Oh dear. I forgot about the deep past. When I was a canvasser, my social life swirled around work. That was because work hours were from 2 in the afternoon until 10 in the evening, and sometimes longer. In those days, there was an institutionalized “bar night,” after which I would drive people home.
Drunk.
On orders from my boss. This was before MADD or any of all that. Pre-AIDS, too. Just barely.
I worked at an organization that was probably two-thirds female. When we socialized, we socialized with people from work, and I’d have parties at my house and, what can I say? We were in our early twenties.
I had a number of work girlfriends, sometimes serially and sometimes simultaneously. One of them I even “hooked up” with two or three times out in the field, as we used to call it. One became a relationship for around four years. A couple of others I hooked up with two or three times each. I was in an open relationship, but even so, that didn’t leave a lot of time to do everything I would have liked to do. And open relationships turn out, upon reflection, not to be so open, after all, once people start to realize what they are really like.
I love having children and being a father. I love being married to my wife. But I loved that time of my life, too. It’s too bad we have to make choices about which we want to have most.