Holiday Companion

“Artistic-style gay male, 43, new to town, seeks local older male to introduce him to the holidays here. Companionship, local concerts, plays, restaurants, university sports. Holiday cheer and travel later if found compatible. Nonsmoker please.”

I had never advertised like this in a paper before, but Gill, an older, sometimes boyfriend of mine in Washington, D.C., told me I should try it, and Bernard, another D.C. artist friend and occasional hookup, told me it would be a good way to get introduced to the gay and artistic communities in the university town I’d just moved to.

“You know you can’t live long without sex,” he’d said.

“What I need here, now, is just someone to help me dive into the local cultural community,” I’d answered, trying to convince even myself that that was all I was looking for. I have to admit that Bernard knows me pretty well, though.

I’d already had a few hookups, but they were one-time casual and were with guys from the gym I started going to as soon as I moved here right before Thanksgiving. They weren’t guys who shared cultural interests with me. I’m not sure they had any cultural interests beyond scoring, but that was OK with me in that circumstance. I usually was just looking for release myself.

It was a bad time to move. Everyone was concentrated on the holidays and most already had the companionship they needed.

This was a university town, rich in culture, little of which I’d found yet. It had several different festivals going. I’d been hired as executive director of a new one, on photography, which was run in early summer. I had until spring to get networked into the artistic community and to get the festival up and running, but it had been hard going connecting with anyone I could be networking with. The first step, Bernard had said, was to find out what was happening on the cultural scene here.

Hence the drastic step of a newspaper ad.

I was already seated at Hamilton’s on the pedestrian mall, the former main street of the town, when I saw him at the door. I had to laugh, because I’d already seen him, without having made contact, at the gym, where I had found him attractive. He was an older guy, but solidly built. I thought he looked familiar in the photo he’d sent me after the e-mail connection was established, but that had been a photo of a younger man. The age difference didn’t bother me, though. He was still handsome and distinguished looking, with something of a military bearing. The first thought I had at seeing him was of Daddy Warbucks, because his distinctive feature was that he was bald and bullet headed. He had been tall and substantial, yet trim when I saw him at the gym in his athletic gear. Here, of course, he was bundled up against the winter weather. I had threatened snow all day. Here he looked rich, in control, and in keeping with the major university in the town.

Despite being bald on top, he had bushy gray eyebrows, which suggested he was at least slightly hirsute. This had a double effect on me that was contrary to the reason I’d told myself I was looking for holiday companionship. The legend—I won’t call it a myth because it had often worked that way in my experience—was that bald men were particularly virile. The same had been said about hirsute men. And this man was both.

He struck a commanding figure as he stood at the door, waiting for the maître d to direct him. But then he saw me, smiled, and walked, confidently to the table. He was wearing an open, long, black cashmere coat with a pristine white silk scarf around his neck that was hanging down his chest. Everything spoke of “well off.”

“David?” he asked, pulling a black leather glove off a slender hand, with long, sensuous fingers, and extending it for a handshake. The gloves clicked a memory in me of a man I’d been with who wore just gloves and explored my body with them—but that’s another story. His grip was firm, confident, but not crushing. His smile was genuine, warm. “That is you then,” he continued. “I remember seeing you at the gym but, I didn’t want to say anything about it in the e-mail exchange in case it wasn’t you. I’m Theodore. Theodore Daniels. Please call me Ted. May I sit?”

And thus began an hour of interesting, comfortable discussion. We were eating early, as we were meeting for the first time to go to the Oratorio Society’s Christmas concert at the old, restored Paramount Theatre on the mall a few blocks east of the restaurant. I had walked to the mall from my apartment in the old, elegant apartment building on Altamont Street about four blocks north of the walking mall. I hadn’t asked how Daniels had gotten there. We planned for dinner here and the concert and then drinks at a bar near the theater afterward if the meeting—I didn’t want to jinx it by calling it a date—was working that far. And we had agreed that it was then to be each to our own homes to assess whether we wanted to take in more events this Christmas season with each other.

“I just retired from the university,” he said. “I was a professor of linguistics there for thirty-five years. I’m sixty-three now.” He looked at me to see how that went down. I knew he must be older than that to be retired from the university, but he wasn’t walking with a cane and, as I thought I remembered from seeing him in the gym, he moved really well for even sixty-three and was in solid condition. I took it he was nervous about his age in terms of answering a personals ad. “And you?”

