A man who is the lover of a girl or young woman.
Age — my age — is a number that makes a stop in my mind several times throughout a day.
This number is sometimes followed by a dull sense of failure, a feeling of density from the weight of past gluttonies.
Other times this number is golden, and its place along the continuum seen as a beginning.
My mortality instincts tell me that this life is not the only one, and that this inferior vessel of my body is merely a transient residence.
I do believe, though, that the memory of this life dies with this body, and that that which moves on when this body dies retains no influence from earthy experiences.
People’s attitudes toward age differences are a strange cultural relic, even a litmus test. As a freshman in high school I was attracted to a girl who was a junior, and she was attracted to me as well until she learned I was only a freshman. This led to an odd but entertaining dynamic between us. We talked like friends and (by my estimation) felt more free to do so than we would have with a lingering possibility of romance.
It was my first exposure to the adolescent conundrum whereby girlfriends and boyfriends are rarely "friends." The relationship turns quasi-adversarial when sex intrudes.
By conventional wisdom, though, our age difference fell within the so-called "socially acceptable age difference." That formula says it is OK to date someone who is half your age plus 7.
At the time was 17 and I was 15. 17 ÷ 2 = 8½, 8½ + 7 = 15½.
Now that I think of it I was actually about 15¼ at the time, so maybe she was right, since at that age even a few months maturity can make a difference.
I did not know about that formula at the time (in fact I only learned of it quite recently) but whatever some arbitrary cultural norms might suggest I think I simply did not like this girl enough to make a fool of myself for her, but I did enjoy talking to her.
My first girlfriend in New York often remarked that she was quite a bit older than me, but when I plug our ages into the magical formula it turns out we fell right in the approved range. She was 31, I was 22, going on 23. 31 – 15½ + 7 = 22½.
