Part
of the reason the Kavanaugh hearings were so painful and traumatizing was that
Dr. Ford’s testimony recalled my own teenage rape so clearly. I felt protective
of Gilmore Guy as he helped me navigate those feelings, mostly by being
wonderful and adorable and nice-smelling and superhot.
But
when, after several increasingly tense attempts at PIV sex, it started to slide
into place, I could feel his focus on his penis’s performance. His
determination and fixation made me feel like I wasn’t there, like he wasn’t
there either. I slipped back from this safe, celebratory moment to that
decades-ago drugged, mouth-covered, trapped, lost teenage feeling. I lost the
battle against panic and told him so. He stopped, of course, looked scared and
concerned. I felt all of my OWN pressure to get back to cheerful so we could
fuck, my own increasingly futile determination to not be so scary with all of
my feelings.
“What
do you need?” He asked again and again, in a voice that was at once scared,
caring, and businesslike. I apologized for panicking and he said something
understanding about “emotional labor” which struck me as a sad phrase to have
to use on a second-or-third date. Nonetheless, he cared for me and treated me
kindly, to the point where I wanted to return the good-listener favor. I asked
him what was on his mind and he said:
“I miss (Gilmore Lady).” I
just couldn’t help it, I started to cry. It wasn’t cute crying by any stretch—lonely,
hurt, sad tears, empty and heartbreaking. It was a moment of inescapable honesty
and I lost all attempts at being I-love-sharing-modern-open-relationships lady.
I cried and cried and
confessed and confessed. I told him how much I want to be someone’s sun and
moon and stars (“Not YOURS. Not on the second date. I’m not CRAZY.”) how what I
really wanted was romance, how I’d already told him in the woods that I’m not a
secondary.
“Do you want me to go?”
He asked delicately.
“No. You can think I’m
crazy tomorrow. Just… don’t go.”
“I don’t think you’re
crazy,” he said forcefully, climbing back into bed and wrapping me up in his
arms. As kind as he was, and even as he didn’t mind me playing a guided
meditation to try and get to sleep, I couldn’t settle in next to him. I went
downstairs to the couch and almost immediately, exhausted and scared (not of
him) I fell asleep in my own personal space.
When I woke up in the
morning and, after my morning writing, meditation, and Spanish practice, went
upstairs to him, I saw all over again what a gift he was. He was just lying
there on his belly checking his phone, locks in a grey bandanna and fanned out
over his naked back and shoulders, looking like a perfect treasure of a man, and
I told him so. I really didn’t want to let him go, and we made the VERY most of
the morning until it was time for me to get ready for work.
We made plans for the
weekend. We texted and texted and texted. I sent him long, fretful, feminist
paragraphs and he sent kind and thoughtful responses back. I could send him fraught
texts in the middle of the night without scaring him away, that does not go
unappreciated. He was a champion. He really tried, and so did I.
When it came time for our
third-or-fourth date, a NO rose up in me so strong and goddessy that it felt
like it was coming from the center of the earth. I said rather more than I meant
to about unicorn hunters and the treatment of secondary partners how I might
LOOK less-than, but wasn’t.
He looked regretful and
sad as he left, and I was sad too. But more than sad, I was SURE. I was brave.
I could see and admit what I wanted, even though poly norms and society in
general would tell me to expect and accept less. I was embarrassed that I’d
said so much, but mostly I just felt proud.
A week or so after that,
Gilmore Guy and I exchanged kind goodbye/thank you texts, and I’m glad. I
couldn’t be more grateful for his visit to my life, and I’m glad I got to tell
him so directly instead of just hoping that he reads this.
I feel like I am a new
and different person in a post-Dr.-Ford world. Her bravery is a new resource
that empowers me to stand up for myself in the screaming-at-the-Supreme-Court
way but also in the smaller, more daily, even in the more snuggly ways. I can’t
say enough about my gratitude for Dr. Ford and for all of the women who came
before her and with her. My childhood self had Anita Hill, my present day self
has Christine Blasey Ford, and we both have Murphy Brown, so I think everything
might be okay.
After I said goodbye to Gilmore Guy, I changed my “Relationship
Type” in OK Cupid to monogamous. I’m not sure that’s exactly right either, but
there’s no “sun and moon and stars” option. So far, it has the same trials and
indignities as it did before, but also the same hope. Steven and Gilmore Guy kindled
a good flame in me, and I’m going to take care of it.
