The pain in your soul....

So Bobby IMed me this week. Super sweet.  Kind.  And my entire being just craved him.  I felt like that scene from Hedwig:

I've only ever felt that way with John and Bobby.  "The pain in your soul was the same as the one in mine."  My entire life, John and Bobby are the only men where I just felt like I recognized in each of them a kindred spirit.  And, well, neither worked out.

And when Bobby wrote me this week, and it is clear he's fucking women he doesn't love, and it feels like we could truly love each other.  We could be ballasts, letting the other dream taller.

I know it isn't about me.  But I feel like if I were somehow different, Bobby would want to give it a try. Or maybe it is about me.  I don't understand how it is possible to glimpse a kindred soul and not give it a try.  But maybe Bobby didn't feel that.

Fuck, I'm crying just thinking about it.  And I have a date with Nate this afternoon.  And he is seeming more and more sweet.  And we'd be sexually compatible, that is quite clear.  And we have similar life goals.  And I'm comparing him to Bobby.  Which is hilarious, because Nate seems to actually want to have a relationship and he lives walking distance from me, and he clearly sees in my both the girl he could fuck until the paint cracked and the woman he could bring home to meet his mother and his daughter.  If I compare him to Bobby, it should make Nate look fantastic.  And yet, it makes me feel like Nate is great on paper, but he isn't a kindred soul.  But maybe he'll become one?  Maybe we'll start to talk about the stuff under the surface?  He is clearly spiritual, and I'm not (which he knows and didn't disappear).

Or maybe I'm enough of a freak that I'll never meet another one.  How do I dream smaller?

It is was funny--Nate asked the last time I fooled around with a man, It was Bobby, of course.  But I qualified it as "messed around with clothes on? Or off."  Bobby touched me so much more deeply.  Fortunately, I gave the dates and Nate did not ask the details.

This all is completely unfair to Nate.  Nate seems like a great guy.

Why does recognizing that "the pain in your soul is the same as the pain in mine" so important to me?  What about not having that aching pain deep inside.  Maybe not being fucked up would be better than articulating the ways I'm fucked up.  But I am fucked up.  And not being able to go there with someone (or not knowing how) means that I never quite feel real in a relationship until I can go there.

If Nate and I do work out, I think I'll quit blogging for a bit.  It seems somehow wrong to blog about him, about how I feel about sex, and keep that from him.  And I don't see how I could share something like this with him, which of course means I don't see how I could have this part of me understood and accepted by him.  Of course, maybe this part of me could come out through gentle, after-morning-sex conversations.  I don't know.  But I've never been able to articulate face-to-face as easily as I can in writing.

Maybe if Nate and I fool around in the next couple of weeks, my plan to actually get over Bobby will work.  Or maybe Bobby will decide he wants to risk being hurt and have a go.  Which seems about as likely as Hugh Jackman leaving his wife and picking me.

Dumb Blond

So Bobby sent me a sweet text message  to say "My two cents--re Mark et al., always show your intelligence with a dominant. It only make you more beautiful..."

And that was part of why I liked Bobby so damn much.  Most men see intelligence and either they are scared of it, or I think they are scared of it, and I do my best to dim it.  It doesn't help that I have a high-pitched voice and bouncy blond hair.  For years, everyone thought I was dumb and I had to prove myself for people to think I wasn't dumb.  Now, I think people don't make that assumption as much, but that need to prove myself still exists sometimes.

But there is also this deep insecurity that it is something wrong with me.  When I was young, I'm guessing I was 9 and my brother was 6, he told a dumb joke and I said something about it being dumb.  (Wasn't I a nice big sister!)  My grandmother took me aside and didn't talk to me about being nice, she said "A lady always laughs at a gentleman's jokes."  Somehow that stuck with me.  To this day, I always laugh at their jokes.  Even when they're offensive. (Not racist jokes, but I laugh at nasty jokes about women that make me cringe.)

