Fifteenth date

Gosh, have D and I had fifteen dates already? Sometimes I stop and realize that the number is getting kind of large; then next I wonder why I have made a point of writing about each one? I’m not sure of the answer, except that it forces me to slow down a little and pay attention. And it sets the event in my memory, in a way that probably wouldn’t happen otherwise. Maybe it’s not important to keep up. But paying attention is always good.

Our fifteenth date was actually a couple weeks ago, when I was at the office in Faraway City for one week and she was able to join me from Saturday afternoon through Monday evening. (And we have another date coming up in another two weeks. I think we are making up for that long dry spell from last September into January.)

We met at the airport, and right away the visit got off to a bumpy start – for a couple of reasons.

The first reason – I should mention that it took a while before D was prepared to explain either of these to me – was that I had dressed sloppily for the trip, and I hadn’t complimented her when I first saw her on how she looked. I mean, she looked nice, … but hell, she always looks nice. And even if she dressed like a slob (which I suspect would be constitutionally impossible for her), I’d still think she looked nice because I love her. But she reminded me how important looks are to her, and explained that she puts a lot of effort into dressing nicely for me. So she wants to be appreciated. The other side of the same token is that when I dress the way I usually do for travel – and if I am going to spend a lot of time in airports I dress for comfort and function, period – she thinks to herself, “He doesn’t even respect me enough to put a little effort into his clothes.” And of course that makes her sad. Ooops, that’s not what I meant, naturally. I agreed I’d dress better next time.

The second reason was a little stranger. When we met at the airport I tried to kiss her, but she only allowed a light little peck. I tried to hold her hand or touch her as we drove in to the hotel, but it was clear she didn’t feel comfortable. Once we checked into our room I tried to embrace her or at least hold her hand, and she flinched visibly away from me. What’s this? Are you angry with me?

D was a little shocked that I should think her angry with me, so I asked why she was unwilling to touch me. That’s what I would do if I were angry. And what she said was very odd.

D explained to me that she had become very confused about the strength of her own sexuality. After it took total control of her for two hours during the last evening of our fourteenth date, D said, she has been really spooked by her own sexual energy. She said she doesn’t understand it – not the power it (obviously) has over her, nor the power that it appears to have over others.

NOTE: This last remark needs a little explanation. D lives in a duplex; her neighbor in the other half is a divorced man in his eighties. D spends time visiting with him to be sociable, going to church with him on Sundays, and generally helping out because he is somewhat infirm. For his part, he has responded by asking her directly to fuck him, and by telling his children and other relatives that he plans to marry her once she is divorced from her husband. D was a little aghast at this: he is in his eighties, with partial paralysis in some parts of his body, … and he wants her in his bed? Well it’s no surprise to me that he should want her there, but I have to admit I find it a little odd that he could expect her to want him. More and more though, D tells me, he seems trapped in orbit around her, in a way she finds somewhat disturbing. Then recently her daughter persuaded her to join a “couch-surfing” network, maybe as a way to travel on the cheap. Recently she hosted her first guest, a middle-aged man coming through the area to visit family. They spent one evening talking over dinner, and he told D all about his two failed marriages. When he left she gave him a hug goodbye, … and he told her then that he had never felt in love with anybody, but he wished once in his life he could be hugged like that by somebody who loved him. It might make all the difference.

Anyway, over the past few weeks, between our previous date and this one, D had been feeling progressively more and more disturbed by the power of her own touch, of her own sexuality. What is more, she felt that she understood it less and less. She told me she had gotten to the point of feeling almost like the character Rogue, from the X-Men – someone who can’t even touch others without draining some essential power out of them.

It’s a remarkable story, and it is certainly consistent with her backing away when I wanted to touch her. But frankly I have a little trouble understanding how this story can be true. D isn’t some newly-pubescent girl who is still discovering that her body reacts in new and different ways. She’ll be 57 this year, for heaven’s sake, and she admits that her sex drive has been remarkably powerful her whole adulthood. How can it possibly be confusing her now? Shouldn’t she have it pretty much all figured out by this point?

I would think so, but she said that she understands sex a lot less now than she did (or thought she did) back when she was 20. Also, a lot of her earlier understanding was filtered through a lens of Christian theology, and now she’s not so sure that’s a very helpful way to approach sex. Anyway, the upshot is that she was skittish about touching me, so she said, for fear that her fundamental sexual nature might explode on her or something. (And of course in the end we did hold hands while talking in the hotel … and a little later we were tearing each other’s clothes off and fucking for dear life.)

