Thank You Note: Cute Car Place Guy

 

 

A couple of Thursdays ago, I was having a very annoying day, which in 2020, sometimes feels like an OH NO THERE’S NO MORE CIVILIZATION day. (Oh trauma-brain, not always helpful!) My internet was down so severely that they scheduled a guy without making me perform any restarts! My Animal Crossing villagers inexplicably stopped talking to me—I’m not proud of how upsetting this was! I thought it was a puzzle but a quick Google showed me it was just a fixable glitch. I thought a nice drive to the gorgeously be-leafed nearby state park would take the edge off, and it did, but OF COURSE the tire light was on.

 

During our weekend election fun/BFF time, Sweetie filled up the tires for me (I’d gotten rid of my air compressor in a flash of Tidying Up madness year before last. I am not great at life sometimes!) and the tire light went off, but I still wanted to get it checked out. I’ve still got some savings from the 600$ a week pre-Mitch McConnell-actively-starving-people-to-death times, so I was braced for new tires. I planned to get a ride from the car place and wait at home, these aren’t really sit-around-in-public-catching-up-on-the-New Yorker kinds of days.

 

OH, Cute Car Place guy. So cute he could be made-up, but isn’t. Tall, Black, with long locks and a beard and the most lovely attention-to-detail hands. Younger than me, but not by too much. He is so, so friendly and sweet. He deserves all the paragraphs.

 

My car’s name is Valentine because that’s when I got her, back during the earlier and smuttier days of the Kitten Calendar. We were in for her February inspection year before last when I decided I would ask him out by sending a very polite note to him at work. I never heard back, so I figured he was taken or just uninterested. (Or! Says my ever-hopeful brain, maybe he just didn’t get the card?)

 

This time, when I brought Val in the following Monday, he seemed disappointed that I wouldn’t be waiting around like I usually do. “Did someone tell you you can’t? You’re always welcome to stay here with us.”

 

He noticed I was due for an oil change (THAT light hadn’t come on, I work from home so I’m really not driving much.) and even though my maintenance plan had expired, he gave me the oil change for free. (Like Rory Gilmore with her Prius, I take Val to the dealership even though you’re not supposed to. I like her to have a home.)

 

This sounds way more like a praise letter on the Awesome Etiquette podcast than an entry in a sex blog, but as I’ve been learning with my Perfectly 1993 Guy story, kindness is sooooooo hot. The thoughtfulness, the care, the multipoint inspection the frequent update-texts from his work number, I can’t overstate the happiness it bought me. I spent days in a gentle cloud of I-talked-to-the-cute-guy well being, It’s kind of dazzling the difference one cute, kind face can make.

 

And Val didn’t even need new tires! When I came to pick her up, I high-fived Cute Car Place Guy with elbows like I’d learned to do at all the post-Covid protests. I missed his warm end-of-appointment handshakes—oh handshakes. Even though my mask was on, I’m sure he could see that I was smiling. It’s possible I was glowing. A light I don’t feel too often, a sweet little heart-lamp, fluttered on and the world was a little more full of hope and joy. Obviously I sent him a (non-ask-out) thank you note. Of course he texted an effusive work text when he got it, and that made me shine for like seven more hours. Thanks, thanks, thanks.

Perfectly 1993 Guy Part Six: Learning to Love a Blowjob

Eventually, it became clear that I was gonna have to go home. The guys were starting college and Last Bitchy Gay Guy’s dad wasn’t renewing the lease on the spare apartment. In the last days before I went back home, Perfectly 1993 Guy and I decided to tackle another block of mine: blowjobs.

 

I’d done a couple that didn’t feel too onerous, but a particularly harsh night of casual sex when I was younger had made me associate going down on a guy with contempt, with being treated harshly. Nothing in the universe was harsh about this guy though, so why not give it a whirl?

 

He stood to the side of the couch arm while I sat looking up at him. His face was beatific, he looked so vulnerable and patient. Kind. His penis was truly the most lovable of all, medium-sized and always friendly, just a perfect companion.

 

It didn’t take too long! Just a few minutes of tentative, teeth-minding learning on my part and he was groan-whispering “I’m gonna come.” And he did. It was another in a series of momentous exchanges of love and warmth.

