A man and I were talking when, for no reason known to me, he asked “why do women quit talking to you after you sleep with them? And I don’t mean sleeping.”
“I don’t know” came from my mouth and nothing else.
“You can have a friend but if you sleep with ’em then you lose something. And that something is conversation. They have stuff to say but they don’t talk to you anymore. They talk around you. And let me tell you,” the man’s smile would have covered a small state in the eastern United States, “if you aren’t just right ready to drop everything and hang on every word then you’re wrong.”
“Is there something you need to talk about? Let me buy you a drink,” I said moving towards the front of the room.
“Sure,” the man slapped back at me and then continued talking across the empty bar. “The worst part is they don’t care about what you have to say anymore. Before you bed ’em they love to hear about all your stuff but after it ‘as got to be all ’bout them.”
“I do know what you mean,” I said pausing to walk back to the table, “I always keep at least two female companions some times three. One of them is the one I talk to, the other one is my lover. Sometimes one to talk to, one lover, and one wife. When the friend becomes the lover you get a new friend, if she becomes the wife then after a while you need a lover. If the new friend becomes your lover then you’ll need another new friend. It is not an easy life we live.”
“I would never cheat on my wife,” the man snapped, the smile now gone from his face. “I only meant that they get hard ta talk to so you have to find things to occupy your time.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Thirty years in two weeks.”
“How long ago did she quit talking to you?”
“Thirty years ago, give or take a week.”
“And it just started bothering you?” I had to ask.
“Well I really never noticed until yesterday and it took me ’til this afternoon to figure out when it started,” he had to reply.