I’ve never been the woman to be fixed up by friends. I was once, as a teenager just out of high school. The guy I was introduced to turned into my very first boyfriend and love, who I subsequently allowed the precious gift of deflowering me. I’m trying to soften up my language by using terms like “deflowering.” While it makes me throw up in my mouth a little, I’m hoping my more sensitive readers appreciate the effort.
The boyfriend called me 48-hours after receiving the precious gift of my virginity (and giving me his) to say he ‘d cheated on me. In 48-hours. I guess gettin’ a little bit made him need to get a whole lot more, so I broke it off during that phone call. It was definitely painful, being introduced to love and sex in such a slap in the face kind of way, but it schooled me quickly on the very real reality of interacting with humans with penises. He called several years later (don’t they all?) expressing his regret and wishing he’d realized the love he’d had in me. Granted, this call was coming from the state penitentiary after a recent charge of attempted manslaughter after a White man made the unfortunate mistake of calling a Black man out of his name in the parking lot of a 7-11 (oops!), but the sentiment was appreciated nonetheless.
It’s nice to know in the solitude of a jail cell, a man thinks of wifing me.
When a doctor looks at you, hands you a piece of paper to sign and says, “And this is to verify that you understand you will no longer have the ability to bear children,” you’re gonna lose it a bit, even if you never planned to bear children.
I’ve never had the mom gene. Kids ask a lotta questions and let stuff drip from their nose and want money to go to college and stuff. I’ve never wanted to deal with any of that or, for that matter, the logistics of child-rearing and child birth. I was never comfortable with things growing in my body (which, now, are) or doctors making incisions (which, they now, must) or removing things from my body (which, I now, am scheduled to have).
Funny how that all worked out.
Yet and still, I’m hard-wired as a woman and have, at times, had the fantasy of telling the man I love that I’m pregnant with his child or spitting out a little genetic mini of me and my man. Problem is, that man never showed up. I’ll never have the option to change my mind and bear his child.
I’m upset about that to some degree. Sure, I can use a surrogate or adopt should a man decide he wants to do more than be buddies with benefits with me, but the female experience of pregnancy is one I’ll never experience. With that comes a twinge of anger with the memory of every man who put me in the bang buddy or friend with benefits zone or hung out/chilled/kicked it with me — because they’re too sensitive, scared or uninterested to use the word “dating” or “relationship” in description of what they’re doing with me — and said “I’m not looking to get serious until later.” Well, it’s later now mother fuckers and because my dumb ass spent too much of my precious time dealing with men who were only serious about falling into bed and not falling in love, the options I had to bear my own child without complication are now gone.
From time-to-time I’ll scroll up and down my blog, wondering what newest design element I can add or change (that’s right, I design shit too), and see two tags in my sidebar blindly glaring me in the face, noting they’re the two I happen to use the most:
Rushmore
Craigslist
I’m done giving advice for shit I probably shouldn’t be giving advice for anyway and think it’s time to tell the story of the aforementioned Rushmore that I met on the aforementioned Craigslist because he’s quite an important piece to the puzzle of woman I am at the moment.
A funny thing happened on the way to 2013. Ten points if that reference makes any sense to you. Forty seven points if you can tie that reference to “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Fuck, I love having my own blog sometimes. Anything goes, bitches! CNN should give me a show because that’s how their news coverage is lately: random as shit, like my brain. Ratings GOLD!
It began as a simple platonic Woman (Me) for Male (Him) ad posted on Craigslist in February 2012 which received a thoughtful and entertaining response received in the middle of the night several days later. 3:31 am to be exactly middle of the night. I remember well because I was actually awake and scrolling through my emails when it arrived. I’d realized the most successful male relationships I’ve had over the years were platonic and decided it would do me good to spend more time with intelligent, engaging, single men looking for the same sort of company in a female. No hanky panky. No funny stuff. Just some entertaining adventures with a man who has the ability to remind me how good men can be. I needed it desperately because my faith in them was dropping at a speedy rate.
The respondent was male, late 40s, tall, good looking, jovial-sounding and recently divorced. He was in-between jobs and looking for a partner in crime to have a few adventures with. Due to a recent lay off (and impressive severance he had ample time and money to lengthen his unemployment and take the next step to find the man he is next meant to be, taking sufficient time to exorcise the person he was working an intense corporate job of over a decade and being the male half of a marriage of about the same length.
Over a couple weeks, and a few emails shared back and forth, we decided to take our conversation to the phone. We chatted for about an hour, getting to know one another and determining if we’d make good adventure companions. IT didn’t take me long(er than hearing his friendly voice) to determine he was a mine I would be more than happy to meet at the Pier and grab some snacks and and just take time to see what a day of sun and fun had to offer.
