I was only 8 when an older man first caught my attention. It was during “The Parent Trap” that I felt an illicit flutter when Dennis Quaid’s Nick Parker reclined, chest hair exposed, while Meredith Blake, played by Elaine Hendrix, sat on his lap, stroking the tuft of hair.

Throughout my adolescence, there was a rotating list of older men who caught my eye: George Clooney, Russell Crowe, and my parents’ friend Raúl, whose salt-and-pepper beard made me dizzy. I wanted a man who’d been around long enough to have stories — someone whose confidence I could run my fingers through.

But even still, I hadn’t planned on marriage, let alone marrying a man nearly three decades my senior. And then I met Christopher.

The first time I heard his voice, I was hunched over a laptop at Frothy Monkey, a coffee shop in Nashville, the city where we both were living at the time.

“Want to join our book club?” he asked the server.

I turned and saw a man with silver-streaked hair sitting with an older woman with a brightly printed sweater, both of them smiling at the server. I approached their table to ask if I could join. The two of them — Christopher and Dorinda, I found out — were so excited to have a new member that they offered to let me pick the first book. 

Every Thursday, we met at Frothy Monkey. We read books like “Migrations” by Charlotte McConaghy, “Planes Flying Over a Monster” by Daniel Saldaña París, and “Poor Things” by Alasdair Gray. We didn’t always have the same taste in books, but we could spend hours talking about them. I felt a pull toward Christopher after he helped me take my car to the shop when I got a flat tire. I knew he was older than me, but I wasn’t sure of his age. I only knew I left each meeting starving for the next.

I wasn’t actively seeking an older man, but, then again, I wasn’t necessarily seeking anything. I had dated men in their 30s and 40s when I was in my 20s. At the time, the age gap was too noticeable. These men either had young kids or they were fresh out of a divorce. I had been using dating apps at that time and my age range was set from 32 to 60, but I had little luck and decided to get off them. My friend Kelcey and I printed out date cards with brief bios and our phone numbers, and we passed them out at bars. We wanted a real-life meet-cute. 

Around the same time, Christopher and I began to spend time together outside the book club, mostly dinner and drinks at his favourite restaurants. I always insisted on paying for myself — I didn’t want him to think I was looking for a sugar daddy (not that there’s anything wrong with that — it just wasn’t what I was looking for).

We had so much more in common than two people of different generations; we both had lived in Arabic-speaking countries, were in creative fields, and were very (very) anti-Trump. Christopher checked off traits that I wanted in a partner: well-traveled, artsy and liberal. But even though we had been spending a lot of time together, I couldn’t tell if we were heading to friends or flirtation. I was growing impatient and knew I needed to find out one way or another. 

I........

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