Knotty Thursday: The Adorables (More Couples Please!!!)

 

I think The Adorables want to be just friends, I haven't heard from them since our date-or-whatever on Sunday, but I'm totally in crushtown about them. So much so that I added "I would like to snuggle with some couples please!" to my Feeld profile.

I'd been texting back and forth with Mr. Adorable for a few weeks--thoughtful questions and mini-paragraphs, the text version of writing letters! LOVE IT. I hadn't really been looking for couples, but if you could see these two faces, you'd understand that I kinda HAD to hit on them.

After a few snow-and-life-related postponements, they arrived at my door Sunday afternoon, not too long after the Good Boy left. (I really am supergreedy sometimes. Total bi stereotype over here.) They brought red wine and those question cards meant to rescue parties from small talk--big talk all the way. I had THE BEST TIME answering questions with them, until I was like "Okay, one more question, then I'm gonna teach you some ropes."

I really didn't teach them anything--Mrs. Adorable likes to self tie, and I'm in awe of her creation.

I tied up Mr. Adorable. I was nervous and protective--he was so sweet and this was his first time, plus his gorgeous wife was right there being gorgeous--I couldn't get out of self-consciousness even a little bit til they worked together to very gently tie me up.

I was sad and a little lost when they left--I'd been too shy to ask for snuggles or any other kind of aftercare, note to self for future not-sure-what-kinda-connection-this-is play.

Now they're just-friends or ghosts, and I miss them. If I did anything wrong, I hope they'd tell me! I hope we'll cross paths again some day.

A Bad Date, A Good Hookup, and a Helpful Google, Part One

 

It’s been a long time since this many (mis)adventures happened in one day. I guess it was really only two, but yesterday felt 3-5 Sundays long.

I should probably be a better friend to myself. When recently-divorced Sunday Morning First Date started Bumble-texting me a couple of weeks ago, he mentioned being leery of my bi-ness because his wife had slept with his sister. (And like eight other people. Not, I don’t think, in an ENM kinda way.) (My only regret about this particular morning is that I didn’t get more details about that (sounds made-up) story.) If a friend had fielded such a conversation, I would have been livid, like WTF kind of bi-phobic bullshit is this?

Instead, I let tenderness and compassion take the wheel. I reassured him, giving a vague outline of my still-beginning dating life. Before a first date! This seems excessive in hindsight. I don’t even know anymore.

We met up at a local nature preserve on just the most beautifully paradigmatic fall morning you can imagine. I even packed us a picnic for after our mini-hike. I’d chosen him because he was sweet and artsy by text. I watched him take a beautiful photo of the trees’ reflection on the water. He had a lovely Georgia accent and a cute Ron-Funches-but-grumpy vibe. I liked the way he pronounced the Great Blue Heron’s name as we passed one from not too far away: herr-RON. I love it.

It was chilly so I was quick to slip my hand into his pocket with his. We didn’t get to hold hands for very long.

“There’s just too much feminism these days. Nobody can say ANYTHING.”

I pushed back in a measured way, but things only got worse. When I called BFF later (like five minutes later) she explained that a lot of what SMFD had to say came right out of Dave Chappelle’s latest standup special, which has apparently been making her Twitter feeds miserable lately. She recommended this article and I read it later in the car with lunch: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/opinion/dave-chappelle-netflix-trans.html

Anyway, back to the end of this short nightmare: SMFD and I were standing on a boardwalk platform in the middle of the wetland, next to a placard about an invasive species of turtles. He (the date, not the turtle) launched into an impassioned talk against “too much division,” saying the left and the right were equally to blame, equally hateful. (It’s this kind of false equivalency nonsense that makes me swipe left on every singly guy who identifies as “moderate,” in his profile even though many (WRONG) lefties would accuse me of the same.)

“Okay, we’re done.” I pointed to the other side of the bridge. “You go this way and I’ll go that way.”

As wrong as he was, I sort of understand the impulse he might’ve had. I know I’ve thrown my own conversational firebombs when I haven’t been ready or a match for someone. But it’s really not the same—never have I ever resorted to semi-quoting a famous transphobe/homophobe/misogynist as a Get Out of Date Free card. I guess Chappelle goes in the folder with the Bern and all of the other snuggle-wreckers.

It felt weirdly like a relief to be so clearly not a match, after a month or so of grey-areas, which aren’t my specialty. BFF was happy to join me on the rest of the hike by phone, debating with me about the categories of clouds in the pictures I sent. Lots and lots of pictures of water and leaves and clouds. I ate my half of the lovely picnic lunch in the car with the window open, catching up on Dear Prudence and How to Do It. I think this counts as reading outside, one of my most important (And most neglected!) fall goals checkmarks.

I was proud, slightly relieved, and ready for a nap. When I got home, there was an over-succinct “Hey” in my texts from Hookup Guy, who is so fucking beautiful I can’t even deal. I’ll tell you that part tomorrow.

BFF (Sweetie) Appreciation Post

First of all, it is LONG past time I changed her blog nickname. These days a “sweetie” only slips out if we’re under some kind of duress and forget ourselves. When we were divorcing (holy moly!) eight years ago I didn’t dare wish that we would still be this close. So close that I just texted her some concert info in case none of my more concert-enjoying friends want to go. It is our system and it works.

 Anyway, we were on the way to pick up our new glasses together (totes normal ex-wife activity) and I was reading her this post https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2021/07/wheres-all-my-body-positivity.html?zx=8607b6472509cebb about all of my recent/eternal fears and insecurities, and she just started to cry.

 I apologized immediately. It’s a real jerk move to read aloud paragraphs about feeling unlovable and unfuckable to someone who has loved me SO THOROUGHLY since just after 9/11 and who went every extra mile in the sexytimes department too. Since I made the shift to mostly preferring guys, I’ve always hated the way that preference could make her feel discounted, and could sometimes make me blind to the many, many kinds of love I’m steeped in every day. (Obvs I wouldn’t say any of that ever to someone ELSE who had a shift in gender-preference! In the words of Laci Mosley, I’m rude to me!)

 After a few minutes of me yammering my labyrinth of well-worn apologies, she sniffled and said “I just want you to get what you want!” 

That’s always been true. Even while jealousy, loss, and my own recklessness were tornado-ing through our marriage, she always rooted for me. If someone didn’t like me back, she was indignant like, how dare he! (Not TO him, of course.) If someone hurt me in a not-fun way, she could be relied upon to toy with the idea of Gorilla Gluing all of their car doors shut. If, say for instance, a venue broke my limits and I got stuck in a nightmare thread about it, she’d create a dummy FetLife account and argue with rapey Doms and victim-blamey, more-game-than-thou subs late into the night. 

Even in the fun, festive times, she wasn’t at ease out in the kink world. I mean, she sure tied knots like she was at ease! But she was often triggered and scared, often overwhelmed by the dicks and the screams and the bruises. But she did it all for me anyway, because love makes you brave. She just wanted me to have what I wanted! Maybe more than I did! 

