A Bad Dating Year is Not the Worst Thing

I’ve been studying awe lately. This is one of my favorite brain books of all time, and I haven’t even finished it yet!

So maybe that’s why the titular epiphany was easy to recognize when it came along. I’m sorry to be a Spotify commercial, but I love the Wrapped time of year so much. When I saw that I started listening to Frank Ocean’s cover of Moon River on February 6 and remembered that that’s the day The Shy One broke up with me, I was overwhelmed with giddy joy. With love. The beautiful absurdity of this year. It felt like my heart was laughing. It felt like a being-set-free.

After week-before-last’s bad review situation, I settled into it: There were highlights, but this was a bad year of dating. The past ten months especially have been full of grief, false starts, acting-outs, minor deceptions, and not-quite-right connections. Too many hookups in relationship-potential clothing. Deleted email drafts. More than one art project about grief. Setting a timer for ten minutes so I could moon safely over the Hidden Folder. It’s beautiful and ridiculous and I love it.

I rang in the New Year overjoyed, in a balloon-bopping collective effervescence with Rainbow Pal, singing to a sassy and sparkly cover of Dancing on My Own. When I left the club, WhatsApping across the ocean to the beautiful Shy Ones, a single golden firework popped over the parking lot. I felt like it was just for me. I kind of still do.

This year gave me so many gifts, not just the beautiful string of coconut-shell beads that well never look right on me. The wallpaper on my desktop is the lush pink and purple flowers I got from my Birthday Good Boy/Hookup. I’ve been building my collection of frilly things. My Duolingo has five languages going. I’m obsessed with Afrobeats, even though the genre gives me all the feelings. BECAUSE it does.

December is a relief, too full of crafts and gifts and next-year’s-goal-setting to worry too much about dating. There are three cute guys at work but I love myself and my job too much to hit on them. I’ll bring the car in before Christmas trips and flirt with the car place guy. I’ll visit the museum I was supposed to see last February. I’ll spend New Years with BFF or on my own or who knows where. Maybe I’ll just be starting a new puzzle.

Dear Shy One, dear Rainbow Pal, dear EVERYONE, I’m overflowing with love for you as if it were the first time and the last. You shine out of me permanently and I hope I can glimmer out of you sometimes too. We’re doing the thing, I’m so proud of us. We’re exquisitely and exhaustingly and delightfully alive.

Dearest, DEAREST 2023, thank you for all you’ve given me. Let’s type in some Rumi for the road:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and
rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each
other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell
you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across
the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

The Kindest Hookup, Part One

 

This story starts with a trigger warning, but not about the date!

Last Tuesday was my birthday. In the course of checking in with loved ones, I found out that someone close to me had had The Bad Thing happen to her on a date over the summer. I was glad she trusted me enough to tell me, and she seemed like she was doing okay, considering. But I was devastated and wondered if I needed to cancel my Wednesday night date! It seemed unfair to have any kind of body fun in the same world where a loved one had been so harmed.

But I knew it wasn’t bodies’ fault, and I was reasonably sure this guy was good and safe. He’s 27, so I figured he had matched with me purely for curiosity/millennials-have-a-mature-fetish reasons, but he seemed genuinely interested in me as a person. We talked about books and he’s reading The Sum of Us. One of my all-time favorites! We exchanged Spotify links and he picked two favorites from my Virgo Season mix: Good Riddance (see above) and Always Something There to Remind Me.

And he was calling me Ma’am! And being so kind and respectful! His smile was radiant and, in mostly chaste pictures, the rest of him was beautiful. I was touched by his attentiveness and turned on by his beauty and bravery. The energy emerging between us reminded me of The Good Boy from 2022—warm, avid, and Mine.

When he asked if there was anything he needed to do for the date, I said “Bring flowers.” Ma’am life is so good, especially during my birthday week!

He came up my driveway with two long bunches of flowers (pink alstroemeria and purple something-like-delphiniums) and a birthday card with no envelope. He looked so happy and hopeful and ready for praise—deeply adorable. We walked arm-in-arm up the driveway to my door, and went in.

