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

That week, while my creative coaching client was collaging through her blocks, I made this. Both a staircase and a trapped butterfly, seems about right.

It should be said, friends, that my almost-year-and-a-half dry spell was a literal dry spell as well—I’ve always been the squishiest, but there was a while when I was so dry that I thought I might be starting menopause. I could just have stocked up on lube, but the idea of always having to was something I wasn’t ready to face, so I got by on spit and determination. From the moment I met J, the dry spell was over. I came home with soaked underpants every time, wetter than in all my adventures. It felt like a reunion, like a second chance at being alive, to be coursing with so much life, to be opening up like a flower. That’s why, no matter how it ended up, I’m glad I let my hoo-ha make the decisions for a while—that part of me (literally and figuratively) has been neglected for so long, I’m glad I didn’t begrudge myself a perilous treat.

When I met him, I was in a delicate but thriving state. It was the first time in my adult life that I could say I was truly happy to be single. I was teaching poetry in my pretty apartment, spending lots of time with my friends and at church, and starting to have faith about where I was going. However, back in February I had to resign from the school district due to acute stress disorder, and I’m still pretty jumpy and prone to panics about once a month. The fact that J. was triggering space issues seemed like it was partly due to my own recent and distant past, but typing the story to you makes it seem less likely that that was so. I am still brokeny, but I think I was scared of him because he was (unintentionally, I’m almost sure) scary—sometimes it’s not that deep.

Anyway, the day after our beautiful but ill-ended flower date, he sent a text apologizing and citing grief. I conceded that not everyone can be besties with their exes the way I (somewhat unhealthily) am with Sweetie. (Currently she and I work at the same three-employee store, she’s my boss, and we spend about an hour each morning processing my feelings about various things. All this with a person I once jumped out of a car to get away from. I know.) I told him to give me some time,  that I’d have to do some soul-searching, so we went to radio silence and a love poem proceeded to pour out of me in a way that hadn’t happened in a long time. I felt jangled but fired up. I made art all day that day.

(When I second-drafted the poem with my friends in poetry class, I noticed that it accidentally implied that I wanted to have babies, including feeling the vibration of his Apple watch as “Another little heartbeat.” and, seeing the children in the flower garden wearing glow bracelets, responding with “I want one” meaning but not really meaning the glow bracelets. I hid it pretty well before I posted it, but still, I was like, nicely done, subconscious! Got it.)

Anyway, maybe latent baby-wishes were what inspired me to give him a chance, or his prowess at planning dates, or the cuteness of his texting style. (It was the first time I’ve dated with emoji involved, and I can’t overstate the adorableness of a good morning sunflower rainbow kissy face…) Maybe (probably) it was just plain lust and curiosity. That Sunday, I took a beach trip by myself, to clear my head and make the right decision, and I knew (I always know things best in the ocean, even if it is with a bathing suit on these days.) that if I let him go, I would always wonder if there could have been something real between us. Also I have to admit there was the stupid “What if this is my last chance?” feeling that comes from being socialized to think of myself as ancient at almost-forty-one.

When he asked me a couple days before the date what I was in the mood for, I very brazenly and honestly said red meat. He sent me a couple of menus for fancy places I could dress up for, with very grown-up prices, and I thought, “Is this what regular dating women get all the time? I should start expecting more from life.” That was the central lesson of him, and I hope I can see it through.

The day before our third date, I had an enormous panic attack. The first week of classes is pretty much the only busy time our college bookstore job is stressful, just because of all the extroversion and sometimes-getting-trapped-behind-the-register it requires. The one rude kid on our super-adorable campus found me and I found myself with a pounding headache, unable to work or get myself home. A kind coworker brought me to the campus infirmary, where the nice nurse asked me why I had neither a therapist nor meds. Reasonable question. I got some good rest before the date, but I carried a residue of fear under my pretty black polka-dot dress. (Hello again, red satin heels!)

As I followed my GPS to the suburbs, everything started to look familiar, especially when I turned onto J’s block. Remember way back whenSteampunk Guy pulled over on a quiet suburban street for car sex? THIS RANDOM OKC GUY’S HOUSE WAS THE HOUSE WE PULLED OVER IN FRONT OF. J was one of the nice people I was trying not to wake with my sex yowls three summers ago. I didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one, but I’ve never been more sure that my love life is a labyrinth. So where had I returned to?

I can’t overstate my delight at being properly dated, to be out in the world being shown off in a fancy outfit, being treated like someone who’s someone instead of a dance card afterthought. I ate rare filet mignon and felt like an animal, like a sexy lion, like a woman who’s thoroughly alive. He ordered a good pinot with the inauspicious name “Writer’s Block” but I seem to be overflowing with paragraphs nonetheless.

