A Tender Date, A Little Ghosting, Part One

 

My date with Thoughtful Guy last Sunday was so lovely, even if the naming was a little premature. We met on my Favorite Woodland Trail. I instantly felt comfortable with him. By coincidence, we both wore pink. I saw a fellow hiker smiling to herself as she passed us. We were CUTE. I took the perfect selfie of us with the trail and bright trees and was sooooo excited that he’s out as poly and I could post it! Probably even tag him!

I had wondered if the trouble with past folks hadn’t been the poly at all, but the closet! This sweet connection seemed like a good way to find out.

Telling Rainbow Pal about him earlier in the week, I said “I listened to him talk about bringing his five partners home for Christmas. It kinda made me want to join him like a cult.”

(I’m not saying polyamory is a cult. I’m saying that there are tendencies there, just like there are with any ingroup that involves humans and our tender need to belong. I definitely have a culty relationship to poly. I’ll say more about that in Part Two.)

Since I’ve committed to the (Maybe long! Maybe futile! Definitely worth it!) quest for Actual Boyfriend Guy, I’m not sure why I swiped right on such a very poly character, but I absolutely could not resist the face. In a long text thread before the date, he said he was very concerned, rightfully so, that I was describing myself as “probably poly.” (And that was probably rounding up. Today I’m landing on the admittedly wishy-washy “monagamish.”) He didn’t just want to be a fling, he said. “Don’t worry,” I told him, “We’ve already flung.”

(Why are we talking like this before we even met in person? The word “lovebombing” has whispered through my brain all week, though I don’t think it’s fair. Attraction. Hope. Affinity. Fate?)

Back to us being cute on Favorite Trail, it was humid and buggy and I really wanted to take him home, so we didn’t walk far. Back at the trailhead, as we parted to go to our respective cars, I kissed him on the cheek and felt giddy and sexy and joyful.

Once I had him in my apartment, we kissed for real and it was perfect. A kiss like this is a miracle all on its own. A lifetime worth of goodness. Soft, wet, firm, emphatic. I was breathless.

“Okay, I’m ready to join your team,” I gushed. “Contact HR. Send me the packet. When is orientation?”

(I’m just gonna stop and notice that Thoughtful Guy shares a name with a famous cult leader. It’s not relevant, but it a little bit is.)

Upstairs, he was INTOXICATING. As we cuddled, kissed, grinded, looked for tickle spots, I went from swoon to swoon. I felt both urgent and stunned, an almost debilitating bliss. This guy. <3

He did a thing no other lover has ever done—he treated the fat at my waist as part of the hotness! He grabbed and kneaded and I groaned with delight and surprise. More of this please!

“Just lay there and be you,” he said, and I did. He was like a day at the beach and I lay there, we lay there, still and sunny.

When (Awesome) Sluttiness Feels Like Armor

Possibly wine is stronger that it used to be pre-pando? My first going-for-a-drink since before quarantine was a really fun fiasco that kinda helped me get around to at least sort of knowing what my deal is.

When Poly Friends’ Partner asked if I wanted to hang out a few weeks ago there was no indication that it was other than friendly, but an OH MY GOD CAN I PLEASE JUMP ON HIM bolt of excitement came out of basically nowhere and made everything distracting and prolific and fun for a little while. I guess I could have asked him the above all-caps question in advance but I really did want to be there as a friend—we hadn’t talked in at least ten years, and it seemed like a friend-match that made a lot of sense.

So while he was telling me all about his various connections and I was feeling both covetous and compersiony, I did SUCH a good job of being Ms. Cheerleader of Other People’s Snuggling while he used the word “friend” like a BILLION times but was also pretty flirty so it was pleasantly confusing, but not too much so. He talked about music and domming and writing enough for me to wish we could be a thing, and the amount I was hitting on him was, in the words of Jack Donaghy, a lot to very.

Poly Friends’ Partner’s life is so glowy and connected, so warm and open, that I felt bowled over with longing to be a part of it, or rather, to be the kind of person who’d be a part of it. It wasn’t disingenuous when I brazened my way through stories about my slutty bunch of years or nudged him for more details of his own adventures, but I was trying to be brave, to be tough, to hide the all-caps sexy feelings behind gameness so I wouldn’t have to face rejection or seem like a threat to his lovely bubble of a world.