I didn’t dress up. I wore stretch pants, a sweatshirt and my hair pulled back with a simple headband. This was, after all platonic. I had no plans to impress a man. I made my way to a coffee shop close to my apartment, purchased a decaffeinated tea and waited patiently, glancing out the window every so often until I saw a a man similar to the photo I’d received in my inbox. Tall as a mountain — with weight upon his considerably lenghty frame — raven-haired, statuesque solid as brick and a determined look upon his face, I named him Rushmore the very first moment I laid eyes upon him.
“Hope!” he said with a big booming voice and a smile. I was, afterall, the only black woman in the place, usual for my home town of San Francisco.
Rushmore and I spent the entire day together that day, following some polite, get to know you in person chit chat. First, a trek along the pier, pointout out — and stopping at — our favorite food haunts and paying for our favorites to share; a hop to a jazz bar just along the water where a strange mix of jazz was followed by a barrage of loud 90s hip hop in celebration of a rather ghetto birthday party taking place on the premises (of which, I sang along to every word and he smiled in entertained joy).
He asked for a kiss at the point. I remember the moment distinctly. We’d spent the past hour singing along to songs, sizing up the other patrons and sharing more of ourselves than expected. He’d shed himself of the layers he’d worn in expectation of the foggy SF morning and his thick, manly shoulders peeked from his blue tank top. I wanted to do nothing more than take my hands, grab them and pull him toward me. Yet, still, I declined, noting, “I’m shy.”
I’m not shy. I’m full of shit. I
knew I wasn’t sure I wanted to take this meeting any farther than platonic. It was, afterall, where it began. I have no doubt this man went into it platonically, but, in the company of my sparkling personality (dont even try me. I’m sparkling damnit) he lost his ability to do the same.
We followed the jazz bar with a trip to the top floor of a local location of one of my favorite Mel Brooks; the Hyatt Regency along the Embarcadero. We found a quiet corner, huddled in and stared out at the view, in awe of our home town. He softly shared his wish to explore the city in a way he never had before, looked at me, lifted his thick palm and swatted me, softly, across the right ass cheek. “Dinner now.” he commanded, not asked.
At that moment, I was hooked. You softly dominate me and everything I have is yours.
He asked for a kiss at that point. I declined, noting, “I’m shy.” I’m not shy. I’m full of shit.
An hour later at dinner he says, “This isn’t in stone,” he said, “But I’m thinking about living overseas for a year.”
“Wait. What, you mean, just up and leaving and living in another country?” I asked.
“Yea. I mean, why not? I don’t want to rush back to a job that sucks the life out of me. I have the time and the financial ability. I just, you know, need to do something for me… something adventurous. I’m thinking of doing a test trip to Hawaii first… see how I can handle the elements with only a backpack and my know how.”
“Good for you,” I said. “I think it sounds wonderful. I only wish I had the time and the money to do something so adventurous.”
“You will,” he said with a grin. “One day, you will.”
By that time we’d been in one another’s company for close to fifteen hours. When he drove me home, he asked me for a kiss. I declined, noting, “I’m shy.” I’m not shy. I’m full of shit. I also wasn’t sure if I wanted to take something that had begun as platonic, and was quickly eviscerated by chemistry, to a place beyond a place platonic could every recover.
I didn’t hear from him for a month. I hadn’ t cared. It was platonic. I hadn’t done anything I regretted or hoped upon more for. We’d spent a wonderful day together. One day, out of the blue, my phone rang. It was Rushmore.
He’d spent the past month making his decision a reality. His passport was acquired, his survival list was made, his provisions were being purchased. He was in the process of preparing himself for an almost year-long adventure in Southeast Asia. He’d enjoyed the time we’d spent and wanted to do it again. Of course, I agreed and accepted.
“You should come with me to Hawaii,” he said, quietly over a tapas dinner three days and severl hours later. “I can pay as much as I possibly can for you without dipping into my budget for my trip. If you can buy the ticket, I can buy everything else,” he whispered across the table, sliding his hand toward mine. “You should come,” he repeatedly softly.
I wanted to. I really wanted to follow this man across the country.
“I can’t,” I shook my head. “I can’t afford the ticket,” I said, weary of my un-ending under employment issues, “I have a job now, minimal as it is, and it’s barely keeping me afloat. I just… can’t.”
Later, in his car, “Kiss me,” he said softly. I kissed him. I wasn’t shy. I wasn’t unsure. I wasn’t full of shit. I wanted this man. Later, we had each other, a very, very, very long time. I don’t think we rose from within each other until about 24-hours later. If he were a contributor to this blog, he’d agree with the words I just typed.
