A Bad Man in a Bad Place

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I saw July 4 for cocktails and catch-up. I wasn’t entirely sure why we were getting together - when last we saw each other things didn’t end well. They didn’t end badly, per se, but they didn’t end well, either.

So I met her at Bar Six in the West Village and sat with my back to the sidewalk and spoke. She’s very beautiful at 39, with grey tinges to her hair that make her look better, somehow. Still smoking, though, which was one of the bigger reasons that we broke up. Going down on her tasted kind of like tar.

We had a very nice conversation, she caught me up on the doings in her life, I told her about where I am. It was fun, and comfortable, and suddenly four hours slipped away.

As the clock struck eight and we both realized that it was time for us to go back to our lives, she offered to walk me back to the east side. It wasn’t until we started walking that she mentioned that we hadn’t worked out. She made a passing reference to a man submitting to her and I laughed and told her that that just wasn’t how I roll.

“That’s one of the main reasons we didn’t work out” she scolded. I held my tongue about the smoking and other things that didn’t work, but it was certainly one aspect that didn’t. She pressed, asking why I wasn’t willing to submit, and I told her that I was happy to submit outside the bedroom, or at least accommodate. That I wasn’t willing to submit in the bedroom is because that’s just not how my kinks go. She kept pressing, rolling down the “well, aren’t people who are hard driving in the board room supposed to be submissive in the bedroom?” I told her that I’m not that guy, that I feel better about my time in the board room if I’m in control in the bedroom. I started to wonder if the domination thing was a control thing for me, and perhaps that’s why I haven’t cared so much about it lately. Lately, I like my sex like I like my rainstorms, warm, wet, and full of thunder and lightning. The rest I can take or leave.

So July 4 was convinced that we didn’t work because she’s domme-y and I’m not subby at all. It was an interesting perspective, to hear from a former lover why she thought things didn’t work. I didn’t dissuade her from this because really, what good would it do? I have no reason to hurt her feelings any more, and we’ll be friends now, where before we hadn’t been able to.

I heard from Princess recently, too. She’s pregnant. Sent me a photo of her kid, still in utero, and a bunch of her looking all pregnant. She looked pretty radiant pregnant.

Also heard from The New Yorker today, who said that maybe we’ll get drinks next week. I’m not expecting that to come to fruition, too much water under that bridge, too many difficult memories, but still, it was nice that she thought of me.

Surfette was on my mind because something she said a year ago came true today. I didn’t bother contacting her to tell her that, but it was still interesting to note.

I think I saw The Liberal in June. I didn’t say anything. What do you say to someone who broke your heart either to watch it bleed OR to test you to see if you could take it? Nothing. You just walk away.

So. The past catches up with me and says hello. Or maybe it’s saying goodbye, to let me move forward? I hope that’s it.

The Sous Chef and I met at the corner of 4th street and Broadway and proceeded to walk through the West Village, exploring apartments and townhouses neither of us could afford. I kept muttering that I needed to make more money, and she kept walking with me and watching the lightning.

“I hope it rains. I love walking in the rain.” She’d asked me earlier if I’d thought it would, and I told her that I did. When she asked if I thought she needed sneakers or Wellies, I told her sneakers, but that was partly because I didn’t know what Wellies are. Still, I thought sneakers made sense, the night was moist but warm, and although there was lightning, it was over Jersey. I figured we’d be hit by a bit of rain.

We walked through the West Village holding hands and exploring areas that neither of us often walked through, the mainly residential picturesque parts of the city. It started to drizzle as we walked, a fine, light, summer rain. We walked all the way to the West Side Highway before turning around, talking about nothing and ambling as comfortable lovers do - enjoying the warm New York summer night. And the rain. I was happy for the rain, and happier still that it wasn’t a downpour. Until we got back to Seventh Avenue. When the heavens opened up and coated our bodies with water.

It remained a fun walk for about 20 more minutes, and then, at a certain point, a block from my apartment, we both noticed that our entire bodies were sticking to our clothing. That the jeans we’d worn weren’t the best choices, and that the sneakers we had on were squishing and sloshing. Fortunately, we were able to walk upstairs and strip down shortly after this started. I noticed that her ass was still dry, while the rest of her was soaked and teased her about having such a magnificent one. As she stripped out of her clothes, she got a bit embarrassed at the fact that she wasn’t perfectly groomed for the evening - I presume she hadn’t expected to be getting naked with me and jumping in the shower. I did what I could to reassure her that I’m a pretty hirsute guy myself and that whatever hair she had on her body just added texture to the encounter. She accepted that and took off her pants, underwear, and then stepped into the shower with me.