I found myself in a pinkly drunken haze sitting on a stranger’s stoop waiting for a Lyft that didn’t come and then finding coffee and my favorite busline. I ended the night yammering loopily on the phone to Sweetie about how I was 40% SO EMBARRASSED and 60% ELATED and how I LOVE wine and I LOVE my busline and how everything was very confusing but not really.

I knew all I had to do about PFP was..NOT.

This morning, when I got a text that read like “Hear ye, hear ye, this is your official notice that I don’t want to snuggle” followed by a winky face (How am I almost forty-seven years old and vexed by a winky face?!) (I know it was meant as a kindness but honestly poly people it’s too much with the communication sometimes. I can figure out you don’t wanna without the Magna Carta).I was hurt and sad and disappointed, but I also understood that I was trying to get back to a place where I definitely don’t belong.

All the adorable poly stuff feels like a (SO CUTE) should statement, as a therapist might say. It sometimes feels like a world I have to get back to in order to be seen at all, like in order to be good enough for men, that I have to find a place in the puzzle of poly. Like I have to figure out how to want both less and more than I do.

I want someone who just wants me. I want to be someone’s favorite. I can’t make myself be any less than the full Call Me Maybe, as frustrating as it is sometimes and as terrifying as men seem to find it. In a few days or weeks this crush will simmer down and I’ll find things to do with all this pent up energy. I’ll try to keep admitting that I want the rom-com even if it seems SO DUMB of a thing to hope for.

 

Snuggles in the Time of Kavanaugh, Part Four

            Part of the reason the Kavanaugh hearings were so painful and traumatizing was that Dr. Ford’s testimony recalled my own teenage rape so clearly. I felt protective of Gilmore Guy as he helped me navigate those feelings, mostly by being wonderful and adorable and nice-smelling and superhot.

            But when, after several increasingly tense attempts at PIV sex, it started to slide into place, I could feel his focus on his penis’s performance. His determination and fixation made me feel like I wasn’t there, like he wasn’t there either. I slipped back from this safe, celebratory moment to that decades-ago drugged, mouth-covered, trapped, lost teenage feeling. I lost the battle against panic and told him so. He stopped, of course, looked scared and concerned. I felt all of my OWN pressure to get back to cheerful so we could fuck, my own increasingly futile determination to not be so scary with all of my feelings.

            “What do you need?” He asked again and again, in a voice that was at once scared, caring, and businesslike. I apologized for panicking and he said something understanding about “emotional labor” which struck me as a sad phrase to have to use on a second-or-third date. Nonetheless, he cared for me and treated me kindly, to the point where I wanted to return the good-listener favor. I asked him what was on his mind and he said:

“I miss (Gilmore Lady).” I just couldn’t help it, I started to cry. It wasn’t cute crying by any stretch—lonely, hurt, sad tears, empty and heartbreaking. It was a moment of inescapable honesty and I lost all attempts at being I-love-sharing-modern-open-relationships lady.

I cried and cried and confessed and confessed. I told him how much I want to be someone’s sun and moon and stars (“Not YOURS. Not on the second date. I’m not CRAZY.”) how what I really wanted was romance, how I’d already told him in the woods that I’m not a secondary.

“Do you want me to go?” He asked delicately.

“No. You can think I’m crazy tomorrow. Just… don’t go.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said forcefully, climbing back into bed and wrapping me up in his arms. As kind as he was, and even as he didn’t mind me playing a guided meditation to try and get to sleep, I couldn’t settle in next to him. I went downstairs to the couch and almost immediately, exhausted and scared (not of him) I fell asleep in my own personal space.

When I woke up in the morning and, after my morning writing, meditation, and Spanish practice, went upstairs to him, I saw all over again what a gift he was. He was just lying there on his belly checking his phone, locks in a grey bandanna and fanned out over his naked back and shoulders, looking like a perfect treasure of a man, and I told him so. I really didn’t want to let him go, and we made the VERY most of the morning until it was time for me to get ready for work.

We made plans for the weekend. We texted and texted and texted. I sent him long, fretful, feminist paragraphs and he sent kind and thoughtful responses back. I could send him fraught texts in the middle of the night without scaring him away, that does not go unappreciated. He was a champion. He really tried, and so did I.

When it came time for our third-or-fourth date, a NO rose up in me so strong and goddessy that it felt like it was coming from the center of the earth. I said rather more than I meant to about unicorn hunters and the treatment of secondary partners how I might LOOK less-than, but wasn’t.

