoes. In fact, he looked like he’d just left work and
dropped off at the bar for a quick drink on the way home. I really wanted to
get acquainted, so I sat near him, since he was sitting at a table near the
front of the bar, close to where the karaoke was set up, which was where I
normally sat during karaoke. Besides, he looked lonely, as if he wanted female
companionship of some sort.
I introduced myself to him as Serena. I was
a divorced, 30-something single woman with no serious attachments. However, I
was not looking for a quick “roll in the hay” with Sean. He just looked like a
guy I found very visually appealing. I wanted to talk to him to see if we had
anything in common. If he was also single and 30-something, I felt I had
nothing to lose. He was so cute and sexy, I had a really hard time
concentrating on his words; I was too busy admiring his face and body. He
looked like he was in really good shape physically; a young man with an
athletic build was always appealing to me. Little did I know just how important
this man would become in my life.
We spent a lovely evening chatting and
laughing together. It had been such a long time since I’d met anyone of the
opposite sex with whom I could interact in an intelligent and interesting way. It
was obvious to me that he was very intelligent. It turned out that he was a
paramedic-in-training. I have always been attracted to cute men in the medical
profession who weren’t necessarily doctors but were trained in medical
procedures. I only had one rule. If the man was my own personal physician, or
dentist, or therapist, I drew the line at getting involved physically or
emotionally with him. I really hate looking for medical caregivers, and those
who were already in my life were the ones I wanted to keep.
Sean described to me what paramedics do in
their line of work. I thought I knew what paramedics do already, but I was in
for a shock. For example, he told me about a few horrific car accidents he’d
attended, which constituted the bulk of his calls, in which one or more
passengers and/or the driver had actually been decapitated or one or more of
their limbs had been completely or partially severed or their wounds were deep,
severe and life-threatening enough to create an immediate need for CPR, oxygen,
splints, bandages, drugs, you name it. It takes a person with a very tough
constitution to do that kind of work. It only made me admire him all the more.
I told him I was a college professor, that
I taught math to first- and second-year college students. I described my
students as being age anywhere from 18 upward. Some of the younger ones were
amazingly mature for their age and a few older ones were just babies dressed up
as adults—they were real whiners. For the most part though, I loved my work
because I felt that I was making a real difference to people, and to me that
meant helping them think about and solve problems of all kinds. This was the
kind of life skill that anyone would benefit from having. I guess this got Sean’s
attention because he listened attentively as I told him some of the amusing
stories of things that had happened in class between me and my students.
By the end of the evening, I was totally
smitten. He was irresistible. I ended up accepting a ride home with him that
evening, since neither of us had been drinking much. At first I thought it was
only going to be a ride home, but it turned into something quite different—a
sexual experience that I cannot compare to any other that I’d ever had before. He
was like a super athlete in bed—absolutely insatiable. I had known a few sexual
athletes in my time, but he definitely took the cake. It was an affair that I
cannot begin to describe because it was not like any other sexual experience I’d
ever had.
My ex-husband, Derek, had been one of those
men who’d thought sex was something that was only supposed to happen
occasionally between married couples—and only when he wanted it. If I wanted
sex with him, it was like pulling teeth; I’d be lucky if I found him in the
mood for lovemaking. The funny thing is, I’d thought I really loved him in the
beginning when I married him. Later I could see that he had used sex just to
get me interested in him and to make the commitment to him—why, I still have no
idea. Our marriage didn’t last long. Two to three years after we’d married, he
found some other woman and left me for her, basically doing me a gigantic
favour. Only problem was that I now had a young daughter, Ellen, to look after,
and even though I loved her very much, it was very hard being a single mom.
It turned out that Sean had been married
too. His ex-wife, Suzanne, was sexually frigid. Anytime he wanted to have sex
with her, she was never in the mood for lovemaking. Eventually, she froze him
out of her life, and he was left wondering why she had ever married him in the
first place and yet remained legally married to him. I wondered if he still
loved her. According to Sean, Suzanne and he were no longer living together as
man and wife. She had her own life and he had his. Since they didn’t even live
together anymore, that meant they were separated. He asked me if I could live
with this situation that existed between them and I said I could. I was so
bewitched by Sean’s charm and good looks that I was willing to believe whatever
he told me. I wanted to believe him and I did. I think that was because I was
falling deeply in love with him and refused to entertain the idea that he might
be pulling my chain by lying to me.
