A Princely Guy, A Surprising Lapse

I was home with the sniffles and this happened, before we'd even met! I'm just really happy to know that guys like this are out there.

A second princely character in as many weeks, is this just what dating with self-esteem is like? Is it an older-lady thing? Whatever it is, it’s nice being a queen in all caps. I liked this guy almost instantly. I was swiping absentmindedly on Bumble, really just going by faces, not bios, but this dear had all the things—36, a grad student at the same university I went to, and the sweetest smile. I could feel his warmth emanating from his profile, a pretty amazing feat.

Plus, Princely Guy’s from Ghana and he promised me a great Afrobeat/Hiplife playlist. I figured he’d probably have a swoonworthy Bristishy accent. (Yesyesyes, he did bring both the playlist and the accent. Ohmy.) He promised to teach me Twi. (Ohemaa means queen!) He invited me over to WhatsApp and you know I find it very cozy there.

His texting style was sunny, effusive, and kind, and I felt a safety talking to him that I don’t usually feel with people I haven’t met in person yet. (I swear it wasn’t JUST because I like being called a queen. Guys in the apps do that fairly often.) He offered to take me to dinner in my neighborhood, so last Friday night I picked out an all-pink-including-undies outfit and met him at my favorite place. Well, my favorite place to get takeout, anyway! This was my first time dining there—they reserved us the table near the window.

His texting manner had been so perfectly tuned to my whole thing that I suspected he might be some new kind of dating app AI, but he was real, and RIGHT on time. Sometimes you can tell from someone’s picture that they’d be a whole lot of fun to have sex with, and he was even more swoony in person—an openhearted face and a carefully-but-not-too-carefully sculpted body, a little slight compared to me, but strong and full of Chi.

As we ate our dinners, I told him I was experimenting with monogamy and he said he hoped to just find one woman. It was the first time I’ve taken anyone home with a monogamous intention, maybe since Sweetie.

For the first time in my life, I’m on birth control, the IUD they put in during my surgery back in March. From what he’d told me, Princely Guy didn’t seem to be that experienced or sexually active, and I was relieved to be free of the gotta-be-safe-enough-for-the-whole-constellation (possibly for the entire world) feeling. For almost my entire adult life, I’ve been a good, good, good citizen of sex. I haven’t had a PIV sex without a condom since literal 1995.

I was in a haze of happiness and trust and music with Princely Guy when he started to enter me without a condom on. It didn’t get mad or scared like I usually would, just told him he needed to get up and get a condom from the bedside drawer. But while he was rifling around in there, I was like…

Huh.

“I’d kinda like to try it without.” I said. So we did. We played and tickled and laughed and we fucked three times without a condom.

And I liked it so much. I liked being all the way against him, being filled up in this new/old way. I liked the feeling of (definitely ill-advised at this point) trust.

The match fell apart for me while I was driving him home. (Universe, send me the guy who’ll drive me around please) not BECAUSE I was driving him home, of course, but I didn’t like the way he talked about women or about my body—just an immaturity underneath all the sweetness that I knew wouldn’t serve us longterm.

On the drive back home, I landed back in wistfulness, missing the soul-connection/body-wisdom of The Shy One and wondering if I’d ever feel that kind of connection again. But my body was HAPPY. When I woke up the next morning, my vagina was full of well being. My heart felt hurty, but my body felt whole and loved and fulfilled.

Of course I’ll get tested, of course. This was a reckless choice, especially for someone who came of age in the Nineties to make. But I feel nothing but peace about it. I feel like a once-in-27-years lapse is allowed and I wonder if I’m headed towards monogamy? Or if this was just another body adventure? We’ll see.

Love, Shame, and Bleeding ALL THE TIME: Part One

 

Anxiety-humming in the background of all this year’s adventure has been my own personal mini-horror-movie—the yuckiest, most erratic, most alarming periods. Maybe post (2021) Covid weirdness, maybe perimenopause, definitely at least one fibroid.

All my period-having life before this, I had periods as regular as the moon. I tracked them with little red hearts on the calendar. If I was feeling sad or overwhelmed or crabby, I could mentally check when it might ease up. My period was a not-favorite friend. A routine so predictable as to be almost comforting.

Plus, most of that time, I was either not having regular sex or having sex with a lady who understood. Most men I’ve played with either didn’t overlap with periods or didn’t mind putting a towel down. I still had this weird, instrumentalizing fear that I couldn’t do “what I was there to do” with guys—sometimes being on my period made me feel naked and exposed, and not in the good way.

The Shy One, true to his name, didn’t prefer period sex. I was such a jerk about it once when we were in the middle of a fight about other things, and I regret that, but it still felt like kind of a patriarchal disdain was behind his non-preference. “Other women,” he’d defended, “Don’t like to have sex on their periods.” Maybe meaning..normal women? Clean women? Still, I transformed those fears into kindness and patience with him and DEEP resentment of my own misbehaving cycles.

I can’t tell how much of my shame in that relationship came from mirror-neurons, from me absorbing emotions he didn’t know he was giving off, and how much was projection, fear of religious people, fear of men. I have to admit, and this is pretty fucked up, that if his conservative background had been Christian instead of Muslim, I might not have made it to a fourth date. His conservatism felt less scary because it wasn’t my family’s brand, but I guess, patriarchy is patriarchy, and my own overcorrected bigotry is still bigotry.

Things to ponder as I keep realizing that life isn’t a romcom, that *love despite our profound differences* is maybe not the healthiest thing to believe in.

Anyway, periods. When he came home from his long trip home to Sierra Leone and we hadn’t seen each other in three weeks, he decided to brave period sex on a light day, inspired by missing-each-other horniness. There was a LOT in that day that maybe I’ll write about sometime, but the sex was profound, adventurous, and loving. “Oh thank you, thank you, THANK you.” I cried out as he entered me, always a little too grateful.

