Sex, Love, and The Shy One, Part Three

 

Sex, Love, and The Shy One, Part Three

I want to try and remember, the way our bodies loved each other so easily, traversed all the very real distances between us and bridged the gap. Together. The most possible together.

The warmth of him. The way he gave himself to me wholly and (almost) without reservation. When he held my hand, my hand felt home, it felt made to be there, folded into infinity, across ages, across universes, folded into whatever divine thing made him. The best possible hands, the best possible me, glowing with light and safety and hope and wholeness.

And the kisses, slipped together and seamless.

Last time I quoted Lottie, this time it’s Lettie. In the bonkers treasure that is Fast X, Michelle Rodrigues says to Vin Diesel something like “If you spend too much time looking in that rearview, there’s things you might miss…like eternity.” But eternity doesn’t work that way, Lettie! Eternity is everywhere and everything and always, you can’t face toward it or away from it, it wraps you up and winds you into the solidness of being, grounds you to the center of the universe and doesn’t let go. Eternity holds your hand. Is this the purple-est prose ever inspired by a The cars..they drift! Movie? I don’t know. All those big, big explosions.

The Shy One only slept over a handful of times, and each time, no matter how many times I’d gotten off (SO MANY) it was so hard to sleep next to him. I was wound up tight with excitement and wonder, not wanting to miss any chance to feel him breathing next to me. Mostly, I slept after he left in the early morning, exhausted and glowing. The sadness of him leaving so quick only occurred to me after I woke up. There should have been a way for him to stay and make me pancakes, but there was always the beautiful pull of home.

It wasn’t all a starfield of bliss. Once, he grabbed my hand to show me how he wanted his penis stroked, impatience and contempt glimmering through him in a way that made me wonder if I’d been doing it all wrong all along, if there was only one meant-for-him person in the world who knew how to do it right.

When I wrote the first draft of these paragraphs, my heart just melted and filled with peace: My darling just wanted to go home. I wish I’d found a way to be kinder about it, and kinder to myself about it. I wish, wish, wish I could have been a kind of home for him, that someday I’ll be that kind of home for somebody new. Somebody mine.

I got self-conscious sometimes about my blowjob skills. I worried aloud once that I was bad at it and I think he actually agreed. He could have meant “Yes, I know you’re self-conscious about it.” Or “Yes, you’re bad at sex.”

Given time, and maybe less judgement, I could have learned. I want to have that part of intimacy, where you take your time learning somebody’s body, letting him learn yours. Every pairing or constellation is a new beginning, and I hope for many more chances to learn.

This morning, I can see myself there in the middle of my biggest dream, maybe being bad at blowjobs, definitely fucking it up in other ways, and feel peace. Today, just for a little while, I’m tuned into my eternity wavelength, past present and future and never and nowhere all at once. Stillness and peace and ungrasping love. Something like acceptance.

Sex, Love, and The Shy One, Part One

It’s been three and a half months since his breakup email, not that long in the grand scheme of things, but I feel a lot of shame for not having moved on properly yet. I can feel him in my psyche, perhaps unfairly cast, the heartless, contemptuous version of him, hurrying me along like “What’s wrong with you? Why are you still thinking about this? What is the big deal?!”

I should probably think about where that judgey voice is coming from, because I don’t think that’s what he would say to me, if he said anything, which he doesn’t.

Three and a half months of perfect silence between us. Eventually my heart and mind will understand there IS no “between us.” Cold turkey is the only way when it’s this deep. I’ve quit smoking before, I know it eventually gets better, and this kind of quitting makes me way less bitchy.

I know this is right, that this is things working themselves out, but I just run low on faith sometimes. Patience wears thin like the toe of a sock, useful until it isn’t.

Last Sunday, I took a field trip with Rainbow Pal to the nature preserve over by the airport. We talked about everything, big talk only. I egged them on to message cuties in their Feeld queue and they did the same for me. We (Okay I) prevailed upon some strangers to take our picture in front of the beautiful waterscape. We saw a heron, turtles, yellow water flowers.

