Winnie The Pooh, and Tigger, Too

 

Many of us will write about our “first time”. I could, but it would be a very short and uninteresting story:

He was my first boyfriend, I was 16, he was 19. We were in the backseat of his 1967 Pontiac GTO.

I think the story of my second lover is more interesting:

He was my second real boyfriend. We connected on OKCupid immediately following the end of my 28 year marriage to my first boyfriend (see story above). We were out to dinner on our fifth date. We were drunk. He was devastatingly handsome. I was curious about what it would be like to be with someone new after a lifetime of monogomy.

He proposed that I follow him home and spend the night, and suggested there was this narrow window of opportunity when his housemate’s kids would be at their father’s house. I was in a newfound spirit of “what the hell” after my husband left and started carrying on a long distance affair with another woman. It was wildly irresponsible for either of us to drive, but I knew he was a very experienced drunk driver having been a lifelong alcoholic so I trusted his judgment. I slowly and cautiously followed him home. By some act of God, we arrived safely.

We entered the house through the garage which led straight into the lower floor of the split level home. His bedroom was on the gound floor, as his girlfriend/housemate occupied the upper level of the house (he had been clear about the girlfriend on our first date, explaining what polyamory was to innocent me).

Walking into another man’s bedroom for the first time at age 52 was surprising. There was a small, unmade bed. I stopped in my tracks to take a better look at the bed because it appeared there were cartoon character sheets on it. I knew I was inexperienced as far as dating and sleeping around went, but this was hard to believe. He was a 52 year old professional father of 2 with Winnie the Pooh sheets on his bed.

At first, I assumed they were from his 2 sons’ childhoods. I didn’t hide the sense of shock on my face. In fact, I starting making fun of him. He knew this was only my second foray into the game of sleeping around. “Do grown men really have Winnie the Pooh sheets on their beds?” “Is this what I have been missing?”

He knew this was quite a funny experience. We had a good laugh. There was some quirky story about why he had this tiny bed with the character sheets. He said it was his girlfriend’s bed that he had been using since they moved in together and was supposed to be used in his room whenever they “entertained” guests. She was using his king size, post divorce marital bed upstairs in her bedroom. He claimed the sheets were hers, too. I know I took cell phone pictures of the sheets as evidence that this actually happened.