But he often did this thing where he pulled away after a date, whether to focus back on home and Mrs. Shy One or just focus back inside himself, where he preferred to be. Near the end, in that making-myself-small-so-I-don’t-have-to-lose-him phase, I felt crazy and needy for wanting him to be kind and loving after dates, instead of tuning me out for a few days.

In that void, I started to wonder if I’d traumatized the innocent boy with my never-not-bleeding vagina. There was this idea in my head that he was somehow cleaner than me, that she was cleaner too because she shared his aversion to period sex. In so many ways, I felt like they were normal and I was deviant. That she was pure and good and I was a guilty pleasure. And instead of realizing that was the awful nonsense that it was, I got madder and madder at my body, at myself.

This Meaningful Sex: Part One

 

Thanksgiving was so much lovelier than I could’ve hoped for. Talking to my sister about the fancy garden break-off gave me some much needed perspective, as did just getting the heck out of town. Today, I made some gentle moves toward Whoever Is Next, but longing for This Charming Man is making me so blue. So I’m typing to lo-fi and disentangling the lost-love feelings.

Conventional thought says that hot sex can be distracting from seeing someone for who they really are, can keep us from powering along to better matches and more-fulfilled expectations. That’s certainly true in this case, but I think the opposite is also true.

Sometimes, I think, bodies know how to love in ways that hearts and minds can’t translate, aren’t ready to see, or just can’t fit into the rest of day-to-day life. Knowing who This Charming Man and I really are, the fact that we connected in ANY way, let alone a (to me at least) spiritually meaningful way, is a MIRACLE. It was a miracle created by the wisdom of bodies. (Okay, yes, also by the wisdom or post-quar horniness, and the not-wisdom-but-welcome break I took from screening for politics.)

The first time I felt him inside me, after ropes and so much other cuteness on our daytime second date, the FIT of him was uncanny. I do partly mean the physical fit—if I could write symphonies to his long, friendly, and eternally hard dick I would. But there was also, I felt, an emotional sliding-together. A rightness. A made-for-each-other. (Wait, is this how women who are used to PIV sex more than I am feel all the time? Is this swirl of attachments and emotions and chemicals something most people just know how to navigate?)

Even (especially) as he pulled my hair and I bit and twisted and sucked his nipples, I felt drawn into his heart, into tenderness and sweet team effort. Every kiss and touch and graze and handhold felt like a recognition, a welcoming home. You were made for me. We were assembled out of stardust and Hentai and playlists and national emergencies to care for each other in those hours, in those weeks.

Yes I know. Oxytocin is strong stuff. But so is love and fate and wet, slippery magnetism.

He was exceedingly PRESENT. He felt both entirely in service of my pleasure and SO turned on. Miracle, miracle, miracle. On our handful of nights together, whole albums went by, looped around once, twice. Long playlists weren’t long enough, the music only sometimes had to be tended to while we played, so easily.

Animal Crossing and Chill Part Two

The Lovely Guy joined me under the covers and our bodies just fit so nicely together. He was so warm and open, I just loved being all wrapped up in him. It’s hard to access what order things happened in, the whole night (And I do mean the WHOLE night) was such a lovely, moan-y haze.

I played at trying to hold him down, pressing his wrists into the pillows behind his head. He very temporarily submitted. The power/tension between our bodies felt easy and fluid, like watercolors. He looked so beautiful beneath me, glowing and sweet but also amused and just barely letting me have the top—like there was only so long he would let me be up there. I thought I’d better make the most of it. I had to spread my legs wide to straddle him. I loved feeling his dick get harder between my still-legginged legs.

Some of these clothes had to go. I wanted him to tear them off, but I got the feeling he wanted me to show the initiative, so I stood up and stripped before I kissed first his face, then his neck, then his chest, then his tummy, his smooth obliques, his thighs. I gave him a few unselfconfident caveats about how I still need lots of blow job practice, and he PERFECTLY understood.

He gathered my hair into his big hands and gently and sweetly guided my motions. His cock, friendly and cheerful, tasted salty and delicious on my tongue. He gave directions so kindly and patiently. He knew the phrase I wanted to hear, but he would hold it back nearly the whole night, until EXACTLY the right moment.

“Is this how you want me to come?” He growled, looking into my face with an expression that was somehow hungry and indifferent. (Fucking SWOON)

“Uh-uh. I want you to fuck me.”

And because he is a very good first-date guest, he’d brought condoms.

No more initiative for me now! I sprawled out lazy and submissive underneath him, hands back, legs open and ready. He bent my legs all the way up and went in and …oh. That relief. That letting go.

He fucked me so powerfully, so expertly, so easily, generously, looking me in the face so much that it was almost startling. But it wasn’t startling. It was natural. It was (part of) how this is supposed to be. I said THANK YOU lots of times. I could NOT believe I’d gotten SO VERY lucky.

When he came inside me, it felt so absolute. I know it wasn’t a promise, or a bond, or a declaration, but those were the feelings at the center of me and in my heart. A long-awaited completion.

I know! I totally want to be chill about this guy! All signs point to FWB at this week-later point. But I can let the feelings live in these moments, can keep and take care of them, right? Let’s try that.

I forget sometimes how deprived of closeness I’ve been, so many of us have been. I’ve spent so many years, even before quarantine, being as determinedly self-sufficient, and closed-for-business as I could manage. I’ve been boarded up against the fires and the storms. Letting The Lovely Guy in felt so ordinary and also like such a dazzling revelation.

There definitely would NOT be any sleep that night.

Practicing a Sensation

Not really! But sometimes!

(There is/might be a new lovely human in the picture too, but I’m not quite ready to write about him yet except to say:

1.     WHOA.

2.     Yay!

3.     “Good girl.”)

Anyway trigger warning for this story—sexual assault, abuse.