 

Swallowing was then, and for some reason remains, a point of pride for me. We had planned out that part in advance, so he had a Peppermint Patty ready to counteract the taste. (Which wasn’t so bad of course!) So lovely, so thoughtful.

 

We literally brushed each other’s hair after that. I explained, in the way that one explains something one knows absolutely nothing about, that this was “a lesbian thing.” I think I got the idea from “artistic” nudes in my dad’s photography books that I used to sneak (lengthy) peeks at when I was little. Whatever the inspiration, the mutual hair-brushing was very nice.

 

In the parental back-and-forth of those years, it was arbitrarily my dad’s turn to house me. I packed almost everything I had into dad’s small car, heartbreakingly leaving behind the Popples knapsack that contained (Among, I assume, other treasures) my senior year book, never to be seen again. (Remind me to borrow my sister’s copy  sometime for that pic of me and my friends’ legs, all in black and white striped stockings and lug-soled Mary Janes.)

 

I don’t remember the ride home with dad, aside from the relief of being on the way home and the hope for future mail. I had to get some kind of job to pay for the long-distance phone calls. I had to figure out my post-graduation life. I felt loved, wistful, dreamy. I knew I would miss Perfectly 1993 Guy so much, and that our story wasn’t over yet.

Perfectly 1993 Guy Part Five: The Quest for an Orgasm!

 

It’s taking me a long time to write these days, because Sweetie bought me a Switch and I don’t spend very much time not on Animal Crossing! The upside is, all of the imaginary flower-watering seems to have cut my anxiety score exactly in half! Hooray! I’ve missed writing to you, though—how have you been? I hope you’re well, happy, and registered to vote! Maybe you already voted!

 

Anyway, so. At some point that summer, I moved out of Beach Aunt’s beach house without even saying goodbye. She left me a modest bill of 170$ which I didn’t try to pay back until ten years later—by then she wouldn’t even cash the check! Beach Aunt was so kind before her Flat Earth/Anti-Mask/Openly White Supremacist phase kicked in! I miss her.

 

I ended up moving into First Bitchy Gay Guy’s apartment with him. Not too long after that I quit Great Adventure too. I’m pretty good at stretching a last paycheck (See also: shoplifting.) but I don’t know how I paid for my life that August! I sure didn’t quit smoking or diner-ing! Maybe the guys took care of me, who knows.

 

The apartment was nice, with pretty hardwood floors and wide windows overlooking a stone courtyard. It was sparsely furnished, though, and the toilet was perpetually clogging. FBGG and I had sort of a George and Martha vibe, part put-on and part real nastiness. It was both agitating and familiar, having come from such a fighty home. We had quite the snit one night when I spattered the pretty white patterned linoleum in the kitchen with RIT Dye red during a painful and harrowing hair-dying incident!

 

The kitchen was maybe only stocked with ramen, cereal, and pilfered diner coffee creams and sugars. Presumably also coffee?

 

So the stage wasn’t perfectly set for romance, but romance happened anyway. FBGG switched rooms with me so Perfectly 1993 Guy and I could have a little more snuggle room. The bed was a mattress on the floor, with bright yellow sheets. The walls were wood-paneled and unadorned. The rooms was warm and sparkly with love. He and and I didn’t know what we were doing in the very best of ways, and he was unerringly loving and sweet.

 

My body was cooperative in all the ways except that one. After years of indifferent/violent/cruel partners, I was really only able to come by myself, and not always that! Perfectly 1993 Guy was fiercely (But also somehow non-pressuringly) determined.

 

No one had ever gone down on me before, let alone someone so beautiful, let alone someone with whom I was so thoroughly smitten! Tenderly, kindly, with a gentle tongue and just the right amount of stubble, he made love to me with his whole cute face.

 

I so much wanted to let go for him, but I would feel the warmth and shudder recede almost as soon as it arrived. No matter how steadfast of tongue he was, I couldn’t convince my body to trust him all the way, to trust myself. I sure did love all the trying, though.

 

“Are you okay?” I asked. He seemed a little sad when he came up for kisses and air.

 

He sighed. ”I just want to be able to do this for you.”

 

Of all the parts of this story, that line makes me the most wistful. Will I ever hear that unconditional, sweet generosity from a partner again? I hope so.