He’d wanted me to sweep him in the door and take charge right way, and I don’t think I did it the way he’d pictured! I told him to have a seat while I put the flowers in some water. When I joined him on the couch, he said eagerly “What do you want me to do?”

“Let’s just sit here and be people”

So we talked about shows. I inexpertly summarized the plot of Yellowjackets and rhapsodized about how it’s almost Gilmore Girls time. (The twenty-first night of September!) He mentioned loving Rick and Morty and old seasons of South Park and I put those upsetting choices in his file but didn’t hold them against him. I wanted to hold myself against him!

We were in the middle of a (Try not to think about the end of the world!) heatwave so everything was warmth on warmth on warmth. He kissed me in the middle of our TV conversation and it sent flutters up through me—just right. An of course whispered through my body. I have been truly blessed with the good kissers lately. If I believed in Karma, I would think I was being very, very rewarded for some good deed I can’t quite think of.

“What do you want me to do now?” He asked again. Look up “topping from the bottom” in the dictionary and there’s his beautiful smiling face!

“Five more minutes,” I said, and we stayed there on the couch, chatting and kissing.

The Heated Blankets (Love, Shame, and Bleeding All the Time, Part Two)

 

On Wednesday morning, I went in for surgery for my misbehaving hoo-ha. They were going to take pictures inside my uterus, clear out some tissue and send it for biopsy, and put in an IUD to hopefully regulate (Or even stop!) the rogue periods.

Pre-op was deep vulnerability practice. First, they have you take off all your clothes and get in your hospital gown, the classic butt-revealer. Mine was an off-sky-blue with an emotionally neutral geometric pattern that definitely did not stay in my brain. And then, I was chilly, and a nurse who called everyone “love” asked if I would like a heated blanket. Of course I would!

She put one heated blanket underneath my head and another over me. The tenderness, the warmth, and the kindness got me all undone, a pure Miranda July movie moment if there ever was one. The nurse dimmed the light above my head and I stared up at the bright rectangle of the light in front of the dimmed one. Relaxed by the warmth and care I guess, my spirit shifted to my first walk along the river with The Shy One, that moment of innocence and uncertainty, before we’d had the chance to break each other’s hearts twice. “We’re on your time,” he’d said, and I took his hand and turned us toward home.

I guess the heated blankets (I accidentally typed “hearted.”) got through all my layers of grief and hurt and loss-of-face and loss-of-hope and let me inhabit that moment more fully than I’ve inhabited any of our so-beautiful-I-don’t-know-what to-do-with-them memories. Fat drippy tears overflowed and I sniffed discreetly so no one in the pre-op room would worry.

These tears were different from all the other ones I’ve cried this past month-they weren’t the bottomless, howling, laying-on-the-floor grief of the first days post breakup or the let’s-listen-to-the-song-and-get-some-sorrow-out of the calmer next few weeks. These good, tender tears were a glimpse of what was real and good and blessedly, healthfully over.

The wait was long and the blankets cooled. My teary release turned to anxious boredom. I woke up from anesthesia to navigate a once-again bloody crotch, this time maybe productively so. My hands were covered in blood for the millionth time in these messy months, and I was glad I’d caught the nurse’s name so I could call out for a fresh pad. Someday, no more pads. Maybe soon.

As I recovered from surgery, more waves of emotion came in, darker and angrier and harder to write about. Trauma, drugs wearing off, new hormones, ongoing loneliness and hurt made me prickly and harsh for a few days, until the next wave of grace came, but that’s another story.

The Good Boy, Part One

 

This is the part where I’m afraid I’m gonna write a good thing out of existence. For me, there’s warm feelings. For him, there’s a bouquet of New Things and he’s not sure what it is, just that he likes it. This is the part where I want to RUN, either at him, or away. I asked BFF-Formerly-Sweetie if I should say goodbye now to keep my heart from getting broken, and she said “(My name) it’s too late.”

So let me make the paragraphs happen even though I might be heartbroken by the last installment. Otherwise, I’m just getting too far behind.