I’ve always felt like kind of a dumbass, in the midst of all that love and still ACHING with longing, worrying I wasn’t lovable while I was so clearly being loved. In the now times, it’s a challenge to remember how to hang out with people besides BFF. We kept each other alive through Bernie and Trump and Covid and “stop the steal.”

But now, of course, the longing is back, my guy-crazy tendencies alternately coursing and cowering. I’m still struggling to accept my guy-liking self and muddle my way along to whatever snuggly future I might find. On the way, it’s good to remember how much I’ve been loved, in all the ways.

Perfectly 1993 Guy Part Three

Other than the shoes, I don’t remember much of that first Great Adventure visit together. EXCEPT THIS: We went on The Enterprise (no relation), one of those Space Shuttle looking rides that rocks back and forth, higher and higher, until it finally flips over. LOVE an upside-down ride, especially with, thrill of thrills, Perfectly 1993 Guy locked in beside me.

 

And, he was… talk-singing.  I can’t overstate how low-key this guy was overall—even though he looked like a rock star, he was the quintessential nice boy. Except in this moment, when, inexplicably and delightfully, he decided to blurt out the entirety of “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine (Pause to Google “Zack De La Rocha problematic” and then remember I’m supposed to be typing…) As the ride started rocking its way up, he started with “Some of those that work forces/are the same that burn crosses” and got all the way to “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!” by the time the ride got to the upside down part and the rest of the riders were screaming. I was laughing my head off in eye-rolling disbelief. It was the perfect, most ridiculous love-moment for a sort-of-punk-rock eighteen-year-old girl in 1993. It made me so happy (and still does!) because it made all of the sense and none of it at once.

 

Aside from the ride/smitten tummy flips and cotton candy romantic nighttime amusement part colors (Us was so many, many year in the future. But also, things can be romantic and Jordan Peele-y at the same time…) nothing particularly sexy happened while we were at the park, just the spark of possibility and the THIS ONE IS FOR ME certainty that paradoxically made me believe I could never have him. (Wow I’m exactly the same forever.)

 

We left pretty late and made the hour’s drive back to First Bitchy Gay Guy’s apartment, (It was  a family extra, something having to do with divorce I think, pretty sure that’s why this just-out-of-high-school kid already had a pretty nice apartment…) stopping along the way to shoplift some Marlboro Reds from the Acme. I usually smoked Camel Lights but shoplifters can’t always be choosers. Sometimes I even resorted to ew/gasp menthols. All of it seems gross now but also dirty-nostalgic, like cigarettes are a fun old bad influence friend I’m glad to be rid of.

 

It was (Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!) decided that Perfectly 1993 Guy would share the foldout couch with me while FBGG would take the bedroom. The living room had the stereo (Pause to sigh over the existence of stereos that were actual physical things…) so I put on a mix I’d made for me and FBGG, a mix of the dance-y, dreamy, and the absurd, culminating for reasons I can’t quite explain in Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” Kind of world-weary for where I was at in my life, but I found it romantic. Quick search—yep, I still do. Possibly I’ve always been an almost-46-year-old divorcee?

 

Anyway, INSOMNIA. The best kind, full of diner coffee and cigarettes, curiosity and happy, wholesome lust. He lay just outside my zone of touch at first, occasionally brushing my arm with a warm elbow. He smelled like sun and clean sweat and life. I was perfectly restless, almost holding my breath. What was I wearing, asked no one? I’ll tell you!

 

A coral slip I’d swiped during my BFF’s Thrifty Shopper job back home. It had a sheer frill of ruffle around the fitted top, soft coral lace along the bottom. I’m surprised I never just went ahead and wore it as a dress, I think I would, now! It was a little big on me, but skimmed my hips in a very satisfying way. The slip felt like silk to my naïve skin, but was most likely some flavor of polyester. Best of all, I don’t think I was wearing it to be seductive! That’s just what I slept in. Teenage me rules a lot of the time!

 

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo gradually (a tape-flip, getting up to smoke a few times, always in sparky semi-silence) our bodies edged themselves closer. Softly, tentatively, he took my hand. Let’s let that last another lifetime, another frozen-in-amber moment to clone or treasure on the shelf.

 

“Are you SURE you’re a lesbian?” He finally (FINALLY, FINALLY!) asked.

 

“Actually I’m feeling pretty bi right now,” I sigh/said, and then we kissed. It was a soft, playful, hopeful kiss of people who are learning how. The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow helped me to learn that I kissed too hard and too thrustingly (Probably influenced by the bad, lazy teen boys of pre-BWSMAP days) and Perfectly 1993 Guy continued that lesson. He taught me to probe and play sweetly instead of just devouring his face the way instinct and experience told me to.

 

There must not have been much night left, but we kissed and cuddled through it. His soft, perfect hands caressed me with respectful, tentative curiosity. It was the first time I’d felt both wanted and honored, both horny-as-fuck and patient, both cared for and fully embodied. It’s hard to process the pace and tenderness of that first, sexy-nightgowned night, but there it was.

 

I started this No Contact High Fidelity project first and foremost to think about touch and give myself something low-stakes to work on during quarantine, but I think I’m learning stuff too, just like Girl Rob does in the vastly-vastly-superior-to-the-book new High Fidelity show. (On Hulu. Seriously the best writing friend a person could have.) Typing my way though this, I started to understand why my standards remain so (sometimes vexingly) high, why I’m willing to wait out so much time alone until the right person arrives: I’ve already experienced so many beautiful, ideal, fateful, hot romantic moments in my life. If no more come along, I’ve already been quite thorough. I feel so grateful right now to Perfectly 1993 Guy and almost all of the other Kitten Calendar characters.

 

Quarantine Crush (Because of Course) Part Five

I feel like I need Liz Lemon to come in here and do a Twenty Year Wrap-Up (Wrap Wrap Wrap-Up) so I can someday finish this story. Let’s see how well I can summarize.

A lot happened in the fall of 2001. I turned twenty-seven, which I’d always thought of as the Cobain birthday, thereby fulfilling an arbitrary and teenage-dramatic goal I’d set for myself. When 9/11 happened, I was both glad to be with my family and fretting my heart out about my California friends. I remember Adorable Co-Host not-unkindly hanging up on me once I’d gone on too long about U.S. imperialism.

I met Sweetie about a month later, and we figured out that we’d been in the same peace vigil on Small East Coast City University’s campus in the days following the towers’ fall.  Fitting, since we’re still vigiling together. Well, not right now, but probably again before too long. (Big East Coast City where we live now is still a red-zone county, so who knows?)

I kept in touch with my CA friends as I started to set up my own poetry life at home. I admit that I was over the moon to be able to walk most places, and I soon was asked to co-host a venue myself, but I piiiiiiiiined for my first family of poets. I missed them so badly that it took a long while for me to like my poems at all, though I did keep writing them. A music, a spark, a sunbeam was missing, and it would take a long while to get that back.

