The lightness of all

When it was over, we laughed, about Apple Pay. About the ingenuity of this system that worked, from beginning to end, it worked where Google Wallet failed. I talked about payment to him, he voiced his opinion, and he wanted to see if I have used Apple Pay, strangely I had not. I confessed. I needed for the security bug to fix itself. I said. I wanted for all the kinks to work themselves out before I sign up. He said that it was easy and that he did make it work, very easily, at Walmart. We talked about the shuttles. FaceBook, Google, Yahoo shuttles that took people from one part of town to another part of the town, the entire bay area was a town to us. He was from L.A., and he had lived in many places, among his residences, Connecticut and New York City. I found that a bit strange. I learned that he had attended a state school here in the West Coast and then he moved to the East Coast. He was a partner at a marketing firm. And he now worked for a startup division of a technology giant.

He told me about dating women on OKC. How they would lie about their age, and how they were in their 30s and 40s and yet they still lived with roommates, barely holding down a job, they were into their 4th career by the time they turn 40,  from a massage therapist to a something else, hopping from one job to another but with no real prospect of a career, how they were the adults who never grew up from being a burner. Permanently living a life of a young adult, when they were in their late 30s and mid 40s, looking to finally get married, and have kids. 

How once he walked a woman home to her place, and she was in her 30s and she shared a house with several roommates. How they had so very little, and did not seem to worry about their future, until they are hitting late 30s and 40s. 

He told me about his mentors. His friends, dropping names as if I ought to know them. He was smacking his lips, chewing, turned out that he was chewing gum, I asked for a piece so he got up and got me a piece. 

By then his cat had decided to lay her head on his lap, and he balanced his cat and me, afraid of me falling onto of his cat, when I tried to avoid his cat, he almost felt offended, as if I was making a choice to choose no one when I should, ought to choose both of them.

When he made love to me, I looked up and I saw those impossibly blue eyes, small and squinting. He was nearsighted but when he removed his glasses he looked more refined with his soft skin and beautiful facial structure. I'm partial to fair skinned men. I liked them blond and blue eyes. Or green eyes. Hair needed to be unruly and light colored at the very least. He had some blond hair now mixed his gray, he was not a young man. At age 47, he still got carded and he was proud of his youthful looks. I told him that I used to have a crush on a man who looked somewhat like him. I was 22 and he was 39, I said. He said, oh I see. You have a pattern. Previously I had told him about another man I dated in my early 20s who was also in his late 30s. He said if there were three things of common theme, then it was a pattern. At the time it was only two things, but then I went on to tell him about this man who was a major VC in the valley at the time, whom had courted and dated me for years, but I could not bring myself to fuck him because his last name was a male sex organ. He said, oh there was the third, and it was officially a pattern. I did like older men but that was many years ago. Now I liked them young. Or youngish, I declared. 

He was very talkative, and he had a lot to say and I realized he was way smarter than he looked. He was offended by the comment so he asked me "why?" I said "Good looking guys tend not to be so smart. You are an exception." 

I always knew my weakness with men were their looks. If I did find the attractive, I wanted to fuck them, and when I did, it sort of made me emotionally vulnerable. I liked men who looked like him. With strong jaw bones and sensual lips. 

For a man who was 6'1", he liked women who were petite like his mother, his mother was French and his ex wife was also as tall as me. It was a pattern for him too, as it turned out. We laid on the couch, chilling, like he did all day and I did all day, separately.

I may find midwesterners intense and east coast men direct, I am the most comfortable with Californian men, and men from the Northwest. It was always the chill, laidbackness that made me more in tune with things. I was not exactly so sure about the reason but I knew I liked them blond and sunny. 

He had a large instrument. One that made me squiggly happy. He was good at fucking, though he called me "my love" and sex "making love" like a Frenchman did. He always walked me to my car when I needed to leave. He was not exactly sure about a lot of things, yet he was okay with it. He knew that I had a long term boyfriend whom I saw very rarely. A husband who I am not having sex with for many years, two children, and two sets of folks. I had never talked to others like I had talked to him. 

He had a step daughter a cat a job and his scarf. He liked finer things in life. He liked dining out and going out. He was a bit taken aback by my aggressiveness, my pursuit of him, but he also liked it because I think it made him less worried about being shut down, though I think he was getting used to it.

I wanted to spend the remaining days together before he had to head out for his vacation back at his home in Nice. I wanted to go to a party or two, eat at a couple of fun restaurants, and I wanted to spend the evenings at his place so that I could wake up with him, grab brunch and settle down on his porch, to read, to hike, and to lounge all day long, like he belonged to me and I belonged to him.

His house was large and beautiful. It did not feel American to me, it felt European, like he was. 

He brought me into his house, it had been a few months since he had a serious girlfriend. I asked if he was only dating white. It seemed to be the case. He said one of his longest relationship was with an Asian. I smiled. I didn't want to be the first. 

He's led an uncomplicated life. I had my shares of complication. We were not exactly the same. He was enjoying the opportunity of getting laid. I was cute but not exactly the relationship person for him. I sort of landed on his lap. He did not want to lose me, or he won't get laid as much.

I like the lightness of this. I like how he made me so excited. I like what I see.

I intend to see it through.

Five Years Later

She saw him coming in. She was early. She had a coffee in her hand. He had his usual beanie hat. He was 54, a middle age man. She was 46, turning 47 in a couple of months.

It was the summer and the weather was as usual, cold and windy. She remembered him talking about the weather, the last time they met, she knew it was the end of it all, when he spoke about weather, and she wondered why people always spoke about weather when they ran out of things to say.