I noted that suddenly she was naked, wet, and hot, just the way I liked her. She flashed me that smile of hers and I gently pushed her into the wall of the shower, kissing her with hot water cascading over our naked bodies. Holding, rubbing, and exploring each other while getting the chill off our bones. A more perfect way to end our encounter hadn’t occurred to me, and wouldn’t for another hour or so.

We toweled off and sat in my apartment talking comfortably about whatever came up and in a lull in the conversation she asked if we could lie down and cuddle.

Not one to turn some good naked skin time, I agreed and pulled her to the bed. We lay down and I stroked her while we continued to talk. Talk turned to sex and our relative comfort levels and the fact that for various reasons we couldn’t have any that night. I was content stroking her as we both air dried and talking and making out. She asked me to roll on top of her at a certain point, which I did, and started rubbing against her. I wrapped my fingers gently, very gently, around her throat. “You like that?” She moaned, asking me to fuck her. “I can’t. You know I can’t.” I wasn’t squeezing, wasn’t choking, I just had my hand delicately resting on her neck. I kissed her face and her lips and her shoulders while rubbing myself up and down against her ass. She pushed her head forward and her throat onto my hand. I stopped her.

“Are you sure you want to do that? If you turn the volume of your life up to 11, it’s hard for 1-5 to be really even register anymore.”

“I know. You’ve been doing it though, haven’t you?” I’d told her that after my experience with The Writer I realized that I needed to downshift my libido and try to be satisfied with simpler things. What I hadn’t told her is that most of what this involved was giving up masturbation three times a day. “I like it.”

I rolled back onto her. She’d told me that she’d had anal sex once before and that it wasn’t a great experience. It was an almost stereotypical bad anal experience - no lube, no warning, and no fun. I didn’t want this to be that, so I asked if she wanted me to try that with her. When she said she did, I put on a condom, put on as much lube as I thought I’d need and then the same amount again, and slowly, and by inches, slipped into her. Asking her, every inch, if she was ok. When she wasn’t, I stopped and slowly pulled out. And then she told me to try again.

When I’d finally gotten all the way inside her, she asked me to put grab her throat again, and to make her light headed. “When you took your hand away before it made me sad. It was like you’d been hugging me, and then you stopped.” I briefly explained the dangers of choking and stayed well on this side of my comfort level. I like her, I don’t want to kill her. I fucked her ass and choked her while I did it until she found herself a little bit overwhelmed. When I slowly pulled out of her she asked me how much she’d had. “I had my whole cock inside you. You did good. I’m impressed.”

She smiled at herself, laying in a sweaty heap on the bed. I asked if she was done and when she told me she was, and that she wanted to keep practicing that but not that night, I took the condom off. I was pleased to discover her hand on my balls, tickling the hairs beneath them, and then fondling my shaft seconds after the condom was off. She kissed down my body and I was pleased to find my cock in her mouth. She gave me an excellent blowjob/handjob and when I felt myself coming, I warned her and pulled her off of me. She finished me off, and then got up, got a towel, and cleaned me off. It’s one of the first times I’d been cleaned off afterwards, in part because I usually am coming on a woman instead of on myself, and in part because I don’t think all the women I’ve been with have been fond of the cleanup part. I was thoroughly charmed.

“Was that ok?” I lay in a puddle of my own semen and sweat and this woman who was responsible for it was asking me if it was ok. I tried to hide the fact that I was light headed and catching my breath. “I mean, I was worried that you weren’t going to like it, I wasn’t gagging on you or anything.” The complication of having shown her this site.

I tried to reassure her. “That was fantastic.” It was. It helps when you have a connection with the person you’re with, beyond the “hey, you’ve got Slot B, mind if I put Tab A in there?”

We held each other and talked about the events of the night, looking forward to fucking as soon as we can. At 3am, I reminded her that we both had to be up for work soon after, and that she’d told me at the beginning of the night that we weren’t having a sleepover. I loaned her a dry pair of pants and a t-shirt, not to mention a pair of shoes, put her wet clothes in a plastic bag, and sent her into the night with a goodbye kiss.

After she left, I fell into the bed, dazed by what had happened, and grinning like an idiot. Now, as I’m writing this the next day, I’m grinning still.