QC and Adorable Co-Host both wrote poems for my and Sweetie’s wedding ceremony. I’m still bowled over that they would’ve come all this way, even if they did have some New England gigs just after. In maybe the most bi moment of my entire life, (Okay, aside from my actual unicorn adventures! Almost forgot!) QC (at my request) held up a boombox Say Anything style as Sweetie and I, with our parents and the bridal party, walked down the aisle of our hometown rose garden. (Though if anyone has ever been holding up the boombox in this story, it’s always, always been me.)

Twenty years with varying levels of keeping in touch. When my book of poetry came out in 2012, I featured at their venue over Skype, so I was oddly prepared for the there/not there of Zoom poetry—lonely and together all at once, talking to friends and reading into the void.

The first time I Zoomed in this spring, I’d been crying/panicking about Zoom every day because of work. I wanted to try something nice with it, a treat. I left the camera off, did my nails, and felt like an interloper, only piping up to applaud. But I got to hear him, beautiful and clear. His was a life and death poem that rumbled through me and overflowed my heart. What choice did I have but to start writing poems again?

The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part Eight

I’ve read and thought so much about the ways that trauma gets stored in the body, the way that it lives and moves and gets processed in a way that is separate from time and the everyday. Why don’t I know very much about the way love is stored? I’m always pretty dazzled by the way that unexpected things can jostle it loose, can strike a gold vein and expose it, all sparkly and vulnerable and ready for mining.

After the first giddy rush of paintings and artifacts, we got some very strong coffee and sat outside the museum in the chilly sun, catching up. I honestly could have talked to him for five hundred and seventy-two more hours. I didn’t ask him enough about his last thirty years of adventures, I wish I’d talked less and asked more.

In the course of reminding me of my born-again-virginhood at the time we were together (It feels so cringy to even type, I’m sorry!) he said A Thing. It was A Thing that, I’m serious, rewired my entire brain. He was maybe just being campy and probably at least half joking but it hit me right down the middle anyway:

“You could’ve put out more.”

It set me free so much to hear this perfect angel I had idealized for so long just say a horny, jackassy man thing to me. The idea, even the little chance, that he had felt real desire for me shifted my perspective an embarrassing amount, really changed the way I saw myself in the past and present. It was unbalancing and delightful.

As you know if you’ve read this blog in past years, the story I can’t help telling myself about men is, they can (temporarily) want me, but they can’t love me. I believe this even though love has happened to me with men at least three times. I don’t know why the story is so embedded but no amount of paragraphs or therapy has ever dislodged it.

The story I’ve always told myself about The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow is that he was an innocent child whom I tried to corupt with my broken and slutty ways. I was a Bad Kid who hurt him. Seeing myself as a threat in general is one of the most annoying ways that rape culture has gotten under my skin, and I am happy to peel away another layer of it.

(Honestly though, writing this feels like I AM being a threat to him, like I’m still a bad influence on his lovely and put-together and situated life. I’m afraid I’m writing him right out of my life, that paragraphs are predatory in their own way, but I’m writing through it. Maybe I can be a good bad influence or maybe not I’m not even an influence at all, who knows.)

Exploring the rest of the museum felt like one of those dreams where you keep discovering new rooms in old and beloved homes. (Writing this feels like one of those dreams where I meet a man I’m fascinated with then spend the rest of sleep tangled up in dream logic trying to find him again. But not in an unpleasant way.) The time just flew by until he had to go meet his boyfriend for lunch. We made plans to hang out in my city next time, at my local museum.

Sweetie had driven me to visit the Boy, so she finished up her time at the local fancy garden and met us in front of the museum. We waved goodbye and then she and I spent the rest of the day exploring and catching Pokémons.

I was crushy, and giddy, and elated, and trying not to be embarrassed about all those things. I had to admit to myself that teenage me, like Rory Gilmore, had had a wonderful boyfriend. (But way better than Dean and without the Donna Reed cosplay.) More vexingly, I had to (for like the millionth time) admit to myself that I still believe in and long for love, that my erstwhile fantasy life of asexuality and spinsterhood might not actually be what I want. Ugh, longing. I guess I was lucky to avoid it for the few months that I did.

The next day, my whole body felt like spring and I made the super most of it. I got naked on the (very private) back patio and made myself a new chalk mural. I danced in the sun like a goof and then went to bed for a very good long time. I want to give you all the details, but it seems like somehow Favorite Aunt would know.

So I’m trying to think of ways to honor my slutty self this summer—I can’t make the Sparkly Festival, but shall I brave the nude beach? I’ve definitely gone back to swiping, and I’m letting myself think that snuggles might not be too far away. It’s nice to be back in the present tense, grateful and glowing.

The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part Four

That teenage summer, there were just a few moments between us that genuinely felt connected to sex, at least as I understood it then. I remember being on top of him, both of us thoroughly clothed, on the floor of Favorite Aunt’s sewing room, while a family party went on below. It’s hard not to imagine myself with the intent an evil scientist, trying to pin down a beautiful and helpless butterfly. I’m not sure if he remembers it that way, if he remembers it at all. Present-day signs point to no on the helpless-butterfly-pinning. (At least not in a bad way. But I can only speculate.)

I had sworn off sex as a respite after the Big Trauma. (He told me a few weeks ago, while having coffee outside a museum on a perfect sunny-chilly spring day, that I had referred to myself as a “born-again virgin.” A LOT. That quote both breaks my heart and makes me laugh—of course that person would become a pansexual sex blogger! I feel really awesome at life right at this moment!) Anyway, I was doing the reasonable-seeming-at-the-time thing of blaming my sluttiness, my adventurousness, for the fact that I had been drugged, raped, and assaulted at a party right before that summer.

I told the Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow that we would wait until we were old enough to get married (by which I meant, like, when I was 20 and he was eighteen) and THEN have sex. Silly as it is, that strikes me as a pretty badass thing to say to somebody, especially someone you’ve only known a few weeks. Imagine saying that to a 2019 guy! Back then, the idea felt romantic and like a relief from all of the impersonal sex my body and soul had been though the previous school year. (Sex which, LET ME MAKE IT CLEAR, I chose a lot of and some of which I really enjoyed. I wonder if I can write about it in detail sometime?)

When I found out, years later, that the Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow (By then technically the Man Who Sewed Me a Pillow) ended up with a guy, I imagined he had been relieved by our lack of sex, maybe for the chance to rest in the performance of heterosexuality before embarking on the road out of the closet. So many oversimplified assumptions in one sentence! I told myself this story for DECADES, and maybe it is true, but I’m pretty appalled at my binary thinking, the ability to write off my own experience as well as the entire spectrum of sexuality and desire, even in the face of so much experience and SO, SO many paragraphs.

This seems like a good place to stop and let it all sink in over the long weekend. Kondo-ing my feelings takes a lot, and right now is that part where all the emotions are in piles all over the place and I need to slow down, touch each one, and see what sparks joy. Maybe next week I’ll finish the story and then everything will be treasured and have a place.