The last kiss he planted on her mouth was gentle and hurried, and he said, "bye hon". She wondered why he called her "hon", like she was someone to him. She wondered if he called the mother, his children's mother, "hon" as well, and how it felt so different than when he said, "come here, my love." The way it used to be.

She smiled and looked up as he approached. She was slightly older but not by much. She's rapidly leaving her prime, but she aged well. He was still looking the same, a bit more tired. She wondered how many more women he had bed. When he got stressed out, he fucked. He fucked to relieve stress and to break her heart. Each time when he told her how he fucked others, she was excited and saddened at the same time. She never told him why, because he did not care about why. He did not care about her at all, and yet she thought nothing mattered when it came to love. Until it was too late.

He asked her how things were. She told him everything was the same. Children were older, they were now in high school and middle school. She had gotten a new job and returned to the city, her stocks had vested and she was working more now in this new company.

He reluctantly asked her about her love life, she smiled. Yes there were lovers here and there. A young man who was now finally approaching 40, she had been with him for seven years, the young man and she met when they were dating, and she kept him under wrap, because he was insignificant, yet she loved sex with him. He was gorgeous, tall, blond and Swedish. He and his wife finally had children, but she saw him still, it was the longest relationships she had to-date. There were others as well, a running list of men came through her head, some were very young, 20 years junior, some were his age, or slightly younger. A boyfriend who lived in Berkeley for years, he was divorced, and had a good looking lab, he was tall and European, and he loved her and showered her with gifts, took her to vacations, he had impeccable taste and lavish lifestyle. He was nearly too good to be true but he was all that, but he was her first rebound after they had broken up and she couldn't love him back. He knew that and he finally let her go. He always knew that he was unable to compete with the last love she had.  Another man came into her life, he was about his age and also from the midwest, he loved her and was ready to give her everything she ever wanted. He was also very tall and had a very midwesterner's demeanor. He wanted to sweep off her feet and took her home to see his mom and dad, she refused. She couldn't bear to leave her children and husband.

There were many others since then. Some were more memorable than others. A couple, lawyers, who lived in the peninsula were very interested in her. They wanted her to move in eventually, she did, briefly, on days she worked down south. The husband was very good in bed, to her surprise, the wife was better, not to her surprise. They did a lot of holidays together. They cooked for her too and showered her with compliments. She continued to see them to this date.

A man who was from the East Coast wanted her to become a stable third to his relationship, though she found him a bit too creepy and the girlfriend too slippery. She ended up dating the man until recently, because she found out he took on another woman who was just like her and she wanted out.

There were still many others, some stories she could remember some she couldn't.

She was astonished by how many who were too eager to shower her with gifts and affection and she couldn't open her heart again.

She did not ask him about his stories. She knew him too well to ask any questions. His life never did change, they met twenty years ago, and he had never changed.

She did not ask him about his children but he told her about them anyway.

And he showed her pictures. In his phone she saw pictures of the children and her own photos. For five years since they stopped seeing each other, she continued sending her nudes to him. Whenever he asked, and whenever she felt like it. He liked them and she liked sending them. It was the only thing that bonded them. She liked her photos being in his possession, it was the only way that made her feel alive. Him seeing photos of her, she sending photos of herself.

She told him that she finally started to have anal sex. One of her lovers had finally figured out how. They went on and on for years until he was good at it and she came violently the first time it did happen. It was a nice feeling. To finally try something new.

She cashed in on her start up stocks, it was a significant chunk of change. She took the money and bought a new place, in the city, a condo, in the city center area. She needed to be close to Hayes Valley, she said, though a condo in Dogpatch almost got her excited.  She now stayed in her own place on some nights, so she could be alone and her children saw her mostly on those nights when her husband was away.

He looked at her, and said she looked still very attractive, very hot. She smiled. Thank you she said.

He reached for her hand, she was startled by it but she let him hold her.

"I always love you, you know that." He said.

She did not believe him, but she liked to hear that. She liked to think that she meant something to him, that her love for him, the undying love, the devotion, did not go on wasted.

"What is love anyway?" She said. "I suppose you know what it is, because you love your children." She added.

"Remember I used to tell you this is it? This,  you and me, this is it. I knew that I couldn't, and wouldn't love another. I would have done anything and everything for you. That was my demise." She concluded.

Her phone buzzed. She said that she had to go. She's been dating this woman, whose husband was out of town, they are headed to the movies, then she'll be staying over. Sex has been great with her, way better than the men she's been bedding. It was very lovely to sleep with a woman, and how she learned to orgasm when she least expected.

He joked, "I'd love to watch you two." She said, "Yes you would."

Goodbyes were said. He watched her to leave from the behind. She had a leaner, more athletic built. She had been running 50 milers and she was beginning to become good at this ultramarathon business. This woman she dates also ran ultras. They were a good fit, she said. She was erect and taller than he had remembered.

There was an air of foreignness about her, gone was her fragility and sadness, she was more assure of herself, and she was more resolute.

He waited for her to turn, and just as he was about to give up, she did, with a smile, she mouthed, "I love you too." And then, she was gone. 

Raining Evening

He introduced her to his cat. The cat who was named after the Queen of France, she’s 11 years old, dark, gray, black fur, she had impossibly green yellow marble eyes. She purred and she sat on his lap.

She brought her work to do so she laid on the cat’s bed and started reading. He just returned from a very long day at work, and he was exhausted. He watched TV on the same cat bed, the $4000 cat bed. 

