I'm still all hurty and lonesome from letting go of The Coach and my to do list is SO full of nonsense today, but I did THIS before I even had coffee this morning! Very therapeutic, I want to practice more and more!
Here's the tutorial I'm using! Talk to you soon!
I guess it’s not a good sign that I’ve been feeling
nostalgic for a breakup dinner from like eight years ago: I was looking for a
hot story to send The Coach and I landed on part two of my Real Date/Car Sex
story with Steampunk Guy. Here’s part one: https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2013/07/real-datecar-sex-with-steampunk-guy.html
It’s not great that I refused to admit to myself that it WAS a breakup date
until a couple weeks later, but looking at the story through my current pleasantly-poisoned-by-hookup-culture
view, the dinner part of the story felt like a miracle. Steampunk Guy had like
nine partners, including a wife, plus a kiddo to take care of, but he still
took the time to break things off kindly. I felt, here in Slutty September of
2021, a burst of gladness that Steampunk Guy had, well, broken my heart, but in
such a dignifying, humanized way.
The Coach didn’t break things off, he just finished
getting vaccinated and still didn’t want to spend time with me in person. He
still sexted a few late-nights a week, and I was still having fun with that
until I wasn’t. But I can’t fathom, and I really wish someone would explain to
me, how sexting could have been fun for him with someone he did not want to be
in a room with. Why not just look up some porn or pay a cam girl (and tip her
well!) instead of keeping someone he didn’t like on the line for longer than he
wanted to?
When I responded to his messages/comments a month ago,
I’d put a pin in the prob he and I had encountered long ago, the feeling of him
having a fat fetish (rather than simply being attracted to whole hot fat
people) or thinking I was just someone to be humiliated. I saw the physical
mismatch of us—him twenty-nine and slight except in one particular way (I found
out through unsolicited-but-not-entirely unwelcome dick pic, obvs.) (But is
there such a thing as dick-catfishing? Probably.) and traditionally fit-looking,
me 47, Amazonian and weighing in at 302 pounds. We WOULD have looked a little
funny in public together, but someone who liked me as a person wouldn’t have
cared.
What started as feeling appreciated, celebrated,
overwhelmingly desired a month ago turned into hidden, erased, dirty-in-a-bad-way.
Maybe he did feel attracted to me but ashamed about it, or maybe he just wanted
me to be a sex-typing-bot whose feelings, bad days, and vulnerabilities he didn’t
have to care about. Maybe he wasn’t brave or kind enough to turn me down
directly. Maybe he was just a jerk. In fairness to him, I knew that trying to
be casual would get me to this emotionally untenable place eventually. I just
shouldn’t have let it go on until it hurt this bad.
This past few weeks have been a (not un-fun) scramble
to find the things The Coach couldn’t provide in someone else, to distract me from
the loneliness while I kept him in the mix. Not! A great! Strategy! As sad as I
am to lose (and reblock) The Coach, I’m grateful to be done with that scramble.
I’m so impatient with what I really want, it’s so annoyingly specific and (imaginary
in this case) snuggle-prohibitive sometimes.
Yesterday, a car plowed into my side mirror and smashed
it off on my way to work. I wasn’t hurt but I was heartbroken—I love my car so
much, and the mirror metaphor was a little too on-the-nose. Sweetie-Now-BFF
immediately sprung into action ordering a replacement mirror and rearranging
her schedule to get me to work until it was fixed. And while that was happening,
I was worrying that I would seem too needy when (okay IF) The Coach texted
after ten. I know it’s not superfair to compare a TWO DECADES LONG friendship/love/friendship
with a recent not-quite-a-fling, but BFF’s kindness and concern reminded me of
what I’d like to have eventually with a guy. The Coach was not going to get me
there.
So at quarter to ten, I said texted him the things I
was feeling. He was was an entitled, bratty jackass about it. So ends my foolhardy
foray into hookuptown. I can’t promise it’ll be the last, but I promise to keep
trying to embrace wanting what I want. But first, wallowing.
Crushtown Mixtape!
Since I’m still missing pool season, I decided to doll
up my morning walks by leaning into my heart/mind/body’s ridiculousness. I
especially like the absurd transitions between songs, they make me feel loopy
in the best way. Like crushes do!