Rainbow Pal and I found the perfect shady bench to have a picnic of popcorn and fizzy water. The bench was pleasingly broad in the bright green dappled shade. I saw a frog hop close to the shore. The trees made a perfectly patterned net of coolness and light.

It was the perfect place for a sad confession. I told Rainbow Pal I was really struggling with the worry that sex might never again be as good as it was with The Shy One. We attributed his prowess to the fact that he’s been married so long. I mentioned that I’d wanted to send Mrs. Shy One a thank-you note after the first time.

I’ve been thinking all this time that he’s so good at sex because he’s so tended-to, so cared-for and thoroughly loved. He was so loved that he had extra love just lying around to give to me! I think I just explained polyamory. I’m so burned out and empty from all the sharing, but could I ever truly leave poly behind?

But putting aside Mrs. Shy One (PLEASE) and wherever else his beautiful skills came from, I need to untangle what his lovemaking meant to me. I need to claim whatever part of the experience as MINE.

I would attribute my swooniness and devotion to the love I felt for him, except, it was there RIGHT AWAY. From the moment I took his hand on our river-walk first date, I felt like: Oh. Yes. This.

His first touches were so kind, so meant for me, so loving before we ever knew each other at all. Maybe he IS just really, REALLY good at it, maybe everyone he kisses and touches feels that warmth, that thorough grace, but I want to believe that some of that sparkle, some of his hunger and softness and playfulness was just for me. I want to believe it sparked from the chemistry of just us, the alchemy.

“I love your body,” he said the first night, sitting behind me in bed and wrapping his arms around my waist. Simple and unbothered generosity. Animal bonding. Grace.

OMG I Almost Forgot This Awesome Ass Update!

Waaaaaay back during the Steampunks in 2013, I remember being jealous of Steampunk Girl’s story about her first anal sex. Her guy at the time had been so gentle, so careful, she said. He listened to her and let her go at her own pace, making it about intimacy, not conquest or transaction.

Marooned as I was with Steampunk Guy and my main partner, Divorce Grief, I couldn’t imagine a man ever being that kind, that tender towards me.

I’m kinda glad (Though still irritated!) that my Ass Project with Steampunk Guy got vetoed on account of feelings, because my ass journey with The Shy One was beautiful. I don’t remember exactly when my asshole came into the mix, but I love the memory of him playing there sweetly and lightheartedly, mischievous and amused. Standing over me, next to me, or behind me while I was on my knees.

Whereas Steampunk Guy would have ripped off the Band-aid (Probably a little traumatizingly) with gusto and wrecklessness, the Shy One was in it with me. He tried a few times, after lots and LOTS of other things, to enter my ass, but, though I relaxed my jaw (Like I learned in that one anal sex class I took!) and took deep breaths, I couldn’t convince my inner sphincter to relax. He tried, ring of pain, he stopped, repeat. Deliberate, responsive. A dream come true as he almost always was.

The closest The Shy One and I got to anal sex was during his after-the-big-trip visit. He’d missed me and he wanted all of me—even fucked me even though I was (I almost always was!) on my period. I wanted him to have all of me, and I pushed through the pain as much as I could. He was too big, or I was too deep-down tense, but it was close. He was inside me in a way that was totally new, in a way my body and my curious mind had wanted for SO LONG. Painful as it was, I was woozy with gratitude and wildly, helplessly in love, even more than I’d already been.

So part of the dream came true, hooray! Cue choir of slutty angels! But then, jetlagged and getting sick and also just him, he withdrew afterwards, both went home and became a little less reachable, and I felt abandoned. Abandoned is a big scary dramatic word for a grownup to be using, but there we are. In those needy, vulnerable, most love-dizzy moments, he went away from me. Even if he only withdrew a little, I felt foolish, lost, stupid. I felt like the world was being taken away just as quick as it had been given. Like the sun had stopped shining.

