TRIFEXICO!!!

No one has ever asked us, out in the world, "What is the deal?" It's been a bit surprising, really, since there are times and places when we are openly affectionate in all directions.

It finally happened.

We took a trip, different from all our other trips, and way farther outside our usual orbit -- all the way across the border. On top of that, we went out to a club that is strictly intended for over-the-top partying, where a good third of the population was half my age. We never do this.

Within a half hour, a complete stranger came up and asked "What is the deal?" It happened while Chloe and I were off finding the restroom. Interestingly, it was the girl of the young couple across the firepit from us who got up and boldly approached Red. He confirmed that both of those ladies were, in fact, his girlfriends. After we came back, the three of us chatted briefly with the couple, and it was charming. Before long, two guys came over: they asked all three of us, "are you together??" -- and upon hearing "yes", instigated a chant of "three-some! three-some!" which got some other partiers to cheer as well. A young girl with a fake lei around her neck appeared and wanted to know details: to me and Chloe, she asked "Are you like sister wives?" We laughed, and Chloe said "No, we love each other!" The girl seemed flabbergasted. "I've always been curious about that sort of thing", she shared. And then she kept going. "You two don't get jealous over him?" Red said "Oh yeah, sure there's jealousy. That's part of the deal." Her eyes widened. She looked us over again -- you could see the cogs turning in her head -- and wondered "Do you all share a bed??" We cheerfully related that we do. A really big bed, preferably. This apparently was the biggest shocker of all.

Not long after, a guy asked Red, out of the girls' hearing, "What's your secret?" To which Red replied: "Be honest, and be clear about what you want." (This did not seem to be what the young man wanted to hear.) I guess we were becoming local celebrities at this point, because another guy standing on the far side of the fire pit pointed at Red and shouted, "He's my hero!"

At last. The applause Red has deserved all along, for bringing this about. We were tickled.

As the evening went on, and the booze flowed freely, and each of us was smooching the others at regular intervals, it just got sillier. Sometime after midnight, Chloe and I were at the bar (where she was employing her amazing horse-whistle skills to get us a bartender), and a much-pierced young man asked me: "Are you guys lesbians?" I laughed and said "Not exactly", which made him look very confused. "There's a guy involved," I explained. And this impressed him so much that he handed Chloe a free drink.

That's right, folks, among hundreds of twenty-somethings in short skirts and fancy pants, we three forty-somethings in jeans were the toast of the town. Now, we could see right off the bat that there were some differences in how the guys and the girls were processing this information. Not one of the guys gave any hint of realizing it's a triangle and not a V. It seemed they uniformly wanted to know How Can I, Right Now, Get Two Girls To Go Home With Me. The girls at least noticed that the three axes were approximately equal, and that a lot of it has to do with me and Chloe being close. The girl with the lei seemed disappointed when my answer to "How did you do it?" was "It took until after I was 40 to figure it out." I can't blame her. But seriously, you do not want to be giving advice on how to launch a threesome in the middle of inebriated mayhem.

Plenty of times I have danced on whatever available surface, singing along, and spilling my beer. I have afterward fallen into bed exhausted and ravenous. I have poured sand out of my pockets the next morning. But never, ever, have I felt so young and so old all at the same time. How about that.