1. Worship
(Lizzo)
2. Tear
You Apart (She Wants Revenge)
3. Wrapped
Up (Olly Murs feat. Travie McCoy
4. Drain
You (Nirvana)
5. What
Difference Does It Make? (The Smiths)
6. Right
Round (Flo Rida)
7. Oops!...I
Did It Again (Britney Spears)
8. I
Really Like You (Carly Rae Jepsen)
9. Bubble
Pop! (HyunA)
10. About
A Girl (Nirvana)
11. Rumors (Lizzo feat. Cardi B)
12. Run Away With Me (Carly Rae Jepsen)
13. How Soon Is Now? (The Smiths)
14. I Wanna Be Adored (The Stone Roses)
15. Work
Bitch (Britney Spears)
16. Evil Boy (Die Antwoord)
17. Pink + White (Frank Ocean)
 | |
| Single column tie with a double knot! Also I really like being a column. |
I like this cutie-pie's teaching style so I think I'll just work my way through this video one Thurs at a time!
I’ve been thinking a lot about what the word “romantic” actually means to me and in this particular case I think it means being all fizzy and lonesome from no-cuddling-but-very- competent stranger sex and getting a hankering to tell my hot unavailable friend all about it. I wanted to tell The Coach about the hookup in detail to get him off, but I also just wanted to confide and get his perspective. Plus, there’s a story between us, however mismatched, and I wanted some grounding.
I sent the text to The Coach at 11:11. (Didn’t time it
that way on purpose.) I even checked this time if I was interrupting some other
lady’s evening, and he said I wasn’t.
He was slutty/sweet/curious, instructive and
encouraging. I opted not to get explicit, but I liked telling him this new
adventure. After I was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep, I confessed that if I
was gonna casual anyway, I wished I’d casualed more with him.
When I woke up the next day, I saw that The Coach had
texted at 4:33 AM and offered, you know, some more casualing.
I asked about friends with benefits, and that was fine
with him. I don’t know what that means, really, or if it’ll result in any more
adventures with The Coach, but I like that door being left open, even as it also
makes me want to jump out of my skin. If nothing else, it would be really nice
to have somebody besides my ex-wife to talk about my sex-life with! (I don’t give
her much info, but I’m pretty sure it’s more detail than she’d like!)
As for Casual Guy, I’m grateful. I liked his
instructions, his sweet voice, his unequivocal fucking. I needed it so much.
With all this adventure in the past month or so, of
course there are also triggers to care for. The line between arousal and
anxiety has always been shifty for me. I would like to spend some time being
extra kind to myself, give myself space to think and feel and crush and
process. (And get back to learning my knots!) And then I would like MORE
PLEASE, UNIVERSE, if you don’t mind.
“Do you have a condom?” I asked as we started to aim
for upstairs.
“No, do you have any? I mean, you said you hadn’t been
fucked in a long time so I didn’t think we’d need one.”
“I mean yeah but I’m not crazy!”
(Seriously people, it’s basically legal to bounty-hunt
abortion seekers in Texas these days, is there anything LESS HOT than trying to
shirk safer sex? There might be one thing less hot, stay tuned.)
He admitted he *might* have a condom in the car so I smacked
his ass and sent him out the door to go get it. I felt impatient and not
exactly hopeful.
But yay! He had one and we went upstairs.
“Okay I want you to kneel down.” He wasn’t so much dominating
as he was gently instructional.
It was nice to have a dick in my mouth again after
aaaaaalllll this time. I really missed the taste (Didn’t make him have the
condom on for this part, probably I should have.) and the fullness in my throat.
“Deeper now,” he said, guiding my head with his hand. The
tip of his dick hit that part of my throat that makes me feel a little squirty
and a little scared. I gagged in a way that I didn’t mind but that definitely shifted
me away from my own room and into porn-mind.
“I want you to spit on it.” Yeah no. I ignored that
request and I humbly ask that everybody look at porn just maybe slightly less.
Realizing I wasn’t going to be spitting on anything, he
shifted to helping me do the best possible job, which I really appreciated.
Love any time spent getting better at penises, learning about angles and
rhythms and…
“Okay now I want to see how tight that pussy is. Take
your pants off and get to the edge of the bed.”
Ahhhhhhhhhh he felt sooooo good. We fit together so
nicely and he was both confident and competent enough that I didn’t have to
worry about a single thing in the entire world for a few minutes.