(I do wonder how much of that emotion I owe to my own trauma. I kinda wish he and I had been able to sit down and sort out our traumas like laundry. I wish I could know more about what he was feeling, whether those shifts to not-liking-me after sex were as real as they felt. But in the end, it’s as simple as “this feels bad” I think.)

I think, someday when I restart this part of the project, I’d like to be kinder to myself about it. I’d like to hold out for someone who wants to be with me after. A guy who feels the afterglow with me and wants to bask in it. Somebody patient who can pat my head and soothe the vulnerable feelings. He’ll bring me fizzy water and tell me what the experience was like for him. We’ll talk all night.

First Date, Full of Grace

 

OMG did you know there are guys who live BY THEMSELVES?! And you can just, like, go over there? Amazing.

Last Friday night, after work, I packed up some buttery chardonnay and some chips and drove ONLY NINE MINUTES for a couch date. It felt good to put on a cute bra, a low-key cozy-cute outfit, and nighttime lipstick! It felt so uplifting to just go talk to a cute stranger about whatever.

He was nice, and looked like he had lovely spankin’ hands, but he said something immature about my body that let me know this wasn’t the right guy for me.

And again, just like back at the heated blankets, a Shy One memory came like a visitation, only he’s not a ghost. The imprint was a clear rectangle of movie light on my soul. The way The Shy One used to move up my body with kindness and grace. With attention to detail. Married-guy ease and talent that I wanted to send Mrs. Shy One a thank you note for. A care I think I have to describe as dad energy. He took care of me. And now he’s taking care of me by being gone.

Back in real time, I hugged the nice but too-boyish thirty-something goodbye and realized it might be a while. Now that the push and pull and tears and hotness and dizzying affection of The Shy One are over (Have been over for a whole moon cycle.) my body, heart, and soul have time to understand what’s happened to us.

As I felt that time and space yawn out before me, I felt joy and relief and deep praise, from the top of my thoroughly beloved head to my driving-home toes.

I called BFF on the way home to brag about this date that hadn’t worked out, or had, in its own way. I felt giddy, sparkly, in a bubble of golden peace. (Don’t worry, I only had one glass of wine!)

Cozy in bed, I listened to the rain and wind outside, just wailing and spattering and gusting. I felt alive with the weather. I felt loved. I felt home.

An Absolutely Beautiful Mess: Part Three (I Win Fastest Heart Every Time)

 

I’ve been grumbling a little about The Good Boy’s not-out-ness, but I’ve got a little tangle of shame of my own to work on. I mean, I’ve got many, but let’s start with this one:

Love.

It’s not like I fall head-over-heels for everyone I’m attracted to, or that I don’t know what’s normal to say or feel after just a few dates, but my heart simply DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK what pace I would like it to move at. In the case of The Good Boy, the pieces slid into place before we even met, as soon as I felt him submitting to me by text, probably even before the app-to-texts promotion the best cuties get.

I’m sure there are plenty of explanations: It was my first time really trying to be a rope top, he’s superpretty and a little in need of rescue. We’re both teaching each other and learning from each other and that’s so so sweet. And you already know about the work-of-art cock.

I guess I’ve known it for a couple weeks at least, but yesterday when I told BFF-Formerly-Sweetie the actual “I love him” phrase, I started to cry a little and felt a gentle rush of relief. BFF and I agreed that I didn’t need to interrupt the pause to tell him how I feel. Then I interrupted the pause to tell him how I feel. When I heard back from him (Not love on his end, but the potential is there.) I felt the warm relief even more strongly, not just because it does, for now, really seem to be a pause and not a break-off. I felt all warm and full and settled into my skin because I told him how I felt. And it helped that he was very, VERY good about it.

But seriously friends, it would have felt less fraught if I’d been making an STI call. I feel so mad at myself sometimes for getting all-the-way smitten so fast, like I’m a crazy person or like I have something heavy and dangerous that I should have disclosed in advance. I would like to be less harsh with myself about it, to just name it when it arrives and let anyone who would flee, flee.