I was talking with a friend about Bobby and realized that I often play dumb at work too!  Not so much in my current job (although I am very aware of shutting up a lot at my current job and trying not to seem too opinionated.  I often avoid getting information because the more information I have, the more opinionated I'll be.  For political reasons, I really can't afford to piss off a couple of people.  But that is more strategic about keeping my job and what I can change and what I can't.)  But I put myself through college and law school by working as a secretary.  And, for the most part, my least favorite part of any job was the playing dumb part.  Finally, my last year of law school, I was less scared about keeping my job and I stopped playing dumb.  I started to get bounced around from boss to boss, and then I got put with a boss that every other secretary hated working for.  He and I clicked (nothing romantic).  He started giving me more and more projects and less and less secretarial work.  While I was paid as a secretary I was doing way more than most secretaries do (I really didn't care because this job was super-flexible about my hours, both what I set as a regular schedule and letting me take days off when I needed to study) and he ended up getting a 2nd secretary so I could do projects, which were WAY more fun.  (At the end, he tried to get me out of the secretarial job, into a junior-level job that would have paid more money the first year than I'll ever make in the non-profit world,, but I'd finished law school and knew I didn't want to stay in corporate finance.)

So, if this in analogous to dating:  I was right that being me, without pretending to be someone else, made it harder to keep my job.  But I did keep my job.  And I found a boss who appreciated and recognized my talents.  And I enjoyed work more.

I am trying to figure out what it was that made me play dumb with Mark, because I really try not to do that anymore.  (My profile is totally written with a subtext that says "hey, I'm interested in ideas, and if you can't keep up intellectually, you will bore me.)  At the beginning, I can be kind of obnoxious about it.  But, once I kiss someone, I seem to want to please him.  And if he doesn't send hints before I've kissed him, I'm less likely to be evaluating him all the time.

With Mark, I think playing dumb started after I said something obnoxious about some of the contract workers I was overseeing, like "I don't know how anyone can live with the high stress and low pay--they're doing a great job, but we are paying them nothing" forgetting that he fell into that category at one of his jobs, which made me feel apologetic.  Then I didn't want him to think that I didn't value his work, so I think I said a couple of put-down things about my work. I believe that is where it started.  He then "joked" several times about my career not being as important as his.   (I should mention, Mark also works part-time as a commercial real estate agent, and he probably makes more money in his part-time job than I do in my full-time job, but it is clear he prefers, the industry we're both in and he is applying for lots of jobs like mine, but because he doesn't have the JD, it seems unlikely (to me) that he'll get a job like mine.)

I think the discrepancy in our jobs and the fact that I don't see his contract job as equal to mine made me more willing to play dumb.  We're basically doing the same thing, but I oversee people like him and get paid about 3 times as much as people like him.  Instead of confronting that head-on, I started to act like less competent and like it was just luck (and there is some luck, but the whole 'what kind of degree and what sacrifices we made to get our degree' wasn't actually luck).  The other fact is that Mark really wasn't interested in my interests, and I wasn't interested in Mark's interests (Poker and football).  This weekend, he was watching a football game and his team was doing really well. About 5 'minutes' before the end of the game, I commented that it looked like they were doing well, and he was annoyed with me for 'jinxing' them.  (They did win, so he said I was lucky and he wouldn't punish me, but that was really over the line for me and made me feel like I wouldn't even try to get interested in football because I'd say the wrong thing.)

So I'm pretty clear that I won't see Mark again.  And I'm playing dumb less often.  But that is a weakness I can often fall into.

Ready to Flee

So Mark is really beginning to annoy me, and I have to figure out if that is because I'm looking for a subconscious excuse to not have something work, or if he really is being annoying.

Mark and I work in the same set of Not-for-Profit groups.  I have  J.D. and Mark has an MSW. I work full-time at one organization and Mark works for a couple of organizations as a contractor. I probably get paid more; I certainly have a more stable and prestigious job.

Mark is often talking about me doing some of his work for him.  I really can't tell if he is joking or not. At one point I said "I have a big project I have to finish" and he texted "Oh, who cares about that. :)"  So, yes he was joking at that point, but it is just this constant nag and I don't like it.   I had a nice big bonus this month and he joked (I think) about how I could buy him a nice present with that (instead I paid off some of my student loans).  Today he was like "Oy--I had a rough day.  Wish I had someone here to spank" and that dynamic just really wouldn't work for me.  It feels to me like he just keeps talking about how I will service him in ways that aren't sexual and I'm really finding it off-putting.

