Heart Emoji Guy: A New Way to Break Me, Part Three

 

Part of how I'm dealing with my oversize herpes emotions is

painting abstractions of the virus under a microscope. Pretty?

The unmatching that night seemed so mild, so good-natured, that I guess I forgot to block his number after the date.

But then, the following Wednesday, four days after our pleasant and cordial mismatch, I woke up from a dreamy morning nap to see that Heart Emoji Guy had texted. No heart emojis this time:

“So you called me there to infect me with herpes? what the fuck is wrong with you?

You got the wrong one, I am not the one.”

I’m not sure why I wrote back, but I did. I wanted to stand up for myself a little, to let the ashamed teen self at the core of this issue know I’m still on her/my side.

“I hope I can find someone who is less stigmatizing about STIs. I still deserve to be kissed, just as you deserve to have your limits too.”

I cried on and off all morning. The kitten was sleeping by my face and I got tears all over her. I felt sad for myself having to field this weird freakout, but also felt sad got HEG, for all the guys who get tangled in Reddit threads or something and decide women only exist to trick and harm them. I cried on my cat because we all have to be so afraid of each other all the time. It’s so hard and it’s not fair.

I blocked HEG, but he borrowed a phone:

“Kiss you n get herpes, you damn fuck?

Only thing you deserve is an ass whooping.

That’s why you are an ugly looser, you stupid fuck..

Karma

I know where you live..”

The 2/3 elipses kind of undermined the menace. I cannot overemphasize how sweet and mild this guy was in person. This is one of the worst things about dating—violence can come out of nowhere and there’s no etiquette, no strategy, no kindness or finesse can keep potential partners from exploding into shame bombs. I know I’ve done it myself, though without the threats. Still, I’m sorry with my whole heart. Shame bombs can go right to hell.

Herpes is such a common, minor thing, it’s so stupid for people to get so upset about it. It’s a virus nearly everyone could be carrying, but that doesn’t matter. They’re GOING to freak out about it sometimes, and I don’t want to be in denial about that anymore.

So I went where I often go when I’m struggling with being a good citizen of sex: Planned Parenthood. There, the nice nurse practitioner lady told me its fine to kiss if I haven’t had an outbreak on my face!

I’d thought about doing daily Valtrex to eliminate the worry a little bit, but the nice lady told me that according to the CDC, there’s no evidence that that would reduce transmission of HSV-1. She gave me a prescription to keep on hand in case I have am outbreak again.

“We all worry about our bodies.” She said.

I’m so grateful for her! I’m so grateful for the couple of dates who have kissed me with abandon post-disclosure. I’m so grateful for the epic, transformative, transcendent kisses I’ve experienced in the past. I took a break from swiping for a week or so, but my inbox is getting back to full again.

One disclosure at a time.

One date at a time.

Staying hopeful is the best and most that I can do.

Heart Emoji Guy: A New Way to Break Me, Part Two

I chose the purple ropes for him. I remembered all the times that winding rope around a stranger had taken me to connection, an “Ohhey it’s you!” of recognition.

And it was beautiful! And silly! I have a four-month-old kitten, how was she supposed to resist playing with the bottoms of the ropes while I wound them around and around Heart Emoji Guy?! I really should train her not to do this, but I was laughing too hard to make her stop. I considered how much nicer an evening this could be if I could just end this performance and switch gears to cat-kindness and solitude. Am I destined to be alone with the cats forever? On my more confident days, that actually doesn’t seem so bad!

I reached around Heart Emoji Guy to cross the ropes at his back—usually a reliable segue to a kiss. I felt his sweet eyelashes against my cheek as he avoided my mouth again.

I was sure he didn’t want to kiss me. I had to honor that despite the loss bubbling up from my hearts like the patrol balloon thing from The Prisoner—evil, ominous, strangely effective.

I was sitting on the bed behind him adjusting the ropes at his lovely waist when I finally admitted it: “I’m so sorry, this just doesn’t feel right.” He was very understanding, I thought. He stayed smiling all through the process of getting dressed, finding his phone, getting his sneakers on; polite, kind, deferential.

After he closed the door, I felt lonely but relieved to be with the sad—the wistfulness of still missing Blue Ribbon Work Crush, the loss of this new hopeful-seeming connection. The idea of sex without kissing hurt so badly and clouded my heart and mind with teenage trauma and loss. A thunderstorm of shame was coming, whether I deserved it or not.