She touched his unruly hair on occasion. He touched her face and kissed her forehead. Then he got up to pour himself a glass of rose. He liked wine. he was in the wine business. He had a nasal accent, the Southern Californian draw. But he then spoke French, with ease, he was half French and half English. His mother from Nice, father from Liverpool. She did not like French men ordinarily. She thought that they were boring, feminine and fussy. But she was a through and through Californian, who liked men tall and blond, stylish and laid back. And he was also that.

Now the cat was taking over his entire lap, and she rested her head on his shoulder and read. 

The rain had stopped and they talked about their plans before the holidays. As she looked up he looked down, she noticed that he had those impossibly blue eyes, his hair blond and unruly, and he was tall for being half French. He was 6’1” and broad shouldered, like a rugby player, but his style of fashion was too European to be mainstream American. He’d look good in a Dolce Gabbana ad. They talk about the holidays. He was leaving for France and she was leaving for Portland. There was a week in between. She wanted to go away. He lived in Los Gatos. She went to high school there. “Do you want to get a hotel and stay down there?” He asked. He liked planning such things. She’s never met a man who liked to plan activities. She wanted to go to party or two. He wanted to do things with her, and he had plans that he wanted to share with her. Hiking, pizza, pool, going away, playing house, staying at his place, and eating out. “I don’t cook, you know.” He said, “That’s okay, we will go out.” In that single defining moment, he planned a whole week before their departures, like they’d be dating for a long time. She asked if he would be available to talk while he’s away. He said, “You can reach me. My cell phone, whatsapp, email. Do that.” She was astonished yet again, a man who was available, to her, at all hours. She liked that. Availability, the willingness to share his life, with her. A man who lived in so many places, and felt at home wherever he went.

She wanted to do things but she did not have any experience with men who was enjoying planning. Thus a dilemma. A man who was ready to share his life. A man whom she was attracted to. A walking wounded woman. A neglected, independent woman who had been ignored, and never been loved. 

He did marketing for living. He was used to flashy things in life. She was more on the conservative side of life. She did not have any idea how to be wooed. So she was skeptical at best. 

He grabbed her hands as she flipped through the pages of her textbook. He had huge hands. She took his hand and held it tight. There was a glimpse of complete adoration that she almost missed, to reassure her, he kissed her forehead. She purred like the cat. Then the cat did the same.

At a brink of discovering myself

Have been going out on dates with couples. I'm bi. I'm not straight. I want to date a couple.

So far experiences are very great. They all like me and they all want to invite me and experience new things.

I have been enjoying this.

I'm no longer 8 headed monster.

I am now ready to be me.

I'm not straight. I like women and men. I want to have a relationship with both of them.

I love my children. I love my husband. I love my boyfriend. I love my lovers. I love my work. I love to exercise.

This is what I need.

Now how do I figure this all out?

I need time.

I'm done with you

I have been crying, a lot.

I have finally recognized the three people that make into the three independent me.

1. The all together mother wife daughter hard working professional with little to no issues. Loved by many.
2. The oversexualized sex symbol who will seduce and entertain men and women and explore the city's many fringe culture and be as comfortable as fish in water
3. The abandoned little girl who was not loved by her parents, who was crying and heart broken, at age 11, already suffered rape and molestation, despite her good grades, she was left at a military hospital all alone, her father, physically and emotionally abusive, volatile, and a serial womanizer.

The broken hearted 11 year old is the one who plays a dominant role with B. She bends backwards for him, she will do anything to be loved by him. She wants a different outcome than her 11year old self, she wants B to see it, stop deceiving her and love her back like she deserved to be loved back.

I cried in the car, I kept on saying, "I need to leave, I need to leave, I need to leave." I am staying with these thoughts because there may be something at the end of this. I am telling myself I have to leave B. The only way to break the pattern of loss, deception, hurt, damage, and sadness is for me to walk away. Where I could not walk away as a 11 year old little girl, seeking her father's approval, having her idol be gone all of sudden, where her father failed to love her back, where my father failed to protect her and yet, as a child, she cold not leave my father on her own intuition.... I am repeating it, again and again. I must leave B, I must leave B to stop the pattern.

Perhaps the freedom I will gain from leaving B for good, to stop loving him, to finally not care about anything he said, to finally no longer worried about who would take him away from me, is the only thing to set my 11 year old self free.

I still love B, I still hope he'd say "I will be with you from now on." But I know he's already with someone else, and I cannot trust anything he says. He is more worried about the mother of his children to find out about our relationship because "she'd be so upset", than to worry about me getting upset about staying in the dark. While he tells me that he loves me and needs me to love him back, he gives very very little in return, attention, affection, and the most agonizing piece of all, the lack of time. I have always a future with him, he never put me on his priority list. he has demonstrated over and over again he did not love me, in fact the only time he had for me was an hour, half an hour, stolen moments where he could get his rocks off and then he was done with me. The time he has given me are getting increasingly rare as he continues his pursuit of newer women, and retaining his family and work life. I had asked for one thing and one thing only, a brunch for my last Christmas. It never came. A weekend away, it never came. It will never come because he does not give much thoughts about me, despite his words of "I love you's" and his empty promises, I serve nothing but a sex toy. In those moments, to cope with that disappointment I end up reverting to the second version of me, the one who is oversexualized and simply want to please men. That was how I coped it all along.

The time he allocated for me was getting less and less, and every night he went back to her house, and every night he stayed there. He was not in fact just taking care of their children together, he was in fact having a full on relationship with his real girlfriend and the love of his life. He was not interested in me, he has long set me aside as a replaceable toy and that was where everything ends and everything starts.