Now that I’ve said all that, let’s keep writing about this adorable Saturday-before-last.

Sex with the good boy is so pure and sweet. Not always gentle, he’s as rough and fast and pushy as I want him to be, but he fucks with his heart, every time. He held me in place like I like, but he did it by wrapping around me, pulling us all the way together like his limbs were the sweetest, softest, most lovingly sentient ropes. He was giving me his whole dear self and it felt so, SO good.

(In some alternate universe, this is also me-at-sixteen and The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow. This is how we may have intertwined in a 1992 world without Catholicism, without trauma, and of course with him being actually-bi and not just bi in my hopes.)

Afterwards, well-fucked and inspired, the praise flowed out, decorating him like the ropes had. I worry that I may have disappeared into the praise, but no matter, he deserves it.

The window was open, and he laughed at me for being so sure that I heard snow. (It was! Such pretty snow! And I really hate winter.) We laughed and talked for such a long time. Then I put on my sleep mask and, after another while, fell asleep on his shoulder.

This Meaningful Sex, Part Two

 

Before I wade back into the feelings, I’m writing myself a permission slip to put dating life aside until after New Year’s. (Aside from The Lovely Guy, who’s easy to trust and be myself around!) There are plenty of year-end crafts and projects to lean into, and I’m especially excited because I’ve decided that I don’t have to spend time with my unvaccinated brother! Having excused myself from traveling to family, I’m excited to spend the month in my own life, making room for whatever quietly arrives. I may even get to see a gemstone exhibit with The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, if I’m superlucky!

Anyway, back to the processing at hand. A (mostly in my own head, but still) horny week has given me a little perspective, but I still find it hard to imagine  connecting with anyone as much as I did with This Charming Man. I understand, on some level, that This Charming Man was maybe just really good at sex. But so were Steampunk Guy, Mr. Shiny Eyes, so IS The Lovely Guy. I remember that glimmer-of-love moment when I came with Mr. Sweetheart as Mr. Shiny Eyes held and kissed me. I remember the Mayor of Kittentown’s endlessly welcoming dick.

But this was the first time, with a man, that I felt truly present, safe, and adored. Truly intertwined with him, body and spirit. That feeling could have been solely provided by my ridiculous love-drunk imagination, but I don’t think it was. Not solely.

When I set out on this quest ten years ago (!), this was the thing I was looking for. Not just to be able to step over my decades of barriers and fuck men, but to learn how to fully and unselfconsciously let them in. It was the missing piece I’ve deprived myself of for so long. The longing crashed and burned so many relationships, probably a little bit this one too.

I told him, the last naked night, that no one had ever fucked me so right before. I don’t think that’s grammatically correct, but he said “thank you.” and sighed the most satisfied sigh. I loved the way he held my head up by my hair because he liked to watch me cry out for a while before he let me bury my head in the pillows. (Let us now praise doggie style, now and forever my favorite possible thing.) He would hold me so sweetly and gently after we (“good girl”) came, but his dick stayed hard and I liked just laying there, petting it. Making friends.)

(The time he slept over, in the morning as he was getting dressed, he let his dick stick up through top of his boxers, pointing upwards out the top of his jeans. Such a fucking treasure of an image, that alone makes all these paragraphs worthwhile.)

I don’t really know how to put these pieces together to help me understand how I ended up feeling so deeply, but I guess love doesn’t need an explanation. A few months ago, before I met him, when dating life started to be so exciting and unbalancing again, I told my then-therapist that my goal was to “let the moment live.”

And I did! I put the paragraphs aside for a little while, didn’t ask what the meaning or status was, just let us be. I just let him please me. I let myself have him.  I let down my guard and let us love, and even if he wouldn’t have phrased it that way, I think it was something real and true.