Dear people who are kind enough to read this, enjoy your Easter or Passover or Cherry Blossom Festival. Eat chocolate and look at flowers, I love you.

#TBT: The Mayor of Kittentown and Being Bi for Realsies

As I've mentioned a few times, I'm in the process of turning the first year of The Kitten Calendar into the first book of a memoir trilogy, and that means I've had to fill in parts that were missing from the story the first time around. As much as I STILL sometimes wish I could simplify everything by being a lesbian, it's important to remember what to took to get in the habit of being true to my penis-loving self.

I named him The Mayor of Kittentown because he was the first man I had PIV sex with in seventeen years, (oh, whoops, spoiler alert!) and also because he mentioned on our first date that he’d been named Mayor of White Castle by Four Square. I was attracted to his profile because he mentioned Mystery Science Theatre 3000, had long, silky-looking dark blonde hair, was taller than me, and had a son—I have such a thing for dads. I told him that I had fond \memories of snuggling up with my goth, indoorsy Nineties boyfriend and watching “Manos” The Hands of Fate. I didn’t hear back right away. (Meaning not within a week or so—this was before everybody had the app on their phone and the process sped up.)

It was almost my default emotion in those days to be frustrated. I was in a meeting of my (Unitarian) church group processing irritation at a party-kissing-related near miss when MKT finally texted. He asked if we could get together sometime and a warm feeling wrapped my shoulders like an afghan made of sex-hope.

I was working in the library at the time and my boss noticed that I was ready for a date. She said she’d noticed a glow ever since I started going after guys, like I was coming into myself. I wore more makeup than I usually do (red lipstick=confidence) a red top that showed off my cleavage a little, my cute red girl-about-town raincoat and fake-Chucks sneakers because I had to take the bus.

Ah, riding the 23 bus to dates—45 minutes of feeling pretty and hopeful and texting my various two-person support groups for courage. The night I went to meet MKT it was a miserable, gusty October night—bitter and rainy. I felt awful for the Occupiers as I walked past their encampment and hoped they were bundled up warm in their tents. I made a mental note to mention them to him as a way of gauging whether he was an asshole or not—if he was mean about them, he would be out.

We were meeting at the science museum to watch “Eight Legged Freaks” MST3K style. When I saw him across the cosplay-dotted lobby, he looked snuggly but shy. I was delighted to see that he really was taller than me—I’m 5’ 10” so that’s hard to find! He felt nice to sit next to while we waited for the movie to start. He was a tech-guy early adopter who brought an iPad on a date so we scrolled through his photos, which I deemed sufficiently soulful: leaves, water, an inexplicable pile of decaying stuffed animals by the river.

He didn’t even make fun of me when, after I visited the restroom, the belt of my raincoat was hanging down and had clearly dipped itself in the toilet—a rom-com moment if there ever was one.

We walked through downtown to a diner after, my lifelong favorite way to eat. When we passed Occupy, he told me had a Lego display on his desk (a few blocks away in the tallest building in the city) of Star Wars characters carrying signs like “These are not the spending cuts we’re looking for,” “Occupy Tatooine” and “Tax the Hutts.” Of all the things I’d imagined potential dates saying about Occupy, this was not one of them.

With both of us being all of the awkward, conversation over French silk pie was stilted, but there was this: Both of us has worked at Great Adventure in the summer of 1993. Because I was slackersome and didn’t try for one of the better jobs, I was on the cleanup crew, sweeping up trash and cigarette butts and charming male workers into cleaning up roller coaster barf. He worked on the Demon Drop, which is exactly what it sounds like. You go up really high and it drops you, and you scream with delight. The thing is, though, I’d had a crush on the operator of that ride—I’ve always had a thing for the glasses/ponytail combo, but especially in my grungetastic teen years.

With that little coincidence, he seemed like a good prospect, until, almost to the bus stop, he mentioned that he frequented the nearby nude beach. I saw absolutely nothing wrong withit, but I said “Oh, I’d be way too shy for that!”

“Oh, I have body issues too.”

“Um, why would you assume I have body issues?”

One of the major psychological and actual barriers to me dating men has always been my size.  I’m 5’ 10” and a size 20, so as one former boyfriend remarked, there is nothing little about me. In the context of my own little world I can feel powerful and goddesslike, but it’s hard to avoid feeling fat in the eyes of men—part of me assumed that a man could NEVER find me attractive, so I looked for evidence of that, and almost always found it. Until I didn’t.

In follow-up emails I mentioned his statement and he was horrified to know that’s how I took it, telling me he did in fact find me nice to look at. He was by far the most promising candidate yet, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and invited myself over to his house to watch MST3K.

It took a little bit of juggling, but we found a Friday evening that worked. I had another datelike thing that afternoon, a walk through the local state park with a nice librarian I’d met through friends. It was the perfect picture of a fall day, like an advertisement for being alive. We took the less-trodden trails and found Narnian bridges and falling down stone fences. There’s a fancy inn in the park and we had apple crisp and spiked cider. I didn’t feel a spark with the librarian but it put me just in the right frame of mind for my MKT date.

What scared me the most was driving there. Though Sweetie was agreeable and encouraging about it, I had this idea that I might crash her car on the way and thus become the official worst person ever. She was a terrible backseat driver so it was always hard to find confidence, but I think the driving fear was just a way of feeling anxiety over being disloyal. Even when you’re bi and sorely in need of a penis, it’s very hard to transition to playing outside the marriage.

His newly-trendy neighborhood was very parked up, but I found a spot (pretty far away, it turns out) that I could go frontways into—parallel parking has never been my favorite thing.

From outside, his rowhouse (which he owned!) looked impressively adult—two well--kept arbor vitae framed the door and the window had a lovely beveled glass design—not so different from what I imagine my Grandmom had in the olden-days version of this city.

When he came to the door, I handed him the cupcake-taker (he’d requested lemon) and surveyed my surroundings. Toy-collecting divorced guy can go in many directions, but for him it was a somewhat tasteful one. There were toys on the mantle—a Peewee Herman doll, Gypsy from MST3K. There were Legos that looked decidedly untoylike, as they’d been built into tiny but intricate architectural structures, including (and this was a major selling point in his favor) Fallingwater (which, as I Google it for capitalization check, I notice comes in a kit.) All of his dishes seemed to be plastic, which I thought was endearingly single dadlike.

He had a beige two-people-can-recline couch, how could we not recline. He selected Red Zone Cuba for our MST3K and we settled in to our marooned astronaut (I think the Joel episodes are the only real ones) and his wisecracking robot pals.

He was easier to warm up to when we were alone than when we were out in public, and I easily snuggled into his lap. Somehow, we two must awkward of people took off our glasses and went from snuggling to making out.

