You need a Hook: Take me out to the ball game of love
05/02/2006
I have been tossing and turning for decades now. The sweet infant who would sleep peacefully for hours was replaced by a toddler often riddled with endless nights of endlessness. For the last week, my brain has hurt. The tired headache that normally comes from the business end of a coke binge has been the beer back that chases a shot of tequila: ever present and slightly bitter (way to work the metaphor).
Bruce keeps telling me to sleep…and post. Post he said. I feel like I’ve been taking you away from your blog he said. Go to sleep he said. But you should also post he said.
There are pieces kicking around, perhaps I haven’t been as prolific as I was the past summer (up loading my posts takes time and makes me realize I was writing a whole lot). I am still working on Shiver Redux and I have another idea for something. There are pieces that I gaze at adoringly and think: “Man, I gotta post that.” So, I’ve started to go through the also-rans and decided to post what I had held back. This first one is, ummmm…huh…something.
Enjoy…
Disclaimer: I don’t often warn people, but this time I will. In this post I use the word cunt. If the word cunt offends you, go away and come back tomorrow. I just don’t want you to be surprised when you come across the word cunt, because for some people, mostly women, the word cunt is highly derogatory and offensive. I would never want to offend anyone, so please, for your own sake, if the word cunt bothers you, please discontinue reading at this point.
I had sex with the OOG. It was a long time coming. And now everything is split into the before and after. Before we were flirting with danger. After will never be the same.
We had been in negotiations for some time. We had rules and standards. For instance, we discussed ourselves and each other, but never our others. So while the OOG knew about the Older Man, he had no information about the specifics of my relationship or sexcapades with the OM. Similarly, I didn’t even know the name of his girlfriend.
I was so apprehensive and excited. I knew enough to know that I never was going to be a serious fixture in the OOG’s life but I wanted to be something, because something is better than nothing.
The reality of everything set in while we were having sex. It was intense and hard. I loved it. I couldn’t get enough until…
he leaned in and started talking.
Now, I’m a girl who has heard some dirty talk in her day. I mean, I don’t actually mind the “dirty slut”, “my hot bitch”, “fucking whore”, and “wet cunt” stuff that can flow during sex. Some guys say it, others don’t. In the right situation, I’m all for it.
The OOG was going down that path when he pulled his body up over mine. He looked straight into my eyes and quietly said: “Do you want me to tell you that I love you?”
Up to that point he and I had agreed that there was no real future for us. We had great chemistry and sexual attraction and in many ways are the perfect fit, but we also drove each other crazy. I have never been in an argumentative relationship, and I hesitate to call what he and I had a relationship, but if it were, we would fight all the time. We pushed buttons and lived for the rehash. We refused to understand how the other person didn’t agree with our point. So we tended to beat dead horses. Over and over. After they died. Again and again. And once we had come to a resolution, we began the rehash again. Clearly this behavior is not healthy - or sane.
I know that we did this because we cared about our opinions and we so fervently want the other to understand our point; plus we both wanted to be right. I believe that somewhere I thought I did love him. Or I loved pieces of him. And I would like to believe that he felt the same. We discussed the depth of feelings we had for each other and about the number of reasons we wouldn’t work. He thought I needed too much. I thought he pretended to not need anything. He thought it’s ridiculous that I like the car door opened for me; I thought it’s ridiculous that he refused to open the car door for me, a simple example but highly indicative of a way that we don’t fit.
For all the ways that we fit, we couldn’t overlook the fact that he found me exhausting and that I found him exhausting. You can’t survive life if your partner is a constant mental and emotional drain. Some things about a relationship should be easy. Not driving each other crazy should be one of them.
All this discussion led to the conclusion that we need some distance from each other. He said that the feelings that we have would fade if we are apart, or that’s the theory anyways. From inside the haze of sex and lust, I began to fight a sad reality. I’ve spent so much of my life looking for someone who makes me feel something more than a finely balanced mix of lust and ambivalence. I final found him only to purposely let those feelings fade.
So when he leaned in and looked me in the eyes and quietly said, “Do you want me to tell you that I love you?” My entire being froze. I whispered: “Don’t” because I knew there was two ways this could go. Either way was going to hurt. And in the time it took me to whisper, “Don’t” he already began his next sentence. As I looked into his eyes, he finished, “Don’t worry, I won’t.” I don’t know if he meant either I won’t tell you or I won’t love you, regardless, I cried in front of someone for the first time in six years.
If you listened really carefully, you heard my heart shatter. Somewhere in my head I thought I should thank him. The OOG had just finished us. From that second onward I could never think of him except as I saw him in those fleeting seconds.
His eyes were so cold and cruel, his words cut, and he was enjoying all of it. After all was said and done, the OOG said that it was just talk. Maybe it was. Maybe he was just playing out a scene in his head, but for the 24 hours after, all I heard in my head was his voice telling me that he won’t tell me that he loves me. Even today, as I rode in to work, something triggered it all came flooding back. I felt his hands on my face, his breath on my chest, and the weight of his body. For a second I had a hard time breathing and the feeling of despair washed over me and pulled me down to that place in my head where I just want to make all the noise stop.
This is the place where you can see the track marks on my soul. This is the place where doubt reigns supreme. This is the place where guilt and sorrow and regret and rejection built a community recreation room and picked teams for dodge ball. They always forget to pick me and I stand in the middle being pelted with all the words in my head that tell me that I am just not worth it.
The angst about choosing between two good men is gone. The OOG will never be the man that I need him to be. The OM will never be the OOG and as unfair as it is to compare them, I can’t help it. So they are both gone.
I suppose it’s all going to be just fine, after all waiting in the wings are the Intrepid Reporter and the Graduate Student; I am a glutton for punishment.
Eventually I will have to stop this merry go round of sadomasochism and I will. I have to find a new place to live and I will have to deal with the particulars of moving. That will provide enough of a distraction that I will be okay for a little while.
The problem is, eventually I have to stop. I have to lie down and go to sleep. I have to let my body and mind stop.
When I do, all I will hear is: “Do you want me to tell you that I love you?”