The other day at the pool. I saw a kid with purple hair and felt joyful that her hair color was playful, accepted, probably not fraught in any way.

I remembered my own teenage purple hair, right after The Bad Thing happened. I somehow found it comforting that it matched the deep bruises under my eyes. It was a way to define myself, to take control of my own body in the wake of losing all control. In the wake of almost losing myself. Or, in some ways, losing myself entirely. My purple hair was a haphazardly done piece of art, giving the finger to heartlessness, abuse, and rage.

My mom saw the purple hair as another thing people would judge her for, another way that I had gone completely out of her control. She kneeled me down at the tub with Chlorox bleach, made me bleach and rinse and bleach and rinse over and over until she finally let me stop. My hair wasn’t brown again, it was a sickly lichen green. The color of queasiness itself. Still, to her it was closer to “normal” color, so no one would know. She didn’t want anyone to know what she had allowed to happen to my body, which she definitely considered hers.

All this is to say, the STI diagnoses I got when I was 16 or 17, a bouquet of them from encounters both welcome and horrific, came at a time when I didn’t really know how to process what they meant. I wasn’t present-day me with all these years of sex-geekery under my belt. I was raised Catholic and everything I knew about sex was bad, except most of my own experiences.

So my teenage self took in the STIs as more evidence that I was bad, that I was rotten all the way through and this was my own evilness just starting to show itself. There were no cheerful infographics Planned Parenthood’s Instagram page—that was a million years away. There were Sex Geeks in the late eighties/early nineties, I’m sure, but I definitely hadn’t met any of them.

Now, with my extremely low-stakes HSV-1 diagnosis, I have every resource and every support. I know that herpes is incredibly common and that the stigma around it is ignorant and cruel. But the shame is still in there deep. It’s my shame and I’m gonna have to be the one taking care of it for now, at least until the universe sends me my next fairy-tale kiss.

 

Heart Emoji Guy: A New Way to Break Me, Part One

Weekend after last, I was a little sad about my job with Blue Ribbon Work Crush being over for the summer, but it was okay because this beautiful, kind, eager young man (29, his profile said) was sending me all the heart emojis. Definite good boy potential, it seemed. We planned a Saturday night movie night at my place.

I ask all my first dates to bring flowers, and Heart Emoji Guy showed up with RAINBOW ones. With glitter on them! And like the biggest bad of Sour Patch Kids you’ve ever seen. AND Junior Mints. And popcorn! I was microwave popcorn and I don’t have a microwave, but still!

Our date was starting at around the time the fireflies come out, so I asked if we could take a walk around my neighborhood. Twilight is one of the prettiest times around here, and there was a poetic slice of waxing half moon to keep us company. We held hands, lacing our fingers together in that way that always feels pleasantly teenage-crush. Dreamy-innocent in that way that David Lynch associates with goodness. (Sorry, I’m audio reading Room to Dream and rewatching all of Twin Peaks so I’ve got my second-favorite filmmaker’s aesthetics all tangled up with my own.)

When it came time to get cozy and pick something to watch, Heart Emoji Guy asked for standup comedy. I braced for him to choose Chappelle (The great date-ruiner of 2021) and free up the rest of my evening. But we landed on (Slightly less problematic? But my niece hates him?) John Mulaney. The new special is sad weirdly smug and funny and maybe not the best makeout material.

But I did hope to make out! I just had to do my disclosure first—HSV-1. I’ve often disclosed over text pre-date, I may go back to doing it that way. Or I may date exclusively on that dating app for people who have STI positives. Or I may hide under the weighted blanket and never date again.

But it really seemed like he took it in stride. He’s in the healthcare field, so I felt not-too-anxious telling him.

When it came time to aim my face toward his, his lips landed everywhere, anywhere, but on my lips. Ears, neck, cheeks, forehead. My heart sank to about the center of the earth.

I wasn’t having an outbreak, but I can still understand someone not wanting to kiss an HSV-positive person. Even if I couldn’t understand it, it would have to be okay! That’s how consent works!

I asked him, trying to keep tears out of my voice, “Do you not want to kiss me?” and he said he did. But his body said that he didn’t. Ears, cheeks, shoulders getting kissed would have been lovely if not for the WHAT IF I NEVER GET PROPERLY KISSED EVER AGAIN grief overtaking me.