“As I noted in the newspaper ad, I’m forty-three, just arrived in town, and wanting to see what’s going on here during the holidays.” By noting that I’d given my age in my ad, I guess I was noting that he hadn’t given me an age until now. It could have mattered. In this case it didn’t. He was well-preserved and seemed quite the cultured guy. I had gone with older men for some time, if not that older. Of course, I was beginning to realize that I was becoming the older man for younger men to go with. The men I’d taken home from the gym here had been over ten years younger than I was. All things change, I guess.

“And, right off the top, I should establish that I am gay,” I said, staring straight into his eyes to gauge the effect and, yes, I suppose, challenging him to declare himself. Although I hadn’t come into the restaurant with the intention of working that aspect of the meeting, after seeing him at the door, I had an urge to clear up preference, including whether he was a top to my submissive. He didn’t declare himself, though, but he also didn’t react negatively to my declaration. He didn’t react to it at all, just stopping a waiter to ask for a wine menu.

I wasn’t surprised having seen him—and earlier at the gym, where he seemed perfectly at home—to know he’d had a responsible position at the university. “I’m the new executive director for the photographic festival in June,” I offered, “and I wanted to start networking with other artistic types here. I found that the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays aren’t a very good time to start that.”

“No, I suppose they wouldn’t be,” he answered. “And they can be a lonely time too,” he added.

His eyes looked a little sad as he said that.

“Yes, they can,” I said. I hadn’t thought about it, but that was true and probably was a reason I’d taken the bold step of advertising for a holiday companion. In D.C., I’d had a set of friends I could count on to get me through the holidays. “I’m sorry, but you seemed to be sad when you said that. Is it unusual for you to be alone for the holidays?”

“Yes. I’ve had my mother living with me for several years, and she passed in the fall. And I’ve just retired, and although I’ve been invited to faculty parties, it just isn’t the same going to those when you no longer are in the game. I guess it’s hit me this Christmas season. It’s probably why I answered your ad.”

“So, you aren’t married or otherwise entangled?”

“No. No entanglements. An interesting way of putting it, though. I’ve never thought of being entangled before—no relationship regular enough to consider it an entanglement. But now I don’t have family obligations or professional duties and relationships any more. I guess I have to start thinking about the changes in my life. I think I might take up international traveling again. I’d done a lot of that before my mother became ill. Have you done much traveling, David?”

“I’ve moved up and down the East Coast fairly regularly, and I studied the photographic arts and museum management out in Los Angeles,” I said. “But I haven’t done much travel internationally. That has always attracted me, but I haven’t had someone to travel with, and I think you enjoy it more when you can share experiences. But that would be a change. And Christmas is probably a bad time to be doing that—a bad time for changes.”

“Yes, precisely,” he answered, although I wasn’t sure what part of what I had said had struck a chord with him. I realized I was babbling; that often happened to me when someone I was talking to aroused me. I didn’t pursue the point of what he was referring to, though.

Our chatting became more disjointed as our meals had been served. But I determined that he was involved in culture in the city and that this had been another reason he’d answered my ad. He was on the board of the Oratorio Society, for instance, and he had planned to take in this concert anyway but was happy that he didn’t have to go alone. He also was active in the university’s drama program and had noted that the fine arts schools were close to where he lived, near the university. He knew a good bit about the background of this fledgling photograph festival I was hired to direct, and our conversation on that was useful to me. If we continued seeing each other, he would be quite helpful to me, I thought.

As we were eating dessert, he picked up more directly on the central relationship questions.

“And you? Is there no one else more regularly in your life? I did observe at the gym that you were friendly with several of the other younger men—men more your age and some younger than you—none of my age bracket. There seems to be a group of young men at the gym who are very keen on fitness and being toned up. You were certainly part of that.”

“Part of that?” I asked.

“Toned up. You have kept your body in excellent shape.”

“You have as well, I noticed,” I said. “I do have a few guys at the gym I’m friendly with, yes, but none seem interested in the cultural networking I need to do here in town.”

“The interest you have in the men working out at the gym is focused on their youth and conditioning—something beyond intellectual stimulation?” He was looking directly into my eyes over the rim of his coffee cup, and I sensed for the first time a gauging of interest from him that went to the sexual. My reply would be very important, I sensed.