He looked regretful and sad as he left, and I was sad too. But more than sad, I was SURE. I was brave. I could see and admit what I wanted, even though poly norms and society in general would tell me to expect and accept less. I was embarrassed that I’d said so much, but mostly I just felt proud.

A week or so after that, Gilmore Guy and I exchanged kind goodbye/thank you texts, and I’m glad. I couldn’t be more grateful for his visit to my life, and I’m glad I got to tell him so directly instead of just hoping that he reads this.

I feel like I am a new and different person in a post-Dr.-Ford world. Her bravery is a new resource that empowers me to stand up for myself in the screaming-at-the-Supreme-Court way but also in the smaller, more daily, even in the more snuggly ways. I can’t say enough about my gratitude for Dr. Ford and for all of the women who came before her and with her. My childhood self had Anita Hill, my present day self has Christine Blasey Ford, and we both have Murphy Brown, so I think everything might be okay.

            After I said goodbye to Gilmore Guy, I changed my “Relationship Type” in OK Cupid to monogamous. I’m not sure that’s exactly right either, but there’s no “sun and moon and stars” option. So far, it has the same trials and indignities as it did before, but also the same hope. Steven and Gilmore Guy kindled a good flame in me, and I’m going to take care of it.

Gilmore Guy, Part Two: I Let My Pants Decide

This Lorelai quote isn't QUITE how I feel (the phrase "that couple life" kinda gives me the heebie jeebies) but this DOES become a story about what I really want. Just...not yet.

Gilmore Guy has a Gilmore Lady, a long distance but primary partner. Although I don’t fit the poly mold these days (if I ever have), I wouldn’t have ruled him out for having a partner, though the hierarchy in the word “primary” did raise a flag of hesitation. But the appeal of connecting with Gilmore Lady, whether in friendship or otherwise, was also a factor.

As Gilmore Guy and I walked along in the woods, we talked easily and flirted gently. He told me about the cocktails he’d designed based on Star Trek, (How is Deep Space Nine anyone’s favorite, BTW?!) I told him how much I’m loving my job these days, we talked about how much we both hate fascists, normal 2018 stuff. Things were so easy and fun and he looked so dapper, I was inspired to have him pose for a picture in front of a nice stretch of creek.

When I asked if I could post the picture, there was hesitation, and my heart dropped. Gilmore Lady is looking for a job, he explained, and they couldn’t be as out as I am. They’d agreed not to have other partners on their social media accounts, which just made me sad. I mean it’s kinda like, love me, love my Instagram, even though of course I respect people’s right not to have their pictures shared. Still, I hadn’t asked to tag him or anything, so the closety-ness didn’t sit right.

(I also realize that this is exactly what someone would say if they weren’t in fact IN an open relationship, at least not one the other partner knows about, but I’m doing my best to take him at his word.)

We kept happily walking along making plans for that evening, but I kind of knew it wouldn’t work. To have something intimate in my life I couldn’t document and share felt lonely and sad, felt like an artistic limitation, and I told him so. Maybe that’s not fair, but it just didn’t feel right.

“I’d better not come over tonight,” I said, much to my own chagrin. I told him I don’t feel comfortable in hierarchies, shared a little bit of the solo-poly chip I still have on my shoulder while trying not to sound bitter. I probably sounded bitter.

There were still 30 minutes of hike back to the car, and much of it was in painful silence. We walked in frozen awkwardness as I tried to buoy the conversation, talking even more candidly since it wasn’t going to work out.

I’m sure it was partly just me wanting to take care of his feelings, but there was something about him that still made me curious. As the conversation shifted to kink (always an ice-breaker when confronted with a taciturn man…) I could feel a playful power dynamic between us.

“I have to admit you’d be fun to boss around,” I said. The conversation and my body rallied to make me want to forget his closet-y stuff, made me wonder if taking pictures is really that important. (IT IS) As we (ostensibly about to say goodbye) talked about the things we like and I told him a little about my adventures (this consisted mostly of sighing about ropes) sex came into the conversation like a benevolent pink force that lifted and carried us along. I was happy to let it.

He told me some more of his submissive fantasies and between the woods and dropping him off at home, I had talked myself out of telling him no.

