The Unusual Suspect
He isn’t’ expected to arrive until half past five. We scout the area out around Bryant Park and find the most inconspicuous space for our stakeout. The fountain was in good view and we are well hidden. All we had to do was wait. Wait for him to meet his sixty one year old Internet mistress. Never in my life had I witnessed a breakup like this. I was the supportive friend at hand to drag Ellen out in case it got ugly. In the adulterous emails exchanged, Tyler was meeting this mystery casual encounter at 5:30. He would be wearing a green tee shirt with camouflage shorts. The one Ellen felt so familiar with and yet now felt such a stranger to while waiting at the park. Was this really happening? And how do I always manage to be caught in these awkward situations?
Never in my life had I witnessed a breakup like this.
At exactly 5:32pm, we walk cautiously to the fountain to make sure we’d see him before he had a chance to run. A part of this whole fiasco felt like an ugly dream. Although it was not my boyfriend, it reopened the wounds of my own bad times. This time around, however, she would do everything I had only wished I had the guts to do.
To our horror, we see Tyler casually sitting by the fountain and flipping through the pages of his book–too quickly for him to actually read. He was nervous. Now, it was for good reason. I sit on a chair nearby and let Ellen run her emotions dry and confront him. I see her push him as he tries to get up and leave. She screams. He looks down. Her hands are gesticulating. I look around.
People are whispering, some are smirking and others are too busy with their cellphones to witness the real life soap opera unfolding. Ellen and Tyler stop talking and look at me. They walk towards me. I realize that I’m holding her bag that’s filled with his guilty emails to the mistress. She made sure to make copies. She takes them out of her bag, and throws it on him. They are not two feet away, and I can see the goose bumps on Tyler’s arm on this hot late summer day. His lips are quivering and his legs are shaking. He tries to find strength but eventually kneels down, putting weight on my chair to catch his breath and lower his head. I can’t even look at him.
Ellen shoves him off and screams “NO TYLER, YOU GET UP! DON’T BE A COWARD NOW!” All he could say is how much he loves her and how he didn’t really plan to cheat on her. She slaps him. It’s over. He never knew Ellen was the sixty one year old mistress. I should say, he never knew the power of the all mighty computer. “Older lady looking for a younger man,” read the subject line of the e-mail that Ellen found in her boyfriend’s outbox.
He was replying to a personal ad placed on Craigslist. She discovered it earlier that night when Tyler conveniently left the e-mail open on the desktop of her computer. It seemed too easy, almost too easy to catch him in the initial act of cheating. The authenticity was questionable but we pursued it anyway.
The next morning, we impersonated the voice of a sixty-one year old female and wrote back to her boyfriend using a random email address. I’ll admit, it probably wasn’t the most mature thing to do, but we can’t always play by the rules. Sure, she could have sat him down and confronted him, but what evidence would she have that he would have cheated? The bastard would have gained the chance to lie right through his teeth and she’d be none the wiser. She’d eat every ounce of it in the blindness of her affection.
Tyler replied back to the email within twenty minutes. He wanted to meet at Bryant Park and later take Ms. Sixty-one year old back to an apartment in Gramercy – ” that is, Ellen’s apartment.
This man Tyler is sweet. He’s funny, smart, cultured, and financially set. He is shy at times, but would appear normal to anyone’s standard. I wonder what, in the name of the sex gods and all things sexual, would possess a twenty-three year old to want a casual encounter with a sixty-one year old woman. Dating someone who has ten or even twenty years of more experience than you is one thing; having sex with a woman who nearly qualifies for senior discounts at the movie theater– is entirely different.
The next time I see grandma at her house upstate, I’m thinking twice before introducing her to Mr. Main Squeeze.
Sandra Fay is a twenty something living and dating in New York City. To learn more about her visit her MyAsiance page at my.asiancemagazine.com/sandrafay