I have to say goodbye to break the pattern of abuse and neglect. I cannot and should not love him. I must leave him like he never existed in my life. I thought that I could will a different outcome if I just showed him how much I loved, adored and admired him, he would love me back in a way I deserve to be loved back. I thought by being with him I could save that 11 year old. But, I thought wrong. I need to leave him, to not save the 11 year old but to let her die. She has to in order for me to take a stronger presence in this present life. 

I may linger a bit as the over sexualized person I was, in his life, but that eventually will end too.

I have figured out the root cause, now it's about reflection and final execution.

Goodbye must be said to the little girl, when I close that door, the other door will open. I know it. I'm hopeful.

Goodbye B. I cannot and will not say this to you, but you have been a total asshole and manipulative, deceptive, cheating bastard. You are the pure reflection of my father when he was your age, and I'm done with you.

New Cognitions

My girlfriend found out that her husband of 10 years, who has been traveling for work, every week, has been cheating on her for the last few years. The details not important but she's divorcing him. The situation forces me to reexamine my interaction with B, and it made me realized a lot of things that I did not know before. I'm at a brink of discovering myself and I'm sort of excited about it.

It's not about my sexual abuse it's about my father who was traveling a lot, cheating, being verbal, emotional and physical abusive, and eventually he left me and my mother. At age 11, I suffered a heart break and was sent to an unattended military hospital. I laid in bed crying and wishing that there was something I could do to get my father back. I idolized him and did everything he told me to do and more, and then he beat the crap out of me and my mother and said horrible things to me, and my mother, and he cheated constantly, ever since I had memories, he was out cheating and fooling around. Eventually he moved away to another city, and he took his mistress / secretary with him and we did not know if he'd ever back again. When my mother confronted him before he left us for the one last time, he also beat the crap out of her. I was heart broken and my heart stopped working, in that I developed irregular heart beat (yes a real heart break) and they had to send me to a hospital. Abandoned and unattended, the military hospital housed soldiers from the boarder dispute war between China and Vietnam, the kids were about 18 years old, farm boys, and they were in rehab and they took care of me, I cried and I cried and wished that I could do anything, something to bring my father back. I kept on asking me, have I done anything wrong? Was I not enough? Did he ever love me? If he ever loved me how could he leave me? I would do anything to get him back, I would endure his beating, his verbal abuse, his moodiness, his lack of relationship with my mother, just to have him back in my life.

He never did come back. For year and half my mother worked tirelessly until she got herself a job in the far away city, and she and I moved to the city where my dad had shacked up with his mistress and eventually got the company to fire the mistress and moved us back in together. By then she was a changed woman, she started going out and she started to date others, and meanwhile my father developed a taste for another woman whom he shacked up with, then another, then another. My mother's heart was so broken that she attempted suicide. To avoid any further drama, I left home when I was 13 and went into a boarding school. Miraculously the only thing that I ever was good at was academic life and it was that life that sent me to the States when I was fifteen. Alone once again, I had to live a life all by myself and raise myself, and when I was 16 I was told that I would be in jail if I returned, it was the year of Tiananmen Square incident, and I was blacklisted. 

My father was deceptive, a liar, and a womanizer. I wanted to form a different relationship with B so that eventually I could will a different outcome. He's hot and cold and he rewarded me when I listened to him and he disappeared when he wanted to. I kept on thinking one day he'll change his mind and love me and we'd live a happy life together. I could take care of him, impress him, and be together with him. 

Maybe he'll be willing to leave his family like my father did and be with me, maybe he'll see how much I loved him and he'd be with me and not abandon me like my father did.

I was not trying to change him even though I might have appeared to do that. I was trying to will a different outcome to save that little heart broken girl.

I never did save her. More shit happened and then she came to the States and had to be forced to face different set of difficult circumstance. I never did save her and I was trying to figure out why I was having such a hard time letting B go. I am still trying to save her, through my relationship with B who was in so many ways, just like my father. 

What my girlfriend's reaction taught me was that if I was a normal person, I should have been upset, but I was not. I thought the only way that men could behave is by cheating and by being with other women all the time, emotionally distant and unavailable, and paid only a little attention to me. That's why whenever B paid any compliment, paid any attention to me, I was so elated. I was happy that he still remembered me, and he must still miss me and he wanted me to be in his life. I told myself. I was only just one of a dozen yet I convinced myself that I was special to him, I meant something to him, because he often told me that when we were together, I thought when he said that he loved me, he meant it. But he did not, his action spoke louder than words. On the week when he had his birthday, when I asked to see if I could come to visit him, and when he said no and I sent a big bouquet of edible fruit and chocolate to him, he later told me that he was fucking a woman he hired to work for him, he fucked her multiple times that week and then when she was out here, he fucked her some more. I thought to myself, of course he's allowed, he's allowed to do anything he wants, because as long as he loved me, it was okay, but how could he really love me when he only just wanted to fuck other women? How could I be so naive and was convinced that he still loved me when he really did not care about me, he fucked other women for god's sake on a week where he told me that he was too busy to see me? He stayed on Saturday that weekend so he could fuck her more. He told me that he had to stay in Philly longer to be with his friends. No he had to stay longer so that he could fuck a new woman. These are the things that my mother did just to keep my father, and here I was, doing exactly the same to myself.

