INDIA

TechCrunch Disrupt, San Francisco

The first time I met Jon, he tried to pick me up.

He almost succeeded. If he had, I doubt I’d be here at TechCrunch Disrupt today.

Picture it – one of my first beach parties of the year, Friday night before a week of midterms, and I'm with my best girlfriends. We're crazy in the way that only geek girls can be crazy – letting our hair down when we're usually buttoned up tight. Tequila shots, pitchers of beer, nachos. Music blaring, we're all half-drunk sitting on stools at the beach bar, and up walks this gorgeous hunk of a man I recognized from my English class.

I watch as Marina's eyes widen when he stands next to me.

"Hey, India right?" he says, his arm on the back of my chair. "You're in my English course. Great name, by the way."

"Thanks," I say, used to getting ribbed about my name. "I recognize you." I turn to him, my drink in hand. "Professor Gardner's class. We're reading Tess of the D' Urbervilles."

"Yeah," he says and gives me a brilliant smile. "Or at least, we're supposed to be. I'm a bit behind. It's a romance, right?"

I shake my head. "Oh, it's not romance, believe me. More like a tragedy, and a warning about Britain's crumbling feudal system, the decay of the rural way of life due to industrialization and the oppression of women."

"Whoa." He makes a face of horror. "Deep. There was a movie made about it," he says. "With Nastassja Kinsky. Didn't Polansky direct it?"

"He did."

Jon nods his head thoughtfully. Then he smiles. "Wanna dance?"

Now, you have to realize that Jon Anders Thorson is perhaps the hunkiest hunk on campus. Not only is he a bit older than the rest of us, due to his having been in the Army for five years, he's beautiful in a masculine way.

That night, he wore a pair of swim trunks because he’s been surfing and he’s tanned and ripped.

He’s gorgeous.

The three of us are sitting there, practically drooling over him, and he asks me to dance.

I glance over to the small space beside the DJ's table and sound system.

"There's no one dancing.”

He holds out his hand, smiling. "Then we'll be the first."

"I don't dance very well," I say, making a face.

"Neither do I. We'll be a pair."

"Are you sure?" I hesitate, chewing on my bottom lip. "It might be more of a comedy routine than a performance…"

"Come on, India. Live dangerously."

That did it. It was something my brother Steven used to say to me when I was too afraid to try out new things when we were growing up together.

Come on India. Live dangerously…

Jon couldn't know that's what my beloved brother used to say to me before he died during a deployment in Afghanistan, but it worked.

I took Jon's hand and he led me to the middle of the small dance area where the two of us moved our bodies in ways that would worry a chiropractor and make Elaine Benes proud. He purposely danced like a robot and I couldn't stop laughing – partly from embarrassment and partly because he was hilarious.

And so uninhibited.

He was fun in addition to being swoonworthy with that sun-bleached dark blond hair and pale blue eyes. Square jaw, scruff and built. Six foot three or four, his biceps bulging and tatted.

I almost succumbed to his charms after several shots of tequila, bites of lime, and licks of salt. At the last minute, I came to my senses when he slipped his hand under my sweater and ran his fingers up my back during a blistering kiss in the dark behind the beach shack.

God… He was gorgeous. But he was dangerous. I could see that the first time I laid eyes on him.

I wasn't offended that he hit on me that first night. He tries to pick up every attractive woman who catches his eye. Marina calls him a manwhore. I call him a bonobo.

He prefers to think of himself as a woman's man.

I can't help it if I love women.

So, I knew the moment I saw him, he was not only out of my league, he was dangerous. With that easy smile, drop dead looks, and smoking hot body, it would be hard not to fall for him but he wasn't the type to see someone on a steady basis.

No. A quick hookup, great sex and then on to the next flower.

Not my thing. I'm all about meaningful and long-term so we were wrong for each other right from the start.

Still, he was a hard man to resist but I resisted him and that made all the difference.

He still is hard to resist.

Five years later, we're business partners. I'll be giving a talk at the Tech Crunch Disrupt San Francisco on the business we started with several other friends from Stanford.

Jon is CEO of Pacifica Technologies Inc. I'm CTO.

We're a spunky little startup that's challenging Lockheed Martin's dominance of the aerospace industry.

With my BSc in Engineering, and our dual MBAs from Stanford, Jon and I, along with three other friends, built Pacifica from the ground up. Now, we've moved past the initial attraction to being great friends and business partners.

There's too much at stake to risk it on a night of sex, no matter how great it might be.

Still, there are moments when I look at Jon and wish we could get together. We're great as a pair, fantastic as leaders of our team. We have honest-to-goodness fun working together. I never get bored with him and always look forward to going to the office because Jon will be there, in the background of my day, making me laugh or challenging me to solve some problem.

Sometimes when I'm feeling lonely, I imagine what it would be like to be his lover, but most of the time, thoughts of Jon as a sex partner are forbidden. I do not permit myself to go there -- at least, not often.

We have a beautiful relationship. It's the envy of all our friends.

I won’t let anything ruin it – especially not something as commonplace as sex.

But it's hard to watch him leave the clubs or parties with women he picks for a quick and dirty hookup.

Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night in the throes of an orgasm and it's always Jon who's involved, pumping away, or with his face between my thighs…

I really really need a man…

Marina, my best friend from grade school, is working on that for me.

She's a crackerjack coder, expert with algorithms and statistics and is working on a dating app that she plans on releasing this month, if the beta goes well.

Maybe, just maybe, she can find me a man.

It's been over a year since I split with my ex-boyfriend Blaine, who asked me to come with him to Manhattan and help him with his own startup.

When I asked him what I'd be coming as – a girlfriend or a business partner – he said the wrong thing.

"Whatever."

Not exactly the resounding endorsement of the depth of his feelings for me.

I couldn’t just pull out of Pacifica and move to Manhattan as a whatever… So, I cried my eyes out and said goodbye to him.

One day, when Pacifica is big enough and my shares are worth enough, I'll cash them in and move to Manhattan on my own. I have ambition. I'm not hoping that Blaine and I will re-unite or anything, but the future is not carved in stone and you can never know what lies ahead.

Jon and I are at the TechCrunch Disrupt convention together waiting for our session.

"Ready?" Jon asks, standing up from his chair in the room outside the venue and slipping his laptop into a briefcase.

"As ready as I'll ever be." I grab my own bag and follow him to the main conference room, getting high-fives from some of the techies who are standing outside the door looking in.

We stand at the back of the room at catch the last few moments of the session before ours. Being claustrophobic, I need to see a clear exit or I get the heebie jeebies. But with Jon by my side, who was a paratrooper when over in Afghanistan, I'm brave.

He puts a hand behind my back and propels me forward, up to the front of the auditorium so I can climb the stairs to the stage to give our presentation.

It's wonderful what we have together. We won’t let anything as crass as sex get in the way of our beautiful relationship.

Now, if only I didn't want him so badly, I might be able to get through this next hour and the coming presentation without imagining us together one more time…

Marina has got to come through with a match for me.

I need a man – badly.