The conversation turned again to his writing, which was a tricky subject. He’d told me before that he wrote erotic novels, and I (somewhat hypocritically) was scared to read them—I had a feeling we wouldn’t be able to go on if I read his stories, and probably I was right. He confirmed that “Well, let’s just say it’s not all consensual.” I didn’t ask him who in the stories was not consenting to what, only told him I was now A. Scared and B. Too tipsy to flee.

“But sometimes someone just needs a little…push…”

Okay, so this blog wouldn’t exist if that weren’t a little bit true, but I didn’t like hearing it from him. “That’s not up to you. It’s not up to you to decide what someone else needs.”

He rightly pointed out that he’d written it, not done it, but still, I felt so let down and sad. “I just want there to be one guy, one guy, who wants a real person next to him in bed.” Yes, there have been plenty, but I was having tunnel vision, heavy with the burden of trying to keep myself not-raped. In the do-over version, this is where I have the waitress split the check, wait around a bit to sober up, and grouse about it to my friends at brunch the next day. But as he paid the bill, the conversation simmered back to happy somehow and I admitted that what I wanted most in the world was just to tear. Him. Apart. I was getting in that pool, and no stupid thing he said was going to stop me.

Next time: Big moon, hot sex, more stupid things.

In Which I Realize How Lucky I Am to Have Had My Adventure Years: Part One

Well, friends, after a quiet and mostly happy-to-be-single year, I recently dipped my toe back into the treacherous waters of sexy times, and though I didn’t find a lasting connection, what I did find couldn’t be more illuminating.

Back in June, I got a crush on one of my coworkers at the college bookstore where I was part-timing. He talked to me about music. He recommended Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” and I found it excellent to type to. After all that time of not getting ridiculous over anybody, I could not stop flirting with him as we alphabetized the textbooks that got bought back at the end of the semester. Then I realized he was 23 and I could reasonably be his mom, so I went back to OKC to hit on guys my own age.

The one I found was tall and dorky-cute and of course beardy, and was especially attractive to me because he’s Unitarian and I have this dream of going to church with a boyfriend someday. On TOP of that, he’s a single dad (nothing hotter) with a SWIMMING POOL in his back yard. I’m too heartachey to make up a nickname, so I’ll just call him J.

He sent me his blog address before our first date and I found some red-flaggy things on there (Like a MILLION paragraphs about how the Cold Stone Creamery once accidentally put nuts in his sundae.) but thought it was best to give him a chance and get to know him in person. I’m so glad I did.

Rather than doing the supersensible thing and just meeting for gelato on our first date, he asked me out for the art museum AND dinner AND a movie—Trainwreck, which I’d been superexcited to see. He! Brought Me! A Mix CD! On! A! First! Date! A little heavy on the ethereal-voiced women, but still. After about an hour in the museum, I felt so powerfully drawn to him that I wanted to push him against the wall right there in the Dadaists.

He was the first guy to take me to see a rom-com on a date, and that was a snugglesome experience. We ended up making out by the river while a wedding down the way provided the cheesiest of accompaniment: “Aaaal of me, aaaaal of you.” It was beautiful and dreamy, but he was one of those guys who steals second base, and I kind of let him. I found myself in the back of his car in the art museum parking lot with my panties down before I remembered I mostly prefer privacy these days. We talked about our fantasies and his were a couple of more red flags: erotic hypnosis and being taken advantage of in his sleep. Not really boding well on the enthusiastic consent front, but that isn’t where this story is going.

Our second date was even more of a romance-bomb: A night time light show in a fancy flower garden. We kissed under a tree and I felt like I was one of the Impressionist paintings from our first date. As we walked down a magically-lit garden path, he sang “All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here, in my arms…” As we approached a woodsy treehouse structure, we sang together: “Blue canary in the alley by the light switch, who watches over you…”  So what hope did I have of making rational decisions?

Next time: BDSM in the Flowers, Bitterness and Cake

Real Date/ Car Sex With Steampunk Guy Part Three: Thanks, Pal

As I was on my knees next to him kissing him in a fit of post-panic second-wind lust, his hand went up my skirt and inside the back of my underpants. “Hmm, let’s see, how’s your ass doing?”

“Yes. Yesyesyes,” is how it was doing. This time I wasn’t self-conscious, just gave over to the sensation of it and tried not to exclaim too loudly, but jeez, goodness, he was hitting the spot. Let us now praise the summer of my ass.

