14 posts from January 2009

I am changing.

Yesterday, I had a brief conversation with Inga, the pretty 25-year-old Polish woman who is the company's part-time bookkeeper.  I was digging around in the supply room when she came in.

"Vat are you looking forrr?  Maybe I ken help."

"Graph paper."  Her English was not good.  "Paper with lines, left to right and also up and down."

"I know vat it is, I tink, but we haff not some.  Iff you vant, I will order it."

I smiled and stepped closer.  I put my arm up on the file cabinet next to her, so she was caught in a little triangle between the cabinet, me, and the wall.  "Taking home office supplies for personal use is only 'pilfering'" I explained in my new sly laconic tone. "But if I start special-ordering it, that's just 'stealing', don't you think?"

Her eyes sparkled and her breathing got heavy.  "I von't tell."

"Thanks, but I'm good," I said, and walked away.

OK, hitting on a co-worker in another department when I was a mid-rank manager of a large company was not smart, but to follow up on something like this, when I am now the senior employee at a tiny start-up, would be too stupid even for me.

But the really amazing thing about this whole encounter was that, for me, it was totally automatic.  There was never a moment where I thought about what I should do or whether what I was doing was working.  Sex autopilot.  I was alone with an attractive woman and I could have taken her like a tiger taking down a fawn, without planning or uncertainty, just pure instinct.

I am changing.  Things are changing.

I got a call from a law firm.  Actually a timid paralegal at the law firm.  It turned out the settlement check I'd gotten for $1200 was supposed to be for $12.00.  The poor kid didn't actually say so, but I got the strong impression that it had been his own mistake and if he didn't recover the check from me, the difference would come out of his meager paycheck.  I laughed and held the check up to the phone so he could hear me tear it up.

After I mailed the pieces back to him (as he had asked), I started to get a little superstitious.  The money, which had arrived about the same time everything else had started to break my way, had been something of symbol.  I had briefly thought of not cashing the check but framing it.

Now it was gone and it occurred to me that my luck might have gone with it.

That night, I went out with a woman I had met on a message board.  I had told her I was married but looking and she was shocked, but still wanted to meet me in person.  She actually seemed very insistent.

We met up at the bar of a local brewhouse.  I was disappointed by two things.  First, she looked and talked just like Roseanne Roseannadanna; I wasn't thrilled by the looks, but the endless, pointless stories told in that high nasal whine went straight through my skull.

The other thing was, I was pretty convinced beforehand that her eagerness to meet me was a sexual thing: that the idea of a married man, an affair with a married man, enticed her.  Talking to her in person though, that just didn't seem to be the case.  She just liked me, found me amusing.

She was very shy about sex.  She asked me about the women I met, "How far do you go?"  At first, I wondered I had told her about Ariel, how I had gone all the way to Chicago to meet her.  Then I realized that this woman in her mid-40s was reverting to high-school argot, "going together", "going all the way".  I had an urge to answer, "I get to third-base."

The next night, I answered a Craig's List ad entitled "Looking to get laid".  I thought it was probably a scam to collect email addresses, but I have a good spam filter on my email account, so I tried.  Turned out it was a real person, a woman who lived only a few miles away.

We chatted online.  She definitely wanted to have sex with me, so I offered to come over right then.  She seemed surprised and declined, pointing out it was two in the morning (which to me seemed at least a reasonable time for sex as two in the afternoon, but whatever).  We continued chatting for a long time, she wanted to talk about all the things we would do when and if we ever did have sex.  It sounded good to me but as we talked, I started to like her less and less.

The problem was, as she seemed to view sex, she was the consumer and I was the producer.  Her role was to experience pleasure; mine, to provide it.

Truth be told, I feel the same way myself. Women have a lot of options when it comes to having sex and if one of them chooses me, well, it's only polite for me to show my appreciation by doing whatever it is she wants and needs.

But she isn't supposed to agree!  She is supposed to believe the reverse, that she is servicing me.  OK, I guess it's a little irrational, but I'd like her to be pleasantly surprised by the effort I put out, not to take it as her due.

So, I'm not going to email her.  If she emails me, I'll answer, but I'll be surprised if that happens.