In all of the years (seventeen, all told) that I’d been almost exclusively with women, what I missed most was the decadent teenage sensation of dry-humping, the feeling of straddling someone and finding something there. When I gathered the courage to climb into his lap, that rush came back to me with a surge of joy. He was big and hard beneath me, but what felt even better than that was the vitality of him—his whole body was shot through with pure life, and he smelled like aliveness, too, sweet and clean and strong.

Though our pants stayed on that night, we surged into each other like a waterfall. He took off my shirt and ran his hands over my shiny red bra, pet then gently over my back and through my hair. I wanted his hands in me, wanted more, and there was this completely new feeling of being of being utterly in charge and utterly at home.

But I wasn’t at home, and I never stopped being conscious of the digital clock next to the TV screen. I’d told Sweetie I’d be home around 11, and I counted the hours left in my head the way you do when you can’t sleep. When it was close to time to go, I had a few sips of soda so I would be alert for the drive home.

He grumbled about how far away I’d parked in a way that made me question his chivalry a little, but he walked me there nonetheless. We kissed goodbye and I drove home in a dizzy haze, changed.

After that, MKT and I fell into a routine. With my school stuff and his family obligations, we found time for each other every couple of weeks. I’d park far away, we’d watch part of a bad movie, catch up in kind of a cursory way, and then make out. The night we watched my favorite one, “Manos” Hands of Fate, found me splayed on the couch with his hands inside my favorite pink lacy underpants. The moon was big that night and when it was time for me to go, we couldn’t stop making out at the car, just like that couple at the beginning of the movie.

Ravenous though we both were, he was patient. He knew I hadn’t had PIV sex (or what most of the world simply calls “sex”) since a little after my twenty-first birthday in 1995. It that I’d been abstaining or anything,  I’d just been single for most of my twenties and then met Sweetie, been perfectly satisfied for a few years, then spent a handful of years being dissatisfied but not doing too much about it. I liked the idea of the kind and gentle MKT being my first-in-a-long-time.

Our relationship was somewhere on the friends with benefits spectrum, but I adored his penis. After three years of research and much, um, reflection I’m ready to pronounce it the best one. It’s difficult to believe that someone who’s walking around with something that amazing could be so meek and unassuming—kind of seems like a miracle! He was magnificent: long, thick, cheerily pink and perpetually hard. He apologized that his antidepressants made it difficult for him to climax, but that meant so many hours of good, hard enthusiasm.

The night I planned to go all the way with him (such an old timey term, I know) I was meeting him to see the new Muppet Movie—the one with Amy Adams and my imaginary boyfriend Jason Segel. Because I’d be taking the big step of staying over, I left the car for Sweetie and took the bus all the way across town. It was early December but not too cold so I could wear my red coat again, but with a teal beret and mittens. They were the kind the kind with flap and the the button on the back so that they were both mittens and gloves.

I was excited to see both MKT and the Muppets, but I felt a little bit off. There was someone else on my mind, someone you’ll meet in the next chapter, someone more Domlike, the appraising look he would give me if he saw me dolled up. I liked MKT and he liked me back in a way that (because I am the worst) Made me just a little less turned on by him. He was nudist at heart, wouldn’t care about the lipstick or the pretty shoes I walked 9 blocks from the bus stop in.

MKT did, in fact care about the lipstick. He had a little girls-are-icky moment of worry that is would get on him as we kissed hello. The other guy had no such compunction—our relationship was pretty much based on his ability to demolish lipstick.

Nonetheless, MKT was the perfect person to watch the Muppets with (re-watch, actually—I’d seen it with my family on Thanksgiving) and as we bussed over to his neighborhood, he wove his hands into my mitten/gloved ones. Because of his deadly shyness, there was always something excruciating about being in public with him, but he was fundamentally sweet and I was fundamentally ready for him.

He was radiant with health and life. Even though it was time for his Lego Christmas village to be up and running, he still shined with beach light—every bright smile I would learn to smile naked on a beach was in there and I still can’t think of a more welcome guest, a more welcome friend.

I’d been ravenous for a penis inside me for many years, but I’d also wondered if it was a forbidden fruit situation—did I only want it because I couldn’t have it? Would I get a man inside me and discover I was a true blue lesbian after all? I half hoped for that, it sure would have uncomplicated things.

But as he slipped the condom on and pushed inside me, I felt a great heave of relief and happiness. Joy came out of my lungs in great gasping wails. I loved it so much. I paused my caterwauling long enough to ask if the neighbors would mind, and he said he didn’t care.

We didn’t get to snuggle in the morning, because he had a Lego convention to get to. To catch the train on time, we had to be out of the house by 8:45. I had a having-a-hard time feeling of being claustrophobic in my own skin, but also the sanguine feeling of having an inner suntan. Every memory of him feels a little beachy, even if we never made it to the beach together. There’s rosy cheeks and sand in my hair when I think of him.

We were a little early for the train, so we stopped at Dunkin Donut to get breakfast. As I ate I prattled a way about poly and sex and Sweetie and he started to look worriedly around like he didn’t want anyone to overhear.

“Are you…ashamed of me?” Vexingly, tears came and I lost all semblance of friend-with-benefits-playing-it cool-ness, if I’d had any to begin with.

“What? No! I’m just not used to people talking about this stuff.”

I sniffled and felt myself sink inward, away from him. I spread cream cheese on my bagel and stared down at the table while he reached for my hand.

“I’m not ashamed.”

“Because if you are…” I set my jaw and tried to be brave, but I was sad to be so close to a dealbreaker, sad about everything, ashamed myself. I’d trusted him, it has felt so good, but what if he was someone who couldn’t like me for what I was? I mean, I already knew we weren’t long term, because of the whole he’s-not-poly thing, but I also knew that I wanted something darker, deeper, more permanent. I wanted to be spanked and dominated and owned, but most of all, I wanted the crazy, cracked romance I already felt for another character.

MKT walked me to the train and made sure I was really okay—my warmed-up body felt opposite to my heavy heart, and what I wanted most was to go home and get into bed with Sweetie. It was a long trip from his side of the city to the bus that would take me back home. I felt wistful for all three of the people on my mind and cheered myself by texting updates to my friends. This morning was both an accomplishment and an ending, both a triumph and a betrayal, but I covered the complication with bravado.

When I finally got home and got in bed with Sweetie, she tried to embrace me but I felt her body stiffen and then sigh into sadness. With tears in her voice she said “You smell…different.”

In the rush to get MKT off to the convention, I hadn’t showered. The smell I wanted to keep with me and mull over was hurting the person I loved most. I said I was sorry.

“Nono, I don’t want to make you feel dirty, like you HAVE to shower, it’s just…”

The wind went out of my sails and I felt so trapped and frustrated. It had felt so good. the shirt he’d lent me, a bit of tech conference swag that said “Heck yeah!” on the front was expressing how part of me felt, how all of me wanted to feel. Here in my own bed, I was so far away from the joyous shouts of the night before. I was a tangle of warring sensations as I lay there and dozed with Sweetie.