“Age is not that important to me,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Conditioning is, I’ll have to admit. I want the man covering me to be in good condition. Some older men are in superb condition.” I’d just complimented him on his body and, with this, I’d also hinted, if he wanted to focus on that aspect, that I was a submissive—men covered me. At the same time, it was a double entendre. Men at the gym “cover” for other men—spot them while they are performing exercises where something could slip and they could hurt themselves if someone wasn’t there to help take weight off them in the fall. I had no problem at the gym finding other men who were happy to spot me during difficult exercises. None of them had been Ted, though, or other men in his age bracket.

“You share other interests with the men at the gym than being spotted by them in your exercises?” he asked, again looking at me pointedly from under bushy eyebrows.

He was going to pin down the double entendre.

“Yes, other interests.” I didn’t elaborate. I’m sure he knew now that they were sexual hookups. The young men were interested in one-time sex, and I took a few of them home, where we banged away at each other in sweaty, athletic, challenging position sex. I was good for a flip-flop. I like to think I was good at both ends of a flip-flop. But it wasn’t what I said. “None of them are regulars in my life outside of the gym. There are no special others in my life, no, and certainly not here in town yet. I had a few flings in D.C., and I was married for sixteen years.”

“Married? To a woman?” His dessert fork was half way to his mouth, and he was looking at me quizzically again from under bushy eyebrows.

“Yes, to a woman. But we’re long divorced. Amicably so. But I found that we weren’t compatible. It wasn’t women who made my heart go all aflutter.”

He laughed at that. “Well, having your heart go all aflutter must be very nice. I’m sorry to say it’s never happened with me.”

“Never?” I asked.

“No, never,” he said, taking another sharp look at me. “But that, of course, was in my former life, when I had family obligations and a career—and when I didn’t reach the Christmas holidays and suddenly feel lonely. And not,” he added, “before I was so bold as to answer personal ads in the newspaper.” Then, before I could say anything, he laughed again and said, “But I guess we’d better finish up and get to the concert. It’s just up the mall, but we don’t want to make a spectacle of ourselves and be late.”

“No, we certainly don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,” I said, having no idea why I phrased it that way or why I should care. It was just two lonely old men each trying to get through the Christmas holidays and seeking a bit of culture along the way, I reminded myself. But was that all I wanted in putting that ad in the paper?

But then, as we were moving down the aisle in an already crowded theater, Ted put a possessing hand on my lower back to help guide me to our seats and drew his face close to my ear to make small comments, seemingly uncaring how anyone watching us would take what, to me, was an intimate touch. He obviously was quite familiar with the Paramount and the programing here. He knew just where our assigned seats were and he was acknowledging greetings left and right as we approached our seats.

The concert was very nice. Ted knew a lot about music and had been a baritone in the Oratorio Society himself once. I admitted I’d been a second tenor in Washington’s Gay Men’s Chorus, which interested him and we talked about the Christmas segment of the Messiah and how many times each of us had sung in that and where during the interval, where we grabbed a drink at the bar. I was surprised how many foreign countries he’d sung the Handel piece in, but I guess that went with his specialty in linguistics. While we were at the bar I noticed that many of the other patrons knew Ted and greeted him. When it was convenient, he introduced me. It seemed he was well placed in the cultural community, and this was definitely helping me meet people I would be working with over the next few months.

In the second half, I kept looking down at his arm resting on the chair arm between us and finding myself wishing he’d put his well-manicured hand on my knee—that he would declare himself and his interest in intimacy. I had let him know I was gay. It was in the personal ad, and he would not have answered the ad without taking that into account. And in our conversation at dinner I hadn’t hidden that I was active with men.

But then I’d bring myself up short. This was just a feeling each other out meeting and a chance to get out for an evening in the company of another person. I couldn’t expect any more on a first meeting. I did find myself thinking of it now as a date, though, even though we’d split the cost of dinner down the center. In any event, he was being very friendly but not demonstrably forward. He knew I was gay, from the moment he read the ad. I hadn’t figured him out completely yet, though. He didn’t shy away from me being gay, but he hadn’t directly committed himself. Maybe he wasn’t gay but just didn’t care if I was. That’s all that I’d advertised for, wasn’t it? Hmm. I’d have to think about that, I decided.

After the concert, and after he’d greeted and talked with several of the choristers, the conductor, and members of the orchestra as well as other patrons—again introducing me where it seemed appropriate—we went looking for a bar.