The next morning, I was a bit down about these developments: the check being yanked back, then two missed misses in a row like that.  Then it occurred to me, I could have slept with either of them.  The first would have been some work to get past her baked-in prudery, but she was lonely and not too bright, she would have fallen pretty quickly.  The second actually said she wanted to sleep with me, in so many words (actually one fewer words, as she compressed "sleep with" in to a single abrupt verb), I would just have to deal with her attitude.

The only reason I didn't have sex with these two women was I decided they weren't good enough for me, that I could better, that in fact I was doing better (with Selena and Catherine), and most important, that I deserved better.

Well, good for me.  Goddamn good for me.

Only a little while after I came to that conclusion, I got an email from Selena.  About nothing; she just wanted to connect with me.  Then Catherine called, just to yack.

The conversation with Catherine was particularly pleasant, partly just because it was just so nice talking to her, but mostly because the way it ended.  I got a call on the other line, I was needed in a meeting.  Catherine said, "Oh, I had to get off anyway.  You go, work is more important."

How many times have I said the exact same thing, said "go", to someone I wanted to stay?  Your affection makes you want not to be a burden, and your pride makes you want to avoid seeming needy in front of someone you want to like you back.  I've said it a thousand times, but I've never had it said to me.  I wanted to say, "No, no, you are more important; this is just urgent.  It's just something I have to do now, but if I were a free man, there's nothing I'd want to do more than just talk with you."  Maybe someday, I'll get the chance to say that to her.

My wife was oddly warm all evening, and then pulled me into bed and, without any prompting from me whatsoever, did two of the things I had told the girl from Craig's List I wanted her to do to me, one of which my wife had never done before in the 16 years we've been married, the other she'd done only very rarely and never with such enthusiasm.  If she didn't have the computer skills of a Labrador Retriever, I would have suspected that she'd somehow tapped my chat with the Craig's List girl and decided to fight fire with fire.

Just before I fell asleep, I calculated that it was almost exactly four weeks since the last time we'd had sex.  You don't have to be a gynecologist to figure out that schedule.

This morning, to cap of my renewed streak of good luck, there was an uncommon situation on the train.  The seats on the train are arranged in groups of two rows of two seats each, facing each other.  Usually, the passengers are all men.  Today, however, a group of four seats on my left was empty except for an attractive young lady; the group of four across the aisle was like empty except for an attractive young lady.  Eeny-meeny-miney-moe.  I went left.

"Ride this train a lot?"  Not a great opening, but what the hell.  The girl looked up -- not as attractive as I had thought -- and gave me that "you're dirt, don't talk to me" sneer instead of an answer.

Fortunately, she got off at the next stop. I looked across the aisle.  That girl was holding, but not reading, a García Márquez novel.

"Is that Love in the Time of Cholera?" She looked up and I might have gasped out loud. She easily made the list of the top 10 most beautiful women I have ever seen.  Easily.

"Oh, yes." She had a lilting, sexy, unplaceable accent. She handed me the book. "Do you like Márquez?"

"Uh, I liked Hundred Years of Solitude."  Which was kind of true.  I own a copy of the book and I like the cover, and I expect to like the actual story if I ever get around to reading it.

Without any excuse, I slipped across the aisle and set down with her and we talked.  It turned out, her name was Caridad and she was from a small village in Costa Rica.  She had gotten a scholarship to Oxford (her accent was Central American with public-school British stamped on top) where she was a graduate student in lit and she was obviously brilliant, in addition to being gorgeous and sexy.  I asked her about her fiancé -- I spotted the ring, in addition to just not being too stupid to know that there might be diamond rings dropped into Big Macs and piles of twenties lying on the sidewalk, but there's no way a woman this fine is walking around loose -- and she asked me about my kids.

Ah well.  Call me greedy.  Catherine is wonderful: sexy and smart and pretty and funny.  Selena is intriguing, fascinating, I've wanted her for years.  I have a good chance of some kind of relationship with either or both of them.  Isn't that enough?

Well, yeah, it is.  But a man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's Heaven for?

Wow, you think you are doing something suicidally risky until you do something else so dangerous that it makes the first thing look like cowering under the bed.

