May 23, 2022: A Letter to Myself From Unconditional Love

 

Elizabeth Gilbert has a quarantine-era meditation on Insight Timer that I still use sometimes on badbad days: https://insighttimer.com/elizabeth_gilbert_writer/guided-meditations/facing-fear-with-a-compassionate-heart

One of the things she suggests is writing a letter to oneself “From Unconditional Love”—I mean, I’d much rather be getting love letters from cute boys than from abstract entities/myself, but these letters do work. I found this letter in one of my journals from the first time I broke things off with The Shy Ones, and I’m like, whoa, this lady really knew what she was doing.

I’m going to edit it for floweriness because no one should have to read an actual journal entry! Also, neither of them actually used the word “discretion” but it’s what they wanted, and it’s the reddest of my red flags in the past and henceforth.

Dear (Me),

You don’t have to feel better yet. I love him too. I love him so big and wide and all-encompassing. I wish this could all be okay.

That warmth. That connection.

They expected “discretion” and I know you’re wondering why you didn’t provide it. Why you couldn’t just *do* it.

You’re wondering if you just ran away because you were scared. You were very brave. You didn’t want to let him go and you did your very, very best.

I’m so proud of you—you stretched and found whole new chambers in your heart. Whole new muscles.

This is important. Just because it was short-lived doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It just reached the end and I know you miss him so much but it did reach the end.

I know it hurts. Thank you for writing this with me, for doing the things that help the most.

This is going to take a while. It’s going to take a while because it’s important. Because it was meant to be. Because it’s meant to live in you and change you. You can’t control the way it changes you, or the time it takes.

Just keep moving. And know he was smitten, he really was. I want you to take that to heart, even/especially what he said at the end: you do deserve to find what you want.

There’s no guaranteeing it, but if you trust your heart, I promise to take care of the very very nice adventures to come.

Let yourself be sad, but don’t give up hope.

Love,

Unconditional Love

Fourth Date Tears, Part Three

I kind of knew I had to say goodbye, but when we got back to my apartment, I asked him to come up to bed to cuddle. I hoped, like I always hoped in these moments, that the warmth and attraction would fix things, might help me ease open my snapped-shut heart.

He sat with his back against the bed frame and I cried into his lap, big gulping not-cute sobs. We both kept apologizing, a tangle of apologies, a squeezing spiderweb of apologies.

In moments like this, I feel so far from the role I’m supposed to be playing, the easy, sexy playful person I could be before I asked the outness question, when I was sure I had a place in his world. When I was hopeful and free.

I figured if I had to let him go, I might as well let him know how I feel. I looked into his sweet face and said “You know I already love you, right?”

Saying it gave me a wisp of relief, a relaxing of all my tiiiiiiired holding-back-feelings muscles. I think two months is a reasonable “I love you” time, but I still felt dangerous, radioactive with need and want and wishes.

He didn’t say it back, but he was kind. He smiled down into my sniffling, sheepish face and said “Isn’t it good to love people?” That smile.

I did try to say goodbye then. I said, “I have to let you go.” But he took that to mean just timewise and said, “Why? It’s barely eleven?”

“That’s not what I meant, “I said, but I let him settle back into bed after his time-checking. The saying goodbye would’ve been easier if it hadn’t been for the kissing.

“Do you want to look for that other person?” He asked.

“I guess I don’t really have a choice.”

“Do you want me to be with you while you look? The most important thing is to be your friend, but I can be more if you want me.”

“I want you,” I said, and then his hand was under my dress, resting on top of my long-wet undies and then sliding his fingers underneath. I was breathless with want. I wanted him to hold me there like that forever, open and warm, together.

I asked him to fuck me and he did, leaving the dress on, sliding into me slow and sweet, smiling big as he reached over me to close the window so I could go ahead and scream.

Except. Also. I grabbed his hand and placed it over my mouth, careful not to cut off breath but relaxing into the dominance. It felt good, a relief and a release, but also I wanted to tame myself to him. I wanted to make myself still, soothe all my hesitation, be his in whatever way he had room for. I wanted to be the right girl.

Midnight came too fast and I pulled him back to me a few more times before letting him go. I asked if I was still his girlfriend and he said yes. We had plans to go to an art installation on Saturday. We said goodnight and I felt desperate, lonely and lost.

Seventh Date Tears, Part Three

 

To get to the rest of this hard, hard day, I have to backtrack to the date before it. The Failed Fancy Garden Date was on a Friday, and the Monday before we’d had (my favorite) a make-out-in-front-of-Gilmore-Girls-then-have-all-the-beautiful-sex date. Our connection that night felt so thorough and deep (Ha, yep, that too, but for now I’m parsing out the emotions.) that I couldn’t think how I was going to shift into casual mode for The Lovely Guy’s already planned Friday night visit. Awash in satisfaction, peace, and a little bit of the Relationship Escalator, I decided it was time to let The Lovely Guy go.

The Lovely Guy and I had a sweet and kind text exchange, and he told me to reach out again if I ever felt the need.

This Charming Man hadn’t asked me to be monogamous, but I wanted to give him my whole self. I was ready to sink into lovely-dovey mode like a warm bath. I had well and truly fallen for him and I was doing the move-too-fast thing. It made me happy and also freaked me the fuck out.

Anyway, back to the Friday of the garden date. When This Charming Man left to go home and plan for his D&D game that night, I had time for a little nap before work. But instead of napping, I texted The Lovely Guy and asked if he happened to be free that night, and he was. He showed up fresh from work with a big bottle of my favorite pink wine.

The Lovely Guy really came through as a friend that night. He advocated hard for me to keep going with This Charming Man, explaining the cultural differences between me and both of them, shedding welcome light on some of my white lady blind spots. Plus, after the moderate tangles of the afternoon, it felt really nice to be talking to a cute liberal. Really, there’s enough to disagree about here on the left.