“Move back onto the bed, I want to fuck you right.” And
ohyes, he did. I hung onto the bars of the headboard and made all the noise and
felt. Just. Relief. Welcome, hooray, thank you.
He started talking about how he was going to take the
condom off and come inside me though, so I said “Wait, what?!” and wriggled out
from under him until he convinced me it was fine, it was on, he was just
talking shit.
(Again! So gross! Be a good citizen of sex!)
A lot of his talk was so much fun though:
“You deserve this. You said you haven’t been fucked
since 2018? Tell me about 2018.”
“It was…this guy...from down the street…and we liked
to watch…Gilmore Girls…afterward we…argued about the…midterm elections…”
And:
“You like this, don’t you? You watch a lot of porn,
don’t you.”
“No just a little…Hentai… once in a while…I don’t…really
need it…I have a good imagination…”
And:
“I love all this hair you have on your pussy. Don’t
shave, do you understand me?”
(Okay points for that but I probably would shave for
The Coach if he asked me nicely.)
And:
“This pussy is mine now, right?”
“Um, no. It’s actually mine.”
But then there was this moment that I can’t quite get
my head around. Now, I don’t mind being objectified as a white woman, that
seems totally fair, a little bit satisfying and corrective. And I should not be
in the business of yucking anybody’s yum or getting protective of a grown man
while he is CLEARLY having a good time.
But:
“You like that. You like that n****r dick don’t you?
It’s okay, you can say it.”
After I winced and looked away, he dialed it back to “You
like that big, black dick, don’t you.”
“We don’t need to make it about race.”
(Okay. I am attracted to black guys (and also, white
guys are fucking terrifying) but I also spend maybe too much time worrying that
they’ll think I’m fetishizing them, that I’m Allison Williams from Get Out. I
should think a whole bunch about this later but first let’s finish the scene.)
After that jarring/heartbreaking moment, we got back on
track.
“Okay are you ready? Can I fuck you harder now?”
“Oh yes PLEASE.”
It felt so good to wrap my arms around his big sexy
strong arms, his muscular shoulders, to kiss him one more time and feel him let
go inside me.
And then he was dressed so fast. He made noises about
owing me cuddling another time, but I knew I wasn’t going to take him up on it.
I put my pants back on the come down and lock him out.
In a warm, fuzzy, kinda-shocked-at-myself daze, there
was exactly one person I wanted to talk to about this. Not super-advisable, but
my guard was all the way down so I texted The Coach.
After my week of phone adventures with The Coach, I guess I decided to play a little more like he plays. (Or I guess, the way he looks like he plays, I really don’t know his life!) I switched my very sensible 37-57 settings on Bumble to a more playful 26-57. I stopped automatically swiping left on anybody who looks like he goes to the gym a lot. I realized (!!!!!) that dating apps could just be for looking at cute people instead of steadfastly looking for The Right One. I slutted up my opening lines by a little bit, which means a lot of kissy-talk and emojis that involve hearts because! If they’re scared of hearts they could just not say hi back!
Note to self: They are NOT afraid of emoji-hearts.
What have I even been doing with my life?
It is a whole. New. WORLD in my inbox now. Which was
good because Friday night I was antsy, and I was (for basically no reason, it
turns out) trying not to text The Coach, and I was trying to just read my
library book but it was in my phone where all those guys were.
There were a few dating-y guys in the mix, but when Casual
Guy was like “What are you doing right now?” I didn’t tell him about the library
book I was trying to read or about looking for a Real Relationship. I didn’t
even ask if he was allergic to cats (no) and if he was vaccinated (yes) until
he was already on the way.
(Let me just stop and give credit to The Coach,
because he could have said he was fully vaccinated too and been done with me like
two weeks ago.) (I mean, kind of a low bar, but being a good citizen of both
Covid and sex is superhot.)
I didn’t believe that Casual Guy would come, or that
he would like me (well) or that he would look the way he looked in his picture.
He did show up and he WAs beautiful. He was dark-skinned, dressed dapperly, and
had pretty that’s-how-they-get-you eyes. A softly West Indies accent. A round
tummy but/and jacked arms. (I believe that is the first time I’ve described someone
using the word “jacked” on this blog and it sort of makes me feel one hundred
years old, but it IS the right word.)
I poured us some wine. My supersweet lesson-planning
Pink Moscato was the only one I had cold but it didn’t matter because nobody
drank any wine.
