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I’ve done online dating for many years and never quite met “the one” but have had a few sweet memories of different encounters and relationships.
One in particular: His name was Jackson. We met on a dating site called Plenty of Fish (POF). He contacted me saying he was living in Germany as a football coach but came home a lot to NYC to see his children who lived on Long Island.
It was Christmas when we first spoke on the phone. There were many lively and fun conversations and I realized he was there for his children, but we made plans the next time he came in for a weekend where he had time for us to spend together. He had a playful sense of humor, seemed highly intelligent and was easy on the eyes. He had been a professional model for 14 years and was able to give himself and his family the comfort he had always wanted. Times were different now because he and his wife had divorced and he would come into their once owned together home and stay to be with his children.
Then it became the time to meet. He texted me that his plane had landed and he first had to visit his grandmother, in East Harlem, who was sick and elderly, who he loved very much and had raised him.
The doorbell rang on a Friday evening and I opened the door. There stands a beautiful looking man with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. He was dressed in a navy blue pea coat and a beret with khaki pants. His skin looked as delicious as a piece of Godiva chocolate. I floated towards him, welcoming him in and taking his jacket, and the next thing I knew I floated right back into his arms and we held one another in a long, long embrace. He took my breath away! He then said, “This was not supposed to happen.”
Isn’t that the way love works, when you least expect it, I said to myself.
We then walked over to my dining room table and sat opposite one another. We began to talk, talk, talk, talk. He told me he grew up in Harlem and shared his background as a child with me. I too shared mine and we must have been speaking for a few hours when I brought out a delicious meal I had made of roast brisket, potatoes, and salad. We just kept talking. He then helped me with the dishes and without blinking an eyelash – as though we had known one another for years – we walked into the bedroom and began taking our clothes off to make love. It was normal, so natural, so comfortable.
His body was rock hard from athleticism, between coaching basketball and long rides on his bicycle in Germany. It was a magical time that went by so quickly and so naturally. Afterward, we rested and held one another.
The next day, we took a subway downtown to his old haunts that he would go to in Soho and Little Italy. It was fun buying some Italian goodies from an old deli that he used to go to and that was still there. It was in February and very cold, but between the two of us, it didn’t make any difference as we sat outside munching on delicious goodies like sausage and cheese on gorgeous bread that he bought in the Italian deli. Somehow we ended up at Gennaro’s in Little Italy buying some delicious desserts with an espresso. The time flew by.
We ended up going back uptown to my place in Harlem around 7pm and he had to leave around l0pm that evening to catch a plane back to Germany. We laid down together to rest and he asked me if he could leave some clothes with me and of course, I said yes. We both rested in one another’s arms and I was consciously aware of the time and didn’t want him to miss his plane (actually I did want him to miss his plane but I didn’t allow that thought to go any further). It became l0pm and it was time. We hugged and kissed goodbye and he told me he would be back for his birthday in 2 weeks. After he left I put on one of his long sleeve t-shirts that he left with me and snapped a photo and texted to him.
I truly thought he was the one. And I saw that he had left his Birkenstocks under my bed, and that was a good feeling to me that he either wanted to stay and wanted to come back.
As a matter of fact, one week later he called when I wasn’t home and left a voicemail message saying, “I love you.”
We both felt the same way the moment we had met. Nothing else mattered to me. I just took all of the beauty and deliciousness in and relished it. I looked forward to seeing him in 2 weeks and only time would tell.
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Photo by Alice Donovan Rouse on Unsplash