Southern Charmer Postscript

 

My oldest cat is sixteen and she's been sick. The first time I turned on the heater this fall, she abruptly left her perpetual spot next to me on the couch and fled for more hide-y places upstairs. She sleeps on the vent under the vanity or on a big suitcase I took out when I changed the clothes over for winter.

This plus the coming (impending) election was giving all of life a way-too-urgent feeling. It's a feeling I had all the time when I was younger and unmedicated and would contemplate the shortness of the lilac season. I knew they'd be gone soon and I worried I wasn't enjoying them enough while they were here.

The one thing that WASN'T making me feel that way was The Southern Charmer. After our lovely night together, he told me that, considering his recent breakup, he felt like he'd gone too fast into sex with me. I took that to mean that he wanted to slow down, not stop. We chatted every few days and I hoped we'd eventually make it back to smoochtown.

I was lying on the floor next to Oldest Cat's ersatz suitcase bed, holding her paw, when I decided to check in with SC. His update was that he had made a new friend, a platonic one, and they'd hung out a couple times lately.

I thought he'd been laying low because of his breakup grief, but here he was making a lovely new confidante. I started to cry, realizing he'd left me behind a few weeks ago without me realizing. People will say literally anything when they mean "We're not a match" and no matter how many times it happens or how many paragraphs I've paragraphed, I still miss getting it sometimes. It's a thing that makes me feel every one of the seventeen points of my Autism Spectrum Quotient. https://embrace-autism.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/

I asked him why he hadn't spent some of that time with me. He said again the thing about having gone too fast, how he couldn't handle the emotional intimacy right now. I didn't even know we were DOING emotional intimacy! A true first. I heard it now, a break-off, not a slowdown. 

Making Out In Front of a Romcom (ala) and Other Perfect Things: Part Four

 This series is taking forever to write, what with the whole triumph-of-evil thing un-hottening life most of the time. (Not last night though, I had a really nice date! But that's a story for another day.) Whatever stage of grief today finds you in, I'm with you. I love you. And I'm here to provide cuteness whenever I can bear it.

Back to being splayed out on the beach-day of my bed, with my beautiful sweet Southern Charmer smiling down at me.

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

His finger slipped down into my absolute sopping wetness and he said:

"I'd like to be inside you."

*****Welcome***** is the emotion I felt as he slid inside me. I felt so filled and fulfilled, happy and free, He was SO PRETTY and so good at kissing and so beautifully and easily part of me.

After what seemed like a good long time, he started apologizing and I didn't really know why. 

"It's been a hard time, I've been going through a breakup, I'll have to owe you."

I think he felt like he was coming too fast, but even if he had been, I wouldn't have seen it as a problem. I always feel gratified by a quick come, like, oh good, this guy is willing to give me what he has.

"I need it," I said, as I always say, when he came. (Or fake-came? Maybe he just needed to stop? Maybe this is the moment when the breakup grief washed back in for him? Oh I wish I could have known and soothed him, that I could have taken care of whatever had brought out all those sorries.

I switched the Donald Glover to lofi as we cuddled up. He asked if it was okay to fall asleep and I said sure, I just have to get up and have my night cereal. After Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I climbed over him to the inside spot and (Just like that, says the part of my brain that thinks only of Sex and the City) I was falling asleep (trying to) with a guy for the first time since The Shy One.

I haven't gotten any better at it in the intervening years. Though we cuddled up sweetly, I felt so alert. I thought about what had just happened. I thought about whether he would stay for breakfast, if he would drink coffee on my couch.

But he woke me up at six AM, same cursed hour whenTSO always left, and seemed a little distant, like he was already out the door. His voice had the cadence of a Barack Obama, if Barack Obama was late for a school presentation.

At least I was able to fully sleep then, warm and content but already a little lonesome for him. And I kind of still am, all these weeks later.