In the context of the five-millionth breakoff of this blog’s life, it’s hard to frame my time with This Charming Man as progress, as a major heart-victory, but it was and is. I wholeheartedly let a man in. I let us adore each other so fully until our time was done. As the heartbreak lifts, little by little, I can feel the truth of him return to my body and soul as the gift that he was. As a strength. As another facet of the love that I am made of.

I don’t want to face the world of men with the hurt and defensiveness I’m feeling now. Yes, I probably should screen better, but I also want to leave room to be open, to push myself, to be surprised. I hope that openness will blossom out of me before too long, but for now there’s the grief that honors this big important thing. For now there are Christmas crafts, and friend-plans, and gentle hope. Putting the swiping aside for a bit, I feel sad and free.

 

 

This Meaningful Sex: Part One

 

Thanksgiving was so much lovelier than I could’ve hoped for. Talking to my sister about the fancy garden break-off gave me some much needed perspective, as did just getting the heck out of town. Today, I made some gentle moves toward Whoever Is Next, but longing for This Charming Man is making me so blue. So I’m typing to lo-fi and disentangling the lost-love feelings.

Conventional thought says that hot sex can be distracting from seeing someone for who they really are, can keep us from powering along to better matches and more-fulfilled expectations. That’s certainly true in this case, but I think the opposite is also true.

Sometimes, I think, bodies know how to love in ways that hearts and minds can’t translate, aren’t ready to see, or just can’t fit into the rest of day-to-day life. Knowing who This Charming Man and I really are, the fact that we connected in ANY way, let alone a (to me at least) spiritually meaningful way, is a MIRACLE. It was a miracle created by the wisdom of bodies. (Okay, yes, also by the wisdom or post-quar horniness, and the not-wisdom-but-welcome break I took from screening for politics.)

The first time I felt him inside me, after ropes and so much other cuteness on our daytime second date, the FIT of him was uncanny. I do partly mean the physical fit—if I could write symphonies to his long, friendly, and eternally hard dick I would. But there was also, I felt, an emotional sliding-together. A rightness. A made-for-each-other. (Wait, is this how women who are used to PIV sex more than I am feel all the time? Is this swirl of attachments and emotions and chemicals something most people just know how to navigate?)

Even (especially) as he pulled my hair and I bit and twisted and sucked his nipples, I felt drawn into his heart, into tenderness and sweet team effort. Every kiss and touch and graze and handhold felt like a recognition, a welcoming home. You were made for me. We were assembled out of stardust and Hentai and playlists and national emergencies to care for each other in those hours, in those weeks.

Yes I know. Oxytocin is strong stuff. But so is love and fate and wet, slippery magnetism.

He was exceedingly PRESENT. He felt both entirely in service of my pleasure and SO turned on. Miracle, miracle, miracle. On our handful of nights together, whole albums went by, looped around once, twice. Long playlists weren’t long enough, the music only sometimes had to be tended to while we played, so easily.

Perfectly 1993 Guy, Part Nine

Someday maybe this blog will stop being a weird time loop, but for now we’re back in the late summer of 1993. Perfectly 1993 Guy and I had been fragmented all afternoon, ever since I accidentally used the word “temporary.” Still, we were back in my room, snuggled into the waterbed with its goldenrod yellow sheets. He had started making a mixtape for me before the trip, so he moodily clunked it into the tape player. The first notes of Blind Melon’s “No Rain,” not particularly our song but EXACTLY the song of that summer, made us both lose our defenses at once, made us melt into a heap of sweet sentimental slackerness, Slow kisses and maybe a few tears.

We lay there listening to what he had so far of the mixtape. It was…uneven. I was mystified by the inclusion of Nine Inch Nails’s “Head Like a Hole,”—I guess maybe he saw me as the one he served? There was nothing about that in either of us, so probably he just really liked the song. I still have it in semi-heavy rotation, so it’s not like he was wrong. I was tickled by Living Color singing “Everybody loves you when you’re bi,” assuming that the “everybody” in the song included him.