OH MY GOODNESS I DID NOT EVEN STOP TO PUT MUSIC ON!
Scream emoji!
He had told me to put on something sexy for him and I,
because I am lazy and it was all-the-way after ten already, decided that meant
cute PJs, a lacy purple bra, and no underpants. No things were shaved or even
trimmed. He could not have given less of a fuck.
I thought it was really sweet that he didn’t want to
move my cat from her spot on the couch. I scooted the cat over and sat as close
to Casual Guy as I could without touching. I thought there would be…banter?
Time to drink wine and settle in a little bit?
Instead he was like, oh, you’re shy? Let me help you.
He took my hand and put it on his knee. He gently put one hand on the back of
my neck and pulled me into a kiss as the other hand went right up my pajama-top,
roughly (but not too roughly) pulling my nipple up and out. OHboy, the lace and
nipple and his rough hand gathering me up with expert pressure, that’ll stick
with me. I’ll picture and feel it for so many alone-times to come. He put my
nipple in his mouth and sucked sweetly. I groaned and lay back, disrupting the cat.
“I mean, I do have a bed…”
 |
| I was looking for the original Blair Witch quote, but Lorelai makes it even more apt. |
The next night was one where he didn’t text, and I
ached to hear from him, literally felt a literal ache in my abdomen waiting/hoping
for that little red text-notification number. I could have texted him I guess,
but I didn’t want to be stepping on any other lady’s time and sure didn’t want the
comparison if he was busy with someone younger, prettier, and (somehow!) more
game.
My brain does this thing when I’m not hearing from
someone I like, creates a whole cast of characters for them, each partner more
beautiful and experienced and slutty-in-the-right-way than the next. This is
almost never a slut-shaming feeling, I’m always happy for them and the adventures
I’m imagining for them. I just don’t ever understand how I could keep up or fit
in.
So I knew it was time to get oriented, to find out who
the other partners were, to check in about the Ma’am stuff, to generally hang
out and be humans together. I also knew that kind of an interaction might
already be off the table.
So I asked if he wanted to go for a walk or a drink
sometime so I could get to know him better. He took it as me asking him on a
date (I guess it like 40% was.) and balked. I’d been pretty sure he only wanted
me for strictly sexy times, and now I knew I was right.
It ended very kindly this time, to the point where I
could feel a little of the Trump-era defensiveness we started this acquaintance
with leave my body a little. He texted some very sweet “it’s not you, it’s me” type
stuff that made me like him (and want to be Ma’am-ed by him) even more. While
we texted it through on my morning walk and maybe in the middle of his workday,
I cried a little. It’s hard to let him go.
I’m glad I’m able to get so much feeling from such
attemptedly-simple interactions. It’s a hard-won skill and what gives these
adventures so much meaning. But it feels a little lonely too. Are there really
ladies out there being the just-sex thing he wants, the just-sex thing THEY
want to be? I mean, there must be, he is superhot. I’ll always admire those casual
girls, even as I try to let go of ever being them. But hey! I was casual for
like eight whole days! And it was a very good eight days.
Dear Coach, Dear Goodgood Filthy Prince, Dear Kind-Of-But-Not-Really-A-Fuckboy,
Thank you. I’m so proud of how far we’ve both come.
(Pun absolutely intended.) Go do all the things, go be exactly you. But part of
you (not that part) (okay also a little bit that part) will always be
mine now. I’m keeping your swagger, your bluntness, your sunny, sexy optimism. You’re
inside me now always and I’m so, SO glad.
Spanks and vaccinated kisses,
A Princess
Part of my staycation festivities was a visit to the
record store for car CDs—I’m trying to be more album-y lately. So that’s how I
ended up listening to Nirvana’s Nevermind three times, smiling big and
screaming along, on my short roadtrip to see some out-of-town art. No BFF to judge
me for playing “Drain You” like a bazillion times, just me, a dramatic sky, and
Kurt Cobain’s fucking perfect caterwauling and boss-of-me guitar.
So, through the combined influences of Kurt’s rasp and
The Coach’s pre-trip forwardness, all the doors of my body and spirit were flung
open by the time I got to my hotel, changed into my coziest PJs, settled
amongst the many pillows, and lay down for a nap. Of course I couldn’t nap and
of course I couldn’t wait and see if The Coach would send his eager-grin-emoji
version of a “You up?” later. It sure didn’t matter that I hadn’t packed lube.
