When you are incomplete and living at your mom’s house in your 50s it is important to latch on to a few symbols of hope and future adventures. For me, this was a pair of boxers covered with stars. Goodfellow brand. Even the label made me smile. That’s the kind of thing it is good to grab hold of. The smile is important. When you’re in a dark depression a smile is sometimes the best hope you have.
All of my plans of escape had collapsed again. This is a common theme in my growing up. By my age you’d think some of the answers would be more clear. They are not. The job I had last year provided me with so much hope, optimism, and cash. Then, an insecure skater bro manager took offense that my success and new emerging projects were taking away from his shine. That’s dumb. He wasn’t smart, just arrogant.
I’m figuring that out, still.
I remember taking a long shower at my mom’s, I was heading over to “Doctor girlfriend’s house.”
She kept saying, “I don’t want a relationship.” She taught me a valuable lesson both that night and for my future. I washed a bit extra, conditioned my hair, and felt my star boxers put a bow on the best package I could offer her.
“I’m running about 20 minutes late,” I texted. “My daughter wouldn’t get out of the bathroom. Showering now.”
I knocked at her door feeling optimistic about getting laid. She called out, “Come in!” She had opened the bottle of wine and was well into its dark contemplations.
“I ruined the fucking rice because you’re late,” she said.
I was five feet inside the house, and she was still 20 feet away in the open kitchen. “Oh, I was texting you my progress.”
“I need more than this. I don’t need this at all. You’ve ruined dinner and now I’m not all that happy to see you.”
“Bye,” I said. I turned around and left. Change of plans.
A few days later she texted, “I’m sorry, I got a little drunk and bitchy.”
A month after that she texted, “You were great. I’m sorry I took us for granted. You deserve someone who can love you back.”
Here’s the part that was so weird, in addition to breaking up with me a few times and taking me back a day later, she was a professor at the university. A Ph.D with her own lab and staff, and pulling down serious cash while complaining to me about splitting a tab. Not a match, she said. Her lab’s work was studying societal effects on childhood obesity.
Her ten-year-old kid was obese. The pantry was full of Oreos and Doritos. She was feeding sugar and crap to her fat kid. I tried to roll over that conundrum in my mind, never having met the boy, but I was not impressed. Framed photos were everywhere showing his blonde hair and chubby little cheeks. He was twelve. His room was a Star Wars toy dump.
She was so smart, so pretty, and fast around the tennis court. That’s what kept happening to our relationship. She’d break up, “Yeah, I can’t do this.”
A few days later, “Do you want to hit some balls.”
She was referring to tennis not fucking. It would always lead to fucking. She’d be upset when she paid for dinner. My funds were limited but my imagination and optimism were showing up with gusto. In a conversation on her back porch, post-fucking bliss, she said it again. “I don’t want to be in a relationship with anybody. It’s not you.”
A moment of clarity popped in my mind as blurted out my new mantra, “I’m not interested in dating anyone who’s not a long-term candidate.”
And that was the ‘ah ha’ moment. We did the OFF and ON get it on cycle one more time before the collapse.
Over the next years, the star boxers became my symbol of independence and clarity. I would put them on as I was getting ready for a date. “Okay,” I’d say to myself. “These come off only when you’re ready.” I wouldn’t put on the stars until I was interested in more than her body.
Sex is lovely. Sex is also an obstacle to getting to know someone. If performed too early, sex becomes the tone of the relationship, all growth and evolution are paused while you both burn brightly in the sexual chemistry honeymoon. Enjoy it. It can’t last. You’d burn up, catch fire, explode.
The sex-positive partner I had was mad about getting it on. She was also quite mad. As she bolted out of my condo she mentioned submitting a background check at Walmart to purchase a gun. My girlfriend needed immediate medical assistance. We were never going to get into the “position without a name.” She was creative. After she split, I asked her about how it went down, looking for “closure” whatever that means.
“I bolt at about six months. It’s what I do. Before I get too close.”
“Don’t you think it would be good to work through your freakout with someone who loves you?”
“Not really.”
She’s married now in a small town to a guy with a boss Mustang he won’t let her drive. It’s okay, she says, she prefers to be driven. Her raging red locks are now salt and pepper and she looks like a school teacher from the 70s, retro readers and all. I’d still fall in love with her beaming smile. She radiated white hot sex. Not anymore. The glow was still there, but perhaps I was seeing the woman she wanted to be. The woman beneath the FetLife exhibitionist. The real country girl school teacher devoted to her macho Mustang-drivin, fishin’ boat-pulling, man. “The marrying type.” If you want to be a Texas small-town teacher with a good husband.