On Monday, The Sous Chef dropped an ultimatum in my lap. Stop seeing other women or stop having sex with her.

At first, I’d agreed to stop seeing other women. Most of the dates I’d been on had been pretty dreadful and I was happy to find someone that I genuinely liked. And like her I do. It’s complicated by her work schedule and part time job on the one hand, and me with my foolish barroom antics on the other. Balance, but at the end of the day we still wanted to come home to each other when we could. An acknowledgement that if things were different we’d probably spend more time together, but they’re not, so we can’t.

I started to do the math in my head. I’m not going to be able to keep up a four-hours-of-sleep-a-night pace up for very long. I’m not going to be able to make plans to do anything with her because there’s a part time job in addition to her day job. So it’s late night sex and hanging out and talking for what seems like hours and usually is.

A severely imbalanced relationship in which I get very little, because she’s already got a lot.

What the situation came down to was this: I like her. She likes me.

So I called her on it.

We went to a movie on Wednesday night and afterwards we started to take a walk. It was midnight in midtown and things were a little dicey both in the neighborhood and our conversation. So I told her that I had a problem.

“In our conversation the other night, I have to tell you, I realized I’m not comfortable with the way things were left. I don’t think that I know you well enough to stop dating anyone else right now.”

“I didn’t say you had to stop dating other people.”

“No, but you gave me a choice between sleeping with you and dating other people. Obviously, I’m going to choose sleeping with you.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” And she hadn’t. We spent two hours outside the Bryant Park hotel talking about the issue and what was revealed surprised me. I don’t know why it did, and it probably shouldn’t have, but it did. It’s not that she didn’t want me sleeping with or dating other people, although she didn’t. Rather, the concern was that she likes me more than I’d realized or thought she would, and that she’s old school about relationships - reserving sex for people that she cares deeply about. I respect that, and appreciate it.

As I walked her home to the Upper East Side, we passed a cop on the beat in front of the United Nations. I’d been trying to explain to her that a random kiss in a bar wasn’t going to impinge on how I felt about her. She had a hard time agreeing to that, and I don’t think she fully accepts it. I still believe it though.

“You know, my objection wasn’t to being serious with you, or about having feelings about you, or anything like that at all. I just don’t like being dictated to, particularly by someone I’ve just met.”

She looked at the cop and asked him “if we’ve just started dating, he shouldn’t be sleeping with anyone else, should he?”

The cop looked at us both and said “it depends on the situation.”

I laughed at that. She got indignant and cute about it.

“Ok, I’m just not used to this. I usually don’t get physical with someone before I’m really emotionally attached to them.”

I had a bolt of mental inspiration and suddenly felt like an asshole. “Oh God. Did I pressure you into having sex with me? It just dawned on me that you could have read into what I said about not lasting more than three dates with women before having sex or we break up?”

“Well, yeah, a little. I worried that you were going to get bored.”

“Oh fuck. Seriously. I didn’t mean to pressure you.” I didn’t. Christ, I’m an asshole sometimes.

“You meant it to reassure me, didn’t you. Like, ‘hey, you made it past three dates and we didn’t have sex. You’re pretty special.’”

“Exactly.” We lapsed into a comfortable silence for a few minutes. It began to rain.

“You can keep dating other people if you want” she mumbled.

“It’s not about that, it’s not. Look, I like you. I’ve tried to respect your time and space and lack thereof, but with all of the other things going on in your life I don’t know if you’re going to have enough time for me. I’m pretty high maintenance and I’ve got a hypersexual libido. I don’t know where this is going, I just know that I like you.” We kissed in the rain. It was romantic and cheesy and kind of cool for being romantic and cheesy. We stopped at Dunkin Donuts at nearly 4 and grabbed a snack. Kept walking until we got to her place, where I left her with an “I’ll see you soon” and a kiss before sending her upstairs.

I flagged down a cab to go home.

“How are you doing tonight?” I asked him. He had an accent that suggested he was here from China, but had an Americanized name.

“Good, good. How are you?”

“I’m ok. A little trouble with women, but otherwise good.”

“Problems with your girlfriend?”

“I’m not sure I’d call her that, but yeah, basically.”

“Is she hot?”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Does she have a good job?”

“Yes.”

“Is she nice?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what’s your problem?”

I told him that we’d only met two weeks ago and that she had told me to be exclusive with her so quickly that it sort of shocked me.

“So? She’s pretty and nice and has a job. Do you like her?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re very lucky. You need to stop sleeping with other women. Do you know how hard it is to find a nice, pretty girl with a good job in this town?”

