Personal Narrative: The Cougar

In the blinding haze of the preceding story, I am less able to comprehend why so many mature women have participated in the cougar mythology. After playing cougar for five minutes, I can honestly say I did not experience the wild adrenaline of a predator on the hunt or the euphoria of capturing prey. Instead, I felt like a wild cougar, preyed upon, in a canned hunt.

It was after midnight and the band was midway through their final set. While celebrating love and life in all its purest forms, the night transformed into Valentine's day. I had no idea that a drama was unfolding.

I don’t know where the saga started exactly. What I do know is that I sat down on a bar bench next to a nondescript stranger, across from a friend sitting next to a friend

Man told me to guess his age and without much thought, I looked into his face, trying not to loose myself in his eager green eyes, and replied 32. A baffled expression gave me a momentary warm sensation that I had guessed right as I had adjusted my line of demarcation in my mind to accommodate this bizarre connection.

My instinct turned false as he told me he is 21, less than half my time on earth, this warmth turned to an ache in my head that seemed to accentuate the lines in my face that he was unable to see. My wrinkles creased tighter as it occurred to me that Mr. Man could be my son and his mother my same age or younger. A twisting sensation occurred in my stomach as I tried to tighten my grip on the ground beneath me. Clearly, I had reached the edge of the cliff with the earthen soil eroding under the weight of my stance. My only choices were to fight or give way to gravity but someone would fall.

When I told Mr. Man I had great insight into people, often within seconds of meeting them, he was quick to ask for specifics about him, his eyes widening in the hopes of capturing me. My keen instinct told me he was eager to see inside me, far more than inviting me into his world. His navigation efforts played out through the night and into the following week.

Story continues in the next blog which will be posted on March 16,