Originally, I was going to go out with the lonely, slightly eccentric Selena, buy her a few drinks, maybe make a move.  We were talking on the phone and for some reason I told her about friend of mine who was going on vacation to Cleveland of all places, to visit the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.  She said that if she were to go on vacation, she'd go to Paris for a weekend.  I said, of course, insanely, "I'd like to take you to Paris."  

She was very enthusiastic about the idea and I checked on the computer; there's a trip over the President's Day weekend -- which, by one of those coincidences that are almost getting predictable, includes Valentine's Day -- that I can easily afford.  We still haven't seen each other in person for four years, but we might very well go.

Before she could bring up the issue, I came out and said she didn't have to sleep with me.  And she doesn't, but come on: Paris, Valentine's Day, and we all know how irresistible I am.  The woman would have to have a heart of stone to remain chaste.

I wrote to Catherine to tell her all this, partly, I must confess, in the hope of making her the tiniest bit jealous.  She wrote back and even said she was jealous, but I don't think she really meant jealous ("intolerant of rivalry or unfaithfulness;  vigilant in guarding a possession" -- Merriam-Webster), merely envious ("resentfully aware of an advantage enjoyed by another" -- ibid.); that is, she didn't care so much that I might go to Paris without her, but that I might go to Paris instead of her.  Ah well.

And she signed the email "Love, Catherine".  I know it didn't mean anything, it was just a figure of speech, but the Dread Tetragrammaton went through my chest like a close-range rifle bullet.  

I've got two things going on that are so suicidal, I'm actually enjoying the thought of doing anything this foolish.

First, I'm going over to Selena's house tonight.  I like her a lot, always have, and she likes me, plus, she sounds painfully lonely on the phone.  Unlikely as it sounds, I may have to turn her down for sex.  Seriously!  I mean, I like her and she's very attractive and sexy, but I do not want to mess up her already disastrous life any further, so I'm going to be careful.  Going to try to be careful.

Second, I'm having a party at my house week after next, I'm inviting a whole bunch of people, include Selena and Rebbecca.  And Catherine.  And Catherine's husband Brian.

So, meeting Catherine's husband.  I had all sorts of qualms about ever meeting him (he knows all about me and her), but Catherine wanted me to, so finally, I just told myself, "Stop being such a fucking pussy, man up, and do it."  Of course, the two of them will also get to meet my wife.  Let's hope they can be discreet.

Oh, Rebbecca -- she was the one who was attracted to me but wouldn't sleep with someone who was married (for which I was extremely grateful, as I wasn't physically attracted to her in slightest, but would have hated to have to say so) -- she invited me to a party last week.

You ever notice that on TV shows, they always go to the same shops and cafes, meet with the same people, and so forth.  It saves the producers a lot of money on sets and casting.

My life has taken on some aspects of a bad TV show and one of them is that the same settings and characters keep reappearing.  In particular, the party Rebbecca invited me to was held in the same house where I talked to Ella for so long last year.  I was half-expecting a little plaque commemorating the event, but no.   This party was considerably tamer than that one; it was built around a "performance piece", a chubby woman in overalls reciting very bad blank-verse about (I think) feminism.  The highlight for me was when she took down the bib of  the overalls to uncover her (surprisingly nice) breasts.  Her poetry became even worse as she made some sort of obscure point about the objectification of women or exploitation by the male gaze or some such crap, but I was happy to see some free boobies.

Afterward, however, I had a drink with Rebbecca, and she told me about a party she threw every year, purportedly to celebrate Presidents' Day, but which always degenerating into an alcohol- and MDMA-fueled orgy.  So I'm angling for an invite.

In a novel I read as a child, Rogue Male, the protagonist is being pursued across pre-war England by a relentless killer in the employ of an unnamed European dictatorship. For the last third of the book, the protagonist shelters in cave while the killer resides in a farmhouse nearby (keeping some of his henchmen on guard).  The protagonist hunkers down in the filthy, wet, cramped, dark cave for two weeks until finally he can't take it, and sneaks out to spy on his pursuer.  From the roof of a nearby barn, he sees the villain as his ease in farmhouse parlor, smoking a pipe and teaching the farmer's children to play chess.

In a fury, the hero stalks back to his cave.  But he comes to realize that, for him, the two weeks were two weeks of privation and discomfort and loneliness; for his opponent, the two weeks were just two weeks.

