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.

Perfectly 1993 Guy Part Six: Learning to Love a Blowjob

Eventually, it became clear that I was gonna have to go home. The guys were starting college and Last Bitchy Gay Guy’s dad wasn’t renewing the lease on the spare apartment. In the last days before I went back home, Perfectly 1993 Guy and I decided to tackle another block of mine: blowjobs.

 

I’d done a couple that didn’t feel too onerous, but a particularly harsh night of casual sex when I was younger had made me associate going down on a guy with contempt, with being treated harshly. Nothing in the universe was harsh about this guy though, so why not give it a whirl?

 

He stood to the side of the couch arm while I sat looking up at him. His face was beatific, he looked so vulnerable and patient. Kind. His penis was truly the most lovable of all, medium-sized and always friendly, just a perfect companion.

 

It didn’t take too long! Just a few minutes of tentative, teeth-minding learning on my part and he was groan-whispering “I’m gonna come.” And he did. It was another in a series of momentous exchanges of love and warmth.

 

Swallowing was then, and for some reason remains, a point of pride for me. We had planned out that part in advance, so he had a Peppermint Patty ready to counteract the taste. (Which wasn’t so bad of course!) So lovely, so thoughtful.

 

We literally brushed each other’s hair after that. I explained, in the way that one explains something one knows absolutely nothing about, that this was “a lesbian thing.” I think I got the idea from “artistic” nudes in my dad’s photography books that I used to sneak (lengthy) peeks at when I was little. Whatever the inspiration, the mutual hair-brushing was very nice.

 

In the parental back-and-forth of those years, it was arbitrarily my dad’s turn to house me. I packed almost everything I had into dad’s small car, heartbreakingly leaving behind the Popples knapsack that contained (Among, I assume, other treasures) my senior year book, never to be seen again. (Remind me to borrow my sister’s copy  sometime for that pic of me and my friends’ legs, all in black and white striped stockings and lug-soled Mary Janes.)

 

I don’t remember the ride home with dad, aside from the relief of being on the way home and the hope for future mail. I had to get some kind of job to pay for the long-distance phone calls. I had to figure out my post-graduation life. I felt loved, wistful, dreamy. I knew I would miss Perfectly 1993 Guy so much, and that our story wasn’t over yet.

Perfectly 1993 Guy Part Five: The Quest for an Orgasm!

 

It’s taking me a long time to write these days, because Sweetie bought me a Switch and I don’t spend very much time not on Animal Crossing! The upside is, all of the imaginary flower-watering seems to have cut my anxiety score exactly in half! Hooray! I’ve missed writing to you, though—how have you been? I hope you’re well, happy, and registered to vote! Maybe you already voted!

 

Anyway, so. At some point that summer, I moved out of Beach Aunt’s beach house without even saying goodbye. She left me a modest bill of 170$ which I didn’t try to pay back until ten years later—by then she wouldn’t even cash the check! Beach Aunt was so kind before her Flat Earth/Anti-Mask/Openly White Supremacist phase kicked in! I miss her.

 

I ended up moving into First Bitchy Gay Guy’s apartment with him. Not too long after that I quit Great Adventure too. I’m pretty good at stretching a last paycheck (See also: shoplifting.) but I don’t know how I paid for my life that August! I sure didn’t quit smoking or diner-ing! Maybe the guys took care of me, who knows.

 

The apartment was nice, with pretty hardwood floors and wide windows overlooking a stone courtyard. It was sparsely furnished, though, and the toilet was perpetually clogging. FBGG and I had sort of a George and Martha vibe, part put-on and part real nastiness. It was both agitating and familiar, having come from such a fighty home. We had quite the snit one night when I spattered the pretty white patterned linoleum in the kitchen with RIT Dye red during a painful and harrowing hair-dying incident!

 

The kitchen was maybe only stocked with ramen, cereal, and pilfered diner coffee creams and sugars. Presumably also coffee?

 

So the stage wasn’t perfectly set for romance, but romance happened anyway. FBGG switched rooms with me so Perfectly 1993 Guy and I could have a little more snuggle room. The bed was a mattress on the floor, with bright yellow sheets. The walls were wood-paneled and unadorned. The rooms was warm and sparkly with love. He and and I didn’t know what we were doing in the very best of ways, and he was unerringly loving and sweet.