I don’t remember the auspicious, his-first-time, midnight-between-our-birthdays sex in detail, (sadly!) but I know it was sweet, kind, and halting, the first go-around endearingly teenage-brief. The second and third times, we found a quiet rhythm. I remember feeling a spark, a little asterisk of sure pleasure the last time he came inside me, less an orgasm than a…togetherness. A confirmation that I could be loved. A Bee-Girl-Finding-Her-Bee-People relief. A warm little flame of home in a body that often felt everywhere but.

Broke or modest that we were, we had only invested in a three-pack of condoms, so when we woke up the next morning with some exact small number of hours and minutes until his bus left, he wondered if we should go out and get some more. We didn’t. We stayed in each other’s arms until the last possible minute, until it was time for my dad to drive us to the bus station. Perfectly 1993 Guy had to get back to campus, and I had to figure out what my back-home life would be.

We promised to call and write, and we certainly did, glowing and fresh and sad as a not-yet-existent Get Up Kids song. I missed him SO much after he got on that Greyhound, and I a little bit pine for him still.

Gold Star for Mr. Shiny Eyes—and Me!

Last Wednesday, something really horrible happened to one of my students. It happened outside school, but it was very upsetting and shook me all the way down to my bone marrow. She’s okay now, but it’s hard knowing that it happened to anyone, let alone to a student I love.

When Sweetie and I got back from trying to visit her in the hospital Wednesday evening, we were sitting on the porch discussing whether or not I should call into work the next day to process. Just as that conversation was winding down to a yes, my phone rang, and it was Mr. Shiny Eyes, asking what I was doing the next day—he’d found himself an opportunity to drive in from out of town and visit.

Glad to hear joy in my voice, Sweetie said of course a visit was fine with her.

For most of last Thursday, I couldn’t move. I felt broken and guilty and devastated for all that I have that my students don’t have—a safe home, a loving group of friends and family, the ability to change my circumstances. I called Sweetie and apologized for needing to schedule some couch time, an apology she found ridiculous. I felt weepy and not-good-enough, hardly a way to go into a second date with someone I’m excited about.

Cleaning the apartment to get ready for him and making dinner for both Mr. Shiny Eyes and Sweetie (yay!) lifted my spirits a little but I felt really fragile and off when he arrived. Just like Sweetie had the night before, Mr. Shiny Eyes listened and listened as I kept on looping back to sad subjects.

After Sweetie had left us alone for snuggle time, I apologized profusely and repeatedly for being such a bad date when he’d come all this way, but he seemed shocked and dismayed with every sorry.

“I came here because I like you, the real you, and this is the real you right now. I didn’t just come here to have sex. But I’m still pretty sure we’ll have sex.

And we did. In fact, he asked if it would be okay to just forget all the kinks and “make gentle love” to me and it’s a little sad how seldom I’ve had that with guys. (But okay, I get other good stuff.) I relaxed into him and it was sweet and hot and satisfying.

Plus, once the lovemaking was accomplished, he was nice enough to end the night with a pretty thorough flogging that buoyed up my spirits even more.

And yet, I didn’t stop apologizing. There’s an annoying almost geishalike part of me that wants to be nothing but cheerful and pleasant and uncomplicated for men. I try to keep a cheery guard up lest they should think I’m difficult or high-maintenance or (that dirtiest of dirty words) needy. I have no problem sharing vulnerability with friends or with Sweetie, but when it comes to men I’m attracted to, there’s this irritating compulsion to behave. It’s insulting to them and stifling to me.

I’m grateful that life kicked my ass enough that I had no choice but to show Mr. Shiny Eyes my sometimes-a-wreck of a self. (I’m also grateful to anyone who reads the full wreck of it here, for that matter!) No choice even, than to at one point put my clothes on and just cry for a bit. He took such nice care of me, and even though second date tears aren’t my favorite thing, I’m so glad for the depth and difficulty that I shared during my second evening with Mr. Shiny Eyes. It’s a step towards learning to actually trust men, and it made my hoo-ha happy too.