Traveling by air during the winter has its attendant risks of flight delays and cancellations, and on a flight from Columbus to Dallas on a Friday night some years ago I found myself grounded for the night in St. Louis. The airline collected my fellow unfortunates and me and loaded us onto an airport bus bound for a nearby hotel. We queued up in front of the hotel's check-in desk, all of us a bit grumpy and irritated. Finally, my turn came and I secured a room.
I deposited my carry-on in the room, adjusted the thermostat, and flipped through the TV channels for a while. Out of boredom, I walked to the lobby to look around and spied the bar, which was nearly empty. I strolled over and asked the bartender for a glass of red wine, which she promptly provided. A man that I recognized from the bus ride came into the bar area and looked about. He approached the bar and took a stool near mine. I glanced at him while he talked with the bartender, noting that he was quite handsome. I judged him to be in his 50's. He looked unusually tan for the winter months, and I guessed that he probably lived in Arizona or California or some other place where the sun doesn't give up so easily.
We soon began chatting, bemoaning our predicament and hoping we would be able to get out of the St. Louis airport in the morning. I complained that I had to return to Columbus on Sunday, so my weekend was virtually ruined. He sympathized with my plight, and said that luckily for him he was heading home to stay. Then he told me the only real regret about being stranded was that he had had plans for that night that he was necessarily forced to cancel. He moved to the stool next to mine and continued in a low, conspiratorial tone, telling me he had recently made a new friend that he had intended to fuck for the first time that evening. He had been thinking about it all week, and now the big event would have to wait.