I was soaked. I’d been soaked for days.
Even by myself, I could feel him all the way in me. I
could feel his eagerness to please. I could feel myself holding him down. I
could predict some sunny future where he’d get a little too rough with my nipples.
The Coach has never been inside me, but also now he’s in there anyway, permanently,
with the rest of them.
Maybe I started to feel the tender feeling creep in that
night when he did text and got me into a helpless bliss and then (Pause to look
up fuckboy in the dictionary. Not really but kind of.) fell asleep without saying
goodnight. (The hotel bedding was REALLY soft.) Maybe in a just-got-off-hard-twice-and-about-to-see-some-amazing-art
haze of happiness, the daydream machine whirred to life.
Or it could have been a couple nights later when a
teensy bit of regular conversation preceded another nice smutfest. Or when he
texted “Wide awake baby!” when it was taking a long time to get an ass-angle I
liked enough to send him. (He put on The Dark Knight while he was waiting.
For some reason I’m glad it was the Heath Ledger Joker and not the Jared Leto
one. Not sure why that matters!)
I’m not sure how warm feelings happen with someone who
texts “Oh can I cum on your tits too?” (Obvs yes! Hooray!) (Point of grammar
though--I think it should be “cum” for the noun and “come” for the verb, but at
least autocorrect didn’t wreck his “your” game!)
But yep, warm feelings. Smutty as all those gorgeous
sentences were, it did feel like a sticky, slippery, phone-getting-all-messy kind
of intimacy. A weird Miranda July kind of intimacy, but still. It took a lot of
trust to keep writing and writing and writing to him, letting him know my fantasies
without physics or even much friendship to ground my body, heart, or mind. Just
naked, momentarily-uncomplicated desire. The ungroundedness would eventually make
this playpalship unsustainable, but I’m glad for a little while it got to be
exactly what it was.
Staycation Sext Fling Part One: The Big Dick Talk
When The Coach walked me to the car after the movie,
the conversation got smutty real fast, though we were still at least three feet
apart. For not-the-first time, he mentioned having a big dick and said he’d be
happy to (presumably after his second vaccine shot) “stretch me out” any time.
Which felt…ew? But also, yay?
The big dick talk was equal parts appealing and
sweetly sad. Appealing because, as has been well-documented here, I do have
that preference, even though it still feels like kind of an unfair preference
to have. (S/O to Steampunk Guy, remember how much I fucking LOST MY MIND about
him, another one who introduced himself big dick first? What a fucking WORK OF
ART/piece of work he was, probably still is.)
But the big dick talk is a little endearingly sad too
because, dude. It’s okay. Just relax and be a person. If I want to fuck you,
I’ll be fucking your whole self, there’s no need to hustle for it that way.
(But also, I liked the hustle, and I missed it a bunch when it left.)
Anyway, The Coach texted to make sure I got home okay,
and that was the last datelike thing that happened.
Oh sexting. I love it/hate it the way I love/hate the
rote “good mornings” of early dating (None of those from The Coach, just, like,
“I want to be inside you” at 6 am before I’ve even made coffee, which was
jarring but not unpleasantly so.) I love/hate sexting the way I love/hate the
little red text numbers, which (as The Coach, a young millennial, probably
wouldn’t remember) used to be the red answering machine numbers.
Anyway, this time around with The Coach, I pretty much
just LOVED sexting. It was a rush to be so graphically, smuttily desired, so
all at once. He had come (ha) a long way too—where his 2016 (or was it 2017?)
texting style got too porny and harsh, this time he was present, more specific,
more just with me, or at least it felt that way. Respectfully filthy,
like he’d learned his lesson. Like he’d heard me all those years ago. He called
me a filthy princess and I called him, toward the end, a good, good prince.
I liked the way our stories switched the power back
and forth between us so easily, holding him down by the wrists one moment and
being completely possessed the next. He even, in one sexty story, got gentle towards
my asshole when I told him I’d never done that part before. (Typing that
sentence reminds me that that was my dream so long ago, the Kind and Patient
Ass Guy that I couldn’t quite feel like I deserved. Kinda glad both Steampunk
Guy and Cute Master dropped the ball on that one, because I would very much
still like that character to come along.) (For a few quick days, I hoped The
Coach might be that character.)