I sent The Lovely Guy off early even though he was so cute and smelled so good. Neither he nor I wanted to make things more complicated or confusing with This Charming Man.

When I woke up the next day, it’s possible that TCM was already all the way gone from me. His like-clockwork “good morning” (Which we’d sometimes followed by talking about what we’d dreamed. Ohhhhhhhhhh OMG I miss him.) was noticeably absent.

Either way, I knew I had to let This Charming Man go. I wrote a way-too-long breakup text. I used the word love, which I meant. It sucked. I cried all day. I watched The Starling, and then Birdbox, and then A Quiet Place, all scratching the itch of my lost and fighty mind.

I know dealbreakers are real. I know you should never start a relationship hoping that something deep about the other person will change. That Friday, in that great garden tangle, we’d both been trying to fix each other, and that is fundamentally unkind. Still, it feels like a great failure on my part, to have found such a beautiful connection and then let it fall so thoroughly apart.

I wish, wish, WISH there was something I could’ve done—not panicked, slowed down, asked the right questions, let him know I heard him. I wish it didn’t have to end the way it did. I wish it didn’t have to end at all.

Seventh Date Tears, Part Two

I miss him so badly all the time. I still, nine days later, can’t believe such a pretty date could go so, so wrong. By the time we were just starting our walk through the fancy gardens, he was correcting everything I said, taking up for anyone and anything I had a problem with—my disinformationy unvaccinated brother, Thanksgiving, Ronald Reagan, he took their side.

As we hugged and tried to reconnect in a quiet little vined alcove, he started in about how “Democrat” and “Republican” are just labels that divide us, how people like me on the left are just as responsible for the “discord.”

“You have to put “Moderate” on your dating profiles, I could have just swiped left!” I said in defeat and exasperation. I’m really, really glad, even in the midst of this annoying story, that I didn’t swipe left.

There was a moment, before I turned back up the path to go home. The alleé of pines and fall trees was decorated for Christmas, and even in the bright noon light, a cascade of blue lights lit up over the oranges, reds, and browns of the trees. He held my hand there, tried to keep me still. He tried to briefly to hold me by the wrists, but I was already fleeing.

(“Why don’t you just MARRY the moment?” I asked toward the end of the day. “I would love to, but it’s already past.” I guess that was the last time he made me laugh.)

I started missing him as soon as I turned away from those daytime Christmas lights. We talked/fought all the way back to the city. On our (dear, dear) third date, we’d watched Gremlins 2, and now we were breaking all of our own Gremlin rules. Instead of “don’t feed them after midnight” it was more like, don’t talk about Dave Chappelle, vaccine-deniers, Russian disinformation campaigns. I felt the kind of crazy I felt before I estranged from my mom, the kind of scary detachment that comes from living in separated realities. The gaslight feeling.

I took him home with me anyway, I wasn’t ready to let him go, I’m still not, even though I guess I have. We’d missed our garden lunch so we had peanut butter and honey sandwiches. We sat close on the couch and my queenly fat cat crawled into his lap. The three of us sat there, beautifully captured in time.

I was still kissing This Charming Man, but I wasn’t reaching him. I asked him to come up to bed and hold me, and he did, off-to-the-side and chaste. As soon as we were there, more tears came, so many tears came, brokenhearted tears, all-the-topics tears. Grief and loss and shame and fear and loneliness and love.

He did this thing that I can’t quite get my head around, that I love so much and maybe shouldn’t. I was apologizing for crying, trying to stuff my face into the pillows. I kept saying “This SO isn’t cute.” But he restrained my hands away from my face, stayed above me, and just kind of witnessed the tears. It was (maybe creepy, I don’t really care) an act of love.

“I’m still here,” he kept saying, but he wasn’t, not really, or I wasn’t. We were both trying hard for it not to be over, but the day was broken, it just was.

 

Seventh Date Tears, Part One

 

As I picked up coffee and scones for our mini-road-trip date, I yammered through the pickup window to the barista about how nervous I was. (I had also been panicky for a day or so about unrelated things, I maybe should have scaled back or postponed this big-step date!) This Charming Man is already gone and I’d only just learned how he takes his coffee. I am absolutely devastated and having the HARDEST time not just calling him up and saying “PLEASE.” Please what, I don’t know. Just please.

When I picked him up, we happily kissed hello but it was a little like having one feral cat in the passenger seat and another in the driver’s seat. He had the energy of one of those Garfield toys they used to suction-cup to car windows in the Eighties, just absolutely ready to escape. I wish I would have paused and asked him why he was so jangled. He second-guessed my driving (he doesn’t drive) and kept listing off accidents he had seen around home. I gave him the AMAZING lemon poppyseed scones I’d brought because! Special occasion! And he said “I thought we were going to eat.” Right or wrong, my jangled brain registered that as food-shaming. Whatever it was, I would have liked it to be a “thank you.”

We were going to eat. When he asked me out for Friday-day, I’d gotten up the courage to invite him to have lunch with me at my favorite fancy garden, about an hour away. I wanted to hold hands with him, kiss against trees, and try not to take too many pictures so I could pay good attention to him. This garden is my happy place, and I’ve only ever taken one other date there. (https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2015/09/in-which-i-realize-how-lucky-i-am-to.html?zx=fec1588cfc2887d4)

This Charming Man, with maybe the exception of this particular day, is PRESENT AS FUCK. It’s what made sex with him, most things with him, so dazzling, so seemingly almost loving, right from the start. Somewhere in ouroff-kilter start-of-the-trip conversation, he said a thing he’d said before, that hadn’t sounded so alarming before I’d fallen for him. In order to give his full attention to The Moment, he doesn’t think of people when they are not there. (“Have you heard of mindfulness?” was the start of this conversation.) I said it didn’t seem like he wasn’t thinking of me because of what an attentive texter her was, but he insisted. And I started to cry. And he second-guessed my driving some more.