What my girlfriend did to her soon to be ex-husband was every self respecting, strong, courageous woman would do, she put an end to it because she knew that he was not worthy of her love. it brought everything to light. I tolerated B like I tolerated my father. I behaved as if I was my mother and I idolized B because I was convinced he was the only way for me to feel alive, the pain, the agony, the sorrow, it was all that I could ever deserve, because as a little girl, lying in the hospital bed, waiting for her father's return, was a girl who's heart was broken, and she never healed. She was hoping one day she could be worthy of his love, only that she should never wished for that, she was better than that, she was a loving, kind, generous woman who was loved by many, and she deserve so much more. Yet, for years and years, she thought she needed his love, his love was the only way to save her, to save that little girl, to revert time, to change a past, and to create a future that she knew that she wanted, to be his and his only and to love him and be loved back. "As long as he loved me. I told myself. as long as he wanted me and desired me. I can endure. I can love him the way I know how. To be selfless, to be forgiving, to be faithful. To love him is the only way that I could save that little girl." 

My father never came back for us. I never could save that little girl. B never knew that he hurt me so much so, he could not change and will not change. He did not care if I was around or not. There would always be others like me, who needed him to figure out their own issues. He was deceiving, manipulative, careless, and unloving like my father was. 

There is no amount of love and devotion could change B's mind. He would never be mine. He would never hold me and tell me that everything was going to be all right. He was never the man who could save the little girl. That little girl is dead. She's gone. She'll never be saved. Her father left her and that was the end. 

But I, I'm not the little girl. I'm a grown woman. I can and will take care of myself, and I must, I must say goodbye to the little girl who was abandoned by her parents, after suffering through rape and molestation at an even younger age, at age 11, her heart broke for good, and  she never came back to life. I must let her go. I can't save her. B can't save her. She's dead and I must let her go. 

I am close to discovering myself. And one day I will be ready to say goodbye to this version of me. I will be ready to leave everything behind. I will be able erase B out of life, like he never existed. I deserve more. I need more. The bond is broken. I'm at a brink of discovering myself and when I complete that journey, I'll be ready to let go of everything. 

I am hung up, is this the beginning of a real end?

When he said to me that his baby mama would be disappointed and sad to find out that he has a girlfriend aka me, it made me pause. Why would she care if she was simply co-parenting with him? Did she expect there would be more from it? Did she in fact in a relationship with him? Is he cheating behind her back? Did he make her feel there is already more? Is he actually telling me the truth? Does she love him and does he make her feel that she's the one? Are they really a couple?  If all of this is true then what am I doing here loving him? He's already loved.

I must play a secondary role in this and I don't want to be his primary object of affection any longer. I should exit left center stage and let her be his main relationship and I will no longer want to participate in this triangle of emotional mess.

I don't like to compete. I don't ever compete, certainly not when she already has the man and I entered the scene late. I deserve more. I need to feel that I'm the number one in a man's life - if I loved him and if he loved me back. If that is not happening, then I feel abandoned and discarded. The only way for it to work is for me to be a mistress, and as a mistress, you stop loving the guy you are with because he's NOT yours to begin with. You take sexual pleasure in forming that relationship and you expect nothing, absolutely nothing in return, maybe a pretty necklace here and there, maybe a nice meal here and there. You give heads. You spread your legs. You say all the right things. You expect nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in return. you demand nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And you seal off your heart. For your heart deserves more than that. You want true undying devoted untainted love. You will do anything for that person. That person who is worthy of you.

Maybe I have been defeated. Maybe I never had a chance. Maybe he never wanted me to take a center stage in his life. Maybe that person, that role has already been occupied. But no matter, I will take this as a defeat and handle it with the grace of a woman and not the grief of a child.

I will desire him for a while but this may be the beginning of a real end. It's not because he stopped loving me, it's not because he wanted me to leave, it's because he did not ever intended for me to play a big role in his life, and the more I have gotten to know him, the more I realized that he never really desired me the way I need to be desired and wanted. He only liked me so that I can be his sexual partner. He needed not me to take care of him. Some other woman, his children's mother already does that to him. He needed nothing more than just occasional fantasy fulfilled. He needs constant new. I gave him a false sense of stability even though he already has it with the other woman.

I am not his, he is not mine. He never was mine and he never will be. This is the beginning of a real end. 

Adultery

"How long have we been hanging out?" He asked.

"Two, Two and half years?" She said reluctantly. 

They both went quiet and calculated the time between the first time they met and now. He was 31 and now he was 34. She was 39 at the time. 

"Eight years is a good number of years". She said. He agreed. 

They sat at the kitchen's breakfast nook, she's sipping a glass of kombucha and he was drinking a beer. He loved beer. He brewed beer at home and drank it after work. She found that she liked men who drank beer. He had grown his facial hair back so that he was looking the way she remembered again. He was very tall, with blond hair and blue eyes, the typical Swede look. She was admitting to herself that his good looks was what kept her in this relationship, for as long as she did. 

He was trying to start a family with his wife. And they had started fertility treatment. She asked him, "Are you still going to fuck me when you have a child?" He said, "Of course, that's the plan." 

"You know, children are over rated. You will miss me more. Your wife will pay less attention to you." She said it not to convince him but to convince herself. She had none of her own children, but she had two step children from her marriage to this man who was seven years older than she. That made the two men fifteen years apart, she calculated the gap between her lover and her husband in her head. 

The young man smiled and started to strip his clothes, then he was taking off her dress. She giggled and laughed. He positioned her on the top of coach, and started going down on her. She moaned.

With him, she climaxed easily and readily. It did take almost a year, but once she was able to do it, she did it every time, it took that long to get used to this man's body, and vise versa. 

Earlier this evening, the man showed her a park where it was often deserted at night. "We should go out there and fuck." He suggested.

"I'd like that." She concurred.

"When was the last time you fucked outside?" He asked her.

