By Amanda Green

We’d be having dinner or eyeing each other over the tops of our drinks. “I want you to know I’m not with you right now because you’re 22,” he’d say, pausing for emphasis as if trying to embody his full age, the years between us. “I’m with you because you’re a beautiful woman.”

“Thanks,” I thought. “But I’m with you, because you’re a DILF.” Still, I nodded and silently counted the minutes until he’d put his mouth to my neck or it would be dark enough for him to forget how afraid he was of hurting me. Sometimes.

I lived with his mother, a septuagenarian who practiced voodoo and Dr. Phil-istinism. She’d invited me to the Thanksgiving dinner her daughter was hosting, since my family was lost in another time zone hundreds of dollars away.

It was there that I met her son, the doctor. He had a quick smile I’d later come to identify as panty-drenching. While he played around with his kids, I picked at a plate of dry turkey and stuffing. When he sat down next to me, I told him his children were adorable. Soon we were talking about work, music and books.

He asked for my phone number as I fished my coat out of the pile of wool and down in the guest bedroom. I gave it to him. Hours later, while walking to a bodega for some milk and cereal to tide me over after the lackluster dinner, my mind began to reel. Could he really be attracted to me? Had his divorce, which I’d heard his mother complaining about, even been finalized? Was he trying to be some parental figure I didn’t need?

I ruled out that last question the next night when he asked me what turned me on, laughing when I gave stock answers like “being kissed on the neck.”

“What about good conversation?” he asked teasingly. It was the first of many didactic moments in our time together. He stuck his tongue in my ear before I could worry about not having the right answer for him and why winning his approval suddenly felt so important to me.

MILFs get mainstream acceptance as some sort of fad, if not a rite of passage. No one asks if a guy attracted to a hot mom has unresolved issues that reek of Freud. But when a 22-year-old woman decides to let a man nearly her father’s age seduce her, the questions come up. In case you’re wondering, I have a very close, supportive and healthy relationship with my own dad. He’s so concerned with my well being that if he ever heard about how The Doctor played me, well, he’d kill him.

By the time I realized he was twice my age that first night out, we’d already glued ourselves to each other in a cab. He didn’t look too much older. The little evidence I’d gathered indicated he acted it mostly in attractive ways. Later, I’d stumble upon a quote about how “men age and women rot.” He’d laugh when I shared it and agree.

“From now on, they don’t get any older than you,” he joked. “As soon as you’re 23, it’s over.”

Just a frisson of icy pain ran through me. He’d already warned me not to fall in love with him, and I’d accepted it as only a woman could: “Fine. But what makes you think that you don’t need to worry about falling in love with me?” Somehow, I reasoned I could get him there. Don’t mistake me for a romantic. I’m a hopeless overachiever.
We never told his mother (my roommate) how well we’d hit it off and enjoyed each other’s naked bodies. A few nights a week, we’d meet up on the sly, high on the downlow. Each date culminated in loud sexual explorations, usually at my place. Well, his mother’s place. In the hasty separation, his estranged wife and children got the apartment; he got the bills and a temporary house share. My bedroom was right outside the front door, and we’d sneak in and out like Shakespeare’s secret lovers.

Up to that point, conversations with men of his age generally involved my grade point average. But we talked about the lives we’d lived before we met each other—slippery stuff like whom we hurt and how, whom we loved and why. Needless to say, he had a lot more material. He’d take me to lounges where I was too shy to dance. “I really hope you grow out of this,” he chided. Once we went to a kid-themed restaurant with his son. I washed animal-shaped chicken nuggets down with a margarita. His son cocked his eyebrows and asked if I was going to be adopted.

As great as the sex was, I realized there was no way we’d ever live or get anywhere near a Pottery Barn together. (Believe me, good sex can foster such domestic delusions.) If we weren’t going to fall in love, we could at least enjoy each other’s company.

He liked to tell me I was a field neither unplowed nor ravaged. “You have an amazing life ahead of you,” he’d tell me in a post-coital pep talk. “I’m honored to be one of your stories.” He also mentioned that I ought to find a nice guy closer to my age someday and that I shouldn’t be such a smartass when I get uncomfortable.

But what was I to do when a romantic walk down Amsterdam Avenue became an excavation of the generation gap? “Seriously?!” I exclaimed incredulously. “You don’t know what a blog is?!”

I knew the days of the DILF were going to end, and it wasn’t a tragedy. On one of our last few nights together, he told me I’d helped him through the lowest point in his life. All that time I thought I was just expanding my sexual horizons.

Months later, I contracted some virulent strep throat-Ebola hybrid and rushed to the hospital for emergency care. I’d since found a boy my age who loved the lessons but hated the teacher, if you know what I mean. But then a doctor, The Doctor, suddenly turned the corner and walked up to me concerned. After getting to cut the waiting room line, I knew the conversation I was in for with my new squeeze: “I’m sorry that made you uncomfortable. He doesn’t normally work those hours. I’m not attracted to him anymore. He was just being nice.”

The whole thing struck me as funny later. Here was my former lover standing over me, shoving a tongue depressor in my mouth. “It feels like old times,” I might’ve quipped, if my throat weren’t so sore. He listened to my breathing, like I used to listen to his. Prescriptions for painkillers and antibiotics were the last of the don’t-fall-in-love notes. I got better.

The Doctor and I run into each other on the street every few months. I’ve since moved out of his mother’s apartment, and he’s officially divorced. We always hug, kiss and catch up. He looks at the woman I’ve become like a proud father—someone else’s. I look at him with thanksgiving.