I don’t seek her out anymore. For a few years, before she eloped to Mason Texas, we would chat on Facebook. During one low period for me, she accepted my FaceTime call. She was there. Delightful. Radiating love and smiles. “Once I love someone, I never stop loving them. I still love you.”
About three months after that last FT support call she texted me a random photo of her achingly pretty and vulnerable in her darkened apartment. It was a call for attention. It still woke up my imagination about the “position with no name.”
Just before she left for hillbilly city she met me for queso and ritas. As we did on our first “in-person” date, we kissed in the parking lot for twenty minutes. Just standing there, leaning against my leased BWM, kissing for our lives. She was an intoxicating kisser.
I think that’s what I need. What makes a kiss intoxicating? The potential of what’s to come? Or the kissing? Whatever it was, her kisses shivered every atom in my body, awakened future trajectories.
I texted her later that day. “So, what’s next? I’d like to kiss you again.”
“Sorry, no.”
That glitch set my emotional growth back a year.
“Why would you do that to me? You know I’m sensitive! You knew I would respond! What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you have a plan? Were you, are you, trying to fuck me up?”
“Sorry, no.”
I pinged her years later, a year ago, and shared a short story I had written that featured my “sex kitten” girlfriend and her malfunctions. “I’m flattered to still be a character in your life. We had some good times. Take care.”
The last kiss was a transgression. Mine as well as hers. After a rita or two I was aiming for sex. She was dabbling in what we had before leaping off to Mason Texas and a new job in a small county school district.
“I needed to feel you again,” she said. I don’t remember exactly when this happened, how long before she was geographically relocated. When I moved into my crappy apartment it was nearby her apartment. She had this conversion van that was parked out near road. Driving by I always wondered what she was up to.
Obviously the kiss was not enough to change her mind. The van vanished. Later, via Facebook, she said she sold it on Craigslist. “I go fishing now. I like boats. Sailing too.”
It’s the symbols in our lives that help us retain a sense of our past. The two intoxicating kissers in my life were both slightly off. After the school teacher came the life coach and massage therapist. I have tried to understand what it was about her sway. How just kissing became a drug, a promise, a plateau. She showed herself to be quite unstable and unable to get over my gray hair as I was pleasing her.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. I don’t think we have any chemistry.” This is after an hour of kissing swooningly on the couch.
“Chemistry? I don’t think that’s it.”
“I’m not getting off. I’m a little freaked out. I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s no chemistry. It’s not going to work out.”
“The fuck? Chemistry? That’s not what’s going on here.” Pulled my underwear (no stars) and petted the dog in the kitchen and waited for her to emerge.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
We talked through her fears and tears. I even used Orsiball as an example. “If the Tears for Fears guy was eating your pussy do you think you’d freak out.” Covid had exhausted all the dye out of my hair and my girlfriend at the time, loved it. So…
An hour later, we did a redo. It was successful, she was satiated. I didn’t want to spend the night with the dog in bed and all. I did want to feel that intoxicating kiss again. We made future plans for the next weekend. Did I mention at this time I was playing tennis with the woman from Match.com?
Friday was the target. I was clear in my mind and in my conversations with friends that I didn’t want to continue with the Victoria Secrets life coach. The suggestion was made that I secure some Viagra(tm) for Friday. I gotten a few pills from my buddy, George. “I take three. You should take three. See how it goes.” I’d never tried it or needed it. Something about her “old man” complex and the fact that her previous boyfriend used it and they’d fuck all night.
She got off “work” around three and retrieved Bohdi from the doggie day care. “What time are you coming?”
I delayed. “Work is crushing me. We have a triage meeting at 5:30 to troubleshoot the problem. I have to be on that call. I can come over when it’s done.”
Her magical face shifted phase into disappointment. Even via Facetime I could feel the shift. She was moving toward anger. Then hopelessness.
“This is not working out for me,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I don’t think you are ready for a relationship. I’m all about keeping commitments.”
“Yes.”
It was a perfect finish to an imperfect addiction. I can be honest. I was addicted to that cocaine kiss. Smashingly thin and perfect body. Locks and locks of blonde curls. I was well on my way…
If not for the crazies.