I know my heart tends to go too fast, but I thought I was doing better this time!

I kind of wish I’d turned the car around at this point, just gotten us home from this already somehow painful day, but I didn’t want to let him go. I tried to tell him what was the matter, that I’d been going about my own life daydreaming about him. Part of me was with him when he was working or running his D&D games or just doing whatever, but he claimed not to think of me at all. Or, in fairness, anyone else when they weren’t around.

I don’t know why, after a brief break to cry in a Kohls’ parking lot, I still kept driving toward the flowers.

Oh, Comedy Guy. (Part Four)

After a break and more episodes, I got attracted to him for another while. I put the makeout mix back on and went all in. I feel guilty about that since I think I knew it wasn’t going to work out, but it felt good to give in to my body’s leadership. I took him to bed for a bit, but after we both came, I just wanted him to be gone. (If a man wrote that sentence I’d think he was garbage. Sometimes I am a toxic bachelor.)

Not knowing how I would get him out of my apartment in the triggered early part of the visit, I’d offered him a ride home, 38 minutes according to Maps. (Okay, look. Cars are destructive and selfish and apocalyptic, but I really want my next guy to have a car. Or just live a few blocks away like Gilmore Guy did.) I was exhausted, not in the blissful, fizzy, satisfied way. I wished I was alone in the car, felt like it was falling apart under the weight of my sad heart.

(A big change since this blog first started: I used to not mind driving to the suburbs! I even kind of enjoyed it because it was always easy to park! Now I just get the sick, soul-rotten feeling of driving a car with ALL of the liberal bumper stickers through Trump territory. Another Twilight Zone-but-not-in-the-fun-way sensation.)

Outwardly, I stayed cheerfully in reference mode with him—reciting the opening disclaimers from My Brother, My Brother and Me for no reason, singing beautifully along with Wonderwall on my Oasis-heavy Happy Spring Mix.

“Said maybaaaaaaaay…you’re gonna be the one that saves maaaaaaaay…”

I’m not sure why it was such a heartbreaking moment, but the beauty of our singing voices together juxtaposed with the ugly sadness in my heart just made me wonder how anybody dates anyone ever.

After I dropped him off on an ominous, anonymous, winding street, my heart felt lighter. I thought maybe (maybaaaaaaaay) I should wait until morning to see if I still felt bad about him. But I knew what I knew, and as I drove along I composed in my head a break-off text and listed all the ways I needed to block him. At a stoplight, even thought it was almost midnight, I texted Sweetie to see if it was too late to call. I’m so, so grateful to have a loyal and very-judgmental-of-men best friend to call in the middle of the night.

The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part Six

He wore the fish shirt to the stupid drama performance, I think. I mean, he probably did, he was very sweet and thoroughly thoughtful.

I had so looked forward to him being inside my school, I so wanted to snuggle and PDA it up and show him off to my friends, but I couldn’t connect. What I remember of that weekend was sadness, a feeling that I was losing him, that he didn’t love me anymore, that all was lost. Whatever grace had shined upon me over the summer, whatever suspension of disbelief, had left me and now I felt a million miles away from everything.

The sadness, distrust, resentment, and disappointment I was feeling (toward the world, not toward him, he one of the few people I could probably have trusted) didn’t leave much room for kindness, tenderness, affection, love. Sometimes it still doesn’t.

But instead of being able to articulate all that, I was just an asshole. I had discovered, during one of our conversations, that he couldn’t name all four Beatles. The 8X10s from my dad’s White Album hung on my Smurf-blue bedroom wall like a shrine. John Lennon was like a religion to me, (I know! I’m sorry! Women born in the Seventies (or probably at any other time ever) are pretty fucked for pop culture father figures.) it being decades before I wised up and converted to Yoko-ism.

So I concluded, in archetypal teen-asshole fashion, that if he didn’t know the Beatles, he couldn’t possibly know me! (I’m not sure why I wouldn’t have just made him a mixtape? Somewhere in there is the sexist assumption that boys should provide the music?) I’m utterly cringing as I type this part of the story, (I still panic sometimes about weird pop culture disconnects. It’s one of my very worst qualities.) but there was a grain of truth there—not about the Beatles, just about life.

I didn’t understand (I still don’t understand, really) how he, over there all beatific and (I assumed) untraumatized, might really be able to understand the fear, pain, and horror that had colonized my head, my heart, my body. If I would have told him, he probably would have listened, but it all seemed too dirty and bad for him to know about and besides, I couldn’t even express those things to myself. So I was mean. I was petty. I wrote a dumb letter and broke it off about the Beatles.

(Favorite Aunt was PISSED: “He is wonderful and perfect and you just threw him away.” So not too long after that I lost her support for a while too. That was probably okay—when it was time for me to come out as bi she was pretty crapola.)

There’s part of my mind, a part I’ve only in the last few weeks decided to debunk, that had me convinced for the longest time that someone as messed up and harsh and inside-ugly as me could never have deserved his sweet and generous love. I’ve sometimes felt that about Sweetie too, about my nieces, nephews, and students, about my friends and, on the worst PMS days, about my cats.

No matter how much I meditate or get therapy or just generally live a kind and awesome life, I still have the stubborn belief that I’m just a goth-girl Tasmanian Devil of grief, despair, and destruction, annihilating everything and everyone around me until I’m back to my natural state—alone, safe, everyone once again safe from me.

But it’s well past time to let that belief shift. Thinking that The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow was a generous angel and I was a selfish mess is not only unhelpful, it’s dehumanizing. Past or present, he deserves better than to be stuffed in a box of imagined virtue, and I certainly don’t need to keep considering myself a threat. I’m glad it only took a few hours in a museum to start unraveling that story I’ve been telling myself, to wonder what will happen if we just get to try out being real human friends.