"In my twenties. I was twenty five. He lived in Telegraph Hill. We hiked the Coit Tower. I fucked him on the path going up the hill and then sucked him off." You always remembered the first of everything, apparently.

She made a mental note of future activities.

In her bedroom, the house where she lived alone sometimes, she turned off the overhead light and turned on the bedside lamp. He tried a few positions with her and kissed her non stop. 

Kissing was always a funny business. To some it was an expression of emotional connection, to many others, she and he included, it was a way to express lust, and intensity. When they had been together for as long as they did, sex was always good, but intensity was getting harder and harder to achieve. But at least, their sneaking around added the excitement.

Her roommate was out. She used her roommate's spare key to open the greenhouse patio. There laid a day bed where she was able to lay out, spread eagled, facing down, as he entered her again, this time, from behind.

An hour had passed. She climaxed and he did too, shortly after. 

They took out their calendar to see what's available to them. Hard to know, and he told her about his pending surgery. She would leave town just as he was out of the hospital. she apologized. He did not mind, he would need time to recover.

When it was all over, she was putting her knee high boots back on. He touched her toned legs and marveled at her calves. "Your calves are amazing. You have some athletic legs." He meant it as a compliment. She was always soft and feminine, but her exercise regiment had gained her muscles she did not know existed. She was always in shape, but in her middle age, she found men thought of her as athletic. She liked that term more, a lot more.

"I will see you soon." She said. He had to leave as well and she was feeling exhausted. it was only seven, but the day was getting shorter and the evening was getting longer. She thought that she was coming down with something as well and she needed to nap before heading home, to her husband, who's almost fifty, and his teenage kids.

On the way home she thought about how he answered yes to the question her posed earlier about whether or not he'd still want to have sex with her after his child was born. This was what happened with men who became addicted to her. She was always a good lay. She demanded very little and she supplied what they needed and did not get often from other women. She loved giving heads, hours on end, skillfully she gave heads. She let men be men and experiment with her. And she was kind, nice and comfortable with the gray area in life.

"Are you going to have sex with me after your child, children were born?" She asked.

"That's the plan. I still want that from you." He quickly answered before covering her lips with his kisses.

"I'd like that too. I like being the other woman. It's always more fun to be the person who's cheating, than to be cheated on." With that, she unzipped his pants and covered his erection with her mouth. 

Hesitation

He invited me to dinner, for my belated birthday, at a place by his work, it would be easy for him to get to, it would be easy for him to say goodbye, it would be easy, and it would be the end. I felt. Just when I started to fall again, to love him again, this happens. It always happens, it serves as a warning, that he was not good for me, good to me and he was only there because I could provide him with sexual pleasure.

I think that at some point, we became close. Closer than most, and closer than we had ever before. A short little trip that bonded us, a very bright future that consisted of him and me, yet he would not let it happen. He who preferred to living alone. I wish that it was the case always. I sensed that he did not have that many real friends. I sensed that he was always polite and comfortable around women. I sensed that he never felt the same of masculinity until he met me.

I think he has a real, romantic relationship with the woman whom he fathered two children with. I think he is cheating behind her back with me. I think when he said that she did not know about us, what he really meant was that they were actually together raising children and be a family. They not only do things together as a family, they are a family. She provides him with children, a house that she owns, a good career, and perhaps sex. He's only not getting laid on occasion, when she's tired, when she's no longer interested in sex because she's got two young children, he looks at other women. He kept his place for business reasons and probably uses is a tax write up. He does not tell her that he still keeps it to seduce women. He lives a very private life with her and the children, and I suspect when she found out that she was pregnant, almost immediately he moved in with her and started to have a life as a committed person, while he still uses all of those travel opportunities to screw around with other women, but in San Francisco, he is with her and her only, and with the occasional flirting around with other women like myself. I think he was very communicative when he needs to be and he shuts down when he knew he was attracting too much attention.

I think she watches him like a hawk and that's why he is not available to see me very much.

I think he does not tell her because he is worried about her finding out about me. I'm perfect for him because I will never cause a fuss.

I am beginning to see that there are a web of lies, and that everything that he presented to me was just so tiny bit of truth, and I remain a small little piece of entertainment.

And I'm tired, and I lost faith, and I am heart broken, and I'm quite honestly unable to trust him, ever again. If that's the case, then perhaps the real ending is near and I hesitate, to move forward. I am more inclined to just say good bye. Leave on a good term, because when there is no trust left, what is there to go on? 

He and I will be no more

I have stopped, finally, the urge to write to him. I think I'm finally at the point of wanting time for myself, to digest and to accommodate the data I have received recently. One single data point, that really changed my view of this relationship forever. A Sunday ago, none of this existed, a week later, everything has changed.

The vision of growing old together, me taking care of him, that northern night, evening walks on snow covered path, that vision that seemed to have forever etched in my head, that one future that I could not begin to imagine to alter, is disappearing. It now looks like a melted snowman, dripping in water, the carrot that made the nose, half fallen, the sticks that made the arms, lying on the ground, the scarf that was wrapped around the snowman's neck, now the only thing that remain intact, though it has now been stumped on, near the last bit of ice that was once a handsome snowman.

That vision of future was disappearing faster than I could imagine, that vision of him and I, together at last, was becoming more of an abstract painting, he was leaving me, and I must leave him before it destroys me. There was never any future, never any promised exchanged hands, it was just a mirage, an illusion, a self-soothing binky.