The other issue is that Mark wants to be a 'mentor' but, frankly, I think he is at least as much in need of a little push to have enough self-discipline so his life looks the way he wants it to.  He and I both have had an interest in writing, but he gave it up and plays poker to feel the time.  I really have a hard time respecting that decision.  (I have a chip on my shoulder about poker, I know that.  I try to think of it as playing video games, which I'm mildly more tolerant of, but the whole losing a thousand dollars in a night, or more, even if it isn't my money, really rubs me the wrong way.  It sounds like Mark isn't looking more than $500 a night, but it still rubs me the wrong way.)  I do feel like Mark is stuck.  Well, I have to go watch Gossip Girl (a secret that is ever better kept than kink--no one knows I watch that!)   So yeah, it is totally hypocritical of me to judge him for playing poker.  Except I watch as many hours of Gossip Girl in a year as he plays poker in a week.  And I'm setting and achieving some of my longish term goals, and Mark just seems stuck. Do I need to look up to a man I'm involved with?  Does it make a difference if he wants me to look up to him?

I should mention one more thing:  Mark pays for everything when we go out.  I'd be happy to pay for something, but don't really know how without planning something (which hasn't seemed appropriate) or inviting him over to my place, which I'm not ready to do.  (I will say that I just assume men will get the first few dates.  Usually I start to get theatre tickets and other treats like that after a few dates, but Mark and I have different enough interests that I don't really know what I could treat him to that he might enjoy.)

Part of me think that this is a silly excuse to stop seeing someone, but it is getting under my skin.  Maybe I just want to be single and I'm looking for an excuse.  Who knows?

So, gentle readers--anyone have a strong feeling one way or the other?  I have to say that soliciting advice off my blog seems a really bad sign to me.  But maybe I'm just avoiding intimacy, and I don't have enough distance to see that.

In Vino, Veritas

I'm totally tipsy.   I'm tipsy on a Sunday afternoon is because I had brunch with one of my gay friends and then we went and sang karaoke.  After all the dates this week, that was the highlight.  We sang "Express Yourself."

Does the fact that I adored this song when I was younger mean the song affected what I think of as real intimacy?  How important is sharing feelings?  Vulnerabilities?  With Bobby, I talked about an idea I was exploring, but it was a cover for being vulnerable; he picked up on that and we just had a real level of intimacy.  But maybe that is better left for a therapists office.  It never does seem to work in a romantic relationship when I share personal stuff quickly.  As Stew said:

The real is a construct
It's the raw nerve's private zone
It's a personal sunset
You walk off into alone. 

It does seem my desire for "le real" never works out the way I'd hope.


I came home today and it was all I could do not to drunk-text Bobby.  Because Bobby is the only straight man I've been out with since John that could express himself. Is it '2nd best' to be with someone who doesn't go immediately to that terrain?  It has been months--why the fuck am I still comparing men to Bobby?  Especially why am I comparing men who are actually single, not Bobby's fake "I have a TPE slave but I'm single" single, and yet I find the men I'm dating wanting?  WTF?  Do I have Buddy's Blues?

I have two (TWO!) perfectly good men who want to see me.  And I went out with both of them on Friday (the other men this week don't even merit a blog mention--why all these men think they can lie about their age, or are men just aging much worse than women?).  Lunch was with "Nate" and dinner was with "Mark."  First date with Nate, 2nd with Mark.  Nate took me out for lunch, sat next to me, kept petting, pawing, touching, flirting, trying to French kiss me, and I kept not letting it turn into an open-mouth kiss (although part of me I wanted to).  Afterwards, he walked me to my car and pushed me against a wall and  grabbed my hair and pulled my head back and that little wild animal inside calmed down and said "Oh, now I know my place..."  Nate was all over me, but I kept pushing his hands back, and I liked that.  I liked being wanted.  I liked being tamed in that moment.  He respected, but he kept pushing the boundaries.  In some ways, he reminds me of Bobby.  Very exuberant.  Has a daughter and seems very engaged in being a dad.  But he couldn't, or rather he didn't talk about anything that felt substantive 

Dinner was with Mark, and then we went for a lunch. I French kissed Mark back.  2nd date. I played dumb for him.  I haven't done that for a while.  But he wants so much to be wiser than me, and it isn't that important to me.  I know this will bite me in the long run.  I can play dumb for a couple of months, but sooner or later, it will piss me off.  I'm not even sure he wanted me to play dumb, just not as smart as him.  But I seem to only have 2 settings--me and dumb.  If I'm not me, then I can't seem to graduate my level of ditziness.  I actually twirled my hair in my fingers, giggled and said "you do know this is my natural hair color, don't you?"  I was charming.  And disgusting.

After dinner, an expensive dinner with a bottle of wine we went for a walk.  It was cold with the water coming off the water, but lovely.  A half a mile from John and my old haunts, but I didn't even think about John. Eventually we sat on a bench.  We made out.     It's OK for a lady to french kiss on a 2nd date, is it not?  But my heart wasn't in it.