The end of the concert had been that first junction at which we had set a reckoning. We hadn’t set plans for anything but the dinner and the concert and had left the afterward possibility open. But before I could think how to ask the “what next?” question and suggest a drink at a bar, he stepped up to that plate himself. He was an “in command” sort of guy, but he did it smoothly without making any waves. He was, of course at least twenty years older than I was, and this was his turf, so it was natural for him to take the lead.

“How about a drink now?” he said. “The Skybar is just across the mall and there are a few more bars on the mall we can walk to if that one’s crowded. I’d like to continue our conversation.”

“Sounds good,” I said. It sounded terrific.

As good as it sounded, though, the bars were all crowded, and Ted admitted that he wasn’t excited about noisy, crowded bars. I agreed with him. I did agree with him.

“We could go to my place,” he said. “I have wine—or beer, or something harder, if you wish.”

The “something harder” gave me a little jolt, but I stayed with him as he continued.

“My car’s here in the Market Street garage, and if you live at the Altamont, you are just a short walk from my house on Fendall Terrace. Maybe fifteen minutes for a guy in as good a shape as you keep yourself in.”

“Wine would be very nice,” I said.

“Beer with the younger guys at the gym but wine with me?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

“Of course,” I answered, but thinking on that, I could see the difference. One-night stands with the younger guys at the gym, but something of higher quality and to savor with this older man.

His house proved to be a cozy stone cottage that had been expanded over the years to ramble up a slope and must have been worth a fortune as picturesque as it was and as close as it was the university while still being on a very private side street. The original structure was oriented away from the street, showing a short side of the structure in the form of a stone wall with a chimney in the center and French doors on either side of it. He parked his Mercedes in a pad just in from the street and we walked up a wide flagstone path, rising in irregularly placed steps to a walk past the right side of the stone façade and beside a hedge-sided walkway to a covered entrance.

Inside, it was all stone walls, polished wood paneling, low lighting, lush Oriental carpets, expensive-looking bric-a-brac, and books, books, books. It was obvious that the man had traveled and collected widely, expensively, and with discernment. The living room, two steps down from the foyer, was off to the left, and was the side of the structure that was facing the street. The stone fireplace dominated the far wall, with bookshelves on either side between the French doors. A Christmas tree, which Ted lit up when we entered the foyer, rose beside the fireplace. The fireplace was laid with wood and Ted went over and got the fire started while I acclimated myself to where the various doors from the slate-floored foyer led.

Straight ahead was the open double door into a dining room, with a kitchen off to the right. The dining room furniture was of a rosewood-finish Chinese Chippendale table and chairs on a richly colored Oriental rug. I could see a hallway beyond the kitchen, which Ted told me led to a bedroom and bath for his mother’s companion, a position no longer filled, and a laundry room. Immediately to my right were double glass-paneled French doors leading into a library, with walls of book lining the room, Another short set of stairs between the library and kitchen led up to two large bedrooms, as Ted showed me later, each with a bath. To the right, above the library and behind a guest bath, and incorporating the bedroom hallway, was yet another bookcase-lined narrow room with two French doors leading out to an enclosed side terrace.

This was a man who clearly was out of my cultural league, but who had a life I achingly aspired to.

By the time I’d gotten back from the guest bath, Ted had wine glasses in his hand and had exchanged his coat, and his shirt as well, with a silk dressing robe. He put the sounds of Frank Sinatra at Christmas on whatever multiroom sound system the house had. He motioned me to a commodious overstuffed sofa facing the fireplace. A cocktail table in front of the sofa held what looked like a brass cigarette box and coasters for the wine. The cigarette box gave me pause. I had specified a nonsmoker in my personal ad. I hoped Ted didn’t smoke. The house certainly didn’t give off the unavoidable smell of a smoker, though.

I have no idea now what we talked about as we sat in the sofa, looking at the fire and Christmas tree, sipping red wine, and listening to Sinatra croon away. All I know was at some point he’d moved closer to the corner I was wedged in, that his arm had gone around my back, and that the front of his dressing gown had opened to reveal that his pecs were firm and were lightly covered with curls of gray hair that continued down his sternum to his belly, which was flat and firm for a man his age. He was hovering over me, gesturing with his right hand to emphasize whatever topic he was expounding on. I also knew that I was breathing a little heavily and hoping that this was leading somewhere.