 

My body was cooperative in all the ways except that one. After years of indifferent/violent/cruel partners, I was really only able to come by myself, and not always that! Perfectly 1993 Guy was fiercely (But also somehow non-pressuringly) determined.

 

No one had ever gone down on me before, let alone someone so beautiful, let alone someone with whom I was so thoroughly smitten! Tenderly, kindly, with a gentle tongue and just the right amount of stubble, he made love to me with his whole cute face.

 

I so much wanted to let go for him, but I would feel the warmth and shudder recede almost as soon as it arrived. No matter how steadfast of tongue he was, I couldn’t convince my body to trust him all the way, to trust myself. I sure did love all the trying, though.

 

“Are you okay?” I asked. He seemed a little sad when he came up for kisses and air.

 

He sighed. ”I just want to be able to do this for you.”

 

Of all the parts of this story, that line makes me the most wistful. Will I ever hear that unconditional, sweet generosity from a partner again? I hope so.

Perfectly 1993 Guy Part Four: Limelight

 

 

Ohboy The Limelight. First Bitchy Gay Guy said it was the coolest club in New York City, so we had to go. The three of us drove to Hoboken and took the PATH train in. It cost *gasp* eighteen dollars to get in, but I think gay (This was before I knew about all the letters to use.) folks could go in the back door and get some kind of deal.

 

It was one of the few non- Great-Adventure-or-just-bed dates I remember having with Perfectly 1993 Guy. I was sooooooo excited! TO SEE HIM! To GO DANCING! To go be in cool New York City! It all seemed impossibly exotic and thrilling, like a really zeitgeisty dream.

 

(Pop culture sidenote: I can’t think about The Limelight without picturing Michael Alig lurking past the couch where the first season cast of The Real World were sitting and being not-awesome at clubbing. I’m re-resolving not to watch Party Monster but I may need to rewatch that episode and also consume a bunch of Club Kid content on YouTube. My quar hobbies are weird.)

 

Anyway, the outfit! Not even a little bit Club-Kid-like, but maybe the coolest I’ve ever felt in clothes. My favorite thrift store minidress was the exact same navy as my aforementioned (And afore-swooned-about!) Docs. No hose or socks. The dress was thick polyester with a sort of lacy texture. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more beautiful or perfectly dressed, but that feels like something I might’ve typed on this blog before.

 

Once inside, we stood in line again for like EVER to get onto the “gay floor” with FBGG. I remember that hallway SO VIVIDLY—wallpapered in garish orange and gold patterns—actual church meets Dee-Lite. The real sex shows were all the way on the top floor, FBGG explained—I couldn’t even imagine what that might mean.

 

Once inside the “gay floor,” FBGG sort of winked out of existence, just melted away into the scene. I was a little overwhelmed (but trying diligently not to show it) by the sight of a naked Howard-Stern-looking guy crawling around with a saddle on his back. It’s alarming, the first time you see the back of somebody’s balls in a public place! For me at least.

 

With FBGG off cavorting, Perfectly 1993 Guy and I were on our own. I was THRILLED to be holding hands with someone so beautiful and new. We decided to check out the Disco/Eighties Room, where I was certain I would know what to do! My all-the-way-raver years were a little ways off, but I’d been going to clubs since I was fifteen. Being carefree and slutty and ridiculous on a dance floor was practically my superpower.

 

And yet. The main property of Perfectly 1993 Guy was stillness. He grew up to be a psychologist, and I’ll bet he’s a good one. I don’t know if it was the pleasant inertia of him or the self-consciousness of being in such a big cool place, but I felt frozen. Even when Groove Is in the Heart came on! I just couldn’t make my body move in any kind of dancelike way. With him watching me, I forgot how to have LIMBS. I was tranced into statuary by lust, by his beauty, by being in the presence of so many people who seemed so cool as to not even be human. So we gave up on the dance floor.

 

We found and sunk all the way into a midnight-blue C-shaped couch situated in semidarkness but lofted above the main (techno even more tuneless than the kind I knew and loved) dance floor. All the while we were snuggled up kissing, I kept thinking I should make myself get up and go dance, but I never did. I’m so glad.

 

It was too loud for us to say much more to each other than briefly hollered words between kisses. We were curled up side by side, his hands on my face, in my hair. Outside of time and space, completely free from the *ahem* real world, from any kind of context at all. His very-gently-stubbled chin. His warm cheek against mine.

