I call Andy and tell him that after a decade of platonic friendship, I’ve had my first sex dream about him. 

“How was I?” he asks. 

I explain that we didn’t actually have sex; we just wanted to, really, really badly. 

In all my sex dreams, I’m desperately trying to have sex, but never can. I don’t mean there are performance issues or emotional breakdowns but that events conspire. I’m practically dying with need, but strangers have invaded my house or hotel room or wherever my subconscious has offered as a place to get naked: a verdant swamp, a clock tower, a graffitied-over subway car from 1974. Behind every door is a surprise party, and no one will leave. I run at them, screaming Get the hell out of here! Leave me alone! They just laugh and cause more destruction. 

“I’m not sure that counts as a sex dream,” Andy says. 

I want it to count. It’s the first dream in years that’s not about my ex-husband, who left me for a woman who still haunts my peripheral vision. I haven’t slept with anyone since, which horrifies my friends. 

“Oh,” says Laura. “Oh, no.” She sends screenshots of dating apps, tempting me with what’s on offer.

I’d really prefer an organic meet-cute.  

“Let me know how that goes,” she says skeptically. 

It’s going okay. I’m in a new era. I feel pretty good about myself almost all the time. My hips have thickened since the last time I sought a sexual partner, but men turn their heads to look at me as they never have before. When I have meetings with married men, they are more careful of me. I mean they try not to be alone with me and avoid touching me. I keep thinking, I feel dangerous. 

All of this is looking, of course, not touching. But I took an important stride the other day. I got into a conversation with two men at a bar. The righthand man was very interested in me, but when I mentioned that I might be receiving a promotion at work, he became paternal. The lefthand man didn’t care about my promotion but knew the book I was reading and had funny things to say about the Napoleonic Wars. I gave him my number.  

“Baby steps,” says Frieda. 

Anyway, I did get that promotion, and I’m moving from my jangling, sun-speckled city to a bleak Midwestern town. 

“What kind of men live there?” Frieda asks. 

I can almost picture them, in boots and sensible flannel. Too many beards! But they might be men who don’t mind a delay as we battle to find a place to be together. They might be able to open the door into an unexpected party and gently coax all interlopers to leave. They might, as we enter room after room, be the kind of people who say, “Anticipation is the best part,” until I show them that no, the best part is everything that comes after.