Catherine has been sending me little friendly substance-less notes every three or four days.  Last one was Sunday.  Part of me wants to shriek, That stuck-up bitch, who does she think she is!  I try to calm myself: it's not even been three days; I don't call my mom once a week.  And for her, the three days were just three days.  Three days in which she had someone to talk to, someone to sleep with.

Damn, though, the suspense is killing me.  Is she, as she says, very busy?  Has she started to regret the whole thing with me?  Has just kind of forgotten I exist?

One of the ironies of all this is that I haven't sent her a message in almost a week, so it isn't completely impossible (just very, very unlikely) that she is asking herself the same questions.

I'd like to write her, I would.  What's keeping me is not self-discipline, or not entirely: I am doing my best to keep my inner-wuss chained up in my emotional basement.  The bigger factor is, I cannot figure out what to say.  I have nothing to say that she doesn't already know: I'd like to see her, I lust after her, I'd like to buy her dinner, I'd like to go down on her some more.

Oh, and Selena sent me an email, saying how she can't wait to go out with me.  My first thought: woo-hoo.  Then: uh-oh.

My near-invulnerability continues.  I left my shiny new iPhone on the roof of my car, drove around down for a few miles; when I braked for a light, it slid gracefully down the windshield and came to rest on the wiper.  I didn't even have to get out of the car to retrieve it.

And it was a rental car.  My ancient Toyota needed more repairs than it was worth and I had left it at the shop overnight to consider my options.  The next morning the mechanic called me, told me that there had been a small fire.  No one was hurt, his shop was damaged only lightly, but my car was gutted.  He was very apologetic, and more important, his insurance company was very apologetic and they're buying me a brand new used Toyota.

Then there was Selena.

A long time ago, in ancient days, before I even started this blog, my friend Andy had a girlfriend.  Her name was Selena and she was a very odd girl.  She had a tendency to ask personal questions, but she would never, ever answer them.  I would ask her the most innocuous things -- where she worked, where she was born, even her last name -- and her mouth would draw out in a tight line and she'd shy her head away like a horse refusing a bridle.  Even Andy, who knew her better than anyone else, couldn't tell me the provenance of Todd, her four-year-old son, only that she had once, in an unguarded moment, said that her and Andy's two-month-long fling constituted the longest-lasting romantic relationship in her life.

Andy, as was his wont, fucked it up.  He said something to her, or asked her something, that she found unforgivable.  He wasn't sure what it was, but since he had alienated every other girlfriend he'd ever had, I wasn't surprised or even that curious.

And it solved a problem of mine.  Truth was, I had developed a slight crush on Selena.  Not something that kept me awake, but enough to feel guilty when she was around, for wanting to screw my friend's girlfriend. It wasn't her appearance -- the truth is, I don't even remember what she looked like -- but her fierce sense of privacy (and the emotional vulnerability it suggested) appealed to me.

Once they broke up, I was free in some sense to try to seduce her.  I didn't try, not because I didn't have any idea how to seduce her (although I didn't) or because my wife had not yet given her go-ahead -- I didn't try simply because I didn't have her phone number.  Or email address.  Or home address.  I didn't know her last name or anyone who knew her except her son Todd and of course, Andy, who would certainly react poorly to any request from me for an ex-girlfriend's contact information.

A few months ago, I happened to check out Andy's Facebook page.  Hey, there was Selena.  I guess they kept in touch.  I sent her a friend request, and we exchanged a few emails, but what could I say?  Uh, you want to, uh, sleep with me?

Night before last, though, things changed.  I had already briefed Andy on the Catherine situation, and he was offensively knowing, but I let it slide.  Then I told him about the Matt situation -- that twice I had shown up out of nowhere and took his date away from him -- and asked Andy to keep an eye on him.  Mistake.  It turns out, Matt isn't just an acquaintance of Andy's, he's one of Andy's best friend.  I tried to explain how important this was to me, but Andy is nothing if not obstinate.

Night before last, we went out for a bite.  He didn't say anything about it, but I guessed he was still upset.  He kept at me, sniping and chiving.  Eventually, he went too far and outright insulted me.  I asked for an apology and when he refused, I just walked away.