It did.

He stopped in midsentence and focused my attention. “But that’s not what you want to hear, is it?”

I had no idea what he was talking about and was afraid he would discover I was more fixated on the firmness of his hard body and on his chest hair than what he might have asked me, so I didn’t respond. That didn’t seem to bother him, though. He put his wine glass on his coaster and then took mine from my hand and put it on my coaster. He moved smoothly and I asked no questions nor impeded his movement in any way. Nor did I react against him cupping the back of my head and pulling my face into his for a deep kiss.

When we came out of that, he smiled into my face and said, “I think you want to hear the answer to the one question you haven’t me yet, David.” He was unbuttoning my shirt as he said that. He opened enough buttons to insert his hand under the material and palm my left pec. His thumb was on my nipple. I was beginning to harden elsewhere. I couldn’t resist the suggestiveness of his hand on my chest and I raised mine and ran my fingers into the gray curls on his chest, an index finger touching one of his nipples. I heard a sigh. That quite likely had come from both of us.

“What?” I asked breathlessly. Having started me going with the nipple pressure, he continued unbuttoning my shirt.

“You haven’t asked if I fucked on the first date. I do. I fuck on the first date. And you, David? Do you fuck on the first date?” Having finished with the buttons on my shirt and flaring it open, his hand moved to unzipping my fly.

“Yes,” I responded breathlessly. His hand was already inside my fly, gripping my cock. He was in command, taking charge.

“You’re getting hard, David. Is that for me? At my age can I still make a younger man go hard? I am not too old to cover you?”

“No,” I answered. “You’re not too old to cover me.” I was wondering who was going to fuck who, though. Ted had the answer for that too. He stripped my trousers off as I reclined into the corner of the sofa and was lying on top of me, worrying one of my nipples with his mouth and stroking my cock hard with his hand. I had made a move to help him get my clothes off but he brushed my hand away.

“Please just lay there,” he whispered. “I enjoy unwrapping my own presents. I just want you to yield to me, to let me get my full enjoyment out of your body.”

“Very nice,” I heard him murmur, his hand gliding all over my body. Then, smoothly, he had his trousers and his dressing gown off and he was naked on top of me, moving down my body, and taking my cock in his mouth. My right leg was trapped between his body and the back of the sofa. He folded my left leg up into my body, holding it there with a grip under my knee. He was testing my flexibility, although surely already knowing from watching me in the gym that I could move into the positions he wanted me in in sex. This rolled my ass up, and his tongue went under my balls, down my taint, and into my puckering hole. I arched my back and moaned as he opened me up with his lips and tongue.

He was preparing my channel. I thought he was going to fuck me, which was fine, I went both ways. But I was wrong. I was erect, but he wasn’t. He was long and thick and I was stroking him when he had moved back on top of my body. My right hand was cupping his buttocks and holding him into me as we did more mouth work and grinded our bodies into each other, but he wasn’t hardening. He didn’t seem to care, though. He sat up from me and reached over to the brass case, which turned out to contain a tube of lubricant and a small pile of condom packets.

So, he wasn’t a smoker—and he engaged in safe sex. I almost regretted the second practice as, when the threat was minimized, I enjoyed the feel of skin sliding in channel of barebacking. He wasn’t cut, and I would have enjoyed the looseness of the skin working inside me.

When he had me hot and bothered with his hands and his mouth, he opened a condom packet, rolled the sheath onto my cock, and lubed up my cock and his hole. Then, as I was still reclining back into the corner of the sofa, he positioned himself over my hips, descended his channel on my cock, and, setting his forehead against mine and watching every response in my eyes with his, slowly rode me to my ejaculation. He was half hard but not hard enough under the stroking of his own hand while he rode me to move into penetrating me, which I had certainly let him know he could do. Ted knew how to ride a cock.

As I groaned and held his waist with my left hand and ran my right hand into the hair on his chest, he rose and fell and rocked and gave me the friction to tease the cum out of me. He did tense, jerk, and dribble out onto my belly before I ejaculated in three strong spoutings. I was sorry he hadn’t gotten off better than that himself, but I’d gotten off nicely.