Overtaking it all was the unassailable physical well-being that went all the way to my core—if it had had a voice, it would have sounded like this: “I’m bi! I’m bi! I’m bi! I’m really DOING this, can you believe it?”

My limbs were soft and warm and my belly felt full, full in a way I’d craved for so long—it wasn’t that I’d been empty without him, but I was empty without that part of me finding expression.

Then there was the guilt—as much as I wanted to love what I was, to find a way to fully inhabit myself and really bi up a storm, it was heartbreaking to know that I’d hurt her, that this was one in a series of so many disloyalties. I’d already hurt her so much by not being gay, and I would hurt her so much more (and only sometimes in a fun way.) It would be years before our relationship would be at peace, and even then only after monumental changes.

And then there was the loss. I loved my life with Sweetie so much, it was so full of snuggles and birdwatching and Sundays in bed, and I knew what I’d done, what I’d admitted I WAS would change our relationship forever.

Unicorn Practice is Easy Part One: Note to Self

Hooray, the nice couple from Friday night gave me the go-ahead to write about them, but first here's some information I wish I'd had a few months ago:

How to Hit on a Couple:

1. Pick the cutest couple in the place.
2. Ask them if they have any advice for a new unicorn.
3. Flirt with them until they're doing stuff to me.

Roadblock #4: Misdirected Anger

Don’t get me wrong, friends. I’ve seen some real jackassery in the past couple of years, and some of the outrage I’ve expressed has been proportional. But there were times when someone fucked up at about a 3 and I got upset at a 10, making it hard to have any perspective or move on with any kind of grace, often leaking friendships and potential friendships in the wake of the panic and hurt.

Part of the reason that guys’ messups end up being so devastating is that often I interpret them as containing some information about me. When Mr. Sweetheart forgot that it was our phone date night, I felt like the message was that I was inherently forgettable, not that he was just maybe a little silly and overbooked that week. When The Man acted like I wasn’t there, it activated a deep-seated fear that I might not exist, that he treated me like nothing because I actually was nothing. To fight that fear, I had to fight him, but that got me exactly the opposite of what I wanted. That’s part of the reason I’m trying to excavate and acknowledge those fears—it’s no one’s job but mine to soothe and fix them.

I think another reason I’ve made guys into enemies is out of some crackpot subconscious attempt to stay close to Sweetie, a way to let her keep saving me. We could snuggle up together and bemoan whoever was breaking my heart that week, and it kept me from having to actually go ahead and open up. I’ve tended to blame her introversion and monogamy for our isolation, but I was fighting off expansion too. I didn’t want to lose her to what I really wanted, so I made what I wanted into the enemy.

Like anyone who lashes out, I’ve often done it out of a sense of helplessness. For most of my life, I’ve seen myself as someone who is made automatically powerless by men, who has to always fight to get that power back. That’s just a false impression brought about by the tropes of trauma, and I’m doing my best to train myself out of it.

But I think a lot of the misdirected anger came from frustration—it was hard to live without male companionship all those years—I’m angry that I’m almost 39 and just now learning to let go and enjoy PIV sex in the grown-up way that I want to. I’m very sad that it took me this long to make friends with the penis, and now I have this ravenous urge to make up for lost time that just hasn’t translated into real life.

I am angry at Sweetie for all of the shame that came out of our mismatch, all of the times she called me a slut or a stupid cunt or a whore, all of the times she contemptuously spat out “Just because I don’t want to fuck anyone else…” or “Just because I don’t have a penis…” She said “fuck” and “penis” in the same tone of voice she might also use to say “George W. Bush.” I’m angry at her for reinforcing my fear that I’m a bad feminist for wanting to submit, and I’m angry at her for crying over recreational bruises or hot blog posts. The things I most love about myself, or most want to love, were the things that made her miserable and bitter.

I am so angry with myself for refusing to admit what I really wanted, for keeping us in a no-win situation for so long. I’m angry about the nonsense I’ve put up with in the hopes that the right boyfriend might take the pressure off and save the marriage—I’m so glad if that factor is never a part of my dating life again.

When we made the decision to divorce, about 80% of the anger just evaporated. I started to feel embarrassed about all of the times I’ve lashed out, and I made a mental apology list. I’ve been unblocking and refriending people and doling out apologies, and each one is a humbling relief. It feels good to come out and say hey, I was an asshole, but I’m committed to being less of one.

About a year ago, Sweetie and I had a terrible fight during which she locked the door and refused to let me leave. When I finally got past her and out the door, I sat in the car and called my mom to ask her to help me get a divorce. Mom talked me out of it, telling me that even if I had a different partner, I’d never be better, that the fights were a part of me I couldn’t change. (Never mind that no one else had ever locked me in an apartment or called me a cunt.) I am excited and inspired to start proving my mother wrong, to heal myself and then find partners who can disagree and express unhappiness without being terrifying, to stop going through the world always a little bit scared. I believe I can be better.

Roadblock #3: I’ve Been Half-Divorced in my Head for a While

Friends, I’ve left out a really important part of the story. I haven’t told you how much hurt there is between me and Sweetie. Every loving thing I’ve said about her is true and sincere, but there is a very deep sadness between us that’s getting harder and harder to push aside.

Every so often, we trigger something in each other that is very hard to live with. We only have bad fights a few times a year, but the things we’ve said to each other are a very heavy load to keep carrying. Any couple that’s been together for twelve years might have deep angers and resentments, but in this case I don’t understand how we can get to the point of liking ourselves, individually or together. For a long time she attacked my sexuality whenever we were fighting, so even though she’s almost always supportive now it is hard to accept myself as bisexual. I have a very, very deep wish to be gay for her, to make all of the complications and dissatisfactions (well not ALL of them, I suppose) go away.

Saturday, we thought we got it figured out. We were bickering on the nude beach of all places, exchanging barbs about how I always want her to go in the ocean and she doesn’t want to. It, um, wasn’t really about the ocean. I told her I couldn’t deal with the idea of swimming alone for the rest of my life, couldn’t deal with paddling around by myself with all those happy couples. I didn’t want to hit on them, I wanted to be them.

She pointed out, incorrectly but insightfully, that the wave-frolicking pairs I was envying were all boy/girl combinations. I’m sure this is partly because I was hurting over Mr. Sweetheart, but I know that’s not all.

“I haven’t been your primary partner for a long time.” she said, again wrong but not wrong. What I feel for her is closer to best-friendship than romance to the point where I dearly wish we could skip right past divorce to being pals. But she would have to not be madly in love with me for us to do that.

Having been back and forth about divorce bunches of times, we decided we were finally going to rip the Band-aid off as soon as we got home and start the divorce process. I got up and walked into the ocean, suddenly and completely fine with swimming on my own. It was cold and it took me a while to settle in, pick my feet up, float and even smile. I felt relief. I could finally stop trying to squeeze into this thing that no longer fit me. My long hard quest to somehow what she wants was over. I could stop running and finally turn to face myself.

