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

On the night after the long date, I slept a deep, sad sleep and dreamed that I was on the island from Lost, but there was a huge old city at the center of the island with lots of art to explore. I went into the biggest museum chamber and found the shadow of a statue of Perseus. This seemed especially important since our flower date was during the Perseid meteor showers, which were also a part of my shared traditions with Sweetie. I decided it meant that it was time, past time, really, for me to slay my own monsters.

After I wrote out that dream and its various implications that Monday morning, I found myself deeply grateful to J and wanting to, if possible, leave behind the fears that were getting in the way of enjoying this messy, complicated, beautiful man and the fun we had to offer each other. So I did the most me thing possible: I sent him a thank-you note, for my early birthday dinner and all of the ways he made me feel good. That day as I went about my bookstore routines and filled in Sweetie (not in too much detail) on the weekend’s events, a little flower of happiness bloomed in my nether regions and in my heart. I decided it was okay to just go ahead and like him.

The next day, I got something in the mail back, an early birthday present he’d clearly sent the second he had my address: a blue canary night light for the birdhouse in my soul, for the song we’d sung together in the garden that night. I hadn’t had such a romantic gesture from a man in the past two decades, if ever. I shrieked and danced around and nearly swooned from touched-ness. I put on Flood and belted out the whole thing and got caught up on the dishes, even fantasized about him maybe wanting to be the only bee in his bonnet. I decided right then and there to let go of all the things that stop me from not being an Argonaut-murdering lighthouse. The little bird was too bright to sleep with him on (I was having horny insomnia and bad headaches.) but I kept him by my bedside.

After a day or so I simmered down and realized that although it really was a lovely present, I couldn’t be sure about what it meant. J. was having a vacation week with the kids and therefore (?) wasn’t as frequently in touch and I started to feel vulnerable, to wonder if maybe I’d been letting my imagination run away with me too much.

The following weekend was our nondate weekend (apparently he was unaware of the concept of babysitters) but I was craving closeness so I proposed that we sext that Friday night. He was hemming and hawing, leaving it up in the air and being not sure if he had time, and my heart fell. I braved up and said: “I’m not an afterthought, not someone to be fit in to the margins of your life.” I admitted that what I was really after was connection, rather than just sex(t). I am so proud of myself for saying that, and I think that admission alone proves that I’ve come a long way since being Steampunk Guy’s “Thing that Happens Sometimes,” his number ten or eleven or whatever I was. Go me for miles and miles of progress.

I asked for a call instead of sexting and that’s what we did—as soon as he got the kids to bed, he called and I knew I had to say all of the things. I told him I didn’t have time to like someone who didn’t like me back, and he assured me that he did. He told me he couldn’t believe that someone as perfect for him existed and if he had, he would have gotten up the courage to divorce sooner. Right now, that sounds like me being rebound girl, but at the time, it convinced me that we were on the same page, that this really was a thing. It’s hard to go back through this story and think that he didn’t like me back; I may have to accept that he did.

That phone call was WONDERFUL, I loved it so much. We stayed up talking about all different things, about his kids and their adventures that week, about my birthday plans (He’d convinced me to invite my church friends to do a birthday brunch, even though I’d been shy to ask since I’d missed the regular brunch the week before. He did push me to do some very good things.) all the things we might hope to do together. I gently told him that babysitters should maybe be a thing, and he said he did want to see me more often and would look for ways. He offered phone sex near the end but I liked the just talking so much that I said no. Just like I used to do during long-distance snuggles with Mr. Sweetheart, I doodled the whole time we were talking and sent him the drawing afterward.

And I felt brazen enough to send my favorite emoji

Which he diplomatically ignored.

We did sext on my birthday night  (after Sweetie had gone home from having cake, Chinese food, and Bob’s Burgers episodes) and it was a really good one. He was an excellent sexter, I’m sure that his erotic novels have their merit! It ended romantically, with us writing about listening to each other’s heartbeats.

“Is my heart doing a better job of telling you how I feel than I can?” He asked, and I still don’t know what that meant, but I know that I liked it. It just turned my insides to mush—I was officially bonkers about him.

Monday, when I was at the beach saying goodbye to summer with my cousins and aunts, he sent me a picture of the boys, on a picnic by a pond. What family-oriented girl could stay cool with something as adorable as that in her phone? I’m only human.

On the Tuesday after my birthday, in the interest of slaying my own monsters, I met with a potential new therapist. When I finished the Big Therapy Project, a lot was left undone. there was another memory that needed attention, a trickier, more childlike version of me who needed some love. I put off working on that for all kinds of reasons, mostly being too tired from teaching to think of anything else. Eventually, though she stuck around long enough to help me quit the school district, my old therapist moved away and sent me a list of referrals that sat in my inbox for four months, until J. became the incentive/trigger that made me realize I needed help. If it works, I’ll be forever grateful to him. Probably I’ll be forever grateful to him anyway.

The therapist’s office building was next to a Tiffany’s and across the street from a pastry shop, which I considered to be a very good sign. I liked her immediately and she gave me a lot of hope for healing. We both are people who like to geek out on happiness and wellness, and the bossiness of her seemed like it could propel me off the Lost island, when I was done exploring, of course. The best part, though, was that instead of wanting to go home and crawl into bed after therapy, I wanted to go jump in the pool and make out in the sunshine with J. I knew he was still off from work so I called and asked, and he said yes, with the caution that I‘d have to be gone before the kids got home from school.

That afternoon, though so short that we had to set a timer, was absolutely magical.  The sun was hot and bright and the sky was blue and we played in the pool like kids, like people who had no baggage, no fear. He kept swimming under me, lifting me up, and kissing me, and I felt so happy and peaceful and swoony and whole in his arms. He looked so handsome, healthy, and virile in the sun, and I felt like a goddess. I pushed him to the edge of the pool, grabbed the wall, and pinned him there in the most delicious, picture-postcard of a kiss. Right then, those bodies were in love, I don’t see a way around it.

When it was time to go, it almost seemed like he wanted me to accidentally meet the kids. His older son had recently stated unequivocally that he didn’t want J. dating, but J. was slowly trying to warm him up to the idea, an effort I found encouraging. When it had somehow gotten to be ten after three, I ran out to my car and was getting in quick but he insisted on saying a proper kissy goodbye. It felt like he was proud of me, like he wanted to rip the band-aid off and make me part of his life, and though it was certainly too soon for that, I took it to heart.

Writing that afternoon makes it so difficult to not to call him, to try and find a way. I know there isn’t a way, but still. The sunny optimism of that hour and a half in the pool, the unabashed connection, was real and I just love it so much.

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.