We sat back up and finished our wine, all very civil and chatty, as if we hadn’t had sex, me quite satisfied, Ted as if he’d had a good time too. Twenty minutes later I was fully dressed standing at the door to the outside path and we were both looking at a snow-covered hedge and a couple of inches of snow on the path. The crucial question of whether we would meet again as cultural program holiday companions hung, unanswered, in the air. Was it important to Ted that he hadn’t hardened up and had a strong release? Was he definitely a “one and done” sort of man?

Ted was still naked, with his silk robe hanging off his shoulders, but open to show his trim, hard body and a low-slinging cock. The tall, dense hedges along the entry walk hid us from any neighbor’s view.

“It’s snowing,” he said.

“Yes, it really must have come down fast,” I said.

“And still snowing. You can’t go out in this. You’ll ruin your shoes even if you don’t have far to walk.”

“I guess you’ll have to drive me,” I said.

“I suppose I could,” he answered, with a grin. He put his arm around me and drew me back into the foyer. “It can be done, if you wish to have another go at it.”

* * * *

I watched Ted walk back, naked, from the bathroom off his bedroom. I was on my belly, naked, on his bed. He had a great body for a sixty-something. Hell, he had a great body for a forty-something. And his erection was magnificent. I felt like he had rubbed the back of my tonsils in the doggy position he’d taken me in. He had driven me hard and long, taking me deep and slow and then fast and faster. I came again. So did he, although I had no idea how much production he managed. He certainly managed to stay hard.

He still was thick and long, and hard as steel. He’d been that way since he’d come out of the bathroom to fuck me the first time. He must have taken something, Viagra or something, when he was in there the first time. Whatever he’d taken, it had given him a long-lasting monstrous hard on. He was rock hard and godawful long and thick, the shaft standing straight out from an unruly gray and reddish-brown bush. I’d noticed that there was less gray and more reddish-brown on his body as the thatching moved down from his bald head.

I didn’t know how long the drug could keep him hard and now many times he planned to fuck me with the out-sized shaft. But I didn’t care. I was having a ball being balled by him. He was definitely a take command sort of guy. And he could flip-flop as well as I could.

He sat down beside me and said, “Roll onto your back for me, baby.” I did so. “Open your legs for me, David.” He glided his hands up my inner thighs, coaxing my legs open, and I spread them for him.

“Again? We’re going to . . . ?” I asked.

“As long as you’ll take it and it stays hard, I’m going to fuck you with it, yes,” he said. “Unless . . .”

“Yes, fuck me again,” I begged. It was thick and as hard as steel. I could ride it all day.

When his hands had reached where my thighs connected with my groin on either side, he ran his hands back down to under my knees, further spread and bent my legs, and set my feet on the surface of the bed.

“I love how you give me full control, how you let me position you as I want you and then stay there while I take you,” he murmured. “How flexible you are to be able to take and hold the positions,” he added.

I had no answer for that other than I enjoyed surrendering to him wholly, so I said nothing. I didn’t mind being his fuck doll as long as he could maintain a magnificent hard. I loved being balled by big-cocked men.

“Can you push your pelvis up to give me a good angle? I think I can get in deeper than last time.”

I shuddered at the thought, but I did as he bid.

“Yes, like that. Stay there, open to me, baby. Take my cock again. Take all of me.”

He rolled over onto his knees between my spread thighs, cupped my buttocks with his hands, separating the cheeks. I gasped and bunched up sheeting in my fists, with my arms cast straight out from my body, attaining an “I’m open to anything you do to me” sacrificial pose, as he entered me again, thick and rock hard, and immediately went deep. Turning my cheek to the sheet and focusing my eyes across the room to the wall of mirror, where I could watch him fuck me, I moaned and set my hips to match the rhythm of his thrusts—in, out, in deep, hold, out, in, out, in deep . . .

“Yes, like that. Fuck me deep. Oh, god, yes.”

His head was turned to the mirror too, him watching me being fucked, me watching him fucking me. Pretty good view for two older men. Two men in prime condition for their ages. Fucking, fucking, fucking.

The man knew how to fuck.

Merry Christmas to him. Merry Christmas to me.

Later, as he lay stretched along my body, he murmured, “There’s a university basketball game the afternoon of New Year’s. We could—”

“Yes.”

“Dinner after at the Ivy Inn.”

“Yes.”

“Then, afterward—”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“I was thinking of a trip to Portugal in February or March.”

“Yes. Anything. Anywhere.”

“I’m still hard. Maybe—”

“Yes, absolutely. Happy Holidays.”