When I saw that we’d matched on Feeld, his sweet, sincere face, his shiny eyes, and the fact that he listed “sub” under his interests, all those factors meant I kinda had to say hello. After my now-boilerplate screening questions (Vaccinated? Allergic to cats? Smoke cigarettes? (Weed is fine.) Somewhere to the left of Joseph Robinette Biden?) I asked if he might like to try ropes, and that was pretty much that.

The Good Boy is a very sweet texter, and before we met in person, I started to float up towards a new kind of rope-top confidence. He felt proctectable, deferent, and dear. This exchange felt so much kinder, safer, and more sincere than the more rough, businesslike text negotiations I also sometimes enjoy. I slipped into cozy-Ma’amness in just a few days. We’d planned two dates before we even had one.

He's twenty-nine, brand-new to any kind of poly relationships (His main partner…onboarded? him not too long ago.) or kink. In spite of the inexperience, though, he’s very adept at the parts of dating that make partners feel like human beings. (Last night, (two dates in) I was feeling supersleepy and he text-reminded me to make sure I slept in bed and not the couch. Kind.)

The day of our first date (couch/ropes/pink wine), I realized I’d run out of Valentine chocolate and asked him to bring me some. Somehow, that ask was a million times more vulnerable than talking about ropes. But he did. He brought a pink heart full of pink heart chocolates.

After a nice long talk on the couch with our wine, it was time to take him upstairs for ropes. I’ll try to get that part into words soon, I promise.

 

Thank You Note: Cute Car Place Guy

 

 

A couple of Thursdays ago, I was having a very annoying day, which in 2020, sometimes feels like an OH NO THERE’S NO MORE CIVILIZATION day. (Oh trauma-brain, not always helpful!) My internet was down so severely that they scheduled a guy without making me perform any restarts! My Animal Crossing villagers inexplicably stopped talking to me—I’m not proud of how upsetting this was! I thought it was a puzzle but a quick Google showed me it was just a fixable glitch. I thought a nice drive to the gorgeously be-leafed nearby state park would take the edge off, and it did, but OF COURSE the tire light was on.

 

During our weekend election fun/BFF time, Sweetie filled up the tires for me (I’d gotten rid of my air compressor in a flash of Tidying Up madness year before last. I am not great at life sometimes!) and the tire light went off, but I still wanted to get it checked out. I’ve still got some savings from the 600$ a week pre-Mitch McConnell-actively-starving-people-to-death times, so I was braced for new tires. I planned to get a ride from the car place and wait at home, these aren’t really sit-around-in-public-catching-up-on-the-New Yorker kinds of days.

 

OH, Cute Car Place guy. So cute he could be made-up, but isn’t. Tall, Black, with long locks and a beard and the most lovely attention-to-detail hands. Younger than me, but not by too much. He is so, so friendly and sweet. He deserves all the paragraphs.

 

My car’s name is Valentine because that’s when I got her, back during the earlier and smuttier days of the Kitten Calendar. We were in for her February inspection year before last when I decided I would ask him out by sending a very polite note to him at work. I never heard back, so I figured he was taken or just uninterested. (Or! Says my ever-hopeful brain, maybe he just didn’t get the card?)

 

This time, when I brought Val in the following Monday, he seemed disappointed that I wouldn’t be waiting around like I usually do. “Did someone tell you you can’t? You’re always welcome to stay here with us.”

 

He noticed I was due for an oil change (THAT light hadn’t come on, I work from home so I’m really not driving much.) and even though my maintenance plan had expired, he gave me the oil change for free. (Like Rory Gilmore with her Prius, I take Val to the dealership even though you’re not supposed to. I like her to have a home.)

 

This sounds way more like a praise letter on the Awesome Etiquette podcast than an entry in a sex blog, but as I’ve been learning with my Perfectly 1993 Guy story, kindness is sooooooo hot. The thoughtfulness, the care, the multipoint inspection the frequent update-texts from his work number, I can’t overstate the happiness it bought me. I spent days in a gentle cloud of I-talked-to-the-cute-guy well being, It’s kind of dazzling the difference one cute, kind face can make.