A Little Polyphobia, Two “I Love Yous” and a Blocked Number

            In the past, I’ve always found a way to diffuse my shame and sadness at the end of a love story by making the guy into a villain, which only one character in this blog every really was. The hurt is normal, the shame is my problem and my responsibility, and the rejection is not personal, so I want to treat the end of the Mr. Makeout Music story as kindly as possible.

I’m not sure what made me think I should be as out with him as I was. Maybe it was our mutual love of Steven Universe, the fact that he used to write erotica, or just the attraction making me all shiny and self-love-tastic. The librarians who supervise me at work range from queer-friendly-and-ready-to-learn to genderqueer and poly-leaning, so I don’t really feel the need to hide my queerness or poly tendencies. It’s not like I’ve talked directly to the kids about it, but I never worry about them overhearing. They all know by now that my ex-wife is my best friend, that I enjoy handsomeness, and that I’m active in LGBTQ and feminist causes.

There have been a couple of painful misunderstandings, but for the most part I feel safe to be myself—it’s part of why I love the job so much. Through honesty and careful conversations, I’ve helped make it a home that accepts me.

And before I tell this story I should say, it’s not like I haven’t acted polyphobic before. In my frustration and failure to fit and find love in the poly world, (Or, it sometimes seems, any world…) I’ve lashed out and been judgmental, impatient, and pushy in ways that I really regret. I’m grateful that my poly friends have been so generous and patient with me while I figure out what the heck my deal is.

Anyway, so Mr. Makeout Music. I REALLY missed him over Thanksgiving break. I wasn’t due back at the library until Tuesday, but I started wanting to sing out his name around Monday night. When I walked in and saw him at the front desk, everything seemed to go really well. He knocked me out telling me that he’d tried to watch some Gilmore Girls for me! We had a little awkward moment when I told him I didn’t like the book he’d leant me (Y: The Last Man, because apparently he thinks feminism means murdering all the men through childbirth…) but I felt like we were settling back into an easy flirty rapport and I was so delighted to see him.

He came to visit my department almost right away and we were talking about how awesome Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was. The conversation randomly wandered to my arbitrary dislike of Helena Bonham Carter (It’s probably because she killed Sirius Black!) This topic opened a surprising and irritating can of worms.

“I think she had some kind of love triangle thing a while back? Although, that doesn’t seem right. Why would I not like a love triangle, they’re kind of my thing.”

“Children’s department…” He said warningly, and I felt like I’d been slapped in the face.

“I’m not ashamed of being poly, and I don’t expect you to be, either.”

“I’m not ashamed, but they’re kids. There’s a time and a place.”

“You don’t need to protect the kids from me.”

“I need to protect them from everything.”

I was completely shocked by this exchange for several reasons, mostly because we had been talking about all the topics for months and months! Never anything it was inappropriate for the kids to hear, but definitely things more scandalous than a love triangle, which is the basis of like A THOUSAND Disney movies. I didn’t like his assumptions about what I was saying and the fact that flirting and being me was suddenly something he thought he had to control, something that was suddenly wrong. It was one of those loss-of-trust moments that’s hard, maybe impossible, to come back from.

When I got a crush on somebody at work, what happened next was what I was afraid of. I asked him to come into the meeting room and talk just a few minutes before the kids were due to come in and make paper snowflakes.

I told him what it’s like to have grown up queer, to have so often been perceived as a threat to children. The bad thanksgiving was weighing on me so much and I’m sure that made this more fraught than it otherwise might’ve been.

Though we’d spent months sneaking in flirting into a million different library conversations, he kept insisting that I’d been talking about sex in front of the kids this time. He kept repeating the “time and a place” thing. I think when I said “love triangle” he heard “threesome.”

It was Annoying Heteronormativity 101. I explained that some of the three-or-more relationships I know are families, that I was talking about love rather than sex. If he wouldn’t feel bad for talking about his family, I shouldn’t have to talk about (VERY VAGUELY ALLUDING TO,) other kinds of families. He was really mad and defensive, but he did try to listen.

From there I told him how hurt I was that he acted so afraid of me back when I took his hand, that he was sometimes treating me like a threat. Not as much the rejection part, but the fear. He insisted that he wasn’t afraid, but it did look like fear to me, then and now.

I started to sob and he said “Ms. ________, please don’t cry.” And came over and sat right up against my side, so sweet, so loving.

After some more back and forth about polyphobia/rejection/election, he said “Ms. _______, what do you really think of me?”

“I love you,” I sobbed, and cried the ugliest, snottiest tears you ever saw.

“I wasn’t expecting THAT answer! To tell you the truth, I really do love you too.”

So that happened. In the midst of all the mess and misunderstanding, we love each other, in whatever way. It counts for something, although right now I can’t imagine what.

I genuinely tried to keep being friends, but I was madder than I wanted to be about the threat-to-kids thing, and he must’ve been mad too, because the next time he came to visit, he was grumpy and he kind of glowered at the paper snowflake I’d made him. (Pink and blue for gender harmony. Maybe that was a stupid thing to say.)

After a few minutes of him grouchily making one sixth of a snowflake and me trying to be professional/lighthearted/friendly, he said he had to go to dinner and left the snowflake there. I felt disproportionally sad about that. We’d given each other so many pieces of art, from homework margin doodles to a leaf rubbing that he named “Ms. ________ in Autumn” because the colors reminded him of me, to watercolor galaxies to me singing out his name, to these paragraphs, and his forgetting the snowflake made me feel like I couldn’t give him one more unrequited thing.