Sexting felt like a good way to deal with my whole
post-quarantine overwhelemed-by-touch thing. I could let the desire spark
though me, be ravished both together with The Coach and at my own pace. When it
got to be too much, (the sensation I mean, what we were saying was never too
much) I could let go of myself literally and physically, be still and feel my
whole body full or warmth and light and peace. Plus, I can neither type
left-handed nor ever truly let go of punctuation.
It wasn’t a long time of Messenger-ing about movies
and catching up on everyday stuff before The Coach started calling me “sweetheart”
and telling me he’d thought about me. (Some people, and I’m probably one of
them, mean something real specific and sticky when they say they’ve thought
about you! I don’t dislike it!) Around the time I was seeing the opportunity
and thinking he and I should hang out sometime, he asked if I wanted to hang
out sometime.
I told him I’d been dying to see Candyman and
hadn’t wanted to go by myself. (BFF will tolerate a horror movie, but she isn’t
a fan.) He’d already seen it but didn’t mind going again. He found the
showtime. He got the tickets. He picked the seats. Is that all it takes for me
to feel cared-for, looked after?
There was some talk about movie makeouts, but the morning
of our date I remembered to ask that one annoying life-or-death question and
no, he wasn’t fully vaccinated. (I am, but I’m not trying to get the Delta!) Only
halfway there. So I told him there couldn’t be any snuggles until after his
second shot. I think I knew, in my heart of hearts, someone who’s right for me
would have been vaccinated by the end of May. I think you’ve gotta be at least
that much of a team player. Still, I know we’re all coming at medical stuff
from different angles, and I REALLY wanted a movie date, so I didn’t make it a
dealbreaker.
(Before I asked about vax status, I’d fully decided I
would take him home after the movie if I got the chance. I was/am horny,
nothing wrong with that!)
(Honestly I half-expected him to back out when I told
him there wouldn’t be snuggles for a while.)
I got READY for this 5$ Movie Night date. I took everything
off my todo list that day (not much was on there since I was on staycation) except
manicure and pedicure. I bought a pretty new dress (light blue and fairy-ish
with a little gold glitter) and a tiny butterfly necklace for transformation. Possibly
this is a story about having a crush on THE MOVIES themselves, or on totally
femme-ing it up, but The Coach brought it all together so nicely.
I liked how decisive and swaggery he was, carrying the
snacks for us and leading us to our back row seat. I liked how he knew the
movie was directed by Nia DaCosta, not Jordan Peele.
I moved the soda from the armrest cupholder so our
elbows could touch. I got chilly and he lent me his jacket. I hid behind said
cozy hoodie during the grisliest scenes and made him tell me when it was safe
to look. It seems like this particular gender-sparkle should have happened to
me long ago, but somehow, I’d missed it.
It was just the best time. The crowd was talkative in just
the way I prefer, just the way I’d missed for all the quar-months. This really
is a little bit a love story about the movies.
Even though (Or because?) there was a makeout embargo,
The Coach gave me such an unexpected new kind of joy. There’s only two or three more more
installments left of his story, but long live femme-ing it up at Candyman—one
of my favorite adventures yet.
I’m not being falsely modest when I say I didn’t understand
what The Coach was seeing when he first asked me out at my college bookstore
job in 2016. I was in a real post-adventures schlubby phase. I probably had on my
heather-purple college logo shirt with loose AND ill-fitting jeans and (still
my faves admittedly) the Payless version of black lowtop Converse. It was first
thing in the morning so my long hair was probably damp in its lazy bun. This
was (only a little bit) before Mr. Makeout Music came into the picture and made
me want to doll things up again.
But here he was, getting sports-guy snacks before work
or class or whatever. Slight-but-strong, a little less than my height, skin the
color and smoothness of caramel, fluttery innocent dark eyes. In retrospect,
the way he hit on me was delightfully old-fashioned and direct: He wrote his
number on the back of a receipt and JUST CAME OUT AND SAID (something like) “I
think you’re really attractive and I’d like to take you out. Give me a call
sometime.”
Honestly it was tempting to think he was trolling me,
but he really did seem sincere! I was working with BFF at the time and, well after
The Coach had left, I was all “I think ______ _______ asked me out?” (He’s a
full-name guy. Love it.) I couldn’t imagine us having anything in common.
Next time he came in, he looked a little shy-but-still-swaggery
and said “ You didn’t call!”