I laughed. “Yeah. I’m a little old for her, I’m 33 and she’s 24.”

“Oh my god. Stop sleeping with other women. Start treating her better. You’re a very lucky man. I see lots of people in this cab and give lots of advice to men, women, everyone. You’re a lucky man. Don’t screw this up.”

The sous chef came over last night and she bought us dinner from l’il Frankies. We watched the first Hellboy in preparation for watching the second one this weekend. She begrudgingly admitted she liked the movie despite her initial misgivings - not because she doesn’t like comics - but because she doesn’t like the terrible one liners he spouts. I had to respect that, and I freely admit to having a crush on a pretty girl who also likes comics. 32 going on 12. Just like most other 32 year olds in NYC.

We found each other making out as we do every time we see each other, talking, exploring, and playing hungrily with each other’s bodies until 5:15 in the morning when I reminded her it was a school-night for her and that her boss had been making a lot of demands on her lately, and that perhaps she should get some sleep, and not be a complete zombie.

There were two points during the night when I realized I am hopelessly smit with her. The first had come before we got together but I first processed it when we got together. As I told you, our second night together, I gave her the URL to this site and offered to let her read it. She got as far back as December before she called to tell me she wouldn’t be reading anymore. That she didn’t want copies of what I was writing about her, either, and that she would rather just hear the stories from me and live the experiences. I was seriously impressed with her maturity. The anti-Facebook-stalker type. I thought that was amazing and wonderful. I’m not ashamed of this, but I am 32, the Bad Man, and trying to break the cycle. She is 24, outside the cycle, and inexperienced by comparison. It leads to awkwardness we don’t need, and she saw that and addressed it. Respect. And affection.

The second moment was when she told me that she was intimidated and nervous about sex with me having read what she had read. Sex with The Writer, for instance, which was amazing and kinky and better than I could ever write it, might be intimidating to a woman with limited experience. I tried to set her at ease by explaining, as I did recently to Wannabe Bad Girl, that in sex experience counts for very little, while connection, communication, and openmindedness count for everything. We have a connection, and she is openminded. And we are exploring communication.

We’ve been struggling with the amount of pressure we feel about having sex - she is concerned her relative inexperience could leave me disappointed, I’m concerned that my excessive experience will gross her out, and whether or not I would live up to the hype. Matters weren’t helped during the movie when the friend who initially set us up texted twice - first to see what was up for the night and then, after not hearing back, again to ask if we were “boning” yet. No pressure. Ha.

When the sous chef looked down at me, still in her underwear and riding on top of me and said that she felt nervous, I did what I could to calm her. What she said next blew me away and was what made me really like her - “I could have pulled out one of my moves from work and gotten back in control, but I didn’t want to. I don’t want to be that person here.” I gently rolled her off of me, told her that I never wanted her to bring that work home with her, and that we should stop until she was less nervous. Minutes later, she fell asleep in my arms.

When we woke up, we spent the morning playing while regularly checking email and the phone to make sure our day jobs were under control. She rolled on top of me again, seeming somehow more comfortable than she was before we fell asleep. I looked at her body, tanned, toned, and tight, and said simply “om nom nom.” which cracked her up. More petting, more kissing, and then I slid down her body and buried my face in her cunt. I stuck a finger, then two, inside her, flattened my tongue and let her writhe and grind away on it. I was rewarded with a squeeling, giggling, screaming orgasm minutes later. She described the sensation of having her first G-Spot orgasm to me, and I inwardly smiled and looked forward to giving her more of them

We relaxed in the bed, hung out and cuddled for awhile, and I let her catch her breath. Our time together was ending due to a meeting, so we dressed, I admired her fantastic body, and she walked me to the train.

On the way, she pointed out that she felt bad not to have reciprocated and had a hard time accepting that first, I’d enjoyed myself and second, that I didn’t keep score. I eventually joked that she bought me dinner and it was the least I could do to go down on her to pay her back. She laughed and accepted that, kissing me at the train station and agreeing to come back soon.

[UPDATE: I've edited this post a bit, mainly to clean it up, due to writing it on my phone]

The Sous Chef is suffering from exhaustion. Whenever we get together we are greedy about the amount of time we spend together so we stay awake for hours and hours and the sun comes up and she has a day job. Which I currently don’t.