During my twenties and for a good chunk of my time with Sweetie-Now-BFF, the sensation of a penis inside me felt like an elusive, impossible grail, something I wanted WAY to much and absolutely COULD NOT figure out how to get with any kind of healthiness or consistency. I think I accidentally acted out this weird story I tell myself if getting stuck on sexting with The Coach—just another (really fun for a while!) way to convince myself I couldn’t get that feeling. I’ve always thought I’d better become SOMEONE ELSE ENTIRELY to get a dick in me, like other women somehow knew the secret I just couldn’t grasp.

I know. It’s very silly. But I still feel unfuckable-in-this-one-particular way even as the evidence is mounting (ha) to the contrary.

When I was text-playing with The Coach, I got a little sick of fucking myself—all of his delightful big-dick-describing made my fingers feel inadequate and though I came over and over for him, I craved the inside release. I had toys, nice gentle still things that usually do the trick, but I wanted something to take the edge off the yearning, off the power The Coach had over me.

So, having done absolutely no research beyond remembering that one Sex and the City episode, I ordered myself a Rabbit and a whole bunch of lube. Sometimes, I do make good decisions.

My new toy did take the edge off enough, gave me enough of a self-esteem boost that I could admit that The Coach wasn’t going to give me what I wanted. But more importantly, that sensation! The coming-from-the-inside sensation that always felt like an impossible treasure now waits in the drawer for me at the end of any given day, good or bad.

Not only that, it TURNS OFF MY BRAIN long enough to just melt and bask in the pleasure.

It seems a little odd to want to learn to take this feeling, that amazing-superhard-cock-inside-me feeling for granted, but that is exactly what I aim to do.

I want to learn that I deserve that feeling as much as anyone else who wants it. I want t0 practice feeling the joy and comfort and brain-tingle without wondering who exactly I would need to be to get it.

I have to acknowledge that I am massaging out a lot of pain that lives in there too—the loss, the heartbreaks, the losses of autonomy large and small.

Some of that pain is even inherited, I think. My mom may have actually taught me this inside-orgasm-craving-lack-of-agency. I used to overhear her berating my dad for not satisfying her properly, which one night culminated in something-like-ten-year-old-me overhearing him rape her.

What a memory to live in my body along with all of the recent traumas, likes, loves, and grief. I’m happy to be taking ownership of this particular sensation, giving myself a safe, private (well) space to learn what it’s like to feel entitled to, and safe receiving, inside pleasure.

I would like this to be part of building up my self-esteem and confidence enough to actually look for a guy who LIKES me, someone who wants to be close as whole humans. It’s a pretty basic wish, the PSL of dreams. I’m glad to have written it down.

 

 

Perfectly 1993 Guy, Part Nine

Someday maybe this blog will stop being a weird time loop, but for now we’re back in the late summer of 1993. Perfectly 1993 Guy and I had been fragmented all afternoon, ever since I accidentally used the word “temporary.” Still, we were back in my room, snuggled into the waterbed with its goldenrod yellow sheets. He had started making a mixtape for me before the trip, so he moodily clunked it into the tape player. The first notes of Blind Melon’s “No Rain,” not particularly our song but EXACTLY the song of that summer, made us both lose our defenses at once, made us melt into a heap of sweet sentimental slackerness, Slow kisses and maybe a few tears.

We lay there listening to what he had so far of the mixtape. It was…uneven. I was mystified by the inclusion of Nine Inch Nails’s “Head Like a Hole,”—I guess maybe he saw me as the one he served? There was nothing about that in either of us, so probably he just really liked the song. I still have it in semi-heavy rotation, so it’s not like he was wrong. I was tickled by Living Color singing “Everybody loves you when you’re bi,” assuming that the “everybody” in the song included him.

I don’t remember the auspicious, his-first-time, midnight-between-our-birthdays sex in detail, (sadly!) but I know it was sweet, kind, and halting, the first go-around endearingly teenage-brief. The second and third times, we found a quiet rhythm. I remember feeling a spark, a little asterisk of sure pleasure the last time he came inside me, less an orgasm than a…togetherness. A confirmation that I could be loved. A Bee-Girl-Finding-Her-Bee-People relief. A warm little flame of home in a body that often felt everywhere but.

Broke or modest that we were, we had only invested in a three-pack of condoms, so when we woke up the next morning with some exact small number of hours and minutes until his bus left, he wondered if we should go out and get some more. We didn’t. We stayed in each other’s arms until the last possible minute, until it was time for my dad to drive us to the bus station. Perfectly 1993 Guy had to get back to campus, and I had to figure out what my back-home life would be.

We promised to call and write, and we certainly did, glowing and fresh and sad as a not-yet-existent Get Up Kids song. I missed him SO much after he got on that Greyhound, and I a little bit pine for him still.

Snuggles in the Time of Kavanaugh: Part Three

Once I had tied Gilmore Guy up, my self-consciousness about giving blow jobs faded a little. I started to remember the rhythm and taste, to settle back into those sensations. I felt like I could trust him to tell me if I was doing it wrong. He tentatively and gradually worked out how to be forceful with his untied hand, pulling my hair and pushing me to take him in deeper—gagging is a nice expression of affection sometimes.

(It’s hard not to think about porn when I’m doing this, though. I hardly ever indulge anymore, but the images of wide, overly-made-up, tear-streaked eyes are burned on my brain. I wish I could go back in time and rescue during-blowjob-eye-contact from its awful fate.)

Next, I decided I needed to be spanked, so I lay across his naked lap and untied his wrist. Oh. Yes. He’s such a natural at this: the smack, the giggle, the squirm, the relief.

“You can hold me down while you do that if you want…”

“Okay. Umm..how do I do that?”

(OH MY GOODNESS WHAT A GOOD QUESTION-SQUEE!)

“Just put your hand near the top of my back and press down.” I took his hand, put it into the right place, and let him take back over. He did as he was asked.

Oof. Aaah. What a relief to feel the submissive switch flip, to feel all of the tension leave my body and my soul, to be held and mastered and cared for.