It would have been helpful to feel less urgent, or not to think about sex without kissing as tragic. Heart Emoji Guy was so kind and sweet and eager, I wanted to please him. I wanted to open up my mind and, like, glow myself into Ma’am mode. I didn’t want to get swept into the tide of grief, I wanted to accept this gift I thought life was trying to give me.

So I invited him upstairs to try the ropes!

Blue Ribbon Work Crush, Part Three

Three words, “no april fools” and then nothing.

I’d known I had to ask about the “smokes often” of it all. My hope was that it didn’t mean cigarettes, juts weed. IT NEVER MEANS THIS! But he’s my ******work crush****** and so beautiful so I had to at least try. Should I never have matched? Maybe? But I’m glad I did because I like this silly story.

Maybe I was too businesslike or cutesie or boilerplate or presumptuous when I asked him the cigarette question. Or maybe he just smokes, or maybe no answer was my answer for any other reason in the universe! If this were a stranger, I’d have felt pretty neutral about deleting the convo after a few days. Instead, I kind of…strived.

Spring is the perfect excuse to look extra cute, show a little more leg at work than usual. I posted a kind of Feeld-y lingerie pic on my regular dating app profile, hoping that might move the needle. When I wrote the first draft of this paragraph I felt a little judgey towards myself about the picture, but there’s something so tender and sweet about wanting him to just see me. I hope he did see that red lace. I hope he took a screenshot and put it in his hidden folder. Oh and a bad little part of me hopes he shows that hypothetical screenshot to the other guys at work.

The blue ribbon here is really for me, being so totally overflowing with fantasies and, at the same time, almost totally profesh! It’s almost like I have a sense of self-preservation.

The striving went on for a week or so, until one night when I had a beautifully hot hookup with a dreamboat who left a little too quick. That combination of satisfaction and melancholy opened me up enough to get a little bit honest with myself—Blue Ribbon Work Crush was the one I wanted, but he was probably a smoker and DEFINTITELY wasn’t a good texter-backer. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted.

I wrote him a note on our now-feeling-cursed dating app thread. I think it was a pretty good end-of-thread message. I apologized for my maybe-businesslikeness and was maybe a little too flowery about how great I think he is.

“Okay cool, I think you’re a nice person too.”

*dies a thousand deaths*

I’m not sure why it’s so devastating to be called a “nice person” but I hate it SO much. I cried, ended the thread, and realized it was only ever gonna be a flirtation. 

Probably, we're both just flirts! Some days I like thinking over every minute detail of what we say to each other, some days I feel mortified and ashamed if I pay him a little too much attention. Today, I’m tired of it and ready for something real.

But as I’m feeling the loss and muddle and awkwardness and BOREDOM, I also want to acknowledge the everyday gift of what has happened, the free-of-charge joy this not-quite-connection has brought. I liked the cute guy at work! He was attracted to me back! Huzzah! I’m proud to be walking away with a minimum of fraughtness. Learning and growing! I might be getting somewhere.

Blue Ribbon Work Crush, Part Two

I had (still have) no chill every time I pass BRWC in the hallway. I always feel compelled to sing out his name or give him a little present.

My department had a whole week of feasting right before Christmas break-- which was wonderful except alllllllll the diet talk that came along with it. If I could wave a wand and make food talk cease to be a small talk topic!!! Anyway, there was an amazing coconut custard pie and I brought him a piece, all wrapped up un foil with a fork and napkin on top. Gave it to one of his teammates to pass along, which in retrospect seems hurtful! Teammate deserved some pie too!

The next day, the last day before break, I looked all over the building trying to give him one of my fancy gingerbread cookies. After that dizzy afternoon, I kept resolving not to chase him! There’s a reminder on my Finch app that says “Do my best about cute people,” because “Don’t fawn all over ___________” seemed too high to aim.

The car got fixed up unfraughtly, and the gentle flirting kept being the icing on the gingerbread cookie of any given day. Sometimes, there was a moment—like when I told him to high five better next time. Like when he told me in a hopeful/bonding tone that his car has lots of stickers on it too.

There was one such moment the day before Easter vacation, a little bit of a blink-and-you’ll-miss it D/s glimmer between us that made me decide that, if the moment came, I was gonna ask him out before the end of the day. There have been several moments like that, that I didn’t end up taking, usually because he was standing around with a bunch of dudes, but sometimes just because I didn’t want to.

Two days later though, a thing happened—he “liked” me on one of the dating apps! OMGGGGGGGGG! Even though he had a “smokes often,” I matched him and said “Hey pal!” and then three big grin emojis.