 

Being so innocently and mutually enjoyed felt new and strange—I’d almost felt with Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, but that was in Perfect Aunt’s living room, that was two sweet children. This was happening in a dark house-musicy Eden where somewhere was Saddle Man.

 

My feel were up on the edge of a big industrial coffee table that was strewn with votive candles. I’m not sure where I got the idea that pouring wax on people was sexy, probably from Madonna. Perfectly 1993 Guy picked up one of the votives and dripped wax lightly onto my upper thigh. Kiss, gentle pain, kiss. With the next candle, he moved further up my thigh, closer and closer to the edge of my underwear. His hands wandered the bottom of my skirt, just grazing the most sensitive places, then more wax, and more kissing.

 

It was probably four in the morning when we left this candleglow lust-haze and dragged ourselves downstairs to wait for FBGG. We lay on a giant round red velvet pouf under chandelier light and Baroque wallpaper, tired, so tired. So ready for bed. So many trains and Hoboken between us and sleep. I was so thoroughly sated, and greeting the grey dawn completely in love.

Perfectly 1993 Guy Part Three

Other than the shoes, I don’t remember much of that first Great Adventure visit together. EXCEPT THIS: We went on The Enterprise (no relation), one of those Space Shuttle looking rides that rocks back and forth, higher and higher, until it finally flips over. LOVE an upside-down ride, especially with, thrill of thrills, Perfectly 1993 Guy locked in beside me.

 

And, he was… talk-singing.  I can’t overstate how low-key this guy was overall—even though he looked like a rock star, he was the quintessential nice boy. Except in this moment, when, inexplicably and delightfully, he decided to blurt out the entirety of “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine (Pause to Google “Zack De La Rocha problematic” and then remember I’m supposed to be typing…) As the ride started rocking its way up, he started with “Some of those that work forces/are the same that burn crosses” and got all the way to “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!” by the time the ride got to the upside down part and the rest of the riders were screaming. I was laughing my head off in eye-rolling disbelief. It was the perfect, most ridiculous love-moment for a sort-of-punk-rock eighteen-year-old girl in 1993. It made me so happy (and still does!) because it made all of the sense and none of it at once.

 

Aside from the ride/smitten tummy flips and cotton candy romantic nighttime amusement part colors (Us was so many, many year in the future. But also, things can be romantic and Jordan Peele-y at the same time…) nothing particularly sexy happened while we were at the park, just the spark of possibility and the THIS ONE IS FOR ME certainty that paradoxically made me believe I could never have him. (Wow I’m exactly the same forever.)

 

We left pretty late and made the hour’s drive back to First Bitchy Gay Guy’s apartment, (It was  a family extra, something having to do with divorce I think, pretty sure that’s why this just-out-of-high-school kid already had a pretty nice apartment…) stopping along the way to shoplift some Marlboro Reds from the Acme. I usually smoked Camel Lights but shoplifters can’t always be choosers. Sometimes I even resorted to ew/gasp menthols. All of it seems gross now but also dirty-nostalgic, like cigarettes are a fun old bad influence friend I’m glad to be rid of.

 

It was (Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!) decided that Perfectly 1993 Guy would share the foldout couch with me while FBGG would take the bedroom. The living room had the stereo (Pause to sigh over the existence of stereos that were actual physical things…) so I put on a mix I’d made for me and FBGG, a mix of the dance-y, dreamy, and the absurd, culminating for reasons I can’t quite explain in Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” Kind of world-weary for where I was at in my life, but I found it romantic. Quick search—yep, I still do. Possibly I’ve always been an almost-46-year-old divorcee?

 

Anyway, INSOMNIA. The best kind, full of diner coffee and cigarettes, curiosity and happy, wholesome lust. He lay just outside my zone of touch at first, occasionally brushing my arm with a warm elbow. He smelled like sun and clean sweat and life. I was perfectly restless, almost holding my breath. What was I wearing, asked no one? I’ll tell you!

 

A coral slip I’d swiped during my BFF’s Thrifty Shopper job back home. It had a sheer frill of ruffle around the fitted top, soft coral lace along the bottom. I’m surprised I never just went ahead and wore it as a dress, I think I would, now! It was a little big on me, but skimmed my hips in a very satisfying way. The slip felt like silk to my naïve skin, but was most likely some flavor of polyester. Best of all, I don’t think I was wearing it to be seductive! That’s just what I slept in. Teenage me rules a lot of the time!