Although it was sometimes difficult for us
to get together, we continued seeing each other over the next several months. My
feelings for Sean were getting deeper all the time. I suppose I should have
stepped back and put the brakes on this rapidly developing relationship, but I
couldn’t. He meant far too much to me. It never once occurred to me that Sean
might not feel quite the same way about me.
One day, I asked him how he felt about me
and he said that he liked me a lot and found me very attractive. I was
flattered by his sentiments, but I wanted a lot more from him. He seemed
unwilling or unable to give me anymore than he was already, so I asked him why.
Sean, though hesitant at first, finally told me the real reason. Against all
odds, he was still in love with his ex-wife, to whom he was still legally
married. I then asked him what he planned to do about it, and he said he didn’t
know. Then I said that if he wasn’t sure about being with me or loving me, I
needed to take a break from him to rethink what was happening to me. Maybe this
would give him sufficient time to determine who he really wanted to be with—her
or me. As much as I loved doing karaoke, I was prepared to stay away for it for
awhile until he decided what he wanted to do. It was going to be difficult for
me to stay away from him, but I was determined to do what I had to. You can’t
make someone love you, can you? No matter how much you want something like
that, you can’t make it happen. That’s what I was about to unexpectedly find
out.
Every time he called me at home on a Friday
or Saturday night to ask me why I wasn’t at the bar doing karaoke, I told him
that I was busy with some school project and could not be there that night. He
would then tell me he missed me and ask me if he could come over to my place. But
I had to refuse. After a few minutes of casual chatting without saying much of
anything, we’d hang up and then I would fall apart and cry. I didn’t know how
much more of this I could take. I berated myself for falling for some strange
guy that I never really knew anything about. Crying my eyes out, I would go to
bed, toss and turn for a while and then eventually cry myself to sleep. My
heart was broken, but this was only the beginning.
A few weeks later, I finally mustered the
courage to go to the bar. I resolved to do karaoke whether Sean was there or
not and I would have a good time, regardless. When I arrived, I saw him sitting
at a table in the far corner with another woman. I walked over to him and
greeted him with some trepidation, and Sean greeted me back and introduced his
woman friend as Marika. I nodded at her in greeting and went back to sit at my
usual table at the front. Later I noticed that they were dancing rather
closely, the way we used to dance. I guess I couldn’t help but stare at them.
When I could get him alone outside the
washrooms, I asked him what she was doing there with him, and he insisted that
she was “just a friend.” Meanwhile, he continued to insist that he had missed
me. By now though, I was suspicious enough to find out for myself rather than
believe him. Later on, I encountered Marika in the ladies’ washroom and asked
her casually how long she’d known Sean and she said that they had known each
other for a couple of years and had dated on and off over time. And then it hit
me—He’s a ladies’ man! He loves the
attention that women give him! If he can’t be with the one he loves (his
ex-wife), he’ll love the one he’s with (right now, Marika). I was shocked
yet not shocked.
Mostly I was relieved that I was not
involved with him anymore, nor likely to be again. With that, I wished her and
Sean luck in the future and left the bar. Months later, I heard rumours via the
karaoke grapevine that Sean had knocked her up and that she wanted to have his
baby. Not only that, apparently, she already had two kids from a previous
marriage, or so I’d heard. I had no idea how Sean felt about this event, but I
told myself it didn’t matter anymore.
We’d had an affair to remember, to be sure.
But would I ever want this to happen to me again? No. I promised myself that if
I didn’t learn my lesson from this affair, then I hadn’t really learned
anything at all about men and what motivates them. All I knew for sure was that
he was the sexiest guy I’d ever met or probably ever would meet, and I’d have
to be content with that lovely memory.
copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
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