But not too long after that delightfulness, the tension came back, and not just the good kind. P.I.V. sex wasn’t coming together, and I could see him getting nervous and frustrated about that. I think maybe he’d bought too-small condoms or maybe just the mood wasn’t right for that part. This was a problem for me ONLY inasmuch as it was clearly making him feel bad. As a queer kinky person, I see intercourse as one WONDERFUL medium in a vast palette, but it scares me how much meaning (and maybe even self-worth!) some guys attach to hardness.

I feel very hesitant to talk about this because I can only imagine how vulnerable this aspect of things is (I can hear Charlotte York going on and on about “We don’t want to upset the penis!” as I type. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXsNgkZCUs8 ) but I think it’s important to think about how objectifying this focus on performance is for both of us. I wouldn’t blame any individual man for this fixation—as with so many sex-troubles, I think it comes from the deep, rotten heart of heteronormativity.

For a while, the worry didn’t overtake the pleasure. We played, we snuggled. We layed around looking like a painting with our fancy wine glasses. He called me “Titianesque” and I was impressed with the art history reference.

But eventually, it wasn’t okay, and I’m going to give myself time to breathe before I write about that part. I’m okay, he did nothing wrong, but that fixation needs to go.

Gilmore Guy Part Four: Your Arms Make Me Wish I Was Still a Poet

I'm not saying this night was about love, oh wait, maybe I am. Not about couple-love, that still feels a million miles away, but the love of bodies, of luck, of my neighborhood, of the rhythm of Amy Sherman-Palladino's writing. It was a night about the love of LIFE, and I'm so glad I indulged in it. Gold stars all around.

            As we kissed on Gilmore Guy’s couch, the magic of desire took me over like a fluffy pink cloud. The comfort and pleasure of him was making me feel woozily submissive. (In my favorite book-I-didn’t-finish-because-it’s-too-triggering, The Body Keeps the Score, I learned that the impulse that makes us freeze when we’re scared is the same as the one that holds us still so we can bond with someone. This is my favorite romantic-but-horrifying brain fact!)

           

            Rather than totally succumb to the blissful frozenness, I remembered that he’d said he’d like to try a little submissiveness himself. I took a deep breath, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shoved him away from me, back against the couch. I straddled him (aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh like a horny homecoming) and immediately felt a Wonder Woman jolt of confidence. He tried to put his arms around me, but I pressed them back, held his wrists as tightly as I reasonably could with someone I JUST met.

            “How does that feel?” I gently growled into his ear.

            “Good.” He gasped, “It feels good.”

I reached to the nape of his neck and pulled his hair. I was worried it might be too much, and it was.

            “Don’t pull my hair,” he said a little reticently, and I let go.

            “Okay, thanks for telling me. Do you feel okay?”

            “I’m okay. Just…don’t pull my hair.”

            “Okay. Meanwhile, you are freeeee to pull mine!” I said, placing his hand in the right spot.

            Oh my GOODNESS I needed my hair pulled! It’s always such a relief. I arched my back, squirmed in his lap, and moaned, semi-realizing that I was giving the revelers downstairs on the sidewalk and earful. I hoped nobody I worked for was down there. Downside to geographic desirability, I guess. Totes worth it.

            He helpfully noted that the futon perpendicular to the couch was easy to fold out, and I was all “Yes please!”

            I was in such a happy haze (I feel like I should assure you that I only had half a drink, this haze was pure hormones) that I don’t really remember how my pajamas and sort-of-pretty underthings got strewn about the floor and coffee table. He took a moment to catch up with me in the nakedness department. Is there anything happier than meeting a new penis? This was a GOOD one, big and ready and delicious-looking.

            But no time for that yet, because his eager talented face was already between my thighs. I came easily and repeatedly, in giggling jolts until I pushed him away by the forehead.

            When it was my turn, though, I felt stunned with self-consciousness. It had been almost a year since I’d had a dick in my mouth (Season Two of Stranger Things with The Socialist—ah, fall.) and I suddenly felt like I’d written exactly NO paragraphs about blow jobs. It felt too big to manage, I was paranoid about teeth, I couldn’t get my head at the right angle

            No matter about my precarious blow-jobbing, he pulled me into a kiss, and our bodies wrapped back up into a snuggle. He ran his hand over my ass and I said “You know you want to smack it!” So he did, hooray!

            The intercourse part just…sigh…fit. It was as natural and as easy as the kissing. In concert with his strength, I found my own lovely rhythm, pausing to realize how transcendent this moment was—a near-stranger and me, making something lovely together. A glow as lovely and golden as the fall sun.

            There was this little dip between his shoulder blades that I could have spent weeks caressing. His body was glowing perfection to me, and so, in that happy haze, was my own.

            “Your arms make me wish I was still a poet,” I said. He’s yoga-strong, like a huggable sculpture.

            “Well, you could always put pen to paper…” he said.

            It’s helpful to have permission to wax poetic about the deep, glittery waves of release and joy I felt as we cuddled, then fucked, then cuddled some more. He spent a long lovely time with my left nipple that I will use (and have used many times already) during personal time. When I come from the inside, there’s rarely any big finale, just waves and waves and waves til we both get tired. I yelped and giggled. “Welcome!” I wanted to say. “THANK you!” I probably did say.

            Afterwards, until we eventually put back on the Gilmore Girls, we lay listening to a mix of silence and street noise, breathing and heartbeats. He put his hand on my heart, I lay my head on his chest. There’s just as much romance in short-lived flings as in more serious stuff, I think. Maybe that’s why I keep revisiting the casual—these brief sparkles of connection are no small thing. They’re important to me, and they give me hope.