 

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo gradually (a tape-flip, getting up to smoke a few times, always in sparky semi-silence) our bodies edged themselves closer. Softly, tentatively, he took my hand. Let’s let that last another lifetime, another frozen-in-amber moment to clone or treasure on the shelf.

 

“Are you SURE you’re a lesbian?” He finally (FINALLY, FINALLY!) asked.

 

“Actually I’m feeling pretty bi right now,” I sigh/said, and then we kissed. It was a soft, playful, hopeful kiss of people who are learning how. The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow helped me to learn that I kissed too hard and too thrustingly (Probably influenced by the bad, lazy teen boys of pre-BWSMAP days) and Perfectly 1993 Guy continued that lesson. He taught me to probe and play sweetly instead of just devouring his face the way instinct and experience told me to.

 

There must not have been much night left, but we kissed and cuddled through it. His soft, perfect hands caressed me with respectful, tentative curiosity. It was the first time I’d felt both wanted and honored, both horny-as-fuck and patient, both cared for and fully embodied. It’s hard to process the pace and tenderness of that first, sexy-nightgowned night, but there it was.

 

I started this No Contact High Fidelity project first and foremost to think about touch and give myself something low-stakes to work on during quarantine, but I think I’m learning stuff too, just like Girl Rob does in the vastly-vastly-superior-to-the-book new High Fidelity show. (On Hulu. Seriously the best writing friend a person could have.) Typing my way though this, I started to understand why my standards remain so (sometimes vexingly) high, why I’m willing to wait out so much time alone until the right person arrives: I’ve already experienced so many beautiful, ideal, fateful, hot romantic moments in my life. If no more come along, I’ve already been quite thorough. I feel so grateful right now to Perfectly 1993 Guy and almost all of the other Kitten Calendar characters.

 

Perfectly 1993 Guy, Part Two

 

Of course I found my 1993 Docs available online in my size when I Googled them for this picture. My birthday IS coming up! 

 

I’ve been realizing that this story has a LOT of me just being a terrible person, I’m sorry! Thinking about First Bitchy Gay Guy really opened a can of horrified-with-myself, not just because it’s when I first learned and applied the term “f** hag”. It’s also dawning on me that every relationship in this no-contact High Fidelity has more than two people involved, though not sexually—I guess that really shouldn’t be a surprise.

 

Anyway, the general bad-personing. In high school, I’d cultivated a shoplifting habit. Just little stuff: cigarettes, nail polish, a small mountain of Easter candy to support a VERY brief flirtation with bulimia, etc.

 

But with FBGG, things really escalated. I don’t really understand why he liked goading me into theft—he certainly didn’t want for anything. He and Perfectly 1993 Guy were the first rich friends I ever made, at least they seemed rich to me! Even so, remember when ATMs had envelopes for deposits? Using his bank card, we would make fake deposits and then withdraw as much cash as we could from each one—usually around 300$.

 

That’s how I afforded my first pair of Docs. Though I understand now that they are just kind of ordinary well-made shoes, they seemed like impossible treasures. We took the PATH train and the subway all the way from New Jersey to St. Mark’s Place to get them, a momentous experience I remember as vividly as any love scene. Those shoes were beautiful. (Just a heads-up, this story has a LOT of the word beautiful in it! It was my favorite word then and probably is now too.)

 

The ATMs at least have the air of the impersonal to them. BUT. Just once, FBGG and I dined and dashed. I think every hard waitressing day I ever had later on (There weren’t as many as I deserve, I was a TERRIBLE waitress but it was so much fun. But that’s another chapter.) was a repayment of Karmic debt. Even though I don’t believe in Karmic debt!

 

Maybe even worse, when we DID pay for our coffee and pie, I remember us leaving mere pennies as tips, justifying it as “Well, they already get paid.” !!!!!!!!!!! I should devote the rest of my life to One Fair Wage. One night, on a roadtrip to my hometown, the waitress asked if we had meant to leave just eleven cents and we said yes. She said that she would rather we leave nothing. I SWEAR TO GOD, years later, that waitress became my kind, wonderful, perfect-to-share-a-smoke-with boss at another diner. I truly do not deserve the blessings in my life.