Friday night she came over after work at around 10 and we ordered Chinese and were going to watch a movie. Earlier in the week I’d suggested we go do something outdoors and fun and she’d asked, almost meekly, if I’d be up for just staying in and vegging instead.

Of course I was. Like I needed an excuse to hang out at home with a pretty girl. So I accomodated her and she came over, we got some take out and talked and kissed a bit and watched old episodes of Saturday Night Live (Celebrity Jeopardy. She likes Celebrity Jeopardy. Sweet!) and talked and generally vegged. At one point she asked me how my first dates had gone that week. I’d only had one, and we went to the Moma to see Dalí, which was nice, but she was such a gym-type that I felt bloated next to her and when people start getting prostelitic about exercise, well, I start to get uncomfortable. And also odd that she’d asked me, but I do recall when first we got to my apartment on the night of the Fourth, she told me that she wasn’t looking for a relationship right now. I suppose that drove the point home and I’ll take that at face value. A little odd, but no odder than knowing that she’s reading along here. We eventually fell asleep, at least part of the night with her in my arms, and woke to the dulcet tones of National Public Radio at 8.

At 10am we woke up after a two hour game of “hey, wake up. Wake up. Wake up.” I was the clear loser of that game as I was awake at 8 and she was just slowly opening her eyes at 10. We dressed and she looked at me and asked “hey, did I become your buddy last night?” Terminology not being my strongest suit I asked her what she meant. “Well, it’s more than three times we’ve gotten together and we haven’t had sex, and you weren’t even physically aggressive with me last night, no throwing me into anything, no wrestling, barely any kissing, and you didn’t even try to have sex with me.”

“Well, we’ve got 45 minutes before 10, you want to have sex?”

“No, I’m still not ready for that and that’s not what I mean.”

“I’m sorry, I just had a good time hanging out with you. If that’s wrong I can throw you into something.”

She smiled. Her smiles don’t have dimples, exactly, they just sort of start at the bottom of her eyes and work their way down. And her eyes smile too. I like making her do that. “No, no, it’s fine.” She started to dress, she had to go shopping first thing in the morning for an event she was going to that afternoon. I got out of bed and brushed my teeth. “Hey, ummm, do you want to come with me to Anthropologie? You don’t have to.”

I think I had some witty remark, but it’s lost to memory now. The gist of it was that yes, I’d go, and that would help get my ass out of bed. Which I did.

So off to Anthropologie we went, and I wandered the store. It’s hard to explain - I’ve said for awhile now that I’m gay except for sleeping with women, which isn’t entirely accurate, but I have no objection to going and doing a clothing pickup, which this was. If it had been full on shopping, I’d've likely balked. But it was early, the day was beautiful, and sometimes I feel like going on excursions like this is a way to slip behind enemy lines. A way to see what women are up to when we’re not looking. I got a lot of smiles from the women in the store, I’m just going to assume they thought I was henpecked and weren’t flirting with me. Either way, it was a reasonably painless experience of a merchandise swap and I got to check out the housewares section, the other real reason I went. There’s been a change there since I was last there four or five years ago, much more feminine-peasant-french-farmhouse-fake than at last check. Or maybe I just hallucinated it the last time. Either way, I’m pretty sure you don’t care.

We finished her shopping and held hands through SoHo until I sent her on her way to shop for shoes (I have limits on what I have the patience for) and I wandered off to the Apple store, not to buy Jesusphone 2.0, but to get the headphones on my iPhone fixed. I gave her a kiss on Broadway and Spring and left with a spring in my step.

You’ve got to <3 a girl who texts you “hey dork - want to grab a drink or something?” At 9:30 at night. Two nights after our first meeting. And that’s exactly what the Sous Chef did.

I hadn’t even had a chance to formulate a plan to see her again. We’d spoken briefly during the day when she returned the call that my pants had apparently made. I got an immediate case of the “should I call again today”’s since we’d already spoken once that day and nobody likes the calling-too-much guy. I was impressed and pleased that she’d taken that choice out of my hands. She made me promise to have her home by midnight, so it was to be a short walk, followed by putting her right back on the subway.

We finally met at 10:15 at Union Square on the promise that I’d get her a snack after we had an adventure walk. Our walk started with my aborted attempts to kiss her which I once again interpreted with an “I am so confused here. Jesus.” I gave up trying nearly as soon as I’d started. She talked me out of kissing her with comments about recently applied Chaptstick, and when I pulled her into me for a kiss, she pulled away. These things make it sound like she was being cold to me, but no, it was quite the opposite, she’d grabbed my hand to hold within the first minute of seeing me. Color me confused, or her at a slower pace than I’m used to. Either way, she was feisty and I was happy.

