It was the last regular season match for FC Cincinnati and I, as a season ticket holder, was in attendance with my friend Paul and my mother, also season ticket holders. Now, the three of us do not have formal seating assignments. Seat placement is generally decided by who arrives when, and this match was no different. Paul and I arrived at the stadium before my mother, so we took the seats furthest from the stairs so that she would have two fewer bodies to crawl over on her way to the seat.

Paul and I chatted while the stadium seats filled. One of those seats was directly in front of me, and occupied by a woman who sat herself after settling her kids and husband into their seats.

Let’s call her Ponytail.

We’re calling her Ponytail because, well, her substantial mass of hair was tied in a high pony.

Initially, I didn’t recognize Ponytail’s ponytail as a problem. After all, the basic structure of the high pony was meant to keep the hair off the neck and under control. I mean, any six-year-old girl knows this.

The problem was that her substantial hair length could not, would not, be controlled. Not even by a well-constructed high pony.

At first, I found this intrusion of hair into my personal space supremely annoying. I mean, though the seats in the FC Cincinnati stadium are not exceptionally small, nor are they built for the largest amongst us. Indeed, my stature runs to the vertical, as opposed to the horizontal. So while there is more than enough side-to-side room, there exists mere inches between my knees and the seat in front of me, the seat now occupied by Ponytail. The clash was between my planted lower limbs and her cascading, swishing mane.

But I put up with it. Or, at least, I tried to ignore it, and employed a number of strategies to do just that. These strategies included paying more attention than necessary to the amount of beer left in my cup, chatting more than usual with Paul and my mother, and paying undue attention to the crappy officiating. Well, the latter is almost a lie. I take great joy in critiquing the performance of MLS referees and joyously boo when the situation calls for it. I mean, I’m not one of those fans who bring their own giant yellow and red cards, but I could be.

But I digress.

The swishing continued. And, I think, it got worse as the match continued. FC Cincinnati was playing well, dominating their opponents, and the crowd was responding. For her part, Ponytail physically manifested her excitement by whipping her head from side to side. The more excited she became, the more her hair flicked across my knees and lower thighs. At one point the frequency of her swishing rivaled that of my car’s windshield wipers in a light rain.

Still, I said nothing.

I didn’t want to ruin her good time and, by extension, the good time being had by her husband and children. I wasn’t about to be the ogre in the row behind the happy family. So, I resigned myself to high-pony lashing. In fact, I did more than just resign myself to it. At some point I started to enjoy it. Or something akin to enjoying it. Or, at least, enjoying it-adjacent.

I was as surprised as anyone, I suppose. The moment I no longer cared about the swishing did not come as an epiphany. More like a shift in the wind. And once the shift started, I couldn’t stop it. Nor did I want to. I leaned in, literally and figuratively. I no longer attempted to avoid this gentle lashing, as I had earlier. Now I remained motionless. I allowed the swish to happen. Now the last thing I wanted was to alert Ponytail, lest she stop.

Here’s a fact of which Ponytail was blissfully ignorant: I hadn’t been on a date for months. The swishing was the sexiest thing that had happened to me in weeks and weeks and, as a result, my initial annoyance had transmuted into low-key pleasure.

During a lull in the conversation, I pointed the phenomena out to Paul and told him I was worried the husband might see what was going on between me and his wife. Paul chuckled, believing I was making a joke. Meanwhile I formulated a plan in which, should the husband notice, I would use the bodies of Paul and my mother to screen a cowardly escape.

I should mention that, by this point, I had yet to see Ponytail’s face. At least not full-frontal. Of course, I’d seen her profile as she whipped around the high pony, but she hadn’t deigned to turn around to see whose legs she’d been cleaning the whole match. This was likely for the best. I didn’t want to risk falling in love with a married woman, and I’m certainly not ready to be a father to her children. Hell, I didn’t even know how old they were. Or if they were good students.

Despite these trepidations, I allowed the swishing to continue until the end of the game, when it came time to go our separate ways. Our parting was bittersweet, as she barely acknowledged my departure with a “Good game, huh?” and walked out of my life forever.

Or until the next match.