One boy, one special boy,

She peers at me over her coffee cup with a cheerful but cautious sense of evaluating some livestock not in its prime but available at a good price.

Her wrinkles and fit frame, my unlined face over soft bulging tummy and under bald pate.

The memory tunes begin to roll though us.

One boy, one special boy, one boy to be with forever and ever, or at least what is left of it.

Put that ring around your neck, tell the world you’re mine by heck.

High on a far and windy hill, two lovers meet and their hearts stand still.

All that crap we scarfed up in Jr. Hi in the pop music of the day,

the mantra of the love paradigm of the time

then we rollicked through the crucible of the Sixties,

sex, drugs, rock and roll,

no rules no limits

sleep with a stranger!

Now  we are old, and we meet, older and wiser, the margin for error thinning as the coming shadows of old age draw near.

We have no time to goof around, and we revert to our childhood monagamy, sizing up each casual encounter as a potential lifetime pard, a person we may push in a wheelchair and clean their diapers, and pretty dang soon.

Do we put a ring around our finger or our neck that will capture us and make us captive to someone who only has a few good years left?

And the women are all fit and financially secure, doing hot yoga and marching up forest paths while I recover from divorce and disability vague diseases.

How sexy is diabetes, vertigo, bipolar disorder, erectile dysfunction?

I still know where a clitoris is and what to do with it to  give joyful pleasure, but my adversary in this game is too smart for me, and passionate desires of the flesh are under control, cannot be used to further my case.

One is the loneliest number you can ever do.

Get used to it.