He brought me the loveliest perfume from Hawaii three weeks later. We spent the next several weeks in each other’s presence, watching movies, ordering or our favorite foods and sampling, sharing our favorite music and artists, and more of ourselves than we expected; opening up about the details of the future with which we face: me on my own, tirelessly saddened and him on his own, trepidatiously excited. I shared with him my goals as a writer. He gave of himself, making sure I had what I needed in my difficult times. I made little crafts and art projects in celebration of his departure, wishing him the most fortuitousness journey in the search of his new self.
A woman single ten years and a man married ten years, finding connection with one another. I was fucking another man, but I was making love to this man. He could have been fucking other women at the time. I didn’t care. He was making love to me. The time we spent, was time I cherished; time I enjoyed more than any other time I spent.
The morning of his departure, we slept fetus-like, locked against one another, reluctant to let go. As we rose, he muttered softly to himself, “No falling in love. No falling in love. No falling in love.”
“I’m not falling in love with you, dummy!” I toyed.
I’m full of shit. I was falling in love.
We kissed and embraced good-bye, my head buried deep in his thick chest, imprinting his manliness in my brain. I would miss the affection he allowed me to feel, the kisses he planted upon my forehead, the embraces he enclosed me in, the looks of lust he gave me in this quiet moments.
As he walked from my door, he turned and said, looking deeply in my eyes, “Remember, writers write,” and walked flew far, far away for a very long fucking time.
And that’s what I did. I wrote. I restarted the blog I let die in my sadness. I started a writing business. I rose from the ashes.
I have quite the busy week, including a get together with Rushmore this evening, who has returned from his year-long trip abroad and immediately set aside some private time to spend with yours truly. *Brushes shoulders*
So, this post will be sweet and short and to the point, inspired by Online Personals FAQ recent post The Faces Women Need to Stop Making on Their Online Dating Profiles.
Some men need help too. So, I made this handy dandy list.
I know a woman. She’s quite a lovely woman. I don’t know her well, but I know her. She’s a couple years older than I am, from what I know, has had a couple of relationships over the years with a bit of time spent single in between. It’s the in between time that most caught my attention.
During the moments of singledom she posted rather dreary and depressive status updates about being single and lonely and, quite possibly, ending up alone. This was a woman single less than six months. At first, on the inside, I, single girl of nearly ten years felt, like this:
Last year, I really gave dating a shot. I was asked out probably more in 2012 than I have ever been in my entire single life.
Don’t get all excited. You can still count the number of dates on which I was asked out on one hand, but that is still a far and away higher number than most years. I did all of this meeting and dating without a single online dating profile which means… wait for it… I met nearly all of these men in the real world.
This made me come to a realization: there are some truly fucked up men in the real world.
Since we’re all aware I’m on vagatical and not giving two good fucks about dating at the moment, I’m spending my time much more productively on a variety of things like: watching make-up tutorial videos on YouTube and trying them on myself without ending up looking like a busted ass clown; learning all the lyrics to Willam Belli’s Selena Gomez parody Love You Like a Big Schlong so I can go to a karaoke bar, pretend I’m about to do the original, then bust out with this version; learning how not to eat a whole pan of paleo brownies in one day; and eagerly anticipating the new season of Mad Men. It’s the 60s and Jon Hamm who, we all know, isn’t a big fan of smothering his hefty howdy doody in underwear, will be wearing slim pants.
I’m not as frivolent as I seem. I swear on all that is unholy this was an actual news story. Yay for journalism!
The other evening, while enjoying the home-fried catfish and cocktail serving company of one of my besties, I made mention of my vagatical. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it to her before, but that night she made more of a mental note, cackled and asked, “Where on the internet did you read that term?”
“I didn’t,” I replied. “It’s mine.”
What is a vagatical?
A vagatical is, obviously a vaginal sabbatical. It’s what you go on when you’ve been absolutely worn thin of emotionless sexual escapades with men whose names, or penises for that matter, you barely remember. I started to listen to my body when it began to fiercely communicate to me that I felt nothing when in the act. I had become numb to sex, hating the feeling during and immediately regretting the act after.
At one point I actually asked a man to remove his body from mine, dress and leave. He laughed and said, “You’re so funny.” Problem is, I wasn’t being funny.
Perhaps Rushmore had a bit to do with what had begun to happen within me. After ten years of loveless/emotionless sex (or sex within which I wasn’t allowed to express love or emotion because of unrequited feelings from my sexual partner), the act was suddenly filled with a tiny bit of emotion. It was no longer just a physical act I did with some guy with an emotional wall or unwillingness to see me as anything more than brief sexual satisfaction. Rushmore and I sorta kinda fell in love with one another and the physical intimacy with which we communicated those feelings was an unidentifiable activity with which I had to familiarize myself.