            There was talk of sleeping over, but I wanted to go home. Not just because they have a no-other-partners-in-the-bed rule. (Though it did bring to mind a piece of Cunning Minx’s advice from years ago that still chimes like an old friend in my head: “You got all these rules? You don’t get me.”) (Also, in fairness, Sweetie and I had that rule as well. I was soooooooo happy when I got my own bed.) It was more that I wanted to go home and be with myself, to honor and process what had just happened.

            He put on his shoes to walk me out (It was around then that we finally exchanged last names. I wonder how/if he ever spelled my last name in his phone) and I thought he was walking me chivalrously to my car.  Instead, he gave me a quick peck at the door, looking around exactly like somebody who’d done something wrong. While I later wondered if he was being secretive or ashamed of me, I also do enough thinking about weaponized white womanhood to wonder if he just felt unsafe being seen with me at night.

            Whatever the reason, his furtiveness didn’t register until later. I went home well-fucked and starving, ate some night cereal, and slept the best I had in a long time. There are more Gilmore Guy paragraphs to come, and I’m so glad I gave us a chance.

Dating in the Upside-Down: A Like Story (Part Three)

            Thinking about the rest of this story, I had a saaaaaaad realization: I’ve lost a word since the last time I wrote about sex! Let’s have a moment of silence for the word “pussy,” which will never not remind me of the rapist-in-chief. I used to like using it sometimes, and now I’m kinda lost about what can replace it. It sounds a little clinical, I know, but I think for now I’ll just call body parts by their names and hope for the best.

Okay friends. If you’ve been keeping score, you’ll know that I haven’t had sex in a couple of years, not since blue-canary-nightlight guy, so I might not have the most perspective on what it was like with The Socialist, but it was good. Easy. Friendly. PIV sex has always been the big mystery to me, the hardest thing to settle into, even though it’s often what I want the most. This was a night where bodies just knew what to do, where everything just sort of took care of itself.

Soon after we got into bed, he got out of it. He knelt on the floor and pulled me to the side of the bed, put my legs over his shoulders, and BURIED his face in my vagina, like I was the most delicious thing in the universe. As assured as if this had been happening since the beginning of time, like he owned the place. Urgent and expert, he sucked my clit and thrust his tongue in as far as it could possibly go, and it felt so ridiculously good that I laughed between cries, apologized for laughing, then descended into giggles again.

All those years on lesbian island had made me sort of indifferent to receiving oral sex, but I guess that’s over now. I felt beautiful and silly and so, so happy. I kissed his slippery face gratefully, then set out to learn his lovely penis. It was friendly in my hand, sure of itself the way he is, and as affectionate. I felt self-conscious about my skills since it had been so long, but he assured me that there would be plenty of time to practice.

I was soooo grateful to have a box of condoms in my nightstand like a boss. They’ve mostly been used to make toy clean up easy, but what a joy for them to find a person.

There was something different about the sex this time, and as much as I want to collapse into giggles at the chemistry between us, I think what was different was me. In all my adventures, though so much good, dirty fun was had by all, I could never be fully present in my body. I struggled so hard to reduce sex with men to a transaction so that I wouldn’t be swept up in an inevitable wave of abandonment and hurt. But this? I was here for it, in every sense of the phrase.

He just fit so perfectly, bent me in all the right ways, filled me up in such a joyful, kind, friendly way. When I looked up into his face, he was with me, and when he held me down by my hair and insistently bent to kiss me, I felt the weight of the world lift. This is my bed. This is my body. This is my home, thanks for visiting. I felt grounded and pink, floaty and rooted, and the feeling hasn’t really left since.

Between snuggles, we chatted about music and fascism and other 2017 things. I looked into his deep green eyes a lot, felt silly, and did it some more.

            Since I started writing these posts, I’ve ruled him out and ruled him back in again. I haven’t lost my post-election fear of white men, the fear that somehow I’ll be swept away from The Struggle by the appeal of testosterone and playlists. I haven’t forgotten that he listens to Howard Stern, but I have to admit that The Socialist treated me 100% like a person. He treated my body with respect and admiration, and I can’t dismiss that.

So for now, I’m cautiously optimistic, thinking of an outfit for our next date, and Googling “Stranger Things Valentines.” I can’t ever really be anyone but myself, and I have faith that that will appeal to someone, even if it’s not this time. For now I’m willing to say, who knows?

#TBT: The Mayor of Kittentown and Being Bi for Realsies

As I've mentioned a few times, I'm in the process of turning the first year of The Kitten Calendar into the first book of a memoir trilogy, and that means I've had to fill in parts that were missing from the story the first time around. As much as I STILL sometimes wish I could simplify everything by being a lesbian, it's important to remember what to took to get in the habit of being true to my penis-loving self.

I named him The Mayor of Kittentown because he was the first man I had PIV sex with in seventeen years, (oh, whoops, spoiler alert!) and also because he mentioned on our first date that he’d been named Mayor of White Castle by Four Square. I was attracted to his profile because he mentioned Mystery Science Theatre 3000, had long, silky-looking dark blonde hair, was taller than me, and had a son—I have such a thing for dads. I told him that I had fond \memories of snuggling up with my goth, indoorsy Nineties boyfriend and watching “Manos” The Hands of Fate. I didn’t hear back right away. (Meaning not within a week or so—this was before everybody had the app on their phone and the process sped up.)

It was almost my default emotion in those days to be frustrated. I was in a meeting of my (Unitarian) church group processing irritation at a party-kissing-related near miss when MKT finally texted. He asked if we could get together sometime and a warm feeling wrapped my shoulders like an afghan made of sex-hope.

I was working in the library at the time and my boss noticed that I was ready for a date. She said she’d noticed a glow ever since I started going after guys, like I was coming into myself. I wore more makeup than I usually do (red lipstick=confidence) a red top that showed off my cleavage a little, my cute red girl-about-town raincoat and fake-Chucks sneakers because I had to take the bus.

