love and reassurance when I’ve been away. “What Burt Bacharach song d’ya think he thinks he’s acting out?” Daisy licked my hand and collapsed for a quick belly rub before I went in to run a very hot bath of Crabtree & Evelyn Nantucket Briar. As the bubbles piled reassuringly up, I called Kevin.
“I walked out on a guy in the middle of sex!” I crowed. I had decided this was a victory, not going any further than I felt like.
“You what?”
“I met this guy, supposedly for coffee. He only wanted sex. In the middle of it I realized I was bored so I stopped and left.”
“Uh . . . Good, I guess.”
“Aren’t you proud of me? Usually I go through with it because I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.”
“Did you ever think about not starting it because it would hurt your feelings?”
I splashed into the suds as carefully as I could to keep the phone dry. “What does the Big Book say? ‘Progress not perfection’?”
“I’m HIV positive, Frances. On this subject I’ve learned perfection the hard way. I’m giving Grace a pedicure, Frances. Can I call you back?” There was mumbling on his end of the connection. “Or can Grace call you back? She has a few things she wants to say to you.”
Later that night, Grace and Kevin scolded me into an admission of my wrongs. Yes, it was dangerous. Yes, I was spineless to follow him up Greenwich Street. And yes, the worst of it was he had a braid . I promised to be wiser.
• • •
I predicated the next date with a number of phone calls that turned into phone sex. When he came over, I got an orange rose and souvlaki in return for a jaw-numbing blowjob before the email saying, “I thought I was ready but I’m not.”
I don’t know when women are ready to start paddling out to sea again, but men have the special problem of thinking they are able to shtup a snake if it stands up long enough. Another piece of unforgivably bad male thinking is their inability to weigh the sixty-four-million-dollar question everyone is hiding from each other—baggage.
Quibble over the nuances as much as you want, but there are two kinds of romantic baggage: the kind we can abandon and start to walk away from, and the kind we heave into the nearest therapist’s office. This is not rocket science, guys! If you spend your dinner hours and weekends in existential angst, keep the woody you talked yourself into at home.
Sol and Orange Rose Guy had the most dangerous kind of baggage: self-ignorance. I was barely a month away from crying on the empty Phoenix freeways on my way home from Dar’s, but at least I knew the chances of finding “another” Dar would be impossible, or a different piece to fit my puzzle would be slim. But practicality had already set in.
Tip: The best way to get over a man is to start dating another man.
Be prepared to settle, to be fond rather than ragingly in love, to share a couple of nights a week together instead of every minute, to lean on your girlfriends for fun as much as on the New Maybe—but go out and reassure yourself you’re wantable. We—men and women—are always ready to be wantable.
Not being ready is a notion I defy. Ha!
If either Sol or Orange Rose Guy were truly Not Ready, they wouldn’t have replied to the ad, so there are two excuses I can offer in their defense.
The most reasonable is that they thought they had kicked the habit of at least the sexual side of life with the ex but found out that sex stirs all kinds of stuff up.
The other explanation is that it was I. I am a deeply pessimistic person. My water glass isn’t half empty, it’s half empty and radioactive. It’s easy for me to go from thinking of myself as a Wrong Woman to the Wrong Woman to just plain Wrong.
Dar, in rejecting me for not being into his music, rock climbing and scuba diving, could make me feel Wrong but I was fighting it, so far with guys who made me feel wiser if not smarter.
Not that it’s any easier being a Right Woman when faced
“I walked out on a guy in the middle of sex!” I crowed. I had decided this was a victory, not going any further than I felt like.
“You what?”
“I met this guy, supposedly for coffee. He only wanted sex. In the middle of it I realized I was bored so I stopped and left.”
“Uh . . . Good, I guess.”
“Aren’t you proud of me? Usually I go through with it because I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.”
“Did you ever think about not starting it because it would hurt your feelings?”
I splashed into the suds as carefully as I could to keep the phone dry. “What does the Big Book say? ‘Progress not perfection’?”
“I’m HIV positive, Frances. On this subject I’ve learned perfection the hard way. I’m giving Grace a pedicure, Frances. Can I call you back?” There was mumbling on his end of the connection. “Or can Grace call you back? She has a few things she wants to say to you.”
Later that night, Grace and Kevin scolded me into an admission of my wrongs. Yes, it was dangerous. Yes, I was spineless to follow him up Greenwich Street. And yes, the worst of it was he had a braid . I promised to be wiser.
• • •
I predicated the next date with a number of phone calls that turned into phone sex. When he came over, I got an orange rose and souvlaki in return for a jaw-numbing blowjob before the email saying, “I thought I was ready but I’m not.”
I don’t know when women are ready to start paddling out to sea again, but men have the special problem of thinking they are able to shtup a snake if it stands up long enough. Another piece of unforgivably bad male thinking is their inability to weigh the sixty-four-million-dollar question everyone is hiding from each other—baggage.
Quibble over the nuances as much as you want, but there are two kinds of romantic baggage: the kind we can abandon and start to walk away from, and the kind we heave into the nearest therapist’s office. This is not rocket science, guys! If you spend your dinner hours and weekends in existential angst, keep the woody you talked yourself into at home.
Sol and Orange Rose Guy had the most dangerous kind of baggage: self-ignorance. I was barely a month away from crying on the empty Phoenix freeways on my way home from Dar’s, but at least I knew the chances of finding “another” Dar would be impossible, or a different piece to fit my puzzle would be slim. But practicality had already set in.
Tip: The best way to get over a man is to start dating another man.
Be prepared to settle, to be fond rather than ragingly in love, to share a couple of nights a week together instead of every minute, to lean on your girlfriends for fun as much as on the New Maybe—but go out and reassure yourself you’re wantable. We—men and women—are always ready to be wantable.
Not being ready is a notion I defy. Ha!
If either Sol or Orange Rose Guy were truly Not Ready, they wouldn’t have replied to the ad, so there are two excuses I can offer in their defense.
The most reasonable is that they thought they had kicked the habit of at least the sexual side of life with the ex but found out that sex stirs all kinds of stuff up.
The other explanation is that it was I. I am a deeply pessimistic person. My water glass isn’t half empty, it’s half empty and radioactive. It’s easy for me to go from thinking of myself as a Wrong Woman to the Wrong Woman to just plain Wrong.
Dar, in rejecting me for not being into his music, rock climbing and scuba diving, could make me feel Wrong but I was fighting it, so far with guys who made me feel wiser if not smarter.
Not that it’s any easier being a Right Woman when faced
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