Sleeping on the Diagonal

“Aren’t I just so much fun,” he asks again as his lips curl in self-derision.  There’s been a lot of that kind of sneering this evening and this is the third time he’s made the same self-deprecating comment.

 

Inner monologue time.  No Dude.  You really aren’t.  But I’m wearing underwire for these double D’s and I shaved my legs.  I really hate to waste that shit.  Be open.  Be open.  Be open.  In my head I’m suddenly the “wants to go to at least second base tonight with someone and I happen to be in your living room” version of The Little Engine That Could.  I’m using sheer will to get up that mountain right now.

 

The pre-meet banter was so promising.  I’m starting to think I might get too excited when a grown man can use a complete sentence.  With syntax! And real words!  Sadly, it’s a lost art in our ever growing illiterate world.  For the sapiosexual in me it automatically puts me at DefCon 3 for panty-dropping.  Lest the uneducated in singledom  readers out there that have been all shacked up, hitched up, in one manner or another for years, tsk and think “It can’t be that bad out there,” allow me to demonstrate with a verbatim, unedited, uncorrected, opening message from a potential suitor (spell check is totally about to hate me):

 

 Hey swettie howz u doing I can give u every thing u would like but u can’t fall in love

 

My red ink trigger finger twitches, wanting to add punctuation.  Did he just call me sweaty?  Z is not an apostrophe s.  Or any acceptable form of plural.  Stop.   All you texters, I implore you.  Please.  Stop.  I won’t even begin to start with my aggravation at the use of “U” instead of an actual word.  Use your words, people.  Words are fun!  This, while an extreme example, is hardly an outlier.  It is more the norm than not.  It really is hunting for truffles out there.  How deep in the woods must I go for a little quality?  The above message was sent despite the online profile that proclaimed in sentence ONE (Uno, Primero, the Very First Thing) “Lover of words and men that know how to use them”.  This is why I drink.

It’s also why I tend to get tingly when a man approaches me with multi-syllables.  Johnny-On-The-Spot here uses complete sentences.  He reads.  He sends me pictures of his art work and his wood-working.  He has a job.  He lives alone (aka—not in his parents’ basement at age 35).  He has a legit graphic design degree, worked as an EMT, and moved on to something with better pay and less stress.  Adulting!  On paper it all looks fantastic.  P.S. Fuck on paper….

 

The get to know you tap dance quickly progresses to the forbidden lambda with serious flirting and some millennial age light sexting.  Hey, My Uterus is Elderly, But She Still Likes to Party.   I’m a sexually liberated, single, adult woman without any hang-ups about The One or following arcane three date rules for physical contact.  At this point I’m tired of vanilla dating.  I could care less about marrying, as we’ve established throughout the entirety of my many diatribes and tales.  I just want to find a few regular lovers.  If something more happens….. Well, sail that gravy boat right on in.

 

As outlined in the three simplest dating rules of all time, I prefer not to waste anyone’s time, especially my own.  JohnnyBGood (maybe I should have been alerted by the originality of his username…..) and I quickly agree on a date to meet.  I suggest drinks because it’s low pressure.  Have a drink.  Decide after an hour if the evening progresses.  Apparently, he’s Sober Sister, Straight Edge at the moment.  I suggest coffee instead.  Not the optimal for flirting but I’m flexible and I want both of us to be comfortable.  He says he’ll have coffee while I drink a beer and mentions a neighborhood place near him that happens to be the place I first fell in love with fried cheese at age 10 and where I may have had my first Jaeger Bomb (not at age 10).  But I digress……..

 

To be clear:  We agreed on DRINKS, alcoholic or non.  I posited more than once prior to meeting that a meal was too in depth, too much pressure.  I am many things that I’ll cop to, but vague is not one of them.  As I pulled into the parking lot my phone whistles with “Can’t wait to eat! I’m so hungry!”  It’s 8 pm.  This old lady already ate.  On account we agreed on drinks and all.  Do I still have that bucket of yellow flags from the Ginger Viking?  I make him sit at the bar to eat at least.  I’m a dominant bitch.  Or so I’ve been told…….

 

In person, he’s a talker.  The kind that feels the need to fill every available space with sound.   I am not.  I appreciate an awkward pause.  I love a companionable silence where we observe the room.  I do like to listen to talkers actually tell stories and have something of substance to say, like my dear Baritone.

Side Bar:  Yes.  You got me.  In real life, a story is never really over.  It merely becomes a new story, often with tales between the lines.  My Rogue Tuba Baritone and I could never actually date each other but he is the same gentleman I shared a dawn with and led me to question the charge of ions.  We still talk occasionally.  There are so few people willing to engage in total honesty that I can’t let go of the ones that do.

I bore of talkers that spew just to spew.  There’s no need to say the same thing 15 different ways.  I understood you the first time when I responded.  We’re good.  Sooooooo…… turns out he may not live at home but he still does his laundry there.  I should have played a drinking game with the number of times he mentioned his ex-girlfriend.  Truth is, he really left his job as an EMT because he ‘couldn’t bear’ to see her at the hospital she worked out when he dropped patients off.  Sigh.  Where is the adult I’ve been talking to for two weeks?  I came prepared to re-enact Red Shoe Diaries, not Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.  Oh.  Shit.  Did I just reveal my age again?  Hi, I’m 36.  Too old for this.           

 

I know I should have said good-bye in the parking lot when he couldn’t muster up a physical move in my direction despite my quite open body signals.  I was bored by the conversation and by him….  but did I mention the underwire?  It’s beyond uncomfortable.  It jabs and pokes and tortures.  All the ‘pretty’ bras have it.  If I’m suffering, someone needs to see this shit.  Or maybe I’m trying to prove to myself that I can be less sapio about my sexuality.  In either case, when he offers coffee at his apartment I say yes.  What’s the worst that can happen with this seemingly simpering beta male?