Ah, riding the 23 bus to dates—45 minutes of feeling pretty and hopeful and texting my various two-person support groups for courage. The night I went to meet MKT it was a miserable, gusty October night—bitter and rainy. I felt awful for the Occupiers as I walked past their encampment and hoped they were bundled up warm in their tents. I made a mental note to mention them to him as a way of gauging whether he was an asshole or not—if he was mean about them, he would be out.

We were meeting at the science museum to watch “Eight Legged Freaks” MST3K style. When I saw him across the cosplay-dotted lobby, he looked snuggly but shy. I was delighted to see that he really was taller than me—I’m 5’ 10” so that’s hard to find! He felt nice to sit next to while we waited for the movie to start. He was a tech-guy early adopter who brought an iPad on a date so we scrolled through his photos, which I deemed sufficiently soulful: leaves, water, an inexplicable pile of decaying stuffed animals by the river.

He didn’t even make fun of me when, after I visited the restroom, the belt of my raincoat was hanging down and had clearly dipped itself in the toilet—a rom-com moment if there ever was one.

We walked through downtown to a diner after, my lifelong favorite way to eat. When we passed Occupy, he told me had a Lego display on his desk (a few blocks away in the tallest building in the city) of Star Wars characters carrying signs like “These are not the spending cuts we’re looking for,” “Occupy Tatooine” and “Tax the Hutts.” Of all the things I’d imagined potential dates saying about Occupy, this was not one of them.

With both of us being all of the awkward, conversation over French silk pie was stilted, but there was this: Both of us has worked at Great Adventure in the summer of 1993. Because I was slackersome and didn’t try for one of the better jobs, I was on the cleanup crew, sweeping up trash and cigarette butts and charming male workers into cleaning up roller coaster barf. He worked on the Demon Drop, which is exactly what it sounds like. You go up really high and it drops you, and you scream with delight. The thing is, though, I’d had a crush on the operator of that ride—I’ve always had a thing for the glasses/ponytail combo, but especially in my grungetastic teen years.

With that little coincidence, he seemed like a good prospect, until, almost to the bus stop, he mentioned that he frequented the nearby nude beach. I saw absolutely nothing wrong withit, but I said “Oh, I’d be way too shy for that!”

“Oh, I have body issues too.”

“Um, why would you assume I have body issues?”

One of the major psychological and actual barriers to me dating men has always been my size.  I’m 5’ 10” and a size 20, so as one former boyfriend remarked, there is nothing little about me. In the context of my own little world I can feel powerful and goddesslike, but it’s hard to avoid feeling fat in the eyes of men—part of me assumed that a man could NEVER find me attractive, so I looked for evidence of that, and almost always found it. Until I didn’t.

In follow-up emails I mentioned his statement and he was horrified to know that’s how I took it, telling me he did in fact find me nice to look at. He was by far the most promising candidate yet, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and invited myself over to his house to watch MST3K.

It took a little bit of juggling, but we found a Friday evening that worked. I had another datelike thing that afternoon, a walk through the local state park with a nice librarian I’d met through friends. It was the perfect picture of a fall day, like an advertisement for being alive. We took the less-trodden trails and found Narnian bridges and falling down stone fences. There’s a fancy inn in the park and we had apple crisp and spiked cider. I didn’t feel a spark with the librarian but it put me just in the right frame of mind for my MKT date.

What scared me the most was driving there. Though Sweetie was agreeable and encouraging about it, I had this idea that I might crash her car on the way and thus become the official worst person ever. She was a terrible backseat driver so it was always hard to find confidence, but I think the driving fear was just a way of feeling anxiety over being disloyal. Even when you’re bi and sorely in need of a penis, it’s very hard to transition to playing outside the marriage.

His newly-trendy neighborhood was very parked up, but I found a spot (pretty far away, it turns out) that I could go frontways into—parallel parking has never been my favorite thing.

From outside, his rowhouse (which he owned!) looked impressively adult—two well--kept arbor vitae framed the door and the window had a lovely beveled glass design—not so different from what I imagine my Grandmom had in the olden-days version of this city.

When he came to the door, I handed him the cupcake-taker (he’d requested lemon) and surveyed my surroundings. Toy-collecting divorced guy can go in many directions, but for him it was a somewhat tasteful one. There were toys on the mantle—a Peewee Herman doll, Gypsy from MST3K. There were Legos that looked decidedly untoylike, as they’d been built into tiny but intricate architectural structures, including (and this was a major selling point in his favor) Fallingwater (which, as I Google it for capitalization check, I notice comes in a kit.) All of his dishes seemed to be plastic, which I thought was endearingly single dadlike.

He had a beige two-people-can-recline couch, how could we not recline. He selected Red Zone Cuba for our MST3K and we settled in to our marooned astronaut (I think the Joel episodes are the only real ones) and his wisecracking robot pals.

He was easier to warm up to when we were alone than when we were out in public, and I easily snuggled into his lap. Somehow, we two must awkward of people took off our glasses and went from snuggling to making out.

In all of the years (seventeen, all told) that I’d been almost exclusively with women, what I missed most was the decadent teenage sensation of dry-humping, the feeling of straddling someone and finding something there. When I gathered the courage to climb into his lap, that rush came back to me with a surge of joy. He was big and hard beneath me, but what felt even better than that was the vitality of him—his whole body was shot through with pure life, and he smelled like aliveness, too, sweet and clean and strong.

Though our pants stayed on that night, we surged into each other like a waterfall. He took off my shirt and ran his hands over my shiny red bra, pet then gently over my back and through my hair. I wanted his hands in me, wanted more, and there was this completely new feeling of being of being utterly in charge and utterly at home.

But I wasn’t at home, and I never stopped being conscious of the digital clock next to the TV screen. I’d told Sweetie I’d be home around 11, and I counted the hours left in my head the way you do when you can’t sleep. When it was close to time to go, I had a few sips of soda so I would be alert for the drive home.