We fucked a lot this visit. I am happy to report that I didn’t have the same erectile problems I had last time. (Maybe I was just out of practice?) Between sex and dinner (and more sex) we pretty much accounted for the evening and the morning. As we walked to a restaurant for breakfast, I spelled out for her my idea about the Shakespeare Festival.

Then D mentioned that she had told her sister about me. More precisely, her sister called while D was en route to the airport.

“What’s that noise in the background? Are you driving?”

"Yes.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Faraway City.”

“Why are you going there?”

Long pause. “To see the man I’m dating.”

D said that her sister was very positive and affirming – “I’m so proud of you!” – and that she wants to meet me. And indeed I have heard so much about her that I’d like to meet her too. (It’s these kinds of emotions that made me think up this idea about the Shakespeare Festival in the first place. But everyone whose opinion I have asked has told me it is a skull-crushingly stupid idea.)

Back to the hotel … more sex. Then we went out to a play in the afternoon, and afterwards to a wine bar where we had plenty of wine, and some elegant hors d’oeuvres, and talked.

D told me she thought I wasn’t being completely honest with myself about my own feelings. Huh? It turns out that she was talking about my argument linking sex with community and friendship (see for example my discussion here). But she wan’t thinking of the abstract argument so much as she was thinking of my suggestion (which I have tried to intimate only very gently) that it is hardly fair for her to be stuck so much of the time with no sexual companionship, and that physical fidelity is not necessary (or at any rate is not something I ask of her). She said that she thinks I have been so badly hurt by Wife over the years that I have really come to believe there is something about me that is simply not “good enough” – whatever that means. So to try to get me over that, she said that she thinks I need a lover to be absolutely faithful to me, so that I can come to understand that I really can be good enough to please her.

I told her that I’m not so sure I agree, and that I have in fact spent a lot of time thinking about questions of fidelity and infidelity.

“I’m not surprised that you have. Is this because of who I am?”

In retrospect I am not quite sure what she meant by that question. At the time I assumed she was referring to her abundant sexual energy, and that she was therefore hinting (as never before) at a level of experience inconsistent with strict monogamy. Later on I thought of a more mundane explanation: viz., that she is somebody else’s wife, so the only way for us to be together at all involves infidelity. I like the first explanation better.

I answered, “Not only that, but because of my own past with Wife.”

“Of course.”

So I summarized my essay that sex creates a couple where there wasn’t one before, and that “betrayal” means betrayal of that couple-dom, of the promise of mutual refuge that you make to each other. But I added therefore that what I would want to know (if she ever were to fuck somebody else) is “Where do I stand?” And if my own position were secure, then maybe it’s not betrayal …? I can’t remember everything we said – that’s one problem with discussing these things over little food and lots of wine. I don’t think we ever got far enough for me to say that it seems selfish of me to trap her sexuality all for myself, especially when we see each other so little; or that it is somehow a denial of a grand, divine gift because her sexuality is so exuberant. But I have said some of that before, I think.

One thing she said that made me feel better is that when she promises me she is only mine, she doesn’t necessarily mean forever. She means for now. She is not saying she’ll never, ever, ever take anybody else to her bed, but only that for now she won’t.

Anyway, after we polished off a half-carafe and a bottle, we left to come back to the hotel where we fucked some more – very intensely and passionately. She fell asleep, I got up to do a little work, and then lay down next to her and slept a good nine hours. There was a party in the hallway (some little kids’ hockey team and their parents) but we both slept through them. She also said that after the noise we (she) had made earlier in the evening, she would have felt awkward about asking them to be quieter. But no need.

The next morning we got up and ate; looked up some flights to plan for my next business trip; then I read to her while she ironed my shirts. Some time later the Consultant called. I had known he was going to be in town (albeit very briefly), and by the greatest coincidence he was going to be flying out the same time she was. So gosh, why don’t we meet at the airport for a bite or a glass of something? We made the arrangements as D finished my last shirt and threw her few things into her bag. Was it really time for her to leave? So soon? Sigh …. Well, maybe we had time for one more kiss. So we started kissing again … and then in a flurry threw our clothes off one last time. I never got hard this time at all; but D for her part moaned intensely enough that it turned into a scream before she covered her own mouth with a pillow. Ahhh, … much better. We dressed and drove to the airport, where we met up with the Consultant to share an hour of wine and talk. He left. She left. I waved at her softly, and then drove back to the hotel. And it was time to get to work ….