 

I follow him back to white walls and 1970’s Industrial popcorn ceilings.  I think I remember reading about someone getting shot in this apartment complex last year…..  Most of the ‘living’ room is filled with art supplies and tables sets for painting and sketching.  My loins surge the slightest.  Drinks had put us back at neutral, but the concept of an artist’s hands slides me up to DefCon 4.   I entertain myself playing with his cat on the floor as he brews a pot of coffee.  And pops a caffeine pill.  And downs a Red Bull.  In the space of 15 minutes in the door.  What is happening?   I make a joke about his heart exploding because I’m me.  He doesn’t laugh.  Instead he cites the overdoses of Ritalin he received as a child and how it won’t even touch him.  It’s not the first time of the evening I’ve wondered what the fuck I’m doing here.  Be open.  Be open.  Be open.  Chugga-chugga,  Chugga-chugga.  Choo!  Choo!  Oh, right.  My legs are butter smooth right now.   There was even moisturizer involved.  It sure wasn’t for the cat to rub against.     

 

 

I tour the three room space and I poke and I lift things as I sip the coffee.  I sit between his jittering legs on the only available seating on the couch.  That god-damn underwire pierces my left ribcage again and I say Fuck It.  At the very least I need to take this thing off for a bit.  So, I lean in and kiss him.

 

His lips are thin and dry under his wispy, barely there beard.  At least he doesn’t go in tongues blazing right away like some men I’ve kissed.  There’s a middle ground gentleman.  By age 35 to 50 you should have learned it.  A 48-yr old should not approach a first kiss with his tongue protruding out like a slimy spear, so that all he accomplishes is aggressively licking me.  But that’s a story for another time.  This gentleman murmurs something about cleaning his bedroom and I assent.  Why not?

 

I’ve done all the necessary Adulting prior to this meeting, just in case.  We’ve discussed condoms are a requirement if the evening progresses and most recent STD testing.  Hi.  Single Girl Smart.  I make sure I have these conversations now.  I’m too old for surprise visits to the free clinic.  Do you hear Salt N’ Pepa?  *Let’s talk about sex baby/Let’s talk about you and me/ Let’s talk about all the good things and bad things that may be.*  I frame the discussion as Adulting prior to potential playtime in  cases of suspected nudity, though 99.9% of the time even those suspected cases still don’t pan out.  We end up shaking hands and parting ways.  Sometimes I try to will that 0.1% to happen because I refuse to live as a cloistered nun.

 

He has orange Halloween lights stapled to the walls like a dorm room.  It’s August.  We are in our mid 30’s.    Be open.  Be open.  Be open.  Chugga-chugga,  Chugga-chugga.  Choo!  Choo! 

 

There’s some pleasant kissing.  Some roving hands by both parties.  His roam.  And they stop.  They roam.  And they stop.  I’m a dominant woman that craves an equal or more dominant man.  I get so tired of having to be the aggressor.  I scrunch my nose and try to use The Force to will this mofo to take a lead.  We’re lying on his bed fully clothed, facing each other.  Including this God-Damn Underwire.  Who thought of this contraption?  Can someone confirm for me it was NOT a woman?  You know what Victoria’s Secret really is?  That bitch doesn’t eat.  I like cheese.

 

His hand traces up my hip, over the dip of crest and down.  It skims over swell of breast and up to my cheek.  And stops.  There’s an index finger resting in my ear canal and a pinky smooshing my lips.  The other three fingers are spread over my cheekbone.   No movement.  The palm starts to feel heavy on my chin.  I open my eyes from my reverie, from trying to Carpe the Damn Diem of the moment.

 

 

Did this mofo really just fall asleep on me??!!!  A coffee, a Red Bull, a caffeine pill, and black, lacy UNDERWIRE ON DD’s!! Oh no, Narcoleptic Nate!  I don’t think so.

 

 

It’s possible I may have lightly slapped him.  Call me Magic 8 Ball but the memory is hazy and unclear.  I’m just saying……  he was asleep with his finger IN MY EAR.

 

Now he’s fired up a Fire Sign.  There are quite a few real men who might attest that I have never inspired a nap whilst willing to declothe in their beds.  There is a whole lot of cursing inside my inner monologue, mostly about boys pretending to be men and underwire.  Instead I take big, HUGE breath and politely, adultly say “I think I should go.”

 

The eyes pop open.  “What?  Why?”

 

Truth circle time.  “I think you’re looking for someone to sleep next to (please refer to multiple previous references to his ex and the actual fact HE JUST FELL ASLEEP), not someone to sleep with per se.”

 

Oh.  Apparently that offends his ‘manhood’.  Amazing how honesty does that.  Suddenly his hands are all over me.  “Do you think I just wanted to snuggle?  Really?”  Well.  Yes.  But if you want to unbutton my pants, please feel free.  That was an option AN HOUR AGO.

 

Puritans and those easily embarrassed of my honesty about inviting you into both the woes and joys of my bedroom, please relax.  Nothing much else happened.  My pants came off.  His came off.  The underwire stayed on.  Seriously?  WTF?  There was exactly one condom released from it’s square prison, followed by one loud exclamation of “Fucking Adderall!” (not from me) when said latex friend could find no grip, so to speak.  Narcoleptic Nate may have opened his eyes, but despite my 20 years of practice and expertise, the rest of him did not.  I didn’t even really get a one night stand out of the evening, let alone a lover a sapiosexual would care to entertain again.

 

All I really got was a talker that dozed off with a finger plugging my ear.  Yet another audition without a callback.  But.  At least his cat was cute.