We walked around Alphabet City a bit, talked about getting one of my friends a gig as the houseboy for our mutual friends, and ran into a perplexed set of classmates of mine, and then to a Bodega not far from my apartment where we got a Mango and two beers - Magic Hat #9 for her, Sapporo for me. The flaw in the Mango theory being, of course, Mango pits which, if you’re not familiar, are most of the Mango. I offered her the use of one of my kitchen knives, with the caveat that we were only going up briefly. I’d already asked if she was a creepy stalker (she said no) and I reminded her that this was the second time in as many dates that she was getting me back to my apartment, so really, we couldn’t stay there very long without it being kind of, well, odd and awkward.

She agreed, and up we went. I cut the Mango for her after a bit of struggling on her part, and tried to score it for easy eating and was scolded with “strips, not chunks.” I smirked at that, laughing at taking direction. And for some reason I still haven’t understood, I took it with aplomb.

The Mango eaten, time ticked away while we talked in my kitchen. 11. 11:30. A discussion ensued about the fact that she’d been a girlfriend on and off since she was around 15 and didn’t want to be a girlfriend again right now. The evening was going in definitely confusing directions, but hey, I’m a stimulation junkie. Better than the opposite. I assumed this meant don’t kiss her. 12. 12:15. At a certain point she asked “are you going to kiss me?” My poor brain, completely bumfuzzled by the situation, agreed to kiss her protruding lower lip and I was rewarded with a happy moan. Shortly thereafter, I went back to my spot away from her and continued the conversation.

We drank our respective beers and then she said something and she pouted. I thought it was just about the cutest thing I’d seen in a long time and I told her so, and gave her a kiss for it. Which was apparently the hoped for response, as 10 minutes later when she pouted again, she scolded me for not kissing her. There was a fair bit of inward laughing at her attempts to train me, but again, mysteriously, I complied. Pulled her out of the chair and into the refrigerator, thrust one leg between hers and grinding into her while I kissed her with her hands pinned over her head. I lost track of time at that point, but what seemed like 20 minutes later, she pulled me out of the corner and back towards a clear path to the bed, which I, of course, pushed her onto.

Much more kissing ensued. This made me happy, as she and I kiss in a very similar way. Hard to explain, but we do.

She’d told me several times that I wasn’t allowed to leave marks, a disappointment, but I accepted it because everyone’s got their threshold. “What, is your husband going to be upset?” That wasn’t it, I’d already asked her the holy trinity of my first date questions:

1. Are you now or have you ever been a man?
2. Are you now or have you ever been married?
3. Do you have any children?

Usually when I ask that, number 3 gets “here, or in Asia” at the end, but I’m clearly out of practice and a bit taken with her.

She told me that no, she wasn’t married. I figured there were three other possibilities that it could be. Boyfriend? No. Escort? No. Dominatrix? No.

I was at a loss. I pressed her on what she did for a living and she hesitated to tell me. I tried to pry it out of her with offhand comments about not being easily offended and having a semi-secret life of my own. To no avail. She told me that she’d tell me if I guessed, and so the guessing commenced.

“Fetish model?” No. “Receptionist at a dungeon?” No. “Blood play specialist?” What’s that? A brief digression into cutting sports followed. She replied with an ‘oh god, no.’ “Electronics specialist?” Same reaction, same response. “Rigger?” What’s that? “The person who ties people up.” Oh. No. There’s a name for that? “I’ve been known to dabble in that.” Her eyes widened a bit. I gave up after a few more rounds of this. “I’m not going to judge. I’m kind of in the industry.” Really? Howso? “I’m an adult blogger.” Her eyes widened slightly more still. I even gave her the URL. Then she told me, in the big reveal, that she had a part time job that I was entirely comfortable with in addition to her day job. Ah. Cool. She explained the situation, and we had an hour-long digression into the politics and lives of sex workers and adult bloggers. Overshare? Maybe. Suddenly significantly more comfortable with this girl because I didn’t have to hide my identity, and hopefully she felt the same way? Definitely.

One of the reasons that I liked her was that she was the first person I’ve met to instant get my Cowboys and Vampires analogy about what happens when girls flirt with me, which goes something like this:

When women see me, they often think that they’re the Cowboy in the Cowboy movie. They come into the bar, saunter up, pistols packed, and act tough and invincible. It’s a Cowboy movie in their mind. What they don’t know, of course, is that it’s really a Vampire movie, I’m Spike, and they’re Dinner.