It upset me more than I would have guessed.  I drove home, my hands trembling on the wheel, then paced angrily around my house.  Finally, I emailed Selena, asked her to call me.

I won't try to dissect my motives for writing her.  There are a dozen competing reasons I could have written to her, pick one.  Hell, pick them all.

She called back today.  We talked for a long time.  She's opened up a lot, which candidly, disappointed me.  I liked the old, tough Selena better.  Mostly, she told me, she wants to get married.  Her boy needs a father, she needs a permanent relationship.

We made a date to go have coffee, but I really shouldn't have.  The woman doesn't need me, doesn't need another married boyfriend (another tiny bit of personal history she let slip to Andy, that she had a history with married men, and he duly blabbed to me).  She needs a real boyfriend and eventually a real husband.

But I still would like to talk to her.

"Hello, SportsShack."

"May I speak to Alessandra?"

"Hold please."

"Alessandra."

"Hold please."

When she walks, she's like a samba, that swings so cool and sways so gentle, that when she passes, each one she passes goes, oooh...

"Hello, SportsShack."

"Alessandra?"

"Yes, this is Alessandra."

"Hi, it's Uli."

"Uli?"

"From the train last night."

"Oh, yes, I remember."

"Great, great, I called to see if you're free to go to a movie with me Sunday afternoon."

"Oh, sorry, I work Sunday afternoon."

"Would another time work better?"

"Sure, yeah."

"If you give me your number, they won't have to page you."

"See, I'm going to be busy, I'm work and also there-"

"Alessandra, it's OK."

"What?"

"It's OK, you can just say 'no'."

"Whew.  Then, uh, thank you for the offer.  It was nice."

"You're more than welcome.  You have a good one."

"You too."

Surprisingly, I was happy when I hung up.   I ask her out and she declined.  Maybe it was the age difference, maybe she really was a lesbian.  Maybe she just thought I was boring or noticed the ring.  It's all good.  Yes, it would have been nice to go to the movies with her, but the important thing was, I got shot down at the next level.

There's supposedly a mental illness called "pronoia".  It's the opposite of paranoia: you begin to suspect the Universe is conspiring on your behalf.  I met Melissa from SportsShack a week after I met Ella; then 16 months later, I meet Catherine, who's escorted by Matt, the same loser who escorted Ella, a week later, I meet Alessandra, also from SportsShack.

I don't know what it means in the big picture, but clearly I was supposed to call SportsShack and ask Alessandra, which I have now done.  I was hoping the point was that Alessandra would go out with me but guess not.  Nonetheless, I am sunnily confident that something else will happen.  

Maybe not something good, but something interesting for sure.

Drew Carey once started a bit with, "You know that look women get when they want to have sex?  Yeah, me neither."

I spent all of last night talking with a woman who seemed... knowledgeable. Some people are just clued in in a way that I, for example, am not, and I met this woman online and I suspected she was one of them.

I was right.  For one thing, she knows Andy, my boss, Amelia, and Matt -- a random collection of people scattered across a metropolitan population of 7 million people.  I wondered if she knew Catherine but couldn't bring myself to ask.  Plus, she knows a stunning number of sexually eclectic people around the area.  I told her a lot about my life, and she seemed interested in helping out.

Even personally.  She met me because she was looking for a romantic connection, but scotched that as soon as she found out I was married.  As we talked, though, in her cluttered, deserted office in a warehouse-turned-office-building downtown, she made it quite clear that although she wouldn't date me, she would cheerful go down on me if I asked.

Why didn't I?  Sad to say, I just wasn't attracted to her.  We talked until one in the morning, and I toyed with the idea of just saying, "You know, I realize we aren't right for each other, but I could really use a blowjob right now."  I was 90% sure it would work and was curious if I was right, but eventually decided that satisfying my curiosity and whatever else wasn't worth the various complications and the unkindness of leading her on.

And then today, a woman at work who I like but am not attracted to made a moderately subtle but unmistakable pass at me.  Fortunately, it was subtle enough that I could let it go by, pretending I didn't notice, and she wasn't embarrassed.

There's a certain J. Geils irony ("you love her / but she loves him / but he loves somebody else / you just can't win") to life.  These women are attracted to me, but I'm attracted to (for example) Amelia, who is living with some guy.  And then there's Catherine...