Of course she swam out to meet me. I started to cry. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

I started to cry harder and sobbed out “I want a husband.”

There in the water, cool and naked and facing the person who knows me best in the world, it seemed so clear. It seemed like such a simple truth.

It’s impossible to overstate the amount of shame that my failure to be gay and monogamous has brought me over the years. I felt, I still feel, like I let her down so much. I’ve been given a partner who is almost perfect, almost every single thing a person could need, why couldn’t I just TAKE it? Why couldn’t I just be satisfied?

I’m not sure if I can every really love myself within the context of this relationship. It is certainly very hard to accept being bi, let alone the taboo and crazy-feeling wish for a male primary. Every time some dude wrecks our evening in whatever careless way, I overflow with sorries, for taking away her time and happiness, for the fact that I could never manage to just settle down and let myself be loved.

Day to day, she’s understanding and giving, the most supportive a poly girl could hope for, but in the fights the truth always comes out. Like I started to say, for years she’d attack my sexuality during every fight, calling me a slut or a whore and telling me that I’m disgusting for wanting men. She talked so disdainfully and I gave as good as I got. These days she doesn’t tell me to go suck a dick like she used to, but she does go from zero to you’re-a-stupid-selfish-bitch-and-you-never-shut-up-about-boys every so often. I wish there were some in-between there.

She doesn’t say those things because she really hates men or bisexuals or anything like that. She does it because I do get self-involved, yammering and fussing through every crush, and it makes her feel insignificant. I am not loving her the way she deserves to be loved, and I am not loving myself, either.

As we drove home from the beach, stopping for sundaes and listening to Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me as usual, the enormity of losing each other kept hitting us and what to do next became a lot less clear. Whether I stay with her or not, a husband seems like an impossible dream-where does one get one of those? How does that happen?

The best thing about this, though, is that I’ve allowed myself to stop denying it, to stop wishing and trying and struggling to be the wife I planned to be ten years ago, to be what’s expected of me, to be what she really wants. I grieve for the nice lesbian wife I didn’t turn out to be, but I’m also glad to be (almost) free of her. (Free of the imaginary me, that is.)

Since Saturday, we’ve been intermittently fine and sobby. We fall asleep separately but she still crawls in with me every night, we still hit the snooze a million times and hold each other in the cool morning air. I wish we could hit the snooze on this decision forever.

Happy Tenth Anniversary, Sweetie!

Ten years ago, in a rose garden in Upstate New York (before gay marriage was legal there) in a ceremony officiated by a poet, Sweetie and I said our vows in front of our family (even the most conservative members attended) and friends. It was a perfect day, exactly the way we’d envisioned it.

To celebrate her general state of wonderfulness, here are ten things I love about Sweetie:

1. She is beautiful. She has the most baby-deer sincere eyes, softsoft shoulders, spectacular bosoms and highly smoochable lips. My body fits perfectly with hers and the smell of her is the deepest of animal comforts.

2. She is smarter than anybody. She has absolutely no patience for nonsense except for (thank goodness!) mine.

3. She is my best friend. Sometimes, especially if we have a nice, leisurely Saturday afternoon ahead of us, we’ll lay down to have sex but seeing her face will make me just start yammering. She opens me all up, and though sometimes I know I have just a few more words than she’d prefer, she’s always, always there to talk with. I’m so very grateful.

4. I love the way she gets really worried if she sees a groundhog or some goslings about to cross the road. She’s protective of everything, especially me—once before we were even dating, it started to rain and she was worried that I’d left without a coat, so she went to my house to get me one.

5. I’m happy doing nothing with her. One of the best weeks recently was the week when the new Arrested Development season came out and we spent all kinds of time binge-watching episodes. Oh, Sweetie and me and our love affair with the couch. And the bed. And the garden. And the porch.

6. She’s so unbelievably generous! All week this week, even though she has her own full-time job, she’s been coming into school with me early every day to help pack up my classroom. She always takes care of me so well and I know I could never even BEGIN to make it up to her.

7. Strawberry waffles in bed every Saturday. Romantic trips to the Whole Foods for sushi and salted caramels. Broccoli soup in the wintertime. Getting like six fortune cookies with every Chinese food order. Morimoto for fancy ramen on really auspicious or really trying occasions. Beachside sundaes. Making dinner for her and sometimes for her and other sweeties too.

8. She listens to me cry when boys are mean to me and hardly ever gets frustrated with me for letting them. She roots for the dudes who make me happy (the whole cast of characters at the moment) but when times are tough she says the lesbians will always be willing to renew my membership. (She says she has an in with the committee…)

9. She joins me in so many adventures and happily sends me off on the ones that don’t interest her. She’s so good at knots that it makes it hard for the boys to measure up. (Yes that is a challenge, guys. Go practice!) She stands supportively by when nice men are helpful enough to hit me with stuff, and then is happy to hit me with more stuff. (Mostly her lovely hands.) She brings out the growly top in me but also can make me feel sosoothingly docile. She lets me draw elaborate doodles on her back because she likes the tickle of it.

10. She gets superpissed when I don’t love myself as much as she loves me. She is better at love than anybody I’ve ever known-she isn’t perfect but she never, ever lets me down. She never stops letting me know that I am the most important thing in the world to her. I would love to be as good at love as she is.

Love Letter for This Time Last Year

Student teaching is really taking it out of me, friends. To the point where I don’t know how to find myself at all some days.

Loneliness, fatigue, and a way-too-early Christmas commercial have been making me a little pine-y for this time last year, when I met both the Mayor of Kittentown and Bill within the span of a few weeks. Though I really value everything that’s happened since then, they were something really special and I miss them every day. There’s a little piece of me always whispering come back to them. Not out loud, that would be creepy, just around the edges of my consciousness when I’m falling asleep at night or hitting the snooze in the morning. It’s a dusky feeling, a curl-up-by-the-door-and-wait.

For those few months that I had them, it was my first glimpse of what a real bisexual life could be like. It was what I told myself my whole life that I couldn’t have. I was getting along mostly with Sweetie, getting excellent vanilla satisfaction from MKT, and collecting consensual bruises from Bill.

After all those years without the welcome weight of a man on me, I finally had it, and though the transition was sometimes terrible between me and Sweetie (There were a series of couch-themed fights, and the phrase “go suck some dicks” often came into play…) (Don’t mind if I DO, btw.) but for the most part my mood and our sex life improved.

They were never going to be long term—besides being monogamous, they both had a deep lack of chivalry—but I still wishwishwish I could have kept them. It feels unlikely that I’ll ever settle into a man again the way that I settled into them. I would love to jump in the sex-TARDIS and go back to being curled up with MKT and his cats watching Mystery Science Theater, or underneath Bill as his eyes bored into me, as he marked me too much with his teeth. As MKT kissed the bruises without asking why they were there.

Of course, I’ve moved forward, had adventures that neither one of them was equipped for, but together, they showed me what it could be like, all the different things to want, how to be a woman who is wanted by men.