I think I can't kiss 2 men in one day.  It just feels odd to me.

I'll keep seeing both.  Nate is no question, but Mark, well, the thing is, he actually is as smart as me.  He just isn't smarter.  But that is a rare quantity.  I don't think Mark and I will possibly have a future, but do I have to make that decision now?  As long as neither man forces the issue, why the hell shouldn't I see both.  I'm not going to sleep with both, but why not have some fun?

Truth be told, I have been wishing Bobby would decide he wanted something more, that he wanted me.  But I realize, that really isn't going to happen.  I'm sure that someday he will fall in love with someone and reevaluate his choices, but that someone isn't going to be me, and he isn't going to allow himself to consciously fall in love.  And who knows.  Maybe Nate will talk about his emotions.  Or maybe men who are less fucked up are less aware of their emotions.

Negotiations

So the guy I'm seeing tomorrow night, whom I also saw last week, sent me directions for tomorrow, and I was like "yeah, so not ready."

But I talked to him about them, and that actually worked quite well.  This whole saying what I'm thinking and feeling seems to work with him.

I don't think I'd look up to him.  He seems very much an equal. We are actually in similar fields, but I'm more successful in our field, so he works part-time in our field and part-time in a 2nd field.  He plays a lot of poker, which I'm really not comfortable with.

It's if funny--I really did feel like Bobby was wiser than me.  Aside from the fact that I thought he was doing something that was soul-numbing.  Poker isn't quite as soul-numbing as my perception of what Bobby was doing, and yet I see him more as an equal.  I don't really know why that is happening.  I think it is because Bobby was quite open about feelings and introspective stuff and this guy is more part of the mainstream of America.  He doesn't talk about his feelings.  He watches TV and follows sports and plays poker, which is all stuff that I tacitly look down on.  But he doesn't seem as addicted to poker as the 'ex' was.  And maybe feeling equals would be a good thing.  Or maybe, I'm just aching for someone to spank me on my birthday next weekend and that would be the third date, so....

Craving....

I thought about nothing other than sex today.  Listening to clients and suppliers at work, all I wanted was to kneel at someone's feet--Bobby?  the guy from last week? John? the guy trying to get me to buy stuff?  a colleague?

It's odd--I actually have my period right now.  Usually right around when I'm ovulating, I'll get this craving for sex.  Or not sex, for being sexy.  I think it is my body saying "mate!"  I usually deal with it by going for a brisk walk at night.  Give me some cheesy 80s music and I own the city.  But this wasn't about being sexy. This was about being owned.  I'll have to be careful on Friday not to go home with that man.  I'm a little shocked at the depth of my craving!

Overwhelmed

I generally have a rule that I try not to have more than 3 dates in a week.  I just feel like I get overwhelmed.  I had 5 last week and 5 this.

I'm literally thinking I might have to make a sheet of everyone I'm talking to.  It came to a head today when I agreed to a date with one guy when I thought I was talking with a different guy.  (One is Greg, one is Craig and I thought I was talking to Craig, not Greg.  I think I wanted to have lunch with Greg, but I would have put him off till next week because we haven't been planning on something.  Now I have both a lunch and a dinner date for Friday, and I'm exhausted!

But I suppose this all is "good problems to have."  One of them is a second date, and, shockingly, on the first date he said he wanted to see me again and I said only if he asked me more questions.  He said "I have this flaw around beautiful women--I talk too much.  And you are very beautiful."  And then he proceeded to ask me some questions about me.  It was sweet and also good that I actually seem to be getting more of a backbone! If we make it to a 3rd date, I'll give him a nom-de-blog.

It seems like the more of a backbone I have, the more attractive men see me.  I had a woman at work say something really bitchy to me yesterday and it totally cut into me.  Much more than I'd care to admit.  (We had Halloween candy at work and I had 2 small pieces--super small, not even the 'fun size'--like the minis.  She said "you shouldn't be eating candy" and I waited till no one was around and asked her to not comment on my food because this is not the first time she has criticized my food.  I said "I am going to have a couple of pieces of candy on Halloween, or else I'll feel deprived" and she said "Overweight people are not deprived."  She is the only person in my life who treats me like that.  She's like 70 and probably weighs more than I do.  I know this is about her and not me.  But it still really hurt my bubbliness.  But I seem to have bounced back today.  But I do wonder at both the amount of male attention I'm getting and how much I appreciate it!