I was a little snappish about it—I had this idea that
nobody should be hitting on someone when they’re stuck behind a counter, but
seriously, 2016 me, I was a middle-aged assistant manager, not a kid! It’s not
like there was a power imbalance, unless you count the part where he was 24.
(As was Mr. Makeout Music! Should I stop automatically swiping left on the
under-30 set? Maybe not.)
A few months later, I apologized for being kind of a B
and asked him out, but he’d gotten a girlfriend by then, so I happily/flirtily
wished them well.
After he and the girlfriend broke up and after I was
COMPLETELY DECIMATED by Mr. Makeout Music/the 2016 election, the thing with The
Coach came around again. We’d planned to get together causally, but got
derailed by some mismatched sexting—I got triggered by the way he talked about
my body, too porny and harsh. The ways he talked about my fatness felt
fetishizing, so I blocked him. We were still friendly in person, so we meandered
back into each other’s feeds. And then I blocked him some more.
In her book, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk
About Fat, Aubrey Gordon has a chapter about different forms of objectification
of fat people that really shifted my perspective. Why, she asks (I’m
paraphrasing) does it have to be something shameful when somebody is attracted
to fat? Why do we consider it a bad fetish? I mean, he did need to learn a
LITTLE bit of manners, but I wondered why I was so triggered by this particular
(sporty, fit) person finding my big ass hot? (NOTE: Aubrey Gordon is way better
at talking about this than I am. You really should read the book!)
Anyway, last year sometime, I sent a friend request
from The Coach into the ignore pile, but he must’ve still been following. When
I posted about loving the new Shang-Chi movie (Speaking of deliciiiiiiiiious
men) The Coach commented/messaged three different ways to try and talk to me
about the movie. And of course, I’m superslutty for talking about movies!
After a little while of laying there listening to the
not-Bonecrusher music, we got a little less naked and moved on to aftercare
mode. Being wrapped up in his strong arms was blissful and sweet, but soon he
had to get going.
As we said goodbye with a few more kisses at my door,
it seemed like we would see each other again. I woke up with a bad feeling,
though, “knowing” he wouldn’t be back. I chalked up the feeling to being overwhelmed
and relearning this particular kind of vulnerability. I remembered that thing I
learned at a conference one time: Crushes make your serotonin drop even while your
brain is boiling over all of the other feel-good neurotransmitters. (https://everydayfeminism.com/2012/12/the-neurobiology-behind-all-of-the-ridiculous-things-you-do-when-youre-in-love/)
(That article says “in love” and that's not what this was but still.)
Nearby Guy had been a pretty reliable “good morning”
sayer. Oh, good morning, how else would we know if someone’s still tuned
in without having to ask…I love and hate the good mornings of dating
textlife.
So no good morning the day after the snuggles.
When I hadn’t heard from him by noon the day after that, I unmatched him on
Hinge and blocked him in my contacts, just to leave behind the jangled feeling
of waiting for that little red text number to pop up. I’ve loved/hated red
numbers since they were on answering machines. They are the good mornings
of numbers.
I wondered why he’d ghosted, wondered things I would
never say to a friend going through the same thing: What if it’s because I did
sex wrong? What if I’m too needy for saying the thing about not-casual? Does he
think I’m a monster because that too-harsh song shuffled on? Probably not that
last one—no one is as much of a dork about good makeout music as I am.
I didn’t expect the metamorphosis from quarantine-mode
bodily privacy back to touch-world to be so profound, but it was. The ecstasy
of being reintroduced to snuggling (And kissing! And spanking! Even just, hey!
There’s a man in my apartment!) was so gorgeous and fragile that I felt like I
might shatter with need after. I felt a well inside me, a toothache of the
heart, but also a big, big cotton candy swirl of gratitude.
(I know being grateful is a stereotype both of fat
women and of middle-aged women, but I think most exchanges of snuggles are acts
of such wild generosity that I don’t care to tamp down my grateful awe.)
In the days after the ghosting, I felt sheepish that
that one night of touch had meant so much (The same way those three glasses of
wine with Poly Friends’ Partner meant so much!) but how could it not? The
plague months, the good (BLM) uprising, the bad (Jan 6) insurrection, they all
brought such trauma and pain and also such weedy emotional growth. I’ve been
blanketed up in a protective-as-possible cocoon. I’ve thought so hard about
distance and breath and interdependence.
Of COURSE it was powerful to let someone new get close!