If I know anything from my lonely lonely life as a single father it’s this: things happen, things change, lovers arrive, disqualify themselves, leave. In a melange of images I intend to weave an informative path, for me that is, informative to me. You will glean what you will.
<aside> I’m struck by how dumb AI spell check and grammar check is when dealing with fiction or poetry. We don’t want the simplest phrase. We don’t want to dumb down every stupid expression with its vanilla equivalent. AI is not smart, it summarizes well. </aside>
Streaming my fantasies into the future I can understand my options only from my previous encounters. What I want. What she wants. Is there room for a WE? Is there energy?
We know time is of the essence. Time is the currency of love. If you don’t have time for a relationship why look for one? In my case, if you’re taking a time out, why are you also writing poems of aspirational love?
That’s just who I am. Optimistic. Enthusiastic. Expressive.
Previous partners might use the word excessive here, but I’m aware of my loud personality.
In Corpus things really began to fit. We enjoyed coffee on the beach. Breakfast at a crappy diner. A day of lollygagging. I think she was most happy that I didn’t press the kissing thing. Sex is so not the goal for either of us. It could be the dessert if our time continues to whisper YES.
A previous beach trip tore into my fabric of sensual awareness and consciousness. It was a fairly new relationship, fully excited and committed, and boom, we’d have sex and she’d explode. I know that sounds like a great thing, a wild thing, a sexy thing. It was different. It was a disconnection not a shared experience. I had never imagined this. My prowess was diminished when I realized she was having these smashing orgasms with little or no connection to me. Sure, we were joined at the hip, so to speak, but she was blasting off into another world, a disconnected world, an inner-world of escape.
I wanted eye contact. Connection. Consciousness. Awareness.
A previous relationship informed a new level of sexual connection for me. Hard to explain. Easy to feel. I was hungry for her the moment I woke up in the morning to the nightly “I’m exhausted,” save phrase that had us setting our sleep-tracking watches and eventually sleeping in separate rooms. Different story. The eyes-open sex was deeper and more fulfilling than anything I’d experienced in my fifty+ years at that time.
I won’t go back to functional sex.
Also, I won’t dabble in sex for sex either. There’s a culture, a lifestyle, like a Facebook of Fetish, that seems alluring. Even porn can take you down odd rabbit holes, holes you’d never venture down in real life, but through a screen, it’s hot. What is hot and what is not. That’s another one of those questions we’ve all got to answer for ourselves. My sex-positive parter, one before the hippie mom love nester, was all that. Open to whatever.
“I was a lesbian before this, so I can make that fantasy come true for you,” she said. It was our first in-person “hello date.” I almost spit my coffee.
“What?”
“Two girls at once. I could make that happen.”
She would never make that happen. Turns out, a few months later, I would call her bluff, more for information than execution. “I could never share your cum,” she said. “That’s mine.”
“Okay.”
“I’d have to be in total control,” she said. She also had some sort of restraint ropes under the mattress of her bed. I noticed them. Left that conversation for later.
She wanted to show me her FetLife profile. There was some story she’d written, some creative expression that she was proud of and wanted me to read.
“What’s the point?” I asked. “I’m not going down that road with you. If this is what you’re looking for, I am not interested in the ‘lifestyle.'”
Eventually, she opened her fetish profile on my laptop. We were in bed. I guess this was foreplay.
“What’s the point of showing me this?” I asked. “What do you want to get out of this experience?”
“Just look,” she said, frustrated.
<redacted>
I did learn a lot of new things about fetishes and the culture that leans into them. A lot of terms I had never heard before. We settled on having sex while blasting a Pornhub video of lesbians going after it. It worked for her. I was not high or drunk enough to make sense of the odd sensual overload. I guess it worked. We both got off. But is that really the point?
What I’m understanding about myself, is no. The orgasm is not the point.
Back to the hippy mama, she took a long time to climax. It seemed like a lot of work for her. I learned to delay my orgasm for her to catch up. It was different than the exploding sex, she was working with me, with my cock, to find her spot and hit her clit at just the right pace… It was an orchestration.
All along the way she was giving me positive loving encouragements.
“You’re so good. You’re so beautiful. Yes, that. I’m getting close. You go ahead, I’ll catch up.”
I was always hungry for her. For that radiation of positive language to mix in with my sex. Wow. I’d never experienced anything like it. Some women can’t tell you they love you even when you’re married to them. She could tell me and show me at the same time. In some ways, she set a new bar for future partners. I guess my most recent three-year journey failed the connection test. Again, I learned that asking for what you want and what you need are essential skills for relationships, and not just about sex. Sex is a good metaphor.
I kept telling this other woman, “something is not working.” We agreed to disagree and she continued to explode on me. Over the course of the last few years, I would offer a book. I might suggest therapy. I would fight against the idea that it was me, my level of desire. I had plenty of desire, it’s just that I was not being healed or fed by our bedroom encounters.
She eventually went to a generic therapist who gave her encouragements and a book to read. I don’t think she read much of it. I had written a review of the same book a number of years earlier.
The concept of unpartnered sex was illuminated as a practical and essential skill. That’s what I told her later, “If you’re looking to me for 100% of your sexual pleasure, you’re missing a lot of the ideas in this book about rekindling desire. I’m not having a desire problem. I’m not sure sex with you is filling me up.”
I gave her a new kind of toy, a clit sucker. (Look it up.) I continued to play along and service myself.
This is not a road map. A self-revelation, perhaps. A dialogue I’m having with myself. “What do you want in your next relationship?”
Right?
If I don’t know… I’m probably going to get another disappointing finish.
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