“Can I wear pajamas when I come over?” (Remember when this option was my requisite for going almost ANYWHERE?)

“Of course, wear whatever you want. Wear nothing!”

A few stoplights later, I harrumphed “Do I have to SHAVE anything? I mean, not that I would.”

“No, I actually prefer hair, though it’s none of my business.”

Gold star.

(Side note: I also stopped shaving my legs a couple of years ago and I hope to never go back. Hope there are guys out there who think fuzzy legs are cute, ‘cause that’s what I’ve got.)

By the time I dropped him off (I had some afternoon work to do, we agreed to meet up later) I was wet and glittery with anticipation. I wondered how I would concentrate all afternoon, with Gilmores, mojitos, and HIM to look forward to. I was glad I’d let my pants decide—I’ve gotta do that once in a while.

In Which I Realize I Am Really Lucky to Have Had My Adventure Years, Part Six

Before I do all of the analyzing and narrating, I want to stop and say I miss him. I liked him so much. He was soft and warm and sweet and strong, and he gave me so much pleasure and inspiration. Whatever else was true during those weeks, there was a deep happiness that rang in me like a bell.

After the pool afternoon, my smittenness with J. had both good and bad effects. First and foremost, I was dizzy with joy because A. He was driving an hour each way that Thursday to have a campus on the pretty, Hogwarts-like campus where I work and. B. Our next date was going to include him not only going to my Unitarian church with me, but bringing water from his pool to add to our beginning-of-season water ceremony.

The joy I felt at the idea of him joining me at church cannot be overstated—I kinda lost my mind. Having been married to an atheist all those years, I longed for a partner I could go to church with, and even though none of the women in my family attend church, I knew it was part of my big, almost-too-scary-to-wish-for dream. Granted, he was also an atheist (Unitarians have those) who refused to call it church, but that did nothing to dim my enthusiasm.

Last Christmas Eve, I was sitting in the pew with The Cute Church Couple (on our friendaversary!)  and their beautiful baby girl. I joked that I was saving a spot for my boyfriend, in case this was actually a Hallmark movie. Later, when church started to fill up, I started to move over, but the Cute Church Husband said “No. Save that spot.” I was touched at his belief in my not-that-crazy church boyfriend dream, and I still take a lot of comfort in that story.

The bad part was, though, the more I liked J, the more I thought women would be lining up any minute to care for him and the boys. I felt like I had to be more grateful, to spoil him more so he wouldn’t go away. (And that I had to be creative about that, since he purported to not like blow jobs…) I also felt (I can’t believe I’m saying this!) slightly guilty for insisting on condoms when he clearly disliked them so much. To quell my anxiety on the whole question of them, I offered to provide them for our next date, since I was hosting. I had him send me a picture of the package we’d gotten together, since he said they were okay.

Also, I felt a great deal of worry wrapped up in making him a picnic—he mentioned food and health several times and was quite a lot more fit than I am, so I started to have a little trouble with food. (Sample comment: Me: “I always have a treat after therapy, and you’re better than a macaroon.” He: “And healthier for you.”)  (Um, no.)  I made salads with chicken breast and brought little teeeeensy slices of birthday cake. I worried that he would end up controlling my eating, and also that I was too fat for someone as fit as he. He’d only mentioned it in tiny ways, but it grew a furrow of anxiety in my mind.

Nonetheless, when the work day of the picnic came, I felt like a romance millionaire. It was raining when I got in, so I parked in an off-to-the-side spot and cleared my backseat in case we had to have a car picnic. I spent the morning packing up boxes of books for returns and gazing dreamily out the windows at the rain and the starlings in the tall trees. I didn’t want him to see me behind a register, but we’ll get to why in a later post.

Sweetie/the boss even said I could take a long lunch and promised to be on her best ex-wife/best-friend behavior. That made me a little nostalgic for the poly days, and I wondered if seeing her there with me would make him bolt the way some of my other not-poly suitors had. I wished I was further along in the moving-on process, so I guess I’m working on that now for the next guy.

When he got to the store, it wasn’t raining but it was still wet. I suggested my backseat but he said no, he wanted to walk across campus and get his family picnic basket; he had a present in there for me. The present was this: a glow stick. From the line in my poem that accidentally said I wanted kids. And I wish I could say that I didn’t let myself wish what I wished, which was: That he would be the one. That he would change his not-wanting-more-kids mind someday and give those boys a baby sister. I have a name picked out, it arrived in my consciousness one evening over the summer, as if from nowhere.