 

And Val didn’t even need new tires! When I came to pick her up, I high-fived Cute Car Place Guy with elbows like I’d learned to do at all the post-Covid protests. I missed his warm end-of-appointment handshakes—oh handshakes. Even though my mask was on, I’m sure he could see that I was smiling. It’s possible I was glowing. A light I don’t feel too often, a sweet little heart-lamp, fluttered on and the world was a little more full of hope and joy. Obviously I sent him a (non-ask-out) thank you note. Of course he texted an effusive work text when he got it, and that made me shine for like seven more hours. Thanks, thanks, thanks.

Bye and Thanks to The Socialist

My third date with The Socialist (a week ago yesterday) was just as warm and snuggly as the first two. I drove out to visit him in the suburbs, to his very guy apartment with a goth mix playing and Smiths posters all over the walls. He was wearing a Smiths t-shirt that matched the rest of the aesthetic, and all of it felt very homey and familiar. When I was nineteen, my boyfriend-type-person was a goth guy who took me to a rave club on Friday nights, and that seems to have influenced most subsequent decisions.

I felt so cozy sitting on his (velvety black) couch with my feet in his lap, talking about books and life and politics. I was SO RELIEVED when he made fun of the idea of a rigged 2016 primary! I told him he deserved ten blowjobs for that, and I meant it, but maybe I need to set my bar higher than “only buys into SOME misogynist news cycles.” Kinda where we are right now, though.

In bed, it was easy and warm. He knew just how to kiss me and just how to fuck me, didn’t mind when my exuberant moans rattled the walls of his crowded apartment building, though he did eventually get up and close the window. I couldn’t contain my joy, and he didn’t want me to.

After a couple of snuggly hours, I got tired of the goth music and (this is seriously one of the best date things that ever happened to me) put on one of his TWO Monkees playlists, singing along to cheery retro deeps cuts with his whole heart and his whole face. This, to me, is the miracle of dating, the way that, in spite of every wall and flaw and trope, a near-stranger’s perfect goofball humanity can shine out of him like the sun, and I am sometimes lucky enough to be there, naked and satisfied, to witness it. (And, in this case, laugh my head off.)

Definitely not hot songs, but I climbed all over him some more anyway—"Another Pleasant Valley Sunday” indeed.

The trouble started when I tried to tell him what I needed in terms of post-snuggle communication. He had disappeared for most of the week following our excellent second date, and as I tried to ask for something other than radio silence I felt stupid and needy and a little flower of hurt bloomed in my chest. I knew I wanted him to be more present by text, but everything I said felt like it had the potential to scare him away, everything kept coming out wrong.

We did spend a very pleasant half-hour joking our way through the emoji keyboard (Upside-down-smiley-face makes a much better ping than the businesslike thumbs-up, don’t you think?!) As I was putting on my pants, though, I knew I had to try and get serious, and he could not have looked more miserable about that.

I explained that praise is a really important part of sex for me. “Praise” makes it sound more BDSM than I meant it to. What I really meant was…softness. Kind words. He hadn’t given a single tiny sparkle of a compliment, and I explained that I couldn’t read his mind to tell if he liked me. He argued that he wouldn’t have had me over if he didn’t like me, but that is just nonsense when it comes to sex. (And I have, like, five years of blogging to prove it.)

“I’m just not good with praise” was the verdict and so was “I just don’t like all the talking.” I said that if we were fucking, he needed to communicate better, and he seemed to take it to heart.

On the long drive home, my phone chimed, and I got my hopes up that maybe he’d said something sweet. When I pulled up at home, I opened the phone and saw…more bantering about emojis, which is admittedly fun and cute but also nagged at that little void in me where kind words should’ve been. I have all the kind words to offer, and I wanted to believe that I deserved some in return.

He pinged the next day, but the connection felt broken. There would’ve been so many things to chitchat about all week—the Blue Wave! The new emojis! Orange heart! But my phone was silent except for reminders from ResistBot, so I had to admit that The Socialist didn’t like me the way I liked him.

After I let him go, I felt a return to myself, a relief from the emotional hangover that had made the sad election anniversary even harder to navigate.

What I want is simple, I want the cute person to tell me I’m cute. What isn’t so simple is remembering that I deserve it.

