It started out innocently, as these things always do.

I would call in my DVD requests and he’d get them arranged for my bearer to pick them up. This went on for I don’t recall precisely how long. We’d become friendly over the phone.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when he offered to personally bring some movies I ordered to my home since he was going to be “in the area”.

You don’t have to, I told him, doubtful. That’s going beyond the call of duty.

No, it was his pleasure, he assured. Besides, he added pleasantly, he wanted to meet the person behind the voice that always ordered movies no one else ever requested.

Service does exist in this country, after all, I thought. I didn’t know the half.

Half-an-hour later, we were making nice in my living room. It was a sultry Sunday afternoon, the evening of the 2009 Oscars. I remember this because he tried selling me on the idea of us watching the show together. He was a rabid movie lover like me. So we had that in common. He was literate, thank god, a plus! He liked books. Although I sensed he didn’t read as much as he ought to. But he wrote poetry. Honestly, poetry writers don’t usually do it for me but, whatever. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to be “doing” anything for me; this was strictly a business relationship. Neither did he want anything from me, like, I don’t know, for me to publish his poems. Which I was relieved about. I didn’t want to have to tell him he wrote bulls#@%t. You’d be surprised how many university graduates write bulls#@%t.

Still, he was a walking cliché, really: tall, dark, and not exactly handsome, but, well, cute. Lord, and with those dark, ackee seed eyes. I’m trying to think of the actor who’d play him in the movie version of the story of my life. Wait, Hollywood doesn’t have many 20-something black leading men, does it? Never mind. Anyway, I had the distinct impression he was checking me out, too. Even though a solid 20 years separated us. But somehow, it didn’t matter. He’d recently graduated from university. Movies and the piddling part-time job he held during the week were pot-boilers; he was in the process of sending out job applications. I offered him advice and tried to remember how it felt to be 23 and just starting out in the world. I didn’t feel ancient, as I expected. Instead, I felt useful; here in front of me was a potential beneficiary of my overflowing font of knowledge, my vast years of experience. I knew they had to serve some practical purpose.

Finally, I stood up, indicating it was time for him to leave. We’d been talking for more than an hour; there was a danger some sort of line was about to be crossed.

I didn’t hear from him all week. I tried to rise above naked disappointment; maybe the chemistry I’d imagined between us was simply that: vain imagination.

But then, that Saturday, a rainy mid-morning in Kingston, he called. I was in bed sleeping off cramps. His voice made it seem like it was sunny outside. There was a mumbled apology about a telephone number mix-up, followed closely on the heels of a request to come see me at my apartment.

Don’t be a cruff, I said.

That’s the thing about 23-year-old boys. They think every older woman they meet is waiting to tumble down on top of them. They have to be disabused of that notion very quickly.

So we spent the next four hours on the phone talking, laughing, flirting up a blue, I mean blue, streak. The boy was decadent. I was looking for some fun, and despite the fact that he had a girlfriend, so was he. By the end of the conversation, he’d made a date like a proper gentleman: dinner and, of course, a movie.

But love stories that intense tend to burn out quickly, don’t they?

After a few months the affair sort of imploded, collapsed in on itself. I began to get on his nerves; he made me feel like jumping through a window. I was constantly making him feel young and callow, he complained. Well, because you are, I pointed out unkindly as we screamed epithets at each other during the break-up. What irked me about him was that he didn’t understand how to be the man he was in the process of becoming even while being with a sophisticated, older woman. Story of my life: another man feeling threatened by me.

It’s always challenging to find intelligent male companionship in this country that glorifies mediocrity and encourages the male of the species to dumb himself down so as not to stand out in a sea of Neanderthals. That we reached the end of the road so quickly saddened me because he was fun when he wasn’t being a tool. And he wasn’t stupid. That’s such a rare gift. When we weren’t horizontal we’d robustly challenge each other mentally, debating, for example, about which was the bigger travesty — the Jewish Holocaust or the African Slave Trade. Or whether abortion was solely a woman’s prerogative. There are so many barriers that come between men and women: social background, religious and philosophical beliefs, financial status. Intellect was something we had in common. But not even that is a guarantee of anything.

We resumed the relationship briefly that Christmas but it lasted about as long as shiny wrapping paper on a child’s gift. He’d really begun to care about me, he confessed, which was frightening to him, and why he’d started being a pain in the ass back then. I’d become fond of him, too. But, by this, I was over the cougar thing; I was over him. I’d had enough of the roller coaster ride. I didn’t need the changes I had to go through with him; I could get that nonsense from a man twice, hell, three times his age.

In the end, it wasn’t ever going to work out. I didn’t expect it to. At the most, I thought I would have made him a better man for the girl he finally ended up with. I’d like to think I did, because isn’t this what relationships — even the most fleeting of them — are for: to leave indelible impressions, delicate fingerprints, on the surface of our hearts?