Seriously, who does this happen to?! I know a “like” is the smallest move possible, but still! He made it! The person I was daydreaming about all this time! The cutest guy at work! Liked me back!

And then my unhelpful brain was like, are you sure? Look at what day it was when he matched: April Fools Day. Several scream emojis!

When he didn’t respond for a few days, I went ahead and asked. “Ohno is this match an April Fool?! If so I will have to schedule some time to be mortified!

(No one I obsessed about this to had ever heard of this as a kind of April Fools prank, so apparently I should have slightly more confidence.)

A few days later, came his three word, no punctuation reply:

“no april fools”

Blue Ribbon Work Crush, Part One

Does everybody walk into a new job and wonder who’s gonna be the Cute Person there? This time, I didn’t even have time to wonder. He was right there when I walked in on my first day last August. A different department from mine! Carrying heavy things! And so exactly my type: handsome in a lighthearted way, tall as me, dark-skinned, locs.

I found a way to say something to him that day and every day since, feeling completely ridiculous after every interaction. He flirted enough to spur my imagination, and firing up the fantasy machine about somebody at work felt scary and delicious.

(And reminded me of Mr. Makeout Music and Lady Work Crush, those cute harbingers of sobbing and job-quitting. I LOVE my current job, top two of all time, so caution is wise.)

Speaking of machines and warmth, after a few months of chitchat, I knew he was a car guy, so I asked him for advice when Valentine’s heater started making a weird whirring noise. And! He said! That it was just the blower motor and if I ordered one online, he would put it in for me! POSSIBLY THE CUTEST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME. Or anyone.

I asked my coworkers about it and the office leader said “Ms. ________, not everything is a Hallmark movie.”

She wasn’t entirely right, my life is always very romcom, but she had a point. The fraughtness of what if he doesn’t do it right? Or what if I ordered the wrong part? Or if I did order it and he never had time to put it in? And how were we supposed to get in tough about it—did I need to *gasp* ask for his number? I didn’t know my post-Christmas museum trip was gonna get Covid-ed out, Val needed to be ready.

I’m learning how to keep fraughtness to a minimum, so I think I made the right choice taking the car in to the new post-Cute Car Place Guy service station. I was grateful that Blue Ribbon Work Crush had explained to me what I needed!

But I wonder—if I’d let him do me that favor, would we have gotten to know each other better? Would we have been able to try each other out in a way that would have been more organic than what did end up happening? Was I too cautious, too closed off to chance and hope and fate? Probably not, but it’s a very cute “what if” to walk around with.

 

Mr. Long Distance Is a Dear, Part Four

 

I loved laying there talking with him, playing with my nipples, and talking some more. When I asked to see all of him, he very sweetly said he wanted to save that for in person. He said that a few times, but I guess eventually the horniness won out. He angled the camera up from under his dick and oh fuck yeah, it was a profound beauty.

His cock was a fat cone of goodness, angled up and rock hard. I wanted to taste the salty tip of it. I could imagine myself riding it for days and nights, maybe for actual ever. I liked watching him play with himself, the way his thumb squeezed up and down his shaft. His warm face smiled down on me.

I asked if I could get out my trusty big pink rabbit, and of course he agreed. I was watching his face when I came, and he came not too much later. I’d like to have seen the evidence, but I’m definitely glad to have been looking into his sweet face as he got off.

He said goodnight pretty quickly then, but texted with praise, just as we’d agreed upon that afternoon. It’s not as good as snuggling, but it meant a lot to read his kind words, and then read some more in the morning.

But that weekend, I had a trip just a little bit longer than the trip to his place would’ve been, and the reality of our distance sunk in. I took stock of all the spoons I have to gather for any given trip and how much I need to take care of in my own life, and realized that it wouldn’t work.

I spent so much time being lonely during The Shy One, I didn’t want to set myself up for loneliness, for another form of unrequitedness. I wanted to celebrate Mr. Long Distance for the big life he is in, and do the same thing for myself.

This is my home. There are literal millions of men in this city. I had an even-cuter-than-his-picture breakfast date yesterday, a local and sweet and beautiful guy who brought roses. (I hadn’t remembered my favorite brunch place was flower-shop adjacent!) Still, as I type this through, I feel wistful for Mr. Long Distance. And grateful. And a little back-tracky. Matches go by fast, my heart moves slow.