Ah, Catherine.  Hope there, once so bright, is fading.  She likes me but not enough, apparently, to overcome the distance and all the other complexities of her life.  I'm sure she would deny that if asked -- she'd say it's just a matter of time, but it will happen -- but I'm forcing myself to be realistic about things nowadays.  It was short and sweet -- tragically short but intensely sweet -- and I don't want to ruin the almost-perfect memory of it by trying to force it to become something it can't be.  I've only come to grips with these facts over the last few hours and I'm getting blue about it intermittently, but then I remember the feel of her mouth on me, the memory I get to keep forever, and I cheer up.

There's the right woman out there.  She may be as different from Catherine as chalk from cheese, but the fact that Catherine exists makes me certain that she's out there and hopeful I will find her soon.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all

The girl across from me was skinny, nervous; she had short hair but long bangs hiding her eyes.  She was digging around in her huge macramé purse.  She fished out a tiny MP3 player, put in the earplugs, and curled her body about the purse, huddling in a ball on the seat.  Behind the dark bangs, her eyes darted nervously.

I looked her over.  There were a half-dozen rings in her ear, two more in her nostril.  There was a small metal button pinned to the purse, painted solid lavender.  Likely a lesbian then, and obviously very shy.  Well, think of it as practice.

"First time on the train?" I asked pleasantly.  She took out the earplugs and I repeated the question.

"How did you know?"

"You looked tense."

"I, I'm worried we've passed 4th Street Station."

"We can't pass 4th Street Station."  Her eyes opened wide.  "It's the end of the line."  We talked for a while,  She was named Alessandra; she'd just graduated from art school last May and had been working since in as a retail clerk.  Where?

Where else?  There are 1000 shops in this city, at least, but Whoever is running my life has a comically narrow repertoire so of course, it was at the SportsShack.  I asked after Melissa; apparently she had quit a few month ago. My station approached so I stood up.  She stood up too; I walked towards the door, and she followed.  "You're going to 4th Street?"

She nodded.  "How far?"

"Only a few minutes."  The train slowed to a stop.  "Hey, it was really nice meeting you."  I shook her small soft hand and had stepped onto the platform before I realized what had happened: she liked me, that's why she had followed me to the door; she had wanted to talk with me, maybe even get off the train with me, go get some coffee, and I had been too thick to notice.

The train was already rumbling away, so there was nothing to be done that night.

But even I have to take this hint.  Tomorrow, I'm going to do what I should have done a year ago with Melissa: call SportsShack and ask to talk to the girl I'd met the night before.

Well, it seems I definitely have the self-discipline of the average OxyContin addict.  I had the phone in my hand and couldn't help myself.  I called her, it was dinnertime, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised I got her machine.  I can quote myself exactly:

Hi. I'm on a hillside with a beautiful view of the city.  It's a different hillside and a different view but I thought of you and ... I wanted to hear your voice.

Which was all true -- just listening to her recorded message, my heart, penis, and tear-ducts all got very enthusiastic about doing their respective jobs -- but that doesn't mean I should have told her.

Re-reading my written resolution, I realize I am technically within the guidelines:  it had been almost 26 hours since I had last communicated with her, more than a literal "day".

It's strange.  I'm actually doing well in the cool thing with other women.  I've just been checking out women I like, trying a much lower-temperature persona, and they seem to respond.  With Catherine, though, I having a much greater difficulty keeping myself from boiling over.

Partly, it's because I know she responds to enthusiasm (she several times mentioned that specifically) and she's easily hurt by indifference (ditto), so however cool I may be, I need to not be cold.

Much more, it's just that I like her so damn much.  She's got the kind of body that when I see, I'm dying to touch; her face is just cute as a button;  I've decided she looks more like Janine Turner than Selma Blair, although there's a lot of Blair there too.  Plus, she's really sweet.

OK, I don't know whether other people will find this as moving as I did, but when we were in the car, she told, "Put your hand on my twat."  She was laughing when she said it, but she meant it, and not in a dirty way; she just wanted to be touched.

She's really all I could ask for, except just a little bit closer geographically.  And even that's not true.  If she were closer, I'd really be making a fool of myself over her.