As the dust settled and I sent my OKC app to the cloud for a breather, I realized something I’ve never been able to non-judgmentally take in about myself before: sex is a scary thing to me. It’s all of the wonderful things, too, but sharing my space, my body with someone takes a deep investment of trust. I’ve always wanted it to be no big deal but with a sensitive body and soul and a heart that will leap into action at the least provocation, I have to take care of myself. I have to admit what I need.

So it’s a sad week, guywise, and I’m disappointed, but this is also a good, big step. I listened to him when he told me what he had (and didn’t have) to offer, and I believed him. Instead of treating the difference between us with self-sacrifice and eventual resentment, I treated us both kindly, setting us free to find a better fit. Sigh-go me.

Single Life, Week Three: A Good No, a Wreath, and a Special Occasion

Last week I was feeling like I had to build myself a new world, so lost that I wasn’t sure where I fit in in the universe. It is amazing what a good no and a good yes can do!

I’m not driving up to my sister’s for Christmas. It seems like I should be able to do it, but the idea gives me a stomachache. What I need most in the world is rest, and it seems like this winter break I am going to get it. Luckily, since modern times are sometimes awesome, it only took one post on the family facebook page and I was free. Christmas Eve and Day might be sad without my niece and nephews, it may bring out the divorce grief, but if it does, I’ll be safe at home where no one will be impatient with my emotions. I may be gleeful or somber, jolly or sobbing, but no matter what I will be warm and at home.

I’m glad to have acknowledged that things are different this year and made taking care of myself the highest priority, even if it means a lonely couple of days. Plus, I’ve never been to my own church for Christmas, so I’m looking forward to that. Making the choice to stay home felt amazing, and I’m proud that whatever else has happened, I’ve made myself a happy place to live.

In the process of tweet-bragging about my choice, I somehow accidentally dialed Mr. Sweetface, the rope-top friend who tied me to his wife a few weeks back. I texted to apologize for the misdial and somehow that led to him asking me for a playdate on Saturday. I gave him a resounding yes, bought some lacy new underpants, and was delighted to have visions of spanky snuggles dancing in my head as the last week of school before Christmas eked loudly by.

The next nice thing that happened was that my mom’s yearly wreath arrived. I opened it on the porch, not wanting it in my apartment, and was about to put it on the curb for someone else to find when I had a change of heart. It was all pearly white, with ribbons that said “hope” “joy” “love” and “peace.” It was too nice of a wreath and too nice of a gesture. I called and apologized for our fight, and she apologized too.

I think it’s time to change what I expect from my mom, to accept her genuine attempts at being loving, even as I distance myself from confiding in her. She’ll never be the trustable comfort I’ve always wished she’d be, she’ll never approve of my shenanigans, and it’s time to just let that be okay.

Sweetie, who happened to be over dropping off the car for the weekend (We’re sharing the car while I save up for my own. It’s not too bad.) helped me hang up the wreath and then went home.

Saturday I cleaned the house as much as I could and managed, for the first time since Sweetie moved out, to do the laundry and groceries by myself. For some reason, I’d been having a mental block about it—don’t know why I express grief through chore-aversion, but I’m glad I’m getting past it.

Mr. Sweetface was the first guy I’ve had over since the apartment became just mine, and the first (spoiler alert) man I’ve had in my bed since the year 2000. He was such a good choice. Though we both got good and spanked, it was mostly about warmth and snuggles, getting to know each other and feeling sleepily festive. He’s the one who helped me string Christmas lights over my headboard.

The thing about that playdate was, it was so easy. He is a spa day of a Dom and a sweet boy of a bottom, (So glad god made switches!) an emotionally generous talker who had me completely at ease. I remarked on my lack of anxiety or fear but started to think I should make that less remarkable, to stop being surprised by kindness and just keep letting it come to me.

There are moments sometimes when things are just working, when can feel the current that runs beneath things, when I feel life taking me forward without struggle or worry. Could be the endorphins or the chocolate I ate while spanking him, but I think it might be Christmas spirit—a new kind of Christmas, especially for me.