He told me to face away from him and sit in his lap so I maneuvered myself behind the passenger’s seat and did so. Car sex with a guy is just as awkward as I’d imagined it would be, but also just as hot. I sat down and pushed his cock into my pussy and groaned and sighed. It was hard to get a good angle to push back against him but I stopped caring about that for a little while because oh my goodness his finger was in my ass, further and further in and oh the catharsis of it, the absolute happiness. He pushed into me hard and I bent all the way over and braced myself against the passenger’s seat, hugging it, almost bent in half. Jesus Christ, I was thirsty and sweaty and tear-stained and newly divorced but this? This was exactly right. Sometimes I’m awesome at life in spite of myself.

I pulled away to take a breath and my head got pushed down to him again—more of him being too big, pushing the limits if what my throat could handle, making me feel full and debased and whoreish and scared and wonderful.

He put the seats down so that I could lay down on my belly the way I like, held my shoulders down and fucked me, the car bouncing cartoonishly, the whole world back-and-forth, sweat and fireflies and hazy suburban stars.

Afterwards it was too hot to cuddle much so we lay back and chatted. His hand wandered over to my boob and it felt so good that I almost reached down to finish myself off again (I did that when I got home. Twice.) (Note to Steampunk Guy: More good old-fashioned feeling-up, please. If it’s not too much trouble.) but he was getting his clothes back on. He helped me find my very damp underpants and I wriggled back in to them and lay back down. My sweaty hair was hanging off the end of the pulled-down seats. I was all flushed and content like I’d just been in the ocean. I asked for one more hug and he laid on top of me and smushed me instead-perfect.

Then we drove around. This was a town he used to live in. He drove me past his old barracks and told me about the family of ducks that used to live behind his old apartment. When we stopped at a convenience store for water and Junior Mints, I realized I was having trouble walking and that my hair was a spectacular mess.

I told him the story of why I’m protective of my voice, but it didn’t hold much power in that moment. Now that I knew I was capable of fighting back, of a well-placed “Fuck you,” I had a little more faith in myself and the trauma of all those years ago seemed like the tiny part of my life that it is. Thanks pal.

Real Date/Car Sex With Steampunk Guy, Part Two: A Hand Over My Mouth

We didn’t go make out in a park. After a little more dawdling around, he pulled the car (a little SUV, I guess) onto a quiet side street. He left on the air and the radio. (Top 40. Making out to One Direction is probably the dirtiest thing I’ve ever done.) I told him that I love being spanked in cars. I snuggled up to him and he pulled up my skirt and obliged. He still felt abstracted and I wasn’t sure he wanted me, so I goaded him into hitting harder and harder.

We kissed and he pulled me to him by the hair. My legs were already splayed open and his hand went between them, stroking the already-damp crotch of my panties and then going inside, pushing his fingers up into me.

He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled open his pants, pulled a condom on and grabbed the back of my head, pushing me down towards his cock. I was happy to have him in my mouth, even as he thrust all the way into my throat and I gagged and fought for breath. He pushed my head down so hard that it hurt, hands in my hair, kneeling down in front of him behind the driver’s seat. This is the good kind of humiliating, filthy in just the right way. Writing this makes me want his dick in my mouth even more, in a fantasy world where I could taste it.

Hands still tangled into the back of my hair, he pulled me up to kiss me. I straddled him and put my arms around him, wanting to be as close as physics would allow. He moved aside my panties to put himself inside me. This is a move I’ve fantasized about for as long as I can remember, and it did not disappoint. He has a way of pulling my fantasies out into the real world, and I hope he’d proud of that.

I pushed into him and felt a rush of both relief and hunger. I wanted all of him. I wanted to eat him alive. I held on as tightly as I could as we thrust into each other, and, forgetting that we were parked on a quiet suburban street in front of people’s well-manicured lawns, I let out wails of pleasure.

The bad thing happened so fast—his hand over my mouth, a limit broken. And I was PISSED.

“Fuck you.” I huffed, pulling the hand away and hoisting myself off him and onto the other seat in one swift flutter of movement.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I forgot.” I could tell that it was a genuine mistake, not something he’d done to hurt me. “It’s just, you can’t be that loud…”

I sat and cried, aware of how squishy my bare ass was on the seat, having teacherly thoughts about Clorox wipes. Sobs of panic came out and I felt defeated, like every guy-story has to end this way.

He was being apologetic and asking me if I was okay, but he has also still stroking his cock. I wanted to be the one stroking it, I wanted to be all over it, but I felt like all I could do was go home. “Thrift Shop” came on the radio and made me laugh at the not-awesomeness of the situation.

I asked him to hook my bra for me and when he did, something shifted. Something about the heat and softness of his hand on my back made the story change for me. I pulled him toward me and disappeared into kissing him, ran my hand down his belly to what I really wanted. I could decide where the story went next, and it was going to heat and decadence and not tears. I didn’t have to be afraid of a hand over my mouth any more. In fact (not to reward bad behavior, but I have to tell the truth) I’m kind of attracted to it.

Next: Long live the summer of my ass.