It wasn’t about the snowflake, of course. I texted him about it after work and we got in a really dumb fight that ended with me telling him he was using the wrong “your.” He was mean and I was mean, and I blocked his number and deleted the thread.

I’m stupid right now because of unrequited love. He’s stupid from love, too, and whatever else is keeping the friendship from being what it was. Nobody’s the bad guy, nobody’s wrong, nobody’s the patriarchy (Well, he’s a little bit the patriarchy.) Just a thing that didn’t go where we wanted it to. I can’t try to be gracious and cute about it anymore right now. I can’t quite get to magnanimous and sparkly and generous about it. We can’t fix it right at the moment and I can’t wish myself fine about it.

If I’m going to trust my heart, I have to trust the heartbreak too, and give it time, and take myself gently and firmly forward. Onward, and, more than anything else, outward.

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.

Holy Christmas, I Gave Somebody Advice!

Over the weekend, I got to be extremely proud of myself when a friend and reader I love and admire asked me for advice. The relationship issues she shared went along with a lot of the themes I obsess about here, so I thought my response to her was worth sharing. I was shocked to find myself sure of what to tell her, but if you ever need the strength to leave someone, I might be the girl to ask; it felt like I was also writing the letter to myself.

"Okay. Rereading your letter this morning made me really sure of what I want to say.

First, as much as I’ve tried to be open minded about people’s fantasy lives, I completely agree with you about his rape fantasy. I think it represents an unhealthy desire to be disconnected during what is supposed to be the most connected of times. Aside from what it says about his view of your personhood (and his own) I don’t see any potential in that kind of scene to bring you two closer. But all of that is moot, really, because you don’t want to do it. To me, that is the most powerful and valid of reasons not to do something, sexwise. Your wants and preferences are important, especially when it comes to something that has such a high physical and emotional risk factor.

And the part of you that’s not getting fulfilled? The sexy part? It’s important, vital, lovable, and (I think) divine. It’s life itself, the force that moves the universe. You deserve to feel it, to express it in whatever way feels good to you. Anybody who doesn’t want to love and honor and DEVOUR that part of you is absolutely not worth your time.

And your counselor is right: you can’t change him. For the part 12 years, I had very similar pains and frustrations with (Sweetie), I spent so many years BEGGING her to get her teeth fixed, to take care of herself, to get out of the job that was rotting her soul, etc. You wouldn’t believe the RELIEF that came when I realized I didn’t have to do that anymore, that I’m no longer responsible for her, that I never have to make her into someone I can stand to live with. I’m so grateful that I never, EVER have to nag her about anything ever again and I thank heavens every day that those are no longer my teeth to worry about.

A bad relationship can make you blind to the things that make you lovable, can make you feel like you can’t have or don’t deserve an escape route. But you can and you do. You are brilliant, powerful, tenacious, and loving and (if you don’t mind me saying) one of the most desirable people I’ve ever met. (Pause to take the sexTARDIS back to 2001 and leap upon you and yours…) It might not look this way now, but I could not be more sure that, after however much alone time you want, you could have absolutely ANYONE your heart desires.

To egalitarian-minded girls like ourselves it might to be hard to admit this, but it’s true: the world is full of people who are not good enough for us. He isn’t. He might be for someone, some day, but not for you, not now.

So take the alone time you want. Try to get inside yourself and see how brave and loving and worthy you are. Don’t dismiss your sex drive as unimportant; it’s there for a reason, and it deserves to be celebrated and appreciated.

There’s happiness and sex and joy ALL OVER THE PLACE waiting for you, and no matter what you decide, I’m here ready to send you all the gold stars.

Love,

(Me)"

Ohno, Mr. Sweetheart. A Breakup, I Think

Last Wednesday afternoon was an especially good one. Sweetie had played hookie from work and we went to our special library over by the city pool. We got out about a million books and then, feeling rich and satisfied, went over to the pool for a swim. I usually go by myself to the pool so I was extra-excited to be there with her. There’s been tension between us for the past few weeks and I was happy to feel it wash away in the sun and water—my heart felt truly free.

Part of the reason for this sense of well-being was that Wednesday night is my scheduled phone date with Mr. Sweetheart. Sweetie had already planned to take herself out and about so that we could have privacy and I had a cute nightgown picked out just in case I got asked what I was wearing. Plus! My visit to Mr. Sweetheart’s place was less than a week and a half away—I couldn’t wait for us to plan it!

Except. A post showed up in my facebook feed that said Mr. and Ms. Sweetheart were on a plane on the way across the country to visit friends. I’d known that they had a trip coming up but had no idea that it fell smack in the middle of our date night.

I felt hurt, disoriented, and left out, as if he didn’t really consider me a factor in his plans. I would have been happy to reschedule our call or even postpone it until after the trip if I’d been asked, but I wasn’t. I calmly left a voice mail saying as much, and he texted back when they landed. He was sorry for “not putting two and two together” and said he’d call but it wouldn’t be “full service.” It seemed pathetic to wait around for a call that he’d forgotten about, so I went out with Sweetie to pick out some new sheets and made some optimistic lingerie purchases while I was at it.

He told me to let him know when I was back from running errands, and when I did he called. He was very matter-of-fact about what was going on, saying he’d be better about the calendar but also just sort of breezing past the hurt. Knowing he was sitting next to Ms. Sweetheart made me feel like I had to reign in my emotions, too. He told me happily about the friends they were staying with and the poly meetup they were headed for. I felt ugly and stupid for having to be a complaint in the middle of his festivities, and would have given anything to be someplace other than sitting rejected in my pajamas as they joyously began their stay. I hated the role I was put in.

Businesslike, he asked me what my driving-to-his-house plans were for the following weekend. I felt startled by this since what just happened had not been resolved yet. It seemed crazy to drive that far for somebody who’d forget a date with me, but I pressed on figuring it’d be resolved by then.