What if, what if he was never who he said that he was, what if, what if the only thing that was true was when he said, "Don't leave your husband and to be with me, you would be disappointed". What if, what if by adding and accommodating the new fact, I must go back to the last three years, and recount every single event, and find those holes in his story and then try to assimilate everything again? What if none of what we had was ever true, and everything was just a lie? What if he never intended to proceed with this, other than some empty promises, endless lies and his occasional lust for me? And if so, why did all of this feel so real? Why did he make me feel so loved? I'm not a high schooler any more, I don't have crushes. I develop meaningful relationships with people who deserve my attention, I follow my gut instincts, and yet with him, my gut instincts were rather confused.

What if he already had a family? What if he was cheating behind his back by being with me? What if his child, children's mother, loves him and expects them to be together like a family for the rest of their lives, what if he is well on his way to become that father to their children, and  husband and lover to her? What if he wanted nothing from me. What if he was only trying to hide everything so that I could continue to be at his backing call, to be his sexual being?

I found myself retreating. I found myself wanting to bail yet again. But if I retreat, and stop loving him, then the whole thing would come to a natural end.

He and I will be no more.

this is how a heart break feels

Are you alone? Are you lonely? Am I not enough? Do you love me? How much do you love me? Do you know that I'm hurting? Do you care? Does the world end and a new beginning will be just as gloom? Will you love me till the end? If some dark truth was revealed and you did not tell me but I found out about it on my own, do you think we could repair our relationship? Do you think I could still love you the same? 

What if all of that are yes and I know my answer ought to be no? What if the other shoe would drop? 

What if I have run out of excuse for you and I must leave before my heart breaks into millions of pieces again? Why is it so hard to love you without my heart breaks? Why then do I love you?

Suppose I stopped breathing. Would I die? I have stopped breathing on an occasion, heart pounded in ways I didn't know it could. I had stopped wishing for anything to happen, but one day it did happen. I have never ever felt so at peace, until I knew that I could be with you. I did not you to make my love to me. I just needed you to be next to me. 

My heart was utterly content and my soul rested when I was with you. I was no longer conflicted and devastated. I was able to be me when I was with you. I stopped crying that night because I knew we'd have another night together, and another morning. 

I found myself having an out of body experience. I watched this woman falling and she could not get up. I found herself crying to sleep and I wondered why she was this way. I could't understand it, because you had caused so much pain, yet I couldn't imagine a world without you. 

One day that's what I wanted from this. One day you and I would be together, you'd be old and gray and I'd be weak and frail, but we'd be holding hands, and never have to wonder when we'd see each other again. 

When he's away

He said that he'd be gone by Wednesday. I didn't know if that was his way of saying that he was not going to be available by Wednesday but his trip was a few days later. For a while he told me that he would be traveling by Nov 8 but I wondered if he had changed his plan, or he did not want me to think that he'd have time to see me before Nov 8. Sometimes I think he has these little white lies because he does not want to hurt me, and he worries that if he was to not be available to me, he would be seen as someone who did not care about me. I know that much about him by now. He'd sometimes tell me that he'd be out of town, but I think he was not, he was simply not available to see me. I love him no matter what. I think even with these little white lies he was being careful. he wanted to see me but he only had limited availability and then sometimes his place is not his when he has friends and / or visitors.

He's a good man. That much I know. He buys ugly paintings from people he knows who needed cash. He lets his friends stay at his place. He's  a generous man who is polite, but sometime irritable. He sometimes, in the middle of sex, would tell me that he loves me so much. I think he loves my pussy and not me, but then when he describes his feeling for me, he said that love is not that easily describable. It's a feeling. And I think he loves me because he knows I love him.

I wonder sometimes if there is a way to be with him, on a more permanent, regular basis, like he belongs to me and me him.

Like this could be for real.

What then, what would that be like?

We'd have separate bedrooms, separate activities. I think he'd get tired easily. He works a lot and gets tired. He wants his space. I let him. I listen to his stories. I take care of him.

This is it. whether he's away or not, this is it. This is the last love I'd ever feel.

When he's sleeping

After having just spent the last two hours telling me about his childhood, he arrived back at the hotel, removed his shoes, put on his t-shirt and went to bed. I imagined he removed his t-shirt to sleep with me and put on his t-shirt to build a natural physical and emotional gap between us.

I let him.

I watched him falling asleep. Within minutes he was out like a light.

I watched him for a little bit as he had fallen asleep, like I did not exist.

I admired his delicate feature, his beautiful frame, his emotionless, dead-asleep facial expression. I watched him and then I went to the bathroom to remove my contact lens and to brush my teeth.

Last week I knew nothing of his past: where he was born, where he grew up, what his relationship was like with his dad and mom. This week I knew he was born in Nebraska, moved to Iowa and settled in Indiana. I knew he hated Nebraska, his mother was abusive, and he liked computer modeling ever since he was four or five. He was born in Stuttgart, and he spent his youth, sometimes a month at a time, in Germany with his mother and grandmother. I deduced that he was always a smart kid, a kid who perhaps did not have a lot of friends but he was good at creating a world where he was largely content on his own. He liked his place tidy, his world clutter-free, and he created his space away from others. He liked his alone time. His mother was volatile and beat him up for no apparent reason, sort of like my father, consequently he developed an attitude to stay emotionally distant yet he was good at charming women to bed. He bedded over a hundred women, and he managed to stay away from real relationships. The longest relationship he had ever had was with me, so he claimed. Even that he very rarely needed to see me, and he took break from me in between visits. I was comfortable with that in the past, in part I was afraid he might grow tired of me, and I him. Though I missed him more often than he did me. I knew because whenever the thought of him came up, I became severely emotional. My heart tucked a little and my eyes welled with tears: I missed him and I ached for him.