It all seems so far away now. I have plenty of offers for friendly and no doubt expert floggings, but the dream of romance (or even the approximation of romance) seems so far away.

I don’t know if I’ll find love like that again, if I’ll ever check my inbox again to find the perfect song. Sometimes this year has an air of finality, a midlife crisis I made the most of and now have to leave. Those two might not have been right, might not have been mine, but they were close, and I let them be close. So, even if I can’t really mean it, come back.

My Crackpot Heart Wants Kryptonite and Other Dumb Mistakes

I keep trying to write around what’s bugging me this week, but it isn’t working. For the most part, it’s been a good couple of weeks. I had such a great birthday and my first few weeks of student teaching have been stressful and busy but very gratifying.

But when it comes to this project, I am lost. Mister Hazel Eyes's disappearance hit me harder than it should’ve, and I’m feeling kind of slutty/rejected because Mr. Popular hasn’t been in touch either. Neither should be such a big deal, but I just can’t get over the never-seeing-someone-again aspect of dating. Things just go by too fast. Since last year, six guys who really meant something to me have come (well, most of them came, anyway) and gone—I am grateful for the experiences and fun that they all brought me, but it all went by so fast that it’s hard not to feel like I’m extra-rejectable, like I’m a failure, like I’m in for a lot more loss.

It seems that whenever I am heartbroken over a toplike person, I get the insane urge to process it with Bill. I guess the heartbreak neural pathways just have his name on them. When I let myself think about it, I feel so unresolved about him, a deep dark, creepy, suitable-for-David-Lynch sadness that he persists in not being around. So I did something foolish that usually works: I wrote him a love letter. I find that sometimes if I write out all of my lovey dovey feelings, thank someone for his contribution, and apologize for my half of things, people can start to feel less haunty. In this case, more haunty. He said, thanks, he’s glad I’m not mad, but that I ruined a perfectly good exit.

I’ve always wanted to show this blog off to him (to show EVERYTHING off to him, really) so I friended him on the fb. It was fine at first, a little inspiring push—it made me feel brazen and hot just to think that he might see some of my smutty details. But after a few days, it felt just like it did last December, like I wanted so badly to be near him but didn’t know how, like I would do absolutely anything to get his attention. And that’s without much clicking—just the tiny bit of not-really-a-connection from facebook was enough for him to start sucking the life out of me, to open up that awful, starving well of want. I took him off, of course, I said goodbye again, exit-spoiler that I am.

Sometimes I really do worry that I’m broken, that the ten years that I spent trying not to be bi have left me too desperate and urgent to be able to make a real connection with a man. I am deeply ashamed of the attachment that I still feel to Bill after all this time—I feel like I’m breaking some rule of adultness that I just don’t let go of things in any kind of normal way. I should be bouncing back faster from Mister Hazel Eyes as well, but it’s hard to get past the hurt of someone not even wanting to say goodbye. I am a good student in everything but this, and I absolutely HATE to have a failing grade on the record, but I suppose there’s no magical sex-TARDIS that would allow me to go back and somehow make it work out—it just didn’t.

I really hope that I’m not broken. I hope that neither my half-closet years nor my mistakes this year have cause irreparable damage. I don’t know what the darkness is that I keep wanting to go back to, but I know that it’s closer to addiction than it is to love, and I know that it is the opposite of joy.

I’d rather follow joy. There’s a lot of good stuff on the horizon, and I thought it might be helpful to articulate this sticky tar pit stuff before it seeps back down into my subconscious. I need some courage, friends, I need to follow the part of myself that knows what it’s doing, my inner Bettie Page, not the glassy-eyed December-girl who’s still worrying how to please someone who has been gone for a very long time.

Rejection is Not an Assessment or a Humiliation…Right?

As a poet, I should be better-prepared to be rejected. Over the years, I have received hundreds of rejection slips for hundreds of poems, manuscripts, etc, and only very rarely did I feel that they had any bearing on the quality of my work. If only I could have that same confidence about myself!

Though it’s been mostly a very happy week over here, I’ve been laying awake with very jealous, hurty feelings about the Mayor of Kittentown. It’s isn’t so much that he belongs to her now; it’s that he officially no longer belongs to me. I’m bothered by the difference between being able to belong to multiple people and only belonging to one—instead of just having a different heart, I worry that I might have a deficient one. I think childlike thoughts like “How could he just throw me away?” in spite of the fact that I broke up with him about two and a half times. I knew we weren’t going to fall in love, I always encouraged him to keep looking (which looks, in retrospect, like its own kind of cruelty…) but the loss of our physical friendship is hitting me hard, it’s breaking my heart, making me feel a little bit dismantled.

Rejection bogs me down. For whatever reason, his rejection seems to negate everything good that he made me believe about myself: that I could trust a man, that I could have a happy bisexual life, that I’m can be beautiful and sexy to men. Somehow it feels like he took those things away just by not wanting me anymore, that I need him (and Bill, and Fireguy) just to have those hot feeling back, but I understand intellectually that that’s just not true.

These men so far, things have gone so wrong with them that I feel as if I have failed a series of entrance exams, that I failed to qualify for their gender. Losing each of them has been so exquisitely painful that it’s hard to feel connected to the good things that have happened, to all the real progress that I’ve made.

I tend to mistake rejection for facts: Bill said he couldn’t have a serious relationship with a poly woman, so I felt unlovable. Fireguy didn’t like being written about, so I thought the project itself made me unlovable. MKT’s simpler (?) idea of love makes me feel like I’m too hopelessly, messily complicated for men.

And I AM complicated, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a guy who’ll love me for it—I believe those are called, uh,  polyamorous guys—who’ll be willing to share his life with me. Two of the men in the previous paragraph identified as monogamous, and the other was a heartbroken mess, so I don’t think I can make any generalizations about them, other than 1. Duh, date poly guys and 2. Don’t be a rebound redhead.

I would love to have back all of the good physical lessons I got from them, to not have the hot self-discoveries cancelled out by the fact that they’re gone. Not too long ago, in a Poly Weekly episode about minimizing scene drama, either Minx or her guest said something like “Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t make you less awesome.” I would LIKE to think that just because someone doesn’t want to fuck me and/or fall in love with me doesn’t make me any less lovable and/or hot.” No one can turn back time and take away those experiences—no one can take any of it away.

Of course this goes back to the heart of this project—learning to approve of myself so that I don’t have to wear myself down trying to gain approval from others, except in fun ways, of course. I started this quest for my inner Bettie Page because I wanted her confidence, the way the looks boldly into the camera, the way she returns the gaze. She is not going to shrink timidly into nothingness when the lens turns away from her, and neither am I.

Dear Divine Whatever,

Please help me to collect and feel whatever good they’ve all given me so far, to take it in as fuel to bravely move forward, believing in every glance and touch and step, having faith in whatever radiates out of me at my proudest, most joyful moments.

(To which I can imagine the Divine Whatever saying: “Good girl. So pretty.”)