When I told her that I’m a top and a dom and a rigger and a sadist, she started laughing. Suddenly, things that I’d said last time we got together were thrown into a different relief. She laughed even harder when she realized what I really meant by “I don’t take orders from people, what the hell just happened.” She took it with good humor.

The kissing started again. Lots of kissing. And groping. But not as much groping as kissing and laughing and smiling and it was like I always imagined making out would have been at 16 if I had been making out at 16. She scratched my head at some point and I leaned into it like a cat, happy to be scritched behind the ear. She was amused at that. “What do you expect? I’m a Leo.”

“Oh. I’m a Scorpio.”

“Of course you are. God damnit.” Scorpios represent two things in my life. Pure evil, and my personal kryptonite. I’m attracted to them like a moth to a flame, like Bush to Iraq, or like a baby to small choking-sized objects.

I told her Aesop’s fable about the Frog and the Scorpion and she laughed at me. I felt I had entirely given her the upper hand. And I was ok with that. For the moment.

The rest of the night is a blur, as it was already 3am. There was caressing and kissing and playing and falling asleep in each other’s arms only to wake up shortly thereafter. I think, and hope, that she had the same good feelings about the night that I did, and the same desire not to see the evening end. It’s rare to make a connection in this town. We’d found common ground over our hidden lives, had a lot more in common than I would have thought considering we met at a party, and have I mentioned that the kissing was good? I did. It was.

By 7am we acknowledged that she had work in the morning and my housekeeper was coming at 9:30. We agreed to nap for two hours and then get dressed and go. Which is precisely what we did. I gave her a kiss at the door, hoping that my housekeeper wasn’t lurking in the hallway as she sometimes does, and sent her on her way. I am now completely, utterly, and totally exhausted, and hoping that I get to see her again soon.

“I brought beer.”

“I can take that. I’m the sous chef.”

“Excellent.” Wait, there’s a sous chef?

I was at a July 4 party at a friends house, high over the East Village, able to see both sets of fireworks from his balcony. A very old friend whom I rarely see, I’d walked into a party where I knew basically nobody. Viviane’s admonition to stop being shy on twitter rang in my ears so I offered up “I brought potato salad, too. It’s kind of iffy, though, I grilled the potatos and they are kind of… well… crunchy.”

“I’ll eat them” she told me. Looking at me with eyes that… wow, nice eyes.

I took one of my in-honor-of-July-4 domestic beers from her and sauntered off into the party. Stuck my hand out at the first group of people I saw. “Hi. I’m Bad Man. I don’t know anybody here. What’s your name?” And the night was off to the races.

On the balcony, I met a 6′3 guy who lives eight blocks from me. We were immediately best friends forever, and I chuckled to myself as I watched his fumbling attempts to flirt. “Your shirt matches your eyes” with one girl and a game of “how hard can I poke you” with another. Not that I was doing any better, but at least I was out and being social. Back to the kitchen for more beer, and coquettish flirting from the sous chef.

Much of the night was a blur due to my uncomfortableness with parties. I remember keeping one eye on her, and an eventual move to the bedroom for a group of us to have an 80s dance party.

“Here, sit next to me on the bed” from the sous chef. I immediately complied. And looked at her quizzically.

“I don’t take orders from people. What the hell just happened?” She smiled and laughed at me. Her eyes smiled with her mouth. She had no idea who I am and it was a weird thing to say.

I kept at a distance from her for most of the party, as I mentioned recently, I usually hunt alone. This was a friend of my friend’s bisexual girlfriend. I had no idea what the situation was, and I hate breaching friends boundaries. So I kept a respectful distance, waiting and watching, talking and flirting, and going around the party. Twenty minutes talking to the tattooed blonde, fifteen minutes trying to help the tattooed brunette find her purse and steer clear of her wildly drunken advances.

The night progressed, my new Best Friend hit on the sous chef for awhile, and then I turned around and saw her talking to a different guy. A hipster Williamsberg-esque scrawny dude. This smelled like a bit of trouble. So I did what I figured I ought to do, I ducked back onto the balcony and admired the view some more. Had some Knob Creek.