Midsentence their friends arrived and that was that. With a businesslike “Okay, I’ll follow that up with you later,” he started ending the call and I was like “Are you kidding me? You’re hanging up on a conversation about how you…”I hatehate HATED being in this harpylike position so I hit “end call” without really thinking, and when I called back, he didn’t pick up.

What upset me the most was that instead of just enjoying Sweetie and my library books, I was now typing sad texts, turning off the phone, and crying my eyes out. It’s a leap that I take complete responsibility for, but I felt not just rejected by the Sweethearts but by the poly community as a whole—being cut off midconversation in the midst of their revelry made me feel like I’d tried to crash a party where I was unwelcome. What started out as a simple miscommunication had turned into what felt like a public humiliation, and (I have to say it!) not the good kind.

Still, I fully expected it to get worked out, that I would turn my phone back on and find some genuine effort to fix it, but there was none. (He’s gotta do SOMETHING,” Sweetie kept saying, as if we live in a movie and he could tool over and hold a boombox over his head.)

I wrote a gracious (if somewhat disingenuous) breakup text this morning because I didn’t know what else to do. I can’t be with someone who treats me like nothing as soon as his friends are around—I already went through it with The Man and once was too much.

But I didn’t WANT to break up. I wanted him to show that he cared, to somehow assure me that I wouldn’t slip through the cracks again. I wanted to hear from him so badly today that I thought I’d explode, but there was nothing, and I spent most of the day crying and feeling like a failure.

The thing is, everybody, this is the second time I’ve been forgotten in the last couple of weeks. When Steampunk Guy and I were making plans for our most recent shenanigans, he sort of drifted off mid-planning, for days. I had to remind him to finish making a date with me. That hurt less because it’s less of a relationshippy situation.

But still, I’m having a hard time not freaking out about being forgettable. The calendar is my sun, moon, and stars and I would never forget ANYBODY, friend, lover, event or otherwise once they’re on there. Why can’t I find this in another person? Why do I consistently choose partners who don’t/can’t see me as part of their lives? Is there anything else out there for me besides having a hot but tiny role?

Mr. Sweetheart, if you get around to reading this, I hated being the negative part in what seemed like such a fun night. I absolutely fucking detest the idea of not having you in my life and I so wish that things had gone differently. But somewhere in me I need to find the belief that I deserve to not be forgotten.

The Waiting and the Breakup Thing

I really didn’t want to let him go. I am tired of being in the pattern of girl meets dom, dom breaks limits, dom disappears. I thought there must be a better way to end the story, some way to let him earn back my trust. I spent the couple of days after the bad scene concentrating on being 100% there for my students and trying to get in touch with my inner strength.

Because The Man and Sadist Girl were members of the venue’s security staff, I wrote to the venue owners to tell them what happened. Because of some stupid loyalty or hope, I left The Man’s name out of it. I gave his name later on, but I seriously doubt that there will be any consequences. I’m one voice against members of a close-knit group, and I’m sure it’ll be easy for them to convince their boss that I’m crazy or whatever. Power imbalances like this are what make me wonder if kink is ever really safe.

When it came time to get in touch with him, I was still very unsure, but I thought it would be good to plan a walk either way—we could either reconnect or debrief and part kindly. It seemed like a healthy way to try and break my pattern of disappearing doms.

He didn’t text back when I texted after school, so I started to figure out that it was really over. I called around 5:30 and got back an unfriendly text that said he would call when he got back from the gym. He made me wait for that call for a long while, but I got the kids’ behavior reports done while I was waiting—that seemed oddly fitting. I kept reading out relevant quotes to Sweetie: “Please pay attention and follow directions,” etc. Does not play well with others.

The call was quick:

“(The Wife) says I have to talk to you so I’m talking to you. I don’t think that you are healthy for me to be around. You are too fragile, even when I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“What are you TALKING ABOUT? I didn’t do anything wrong. I realized that I needed help and I told you! And you didn’t listen. It is not fragile to respond to something traumatic by being traumatized.”

“You weren’t traumatized and this isn’t about Saturday, which, I already apologized. You have emotional issues about me. You’re so nervous that it makes me fearful. When you met (The Wife) you were so upset that you could barely speak, even though there was no reason to be nervous.”

“I was nervous when I met her because I LIKED you.” (And, I didn’t say, because she started out the night by pouting and refusing to come to the table. And she had veto power. And she tried really hard to convince me that I would like a horror-themed play party. And because they were Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe-ing each other all throughout dinner. It was nerve-wracking, is all.)

“That wasn’t the only thing.”

“Explain please. I just don’t understand.”

“I don’t HAVE to explain. I can just hang up this phone and never speak to you again.”

(tiny voice) “Oh. Okay.”

I couldn’t understand why he was suddenly so mad, what in the world had changed since Sunday. I started writing this post as a “Well, AM I too nervous?” kind of thing but that is just pointless. Even if I had fucked up the dinner we could have talked it through. He was trying to turn it around on me for whatever reason, but it makes no sense. None of it makes any sense.

It’s always tempting to look around in a story and see what I could have done better, see what lessons I can learn so that it can all go better next time, but this is not the time for that. The plain and simple fact is that he fucked me over and then tried to gaslight me about it. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.

I’m not fragile. I have “emotional issues” but who doesn’t—it’s called being alive. I tried to talk and process and do what you’re supposed to do, but none of it worked, because it was over, even sooner than I thought it was. I miss him so badly and I don’t know when I’ll be ready to date again. The fear and sadness gets less every day, and I’m ding my best to take care of myself and move on.

A Month After Fireguy: On Coming and Writing

A month ago, I had a basement-date with Fireguy that went (consensually) a lot further than it should’ve. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that I could end up restrained and at third base by the end of a first date. It was a LOT of fun buy it was also certainly too much for me.