After he left on his year-long overseas trip, I couldn’t see myself returning to anything less the sort of physical intimacy we’d shared. I ignored this conclusion for a while, attempting to live out my Sex and the City Samantha fantasies for once in my life — believing myself free-thinking and flirty enough a single woman to just have fun until someone offering something more presented himself. That didn’t work for long, as I had to realize I’m years past the ability to engage in anything casual and that’s precisely the problem with being a woman as single as I have been in a vast dating pool filled with offers of casual coffee and companionship cunnilingus from Friend with Benefits Fellas and Maybe More Men. Seriously, this is a thing now. Dudes just casually offer to go down on you over a coffee date or an email. That’s when I locked it up and sent my vagina on sabbatical.
Evidently, a couple days later, he was still thinking about my profile and wanted me to know. Either that or force a response from me. He really seems to want to let me know he plans to find me when (and he’s not quite sure about this still, it seems) when and/or if he comes back to California.
Ok, dude. That’s um… good to know. Again. I guess.
I guess it’s a good thing to let a woman know she’s about to be stalked. Or, already is being stalked.
It’s that time of year again; time I receive the one online dating site message I get all year.
I’m exaggerating. I get, like, six.
That time, I didn’t exaggerate.
Can a bitch just write a paragraph? Yes, she can. This isn’t it.
There are so many things above, I can’t even…. I won’t even make mention of the word he missed. The fact he didn’t feel it was important to include doesn’t give it enough value to pontificate upon.
I’ve had to ease up on my opinion of folks who misuse “your” in place of “you’re”, because many people I know and care for do it, but I’ll never, ABSOLUTELY NEVER, EVER understand it. I mean, I’m not one to judge; I misunderstood the correct use of effect/affect for years and avoided using them until I properly understood how. I’m sure I still fuck it up and I’m sure I still look like a dumbass every time I do. So, I’ve chilled out about errors such as: your/you’re, there/they’re/their, and quite/quiet. It happens and, should people be too lazy to learn better, I’m too lazy to have a fit about it.
I began the holiday weekend watching films from the Criterion Collection on Hulu, since they were free and I’ve been too broke to restart my Hulu Plus membership. After 24-hours of foreign films, unsimulated sex scenes and unsuspected, and quite horrific, film endings (I mean, where did the rapist with the ax come from and why wasn’t I properly warned for that?) I felt like I was dipping a little too far into art-house for my own good and needed to lighten my mood. So, I did a decided to engage in a little binge watching — my favorite past time — and check out Seasons 1 through 3 of Braxton Family Values on Netflix and YouTube. I started on an intellectually high. I ended a bit on the low side, albeit ecstatically happy.
There’s a lot going on these days, strangely for a woman who rarely leaves the house for anything other than work and spends her free time sitting around watching television shows and movies. I suppose the most important thing to mention is a trip to the hospital following some of the worry I expressed in this post. I hadn’t been able to stomach a meal for about a week and, after a night of chills, aches and a bunch of other stuff that’s just plain too nasty to mention I headed my butt on into the ER.
I’ve never been the woman to be fixed up by friends. I was once, as a teenager just out of high school. The guy I was introduced to turned into my very first boyfriend and love, who I subsequently allowed the precious gift of deflowering me. I’m trying to soften up my language by using terms like “deflowering.” While it makes me throw up in my mouth a little, I’m hoping my more sensitive readers appreciate the effort.
I have quite the busy week, including a get together with Rushmore this evening, who has returned from his year-long trip abroad and immediately set aside some private time to spend with yours truly. *Brushes shoulders*
I know a woman. She’s quite a lovely woman. I don’t know her well, but I know her. She’s a couple years older than I am, from what I know, has had a couple of relationships over the years with a bit of time spent single in between. It’s the in between time that most caught my attention.
Last year, I really gave dating a shot. I was asked out probably more in 2012 than I have ever been in my entire single life.
The other evening, while enjoying the home-fried catfish and cocktail serving company of one of my besties, I made mention of my vagatical. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it to her before, but that night she made more of a mental note, cackled and asked, “Where on the internet did you read that term?”
I began the holiday weekend watching films from the Criterion Collection on Hulu, since they were free and I’ve been too broke to restart my Hulu Plus membership. After 24-hours of foreign films, unsimulated sex scenes and unsuspected, and quite horrific, film endings (I mean, where did the rapist with the ax come from and why wasn’t I properly warned for that?) I felt like I was dipping a little too far into art-house for my own good and needed to lighten my mood. So, I did a decided to engage in a little binge watching — my favorite past time — and check out Seasons 1 through 3 of Braxton Family Values on Netflix and YouTube. I started on an intellectually high. I ended a bit on the low side, albeit ecstatically happy.