“I asked for a glow stick and got one!” I exclaimed with glee, “Should’ve wished for a million dollars.” (That’s what Sweetie always says to me whenever synchronicity brings me surprisingly apt gifts.)

The campus has these red, green and yellow Adirondack chairs strewn around and we tried sitting in those under a pine tree, at first. I felt princessy and cared for as he napkined the rain off of our chairs. As we settled in, though, it started to rain harder, so we made for the porch of the most castle-like building on campus.

“We were too far apart in the chairs anyway.” I said.

“We’re too far apart even when we’re on top of each other, so…” So romantic, but also…not.

There happened to be a table with two chairs on the porch, and he wondered aloud whether we should sit on opposite side or together. Judge John Hodgman disapproves of sitting on the same side of the table, but Judge John Hodgman was not there.

Lunch chat was mostly pleasant and sweet. We took a lovey-dovey my-head-on-his shoulder selfie that makes my heart ache just think about it. We kissed and cuddled a campus-appropriate amount. The STI testing conversation that I had kind of skipped over last date had been hanging over my head, but it was without trouble except that he sounded kind of naïve. I mentioned the possibility of someday going on birth control, which is a huge deal for me. (Just, I’m a delicate machine. And the side effects sound scary. I wish I were more easygoing about it, but not yet.)

He set off alarm bells, though, when he offered some very creepy Svengali-like help to my creative coachees, about whom he knew virtually nothing. It made me wonder again what I might be getting manipulated into.

Still, the rain and magic won out. He said he wished we’d seen a rainbow, and I said we were the rainbow. The rain stopped exactly when I had to walk back to the store, take that, Mr. Atheist. (I don’t really think that’s what god is, but also I felt like god wanted us to cuddle.) On my commute home was download-This-Is-Water miserable, but glances at our selfie gave me almost as much comfort as the 90210 recap podcast that is currently my favorite.

Coming up: Special underpants, hello/goodbye.

In Which I Realize I Am Really Lucky to Have Had My Adventure Years: Part Four

Back during my divorce summer, when I swam away from Sweetie and came to the realization that what I really wanted was a husband, what I wanted more than anything was a man to play with me in the waves. Wherein Sweetie was grumpy at the prospect of fighting the surf, I wanted someone strong and vital who would change into the water the way I did. I had a vision of being picked up and carried and kissed in the water. This night came so close to that picture that no wonder I ended up diving into him.

When we got back from dinner, it was dark and a huge orange moon was rising over the pretty/samey houses on view from his back yard. He’d told me many times that I didn’t need a bathing suit, but I’m still in my privacy phase. I wore my pretty blue one printed with hydrangeas. I am at my heaviest right now so I felt a lot of worry that he wouldn’t be attracted to me anymore when he saw my thighs.  We sat at the edge of the pool with our feet in the water on the little swim-out seat.

He said, “I think you’re scared of what’s gonna happen after this.”

“After the pool?”

“I’m scared too. I’m out of practice.”

“Me too, high five!” I may be more shy in some ways, but at least I’m still a high-fiver. “What I’m really scared of are the bonding chemicals that are gonna come afterwards. Because science.”

He didn’t seem to object to the bonding chemicals. Honestly, every step of the way, I was sure that he liked me. I still kind of am, though that doesn’t explain how things turned out. When I stepped into the pool, I put my foot down weird, so that the edge of the seat smashed me between my toes. My middle toe hurt so badly that I wondered if it was broken. Nonetheless, I jumped the rest of the way into the deep end, a little conscious of the nondainty splash I probably made.

After a few minutes of watching me swim (I loveloveloved when he watched me swim. I love the satisfied way he admired me—it’s been a long time since I’ve been looked at like that.) he jumped in too and it was like something I’d already lived, like I was fitting into one of my life’s puzzle pieces. The water was cold and it was a breezy evening, but the shivers came from somewhere down deeper. He held me and kissed me gently until I said “I’m torn between being really turned on and really cold, do you want to go in?”

I borrowed his shower to rinse off the chlorine and he lent me his scratchy grey robe. I wished I had nice warm pajamas to change into, but instead, I had nice warm him.