He grumbled about how far away I’d parked in a way that made me question his chivalry a little, but he walked me there nonetheless. We kissed goodbye and I drove home in a dizzy haze, changed.

After that, MKT and I fell into a routine. With my school stuff and his family obligations, we found time for each other every couple of weeks. I’d park far away, we’d watch part of a bad movie, catch up in kind of a cursory way, and then make out. The night we watched my favorite one, “Manos” Hands of Fate, found me splayed on the couch with his hands inside my favorite pink lacy underpants. The moon was big that night and when it was time for me to go, we couldn’t stop making out at the car, just like that couple at the beginning of the movie.

Ravenous though we both were, he was patient. He knew I hadn’t had PIV sex (or what most of the world simply calls “sex”) since a little after my twenty-first birthday in 1995. It that I’d been abstaining or anything,  I’d just been single for most of my twenties and then met Sweetie, been perfectly satisfied for a few years, then spent a handful of years being dissatisfied but not doing too much about it. I liked the idea of the kind and gentle MKT being my first-in-a-long-time.

Our relationship was somewhere on the friends with benefits spectrum, but I adored his penis. After three years of research and much, um, reflection I’m ready to pronounce it the best one. It’s difficult to believe that someone who’s walking around with something that amazing could be so meek and unassuming—kind of seems like a miracle! He was magnificent: long, thick, cheerily pink and perpetually hard. He apologized that his antidepressants made it difficult for him to climax, but that meant so many hours of good, hard enthusiasm.

The night I planned to go all the way with him (such an old timey term, I know) I was meeting him to see the new Muppet Movie—the one with Amy Adams and my imaginary boyfriend Jason Segel. Because I’d be taking the big step of staying over, I left the car for Sweetie and took the bus all the way across town. It was early December but not too cold so I could wear my red coat again, but with a teal beret and mittens. They were the kind the kind with flap and the the button on the back so that they were both mittens and gloves.

I was excited to see both MKT and the Muppets, but I felt a little bit off. There was someone else on my mind, someone you’ll meet in the next chapter, someone more Domlike, the appraising look he would give me if he saw me dolled up. I liked MKT and he liked me back in a way that (because I am the worst) Made me just a little less turned on by him. He was nudist at heart, wouldn’t care about the lipstick or the pretty shoes I walked 9 blocks from the bus stop in.

MKT did, in fact care about the lipstick. He had a little girls-are-icky moment of worry that is would get on him as we kissed hello. The other guy had no such compunction—our relationship was pretty much based on his ability to demolish lipstick.

Nonetheless, MKT was the perfect person to watch the Muppets with (re-watch, actually—I’d seen it with my family on Thanksgiving) and as we bussed over to his neighborhood, he wove his hands into my mitten/gloved ones. Because of his deadly shyness, there was always something excruciating about being in public with him, but he was fundamentally sweet and I was fundamentally ready for him.

He was radiant with health and life. Even though it was time for his Lego Christmas village to be up and running, he still shined with beach light—every bright smile I would learn to smile naked on a beach was in there and I still can’t think of a more welcome guest, a more welcome friend.

I’d been ravenous for a penis inside me for many years, but I’d also wondered if it was a forbidden fruit situation—did I only want it because I couldn’t have it? Would I get a man inside me and discover I was a true blue lesbian after all? I half hoped for that, it sure would have uncomplicated things.

But as he slipped the condom on and pushed inside me, I felt a great heave of relief and happiness. Joy came out of my lungs in great gasping wails. I loved it so much. I paused my caterwauling long enough to ask if the neighbors would mind, and he said he didn’t care.

We didn’t get to snuggle in the morning, because he had a Lego convention to get to. To catch the train on time, we had to be out of the house by 8:45. I had a having-a-hard time feeling of being claustrophobic in my own skin, but also the sanguine feeling of having an inner suntan. Every memory of him feels a little beachy, even if we never made it to the beach together. There’s rosy cheeks and sand in my hair when I think of him.

We were a little early for the train, so we stopped at Dunkin Donut to get breakfast. As I ate I prattled a way about poly and sex and Sweetie and he started to look worriedly around like he didn’t want anyone to overhear.

“Are you…ashamed of me?” Vexingly, tears came and I lost all semblance of friend-with-benefits-playing-it cool-ness, if I’d had any to begin with.

“What? No! I’m just not used to people talking about this stuff.”

I sniffled and felt myself sink inward, away from him. I spread cream cheese on my bagel and stared down at the table while he reached for my hand.

“I’m not ashamed.”

“Because if you are…” I set my jaw and tried to be brave, but I was sad to be so close to a dealbreaker, sad about everything, ashamed myself. I’d trusted him, it has felt so good, but what if he was someone who couldn’t like me for what I was? I mean, I already knew we weren’t long term, because of the whole he’s-not-poly thing, but I also knew that I wanted something darker, deeper, more permanent. I wanted to be spanked and dominated and owned, but most of all, I wanted the crazy, cracked romance I already felt for another character.

MKT walked me to the train and made sure I was really okay—my warmed-up body felt opposite to my heavy heart, and what I wanted most was to go home and get into bed with Sweetie. It was a long trip from his side of the city to the bus that would take me back home. I felt wistful for all three of the people on my mind and cheered myself by texting updates to my friends. This morning was both an accomplishment and an ending, both a triumph and a betrayal, but I covered the complication with bravado.

When I finally got home and got in bed with Sweetie, she tried to embrace me but I felt her body stiffen and then sigh into sadness. With tears in her voice she said “You smell…different.”

In the rush to get MKT off to the convention, I hadn’t showered. The smell I wanted to keep with me and mull over was hurting the person I loved most. I said I was sorry.

“Nono, I don’t want to make you feel dirty, like you HAVE to shower, it’s just…”

The wind went out of my sails and I felt so trapped and frustrated. It had felt so good. the shirt he’d lent me, a bit of tech conference swag that said “Heck yeah!” on the front was expressing how part of me felt, how all of me wanted to feel. Here in my own bed, I was so far away from the joyous shouts of the night before. I was a tangle of warring sensations as I lay there and dozed with Sweetie.

