Most of us have them; some are short and sweet, others long and lazy. Sometimes they remain as beach glass fragments of memories and sometimes they stretch out into the autumn months where love fades like the sun.
I’ve had a couple of summer flings myself. They were both with older men, although the similarities ended there.
My first encounter occurred while I was vacationing in Mexico, a hilarious cliché that came from a concoction of tequila and having no idea what he was saying.
While I can’t remember more than three words I said to him, I know our mouths found other uses. He was a friend of the family, and soon enough I was enamoured.
We went dancing, sneaking out to kiss on the beach. I was over the moon, and when I left I did so kicking and screaming. I wouldn’t eat for weeks and I told my parents I was going back to marry him.
Rather dramatic, I suppose.
Lust is extremely hazy, and when winter settled in, the cold knocked some sense into me. I realized I thought a man that I couldn’t hold a full conversation with was my soulmate. He had been, in fact, just a rather yummy Latin playmate.
The following summer I was determined to enjoy my new job and time off from university. I wanted a fling with someone handsome and exciting, one I could file away at the end of August to nourish me through until April.
I found him and that passion soon after, but it was a messy affair.
He was charming, witty, and sophisticated but he was also my co-worker and almost a decade older than me. The show I put on to prove how little I cared for him was taxing and often resulted in me slamming doors and ignoring his texts. He was difficult to pin down, emotionally or otherwise and so I was left with a perpetual knot in my stomach.
Yet, for all the heartbreak I carried with me into September when we ended our doomed tryst, I have never felt a high like those I experienced with him in those short summer months.
Summer flings are dangerous because summer is not reality.
Good sense leaves us to get drunk off of the heat and life that permeates the air. There is no room for sunsets or cocktails on patios, or fireworks and road trips once the leaves fall. We live in an alternate reality where love makes a match so impossible that you think that it might just work.
Maybe that sounds tragic, that summer is fleeting and at times heartbreaking. But people live for the summers of life, for first kisses, adventures, and heartbreaks. Know that the depths and heights of the passions we achieve are what we live on, and know that there is no greater feeling than when the first flowers bloom and your heart begins to melt.
@alejandranikola