The next day, I was feeling good but overwhelmed, a little shaky and unsure. I figured I’d give it a few days to let it sink in, then write it through and consider what I wanted to do about that budding relationship or acquaintanceship or playpal arrangement or whatever it was supposed to be. Fireguy, however, went into damage-control mode, quite unbidden and unnecessarily. He texted and said that if I wrote about it that day, it wouldn’t be the “one handed read” that he wanted it to be, but if I wrote about it the next week, then “that would be fine.”

It isn’t that I dislike being jerked off to, either in person or in written form—in fact, until that moment, turning people on had been one of the big joys of writing this. When Fireguy sent those texts, I felt the bottom drop out from under me, both because he was taking ownership of something that’s creatively mine and because he’d reduced this complex personal journey or whatever to something that existed just for his enjoyment. I wanted to handle it properly, so I called him up to talk about it, but I was so panicked that I ended up blubbering and unable to finish my sentences. He seemed irritated: “You just don’t understand what’s going on with me.”

What was going on with him was that he and Varga Girl broke up but were trying to continue as sub and dom, that’s a big deal, admittedly. But what he’d mentioned in the texts was, this guy had embarrassed him on FetLife, and he was very concerned about his reputation. It still makes me so disgusted that he was:

A. A grown man that concerned about his online reputation.

B. Willing to compromise my well-being about it.

C. A dominant man trying to squelch a submissive woman’s point of view.

What I kept asking him, and what I still keep wondering, is what about what’s going on with me? All of that stuff that happened was a big deal to me, and I still wish I could’ve gotten anybody to acknowledge it. I was completely unable to convince either Fireguy or Varga Girl that I was a person in the story, that, for better or worse, something had happened to me, and I had a right to write about it, I had a right to a point of view. I’ll never get them to acknowledge me as a human being, and that is really scary.

I eventually managed to get it through to him that trying to control me creatively was crossing a limit. He apologized for that and for breaking my trust. We had a pretty good conversation (even if he did try to rewrite the meaning of the phrase “one-handed read”) and I was relieved that I didn’t have to stay mad at him.

AND THEN HE DID IT AGAIN.

Paranoid and still trying to Smeagol his precious ex, he tried to convince me again to stop writing about our date, trying at first to shame me about the sex parts, but eventually admitting that he was afraid of his sub reading it. He tried to convince me to take out the sex scenes or “make it more anonymous” even though I already don’t use names or locations. He even suggested switching the entire blog to private. “Everyone knows it’s me,” he said, he said he didn’t want his family to read it.

I was beyond livid, I still am. First of all, I had made a clear limit about trying to control me creatively. Breaking a limit once can be seen as an accident, breaking it again is torture. He knew that what he was doing would have a triggering effect, and he kept doing it anyway. When I got upset and panicked, he told me I was too angry to be in his family.

What I heard in all those attempts to control my writing: “My point of view is more important than yours. Nobody in the scene knows who you are, so you don’t matter.”

So right now, I’m still scared. I’m having trouble getting back to the feeling I had before that night-the feeling of being free and loved and starting to accept myself. I really worry that I will never be able to trust a man again, that I can only find men who embody a secret inner wish to be erased.

Part of me want to jump up and down and say “Why don’t you see, what happened was important,” both the experience and the paragraphs he squelched. After all, he did succeed in fucking up the writing process—I was too disgusted and humiliated to finish telling the sex part of the story.

One part I didn’t get to was, toward the end of the scene that night, I did get to try the “Please, Sir, may I come” thing—he was playing with my boobs and I was finishing myself off down below, and I started to feel the wave crest, so I found just the right moment and asked: “Please sir, may I come.”

“Sure, go ahead,” he said, and I did.

Sometimes you don’t know that you don’t like something until it’s too late. There’s some connection there between his wanting a say in the deeply intimate rhythms of my own body and wanting a say in the way I write about the experience—to me, those things are not separate. If you’re keeping score, that’s “”Come for me, you greedy little brat,” yes and “Please Sir may I come?” no. It’s complicated.

As much as I enjoy the feeling of submitting, it seems very difficult to find a guy whose dominance does not spill over into everyday life. Both Bill and Fireguy refused to let me belong to myself after I left the couch or scene. Both experiences were about losing my point of view, and I am very scared of letting that happen again.

Goodbye (Again), Mayor of Kittentown

“She wasn’t just cleaning out her locker, she was cleaning out her life.” (Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years as Winnie Cooper got ready to leave town.)

This week, I broke things off with the Mayor of Kittentown. For the third time. I’ve never been quite able to figure out what doesn’t work between us, only that something doesn’t. I’ve known almost the whole time that he wasn’t a romantic match, and maybe I’m just not an FWB kind of girl.

Remember last week when I was feeling fretful about guys only liking me for my boobs? Here’s part of why: I was texting with MKT, just catching up because we hadn’t seen each other in a while. When I asked how things were going with the other woman he’s dating, he said she wasn’t really exciting him too much and

“Besides, she needs bigger boobs. ;)”

I sent him back an “Eeeeeeew” for talking about a woman’s body that way, it really got under my skin. Yes, I’ve heard and enjoyed guys saying much filthier things, but in dirty-talk context and therefore consensual—how would she feel if she knew he was saying that about her? He isn’t poly so I can’t expect him to know he shouldn’t compare us, but the fact that that’s the first way he could think of to say he liked me better, not my heart, my face, my general enthusiasm for B-movies and pancakes, just my boobs, of course.

The trouble with being new to sex with guys is that I don’t always notice when I don’t like something until it is kind of way too late to do anything about it. Like I’ve said before, I like for my boobs to get lots of attention, but the way he fixated on them was kind of childish. “Boobies!” He would say often, even on days where I was feeling objecty from other jackasses. And the fact that I was feeling objecty from other jackasses always made me want to give MKT a pass.

