He was somewhere in the blurry tequila background, interjecting from time to time. Between my inherent drunkenness and my complete oblivion to most subtle male advances, I really had no idea of his intentions and even less of how our meeting would alter the course of my life in such a dramatic way. It’s hard to say today that I regret that coming together, because we have had good times….but I have to say that deep down inside of me, there is a screaming little voice that says I probably regret nothing more. Or nearly nothing.

Despite my state of advanced inebriation, I suddenly remembered that I had a handsome German guy coming to my apartment for dinner. It was getting late and somehow, Husband du Jour convinced me that it would be a good idea if he drove me home. He did. He came in to visit my humble studio apartment, feigning interest in my living conditions and slipped a sly hand into my tights. That was when I realized that he wasn’t just a Good Samaritan. He invited me for lunch the following week, I said yes without really thinking that he would even show up. I thought the invitation was just a sort of payment for feeling me up. He left, I made dinner and enjoyed the company of my sexy German friend.

I dressed accordingly for my Monday lunch invitation without much enthusiasm. I doubted that my new friend would show up at all, and then he did show up. We ate fish in a restaurant by the port of Nice and then took a lovely seaside drive to Villefranche where we drank cocktails in the sun on the terrace of a bar overlooking the Mediterranean. He was trying to impress me and I guess that it worked. The afternoon looked nothing like my student life, far less opulent, less scenic as well. Yet back in America, I had gotten used to dating men a bit older than me, to being offered more than beer and pizza, so in a way, the situation seemed quite normal to me. He told me he was 34, to me an age quite advanced, nearly old.

That would be the first of a long series of lies. He was 44, roughly the same age as my parents.