Overtaking it all was the unassailable physical well-being that went all the way to my core—if it had had a voice, it would have sounded like this: “I’m bi! I’m bi! I’m bi! I’m really DOING this, can you believe it?”

My limbs were soft and warm and my belly felt full, full in a way I’d craved for so long—it wasn’t that I’d been empty without him, but I was empty without that part of me finding expression.

Then there was the guilt—as much as I wanted to love what I was, to find a way to fully inhabit myself and really bi up a storm, it was heartbreaking to know that I’d hurt her, that this was one in a series of so many disloyalties. I’d already hurt her so much by not being gay, and I would hurt her so much more (and only sometimes in a fun way.) It would be years before our relationship would be at peace, and even then only after monumental changes.

And then there was the loss. I loved my life with Sweetie so much, it was so full of snuggles and birdwatching and Sundays in bed, and I knew what I’d done, what I’d admitted I WAS would change our relationship forever.

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

The night before J. was set to stay over at my place, I had one of the most optimistic shopping trips of my life. I really wanted to celebrate my slutty self and all that was joyful between us, what was beautiful in my dripping-wet desire for him. I got a matching fancy blue lace bra and underpants with delicate peach accents. Since I had a toothbrush at his house, I got him one for mine. Buying a 24-pack of condoms seemed so hopeful as to be hubristic. (I’ve since remembered that I’m happy to have them for my own use, too!) I overcame my mental block about buying lube. It felt like as soon as I made these purchases, he might disappear.

I got picnic fare for our Sunday breakfast: nice bread, cheese, chocolate, and pretty little red delicious apples. For some reason I had a twinge of fear about drinking with him, so I didn’t copy his (AWESOME) champagne-in-the-fridge move.

The morning of our date, I felt sunny and expansive. I had been squishily turned on since our picnic and was fully embracing my desire to pounce. He understood that he was to surrender his pants promptly at three. In preparation, I went down to the corner to the neighborhood co-op and got rainbow carnations for the table inside the door and little mum pots for the outside front and the terrace. All of my plants were thriving green and blooming, and the nasturtium seeds I’d bought at our garden date had grown into nice little sprouts. I cleaned and organized my girly apartment until it felt like a perfect welcome. You could certainly say I was trying to hard, but I might call it service. Or art!

I had my pink soft pajamas on over the sexy lingerie and I was full of my lovey-dovey self when he knocked on the door. I let him in, gave him a quick kiss, and asked, “Do you need anything? Are you hungry? Do you have to pee?” When he said no, I pushed him up the steps to my loft bedroom, shoved him down onto my princessy bed, straddled him, pinned his arms above his head, and kissed him hard. He pulled off my top and the lacy lingerie was summarily dismissed. There was an odd moment when he said “I didn’t bring condoms, so…” but I was way to rarin’ to go and stocked up on condoms to be all WTF about it. I opened one with what I hoped looked like confidence, slipped it on him, rubbed his big, hard cock until it was more than happy, and with a relieved exhale, pushed him inside.

He was the one who made me truly love being on top. I felt so at home there, so in control and competent. He sucked and played with my nipples for the longlong time I so enjoy, and when his hands were at my waist or on my back, they felt made for me. I keep saying magical, but those hands were. As we were turning over to switch positions, I asked him to stop and hold me a minute, I felt overwhelmed. I was out of breath and dizzy from emotion and release. After we breathed together for a while, he had me lay back, held my hair, and pushed in, and I looked up into his eyes and loved him. There’s no other way to say it.

We stayed in bed a long time, listening to my makeout playlist (YAAAY for having one again, it’s been since Steampunk Guy!) cuddling, staring into each other’s eyes, and fucking some more. At one point, when he was on top with my legs wrapped around his back, he hit the spot so precisely that I blurted out “If you were me right now, you’d believe in god.” and he said “No, the name’s J___.” and I laughed for like forty five minutes. It was one of the funniest, happiest, silliest moments of my life so far, but all of the laughing had the unintended effect of killing his hard-on, so we went back to cuddling and pillow talking. We decided to consider ourselves a couple, but I was still afraid to ask about the boyfriend word even though I was tired of referring to him as “the guy.”

Eventually we got our clothes on so that we could go to dinner. I was showing him my favorite neighborhood diner, so we decided I would drive. My little car was parked in a tight spot, I bumped the car behind me, and though I laughed and said “that’s why god made bumpers” I felt really stupid. I’m normally an okay driver (not the best, as we’ve established here…) but the dizziness of the day and his razor-sharp attention to my driving made me feel lost and discombobulated.

Sweetie was the world’s worst backseat driver, in the car and in life. Her protectiveness made her chime in over and over on what wasn’t safe and what I shouldn’t do. It took years for me to convince myself that I could drive on my own and to feel competent to drive others. Now I do, I even drive my niece and nephews to the comic shop when I visit them. I want to keep steering towards autonomy, so I have an inordinate amount of baggage about backseat driving. The night might have ended differently if he’d driven, but probably not.

Dinner was fine, lemon meringue pie for and appetizer and mostly pleasant sweet nothings of conversation. We made so many plans—for me to spend weekend-after-next at his house, to go back to the art museum sometime, and the beach before it got too cold for him (instead of Sweetie) to help me pick out an external CD drive. He was planning his next mix CD for me, now that he knew me better. It felt like we were kind of a snowball picking up relationship momentum, except a few little things, like this: He had a sandwich with SO MANY onions and refused a stick of gum after, giving the rest of the night a literal bad taste. Knowing how it turned out, I’m tempted to see that as evidence that he couldn’t really empathize with my side of things, but that seems like a stretch.

Next Time: Taking too long to say goodbye.

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

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

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

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

“After the pool?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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