Is worrying about being an object old-fashioned or prude? It certainly does seem to be getting in the way of my fun.

He said insensitive things in other ways, too. On out first date he said something demeaning about a homeless person, he made jokes about them regularly. I think that’s a mainstream thing to do, but I thought it showed a lack of empathy—a lot of my dealbreakers just seem like guidelines for being a decent human being, but I still feel obligated to compromise them sometimes. I am a perfectionist and I don’t want to be, but I guess limits are limits. Close to the end of our relationship, he told me he’d once tweeted that the woman being loud on the bus behind him “Should choke on a bucket of cocks.” That’s hard for a girl like me to get past, even though, again, comments like that are part of everyday culture. I’m sure plenty of decent guys say things like that every day nowadays, it sucks.

Anyway, those seemed like small things compared to the fact that he was being so sweet to me almost always. I wanted to like him because he liked me. He has the prettiest green eyes and (when it isn’t leering) an angelic smile. He called me beautiful and held me when I was sad. Sex was always fun between us, even if we both wanted to be on the bottom. He’d usually take the top and make me a very loud, happy girl. His neighbors probably got woken up more than once.

But I can’t quite get away from the idea that being together when we aren’t/won’t be in love is a kind of using each other. It feels objectifying to both of us. I wish that I didn’t feel that way—I am very, very frustrated that sex is such a big deal to me, it’s really gunking up my experiments. Maybe it isn’t a matter of rejecting the whole idea of FWBs, maybe just this particular situation didn’t work?

All in all, I’m grateful to him. He was such a good first-in-a-long-time—I appreciate that so much. It’s hard to let him go and scary to have an almost-empty dance card, guywise. Aside from my date with the Gentleman this weekend, I’m turning my attention back to my friends for a while. I’d love to be a little more healed before the next guy comes along.

I wish the Mayor of Kittentown all the luck. I think the lessons here are: treat people like whole people as much as I can. Get better at saying (kindly and directly) what bothers me. Get better at listening to my body and heart, and don’t cling to things that don’t work. Those are good lessons.

I’ll miss him, his cats, his episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Thank you, pal.

How I Found Out I’m Kinky, Part One: You Had Me at Duct Tape

Backtracking is never as much fun as writing about current adventures, but I might be a little bit stuck right now, so I’ll tell this story. Oh, The Song Sender.

I had a vague idea all along about wanting to be dominated, but I didn’t have any idea of what my BDSM imagination could come up with until I met The Song Sender last fall.

Before I talk about him, though, I should stop and give credit to the Mayor of Kittentown. Last fall when I first started dating guys, MOKT was the first guy I really clicked with. I could tell he was trustworthy because the first time I ever went to his house, my first urge was to lie down and take a nap. He was a safe and fun person to have a whole bunch of first-in-a-long-times with. He treated me kindly, told me I’m beautiful, and let me take my time. Also he has a really excellent penis. I’m just such a fan of it. He was the first guy that I had PIV sex with (after a date to see The Muppets, no less) in sixteen years and my reaction was I CAN’T BELIEVE I WENT SO LONG WITHOUT THIS and also MORE PLEASE.

The Mayor of Kittentown deserves a lot more paragraphs and will probably get them, but for this story, it’s important to remember he is in my life all the time making me feel beautiful and generally doing things right.

At the same time as I was getting to know MOKT, I found The Song Sender on Ok Cupid. I wrote to him despite the fact that he had 666 in his username because I liked that he had a link to a party clip from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on his profile (I just go nuts for a B-movie aesthetic) and, under “Things I Cant Live Without,” he had a bunch of synonyms for the word “moxie.” His is still my favorite profile ever, blocked though it may now be. I told Sweetie that he had a picture of himself looking snarly/thoughtful in a throne made out of bones and another one where he posed next to a girl covered in stage blood and I asked “Is this guy a serial killer or just kind of metal?” and Sweetie said “I think maybe you’re less likely to get murdered than you think.” I found that very comforting!

He was very untoward. When I told him I’m a Hermione Grangerlike fussy straight-A student and asked if Harry Potter references turn guys off, he said no, especially now that Emma Watson had turned 18. This would ordinarily be a dealbreaker- I can’t stand guys who are over-focused on youth, but I couldn’t help but just laugh and agree about the hotness of Emma Watson.

Another time, when I told him I was having my students write about daylight savings time, he said “Well, I’d prefer dirty limericks about duct tape, but hey, it’s your class.”

I should have been mortified, I think, but instead, I felt something click, my usual ok-we’re-friends-now feeling—he was scary but I was so curious. I wrote back and said that in my extremely limited experience, pretty ribbons > duct tape. I felt all scandalous for saying that, even though it is really mild compared to the conversations I have these days. So we’d kind of agreed to a tying up situation by, like, the third email.

I used to start Ok Cupid conversations by asking guys to send me some songs. I am in graduate school for teacher certification and sometimes the classes are really boring and my soul needs to be woken back up. He was soooooo good at sending songs. Tina Turner singing “Whole Lotta Love,” 60s go-go music that made me think of dancing naked in the woods, the occasional Bjork heart-melter. He sent Elvis’s Suspicious Minds and I opened it at work—the librarians swooned and I told him he’d made everyone’s day. He wrote back “I’m just here to help.”

The song that ended up on repeat the most often was Brian Eno’s “Baby’s On Fire” which includes these lyrics:

“Baby’s on fire, better throw her in the water. Look at her laughing, like a heifer to the slaughter.”

There were a fair number of creepy songs like that, but instead of scaring me off, they drew me in. We made plans to meet, and I warned him that I’m much more brazen over email, that I’m awkward but not this awkward:

Next time: He gets jealous of the famous rope guy.