EARL

Internet dating took a couple of months. There was one false positive after another. Someone would look cute in their picture and show up twenty years older. They would sound promising on the phone, but immediately ask for sex.  They would be cute and smart, and talk incessantly about the teenager that lived next door. I was about to give up, but then I met a man. A plain man. Earl. He was a mail carrier. Divorced no kids.  He had been a train conductor and I thought that was interesting. We went to a middling restaurant and I made it through the meal.  That night I went home and got out my birth control pills and started taking them. Just in case.

He took me to several movies and became a regular date on Friday nights and sometimes on Saturdays with my mother babysitting...

Please subscribe to keep reading.