It hurts to remember how right our bodies felt (one of my poets wrote in a poem once that bodies are the easiest ways to fit), how well he kissed me, the softness of his skin, the scratchiness of his beard, the strength of his arms. More than anything, I loved remembering how sometimes sex just runs itself, how at first we knew what to do with each other like it was destiny, and in its own way, it was. I’ve never been more ready to have someone inside me, never this sure that what I was doing was real. I felt free to look in his face, in his eyes, and saw only kindness there. The barriers I’ve almost always felt to connecting with men were not there. It felt solid and sweet.

There were hardness issues at first, which he explained by saying that he had trouble with condoms, that he wasn’t used to them. It seemed bonkers to be talking about not-condoms at this (or any) stage of things and I felt a little surge of impatience. I was kind of like “Well, welcome to my world” but sympathized/rationalized that maybe he was just missing married sex. It tugged at my heart strings but at the same time I was (in my head) like dude, just grow up.

The hardness issues worked themselves out in good time, he lost all tentativeness and hard and long and perfect—that feeling that’s so delicious that I can’t even deal with how much I want it, how much I miss it. He pulled my hair and pinned me down and went deeper and I looked up at him and saw someone who was mine, not somebody else’s boyfriend whom I’d have to turn in at the end of the night like in the poly days. In that teensy spate of time, he belonged to me, there was nothing and no one else, and the inside of me was (just for right then) sated and quiet.

This happened a few more times until we ran out of condoms, at which point he mentioned again that what he really liked going without. He said that, although he didn’t like blow jobs (You guys! Was I really willing to give up blow jobs for someone? Yes, I was.) (Also, did he really not like them or just want a bargaining chip? Gross line of thought.) he might “Let me try it,” but I said no thanks, there were plenty of things he was enthusiastic about for me to do. (This turned out to be perfectly not the case in the end, but we’re still several posts away.) Because he kept perseverating about the no-condom thing after I’d said no a couple of times, I told him I was scared of him again. I asked him about his fantasy of being sleep-ravished, he wouldn’t do that to me, would he? “Not if you don’t want me to,” he said,

“Because then I wouldn’t be able to say yes…” I honestly wasn’t sure he saw the problem.

I slept badly. He snored and my body was so far beyond awake. Although he’d brought me an ice pack for my toe, it was throbbing. If it had been up to me, we’d have stayed up fucking and snuggling and chatting all night. I tossed and turned and apologized for tossing and turning. I got him to turn off the radio and all of the devices that beeped at random intervals.

I had maybe two hours of sleep and was awakened at six AM by an alert-in-every-way J. listing off the things we could do about being out of condoms. “We can not have any more sex today, we can go without, or we can go to the drugstore and get more condoms. Are you coming with me?”

All I wanted was to be asleep and I had this creepy obligated feeling-- he was treating his morning wood like a contract I’d already signed, possibly in my sleep. And I was PISSED that he mentioned going without again. I was beyond trying for patience and snapped “Not unless you want BABIES,” knowing he didn’t. Now I can’t help but wonder—did he not know how this thing works? How could he be married with kids and still seem like he skipped seventh grade health class?

“Just because I said it doesn’t mean it’s a real option. I honestly don’t think not having more sex is an option either.”

I jumped out of bed, found his robe, and ran down the steps. “Help me find my glasses, I need to get out of here now.”

“Wait, what? So you’re not going to my U.U. fellowship with me?” (Oh for Christ’s sake, just fucking call it church!)

“I’m not going anywhere with someone who says I have no fucking choice.”

I was too tired and upset to drive home so I lay down on his couch in the scratchy robe and cried. His golden-eyed black cat came over to see me, rubbed his ears against my hand. J. didn’t even bring me a blanket until I sniveled for one. He went out to get me some coffee and I simmered down.

When he got back, we talked and somehow made it back to cuddle mode. I had to give him credit for staying calm and weathering the triggers—I still couldn’t be sure if it was him or my baggage causing them, probably a combination of both. We went and got condoms, a picnic breakfast, and a toothbrush for me so I could make myself more comfy. We fucked through the morning and then dragged ourselves out of bed to go jump in the pool. It was a sunny, dazed feeling of fear, judgment, and bliss.

I wanted to accept him, to embrace him without fear, to honor his (sometimes) generosity and the eagerness of his gorgeous penis, but I couldn’t stop finding reasons to be afraid.

Next time: My heart opens and I let him in.