When I got back to the kitchen, I overheard her giving him her phone number. That cinched it, I’d entirely botched the night. What the hell is wrong with me these days? I can’t even meet a single cute girl at a party? I’d asked her earlier if she’d get another drink with me somewhere else after telling her point blank that I (and I’m not making this up) “think you’re totally cute.” When the words came out of my mouth something in the back of my head said “wait, what did you just say? Really? Really???” She smiled at it, though, which made me wonder if perhaps I hadn’t completely fucked things up by saying that. It was genuine. Which helped, I think.

As the party emptied out, and two in the morning rolled around, the only people left were me, the host, his girlfriend, and the sous chef. In my head it sounded sort of like this:

“Is she waiting for me to leave so I don’t stalk her?”
“No, she’s been flirting with you all night.”

“Yeah, but I asked her like, three times to go with me for another drink right now and she keeps changing the subject”

“Sure, but she DID say that she was going to help them clean up. Maybe she was being honest?”

“You’re not helping.”

“Sorry.”

At which point she fed me some spinach dip on a nacho and I figured I’d push my luck.

The three of us sat and hung out and chatted like old friends, although I’d only just met two of them, until three. I gave up.

I told the collected company that I was going to head home after I went to the bathroom. Ambled over to the bathroom, washed my hands, looked myself in the eye wondering what had gone wrong, and walked outside.

My friend’s girlfriend looked at me. “Make sure she gets into a cab, ok?” Wait, now I’m responsible for her? Couldn’t we have done this a few hours ago?

Downstairs, outside, to the street. Standing on a street corner and talking for 20 minutes. It’s getting late.

“You know, it was funny in there, when I asked you to sit on the bed with me, I’d saved you a seat, I wasn’t ordering you around or anything.” I grunted in understanding. We talked about, well, nothing really. Just killing time. At 3:30 in the morning. I’m too old for this. And then, out of the blue, she asked

“Can I call you sometime?” What the hell???

“Sure.” I gave her my card. “I don’t think you’ll really call me though. Here, give me your number too.” She wrote hers down on the back of a piece of paper I had with me.

I looked her in the eye. “Can I kiss you?” She looked startled.

“Wow, now it’s awkward. You asked. I mean, that’s awkward” she pointed out. So I grabbed her by the hip and the neck and planted one on her, eliciting a “wow, can we try that again?”

I pushed her into a lamppost and attacked her with some of the ferocity that I’d pent up over the last few months. Her knees buckled slightly and I smiled inwardly. “How about that drink now?” I asked her. She agreed.

We hustled down to my local, and when we got there, the doors were locked. They let me in, fortunately, for a quick nightcap, and then we took a walk in the rain. And proceeded to freeze. She suggested coming back to my place to grab sweatshirts and keep walking, which we nearly did, instead staying at my house to make out until the sun came up, after which I walked her back downstairs, gave her one last kiss, and sent her off in a cab. Happy, exhausted, and flush with the excitement of making a new friend, I promptly passed out when I got upstairs.

For anyone that wondered if Lex and Les’s life was the way that they described it, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that I witnessed it firsthand tonight. And they witnessed firsthand how I live, although they’ve done it before, as I have witnessed theirs. They are some of my favorite friends. The girl that showed up with them was very cute, had the kind of breasts you want to motorboat, and on and on. But it’s their story, not mine. I have hard limits about what I’m comfortable with regarding the women that show up with friends of mine. Suffice it to say that a good time was had by all.

Tonight, out with a girl with whom I’d been set up. Fine time, split the check, cheek proffered, although she was bright eyed about getting together again.

Am I rusty, disinterested, or was it that I told her the transvestite model at B-Bar story and she lives on the Upper East Side? [Could it be all three? -Ed Hmm... could be.]

After a long day at work, I got home a few minutes early and The Writer was standing just in the doorway of my building.  The timing could not have been better.  A quick kiss on the cheek, up the stairs and into the apartment.  A shower for her to loosen up her cough, and then dinner was magically delivered.  As we sat at the table, each of us working on our laptops and fighting over the last piece of sticky rice, I looked at her briefly and smiled.  There wasn’t going to be any sex tonight, although there were a few kisses.

“You know, I don’t want to seem weird or anything, but it’s really nice to have you here.”
“I agree.”
“I mean, I don’t want to come on too strong or anything, but I like the fact that we can just hang out and do stuff and be around each other.”
She smiled at that.
“I just like you is all.”

I left it at that.

Sometimes I just crave a relaxed tender time with her.  The sex and raunch and everything else makes those tender times even better.

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