 

Okay, enough confessing for now.

One more variation-on-a-theme though: I remember calling Favorite Aunt from a payphone to update her on my whirlwind friendship with FBGG. “He’s in love with you, just wait and see!” I guess she was taking a break from shipping me with The Boy Who Sewed Me A Pillow.

 

Although I’d resolved at the beginning of the summer to get more serious about being a lesbian (Doing my own bi-erasure but also just wanting to satisfy the urge…) My First Bitchy Gay Guy kept insisting I’d like his best friend. So, on my day off from the Six Flags, I got the two of them in for free.

 

If I  had invented a fictional boyfriend for myself, it would have been this guy. He had soft, curly brown hair that went past his shoulders Eddie Vedderishly. He was softly fit and had a rich-boy’s late summer tan. He had an adorably crooked nose and sweet brown eyes framed in beautiful fluffy eyelashes. He had on some band t-shirt and green Doc Martens. I made way too big a deal about how we all had Docs on: Everyone’s looking at us! No they’re not, he said, so blasé about the magic shoes.

 

I could NOT believe I was about to ride roller coasters with him! It seemed and seems impossibly romantic. The three of us went to get in line.

 

Perfectly 1993 Guy, Part One

 

 

OMG! I’ve been putting off the brain-treat of writing about requited love all summer! Time to set a timer and start.

 

The day after I graduated, I moved away from my suburban town to go live with Beach Aunt at the shore. She was renting me a room for some insanely cheap price: I think it was 170$ a month. I gave a way lots of my thrift store clothes and most of my high school (sometimes Jane’s Addiction related) art. I kept a lot of the ridiculous tchotchkes I’d looted from a friend’s Thrifty Shopper job: Lots of sincere-looking animal figurines in Seventies colors. It might be my overly poetic memory, but I think I carried a (Little) birdhouse (In My Soul) on my lap in Beach Aunt’s overstuffed-with-everything-I-owned compact car.

 

I left behind Bucky Fellini, the rabbit I’d purchased at the State Fair the summer before and named after a Dead Milkmen album. Don’t worry, we will eventually be reunited! And I think the Dead Milkmen are still together!

 

I had 300$ in graduation money, a dozen white roses from my mom, and a new set of oil paints I would (spoiler alert) never be unlazy enough to learn how to use properly. I had a tape from the coolest girl in the school: Mary’s Danish on one side, mix after the album ran out on the other. Push th’ Little Daisies by Ween. Sensitive Artist by King Missile. Nineties AF. I had candles and incense that had been too stinky to burn in mom’s house. I had a floral vintage suitcase filled with thrift store lingerie. I was ready for nothing.

 

The strongest emotion of living in Beach Aunt’s house was the feeling of WAITING FOR LETTERS TO COME. Come to think of it, that defined part of my California time too, and even now, a little bit.

 

There was a bus that carried workers from Beach Aunt’s town to Great Adventure, so she helped me to get a job there. Not ambitious enough to wait for a spot to open up in the old-time photo studio or something else nominally creative, I took the easiest job to get: Maintenance. They gave me Smurf-blue shorts, a bright yellow shirt, and a visor. Not exactly a look to look for love in.

(Serendipity side-note: The Mayor of Kittentown worked there that summer too! We never met, but I think I probably flirted with him on the ride he operated, which, after several enjoyable minutes of Googling, I’ve deduced was just prosaically called the Giant Drop. Love a big drop ride!)

 

Aside from some one-night concert friends I’d made at a Dead Milkmen show when I first got to the beach (“If you don’t have Ween, then we’re gonna raise a scene!” the band sang, paraphrasing an important plot point of Punk Rock Girl.) I was essentially friendless for the first month of the summer. On days off, I would either float on my own in the pretty blue waves or take the bus to the park to rise the roller coasters for free. It never got old!

 

During one particularly tedious shift clearing tables and sweeping up cigarette butts in the 1950’s-themed area of the park (They only had about 10 songs in rotation. One can only take so much “Leader of the Pack.”) I met My First Bitchy Gay Guy, my literal partner -in-crime for the rest of the summer. He would be the one to introduce me to the very most Nineties-dreamy guy in the universe, who would be my first sex-with-love around midnight between our two early-September birthdays. Oh swoon swoon swoon.