He was often very exhausted, he worked constantly, from 7 am to 7 pm. And then he crashed soon after.

He was lying in bed trying to make a reservation or checking his email on his phone, I sat next to him, and he jumped, "You are crowding me out." He said. I constantly wanted and needed his affection, but he dished it out very sparsely.

When he was away that day, I worked hard. I put him out of my mind because I knew he'd return back to me. It was the first time since I had met him, that I felt utterly content. Knowing he'd come back to me, that evening, gave me the solid ground to stand on, one I never had and never will.

When I was leaving for the airport, not realizing when I'd ever see him again, I put on this brave face, an emotionless version of me emerged from this, I said calmly goodbye as if he was a colleague and not the love of my life. In truth if my real feelings came out I'd be crying. I'd cry because I couldn't stand being away from him, to not know when I'd see him again, to know that if I did manage to see him again, I'd have to try very hard first for him to know that I needed him so, and he would not realize how much it hurt me because I had no idea how soon I'd ever see him again. How could he ever understand the extent of my love, my longing for him? And even if he did understand it, how could he ever feel the pain, the gut wrenching pain I feel when I part from him?

I have never felt this way about anyone in my life. I have never felt this level of intimacy towards anyone else. I have never wanted to take care of anyone like I wanted him.

I want to tell him that stop running away, stop pushing me away, stop explaining to me why you cannot be with anyone day in and day out, stop because he could and that person would be me.

In the middle of the night I told him, "I want to take care of you, when you are 97."

I have never figured out why. I just knew that I could not live without him. And to lose him is to lose me. I fell asleep shortly after he did. In my dream we'd finally find a way to be together, and I'd live in harmony with him, and he would stop being afraid of losing me, me stop loving him. He knew once for all, that I loved him, I'd take care of him, and he had nothing to fear or be afraid of. For once he knew to trust his instinct. I would always be there for him. 

He knew all that because when I missed him, my heart tied a knot, and it hurt like hell, and this time, he felt it too. 

Polite and Irritable: A Midwesterner's Trait

He stood in the kitchen and chitchatted, after having just met me outside of his apartment, calling me “sweetie.” The maid was finishing up cleaning, and he looked irritated. She had been cleaning for a number of hours now, he said. He got her from La Colectiva, a San Francisco maid service collective. He was polite and cordial, and as the maid handed him a rustic candle holder and informed him that she failed to clean it properly, he said, “that’s okay” and took it back to the kitchen. He sat it down on the counter and continued to chitchat with me.  

"You know, I read the other day twenty eccentricities of San Francisco, starting with Emperor Norton." He said. 

"What does it have to do with me?" I retorted.

"The way you are dressed, contributes to the eccentricity of San Francisco." He replied.

I had on a black dress, the top part was black, the skirt portion of the dress was plum and black. I had on a plum colored polka dots stockings and silver and gold shining high heel boots. 

He always thought the way I was dressed was quite elaborate, I was unique and stylish, he’d say, which I took as him saying that I was always overdressed. 

"I’d like to think that I dress like a New Yorker. Street smart." I said. 

He approached me and hugged me gently, “I suppose your New Yorker like attire is part of the eccentricity of San Francisco.” He said while looking at me adoringly. I knew he loved me. 

I stood only a few inches away from him, my face tilted and I said, “I’m here to see you, I’m not here to have sex. Do you still want to go out?” 

He took a look at my shoes, and said, “In those heels?” 

My heels were 4 and half inches tall. I looked, at the most, a couple of inches shorter than him, and that made me feeling a bit less confident somehow. You’d think it’s the exact opposite. 

La Colectiva lady came to ask more questions. He had left her an envelope, inside it was money. He answered the question while gave her the money. He did not respond to my request to leave the apartment to go outside, though he had already suggested to go out, just a few minutes ago.

The lady gathered up her cleaning supplies and started to leave. He started to move around the place to check for things that were not done properly. For instance, the metal mesh wastebaskets were misplaced. There were two in one bathroom and there ought to be only one. He started to move about the apartment trying to find a home for the extra wastebasket. 

I went to use the bathroom and tossed my tampon wrapper into a trashcan. His buddy was going to come to stay at his place, and he might find the tampon wrapper, I later thought of it, but by then it was too late.

"Why would he not go to a hotel?" I asked. 

"I guess he’s cheap. But he’s helped me, my company, very early on with securing projects and throughout the years, he gave us projects. I’m leaving and he has stayed here every time he’s been here. He’s sixty years old, and sometimes he’d stay at the living room sofa, like he’s 18 years old." He said in a resigned voice. 

With that he walked into his bedroom, to check on the bed. 

"Oh God. She did not put on the sheets. I left them out in bed. And she did not do anything about it." He was irritated, this time, I could tell for sure. 

Then he caught himself. “I’m nice. But I’m easily irritated. People don’t like to work for me. It’s a Midwesterner’s thing. We’d say something nice but we don’t always mean it. We are very polite but we don’t say what we mean. At work, I’d tell them they did a good job but then I’d give them fifteen comments. That’s why they don’t like to work for me. One of the sales guys told me once a Minnesota person said that they liked us. He thought that we landed a project. I told him that it could be anything. They’d say anything, we Midwesterners. But you don’t know what they really mean.”  

As he’s saying that, he started to remove the old pillowcases and dragged the comforter around, and then he started to put the new sheet onto the bed. I helped him like I often did. I recognized those pillows. I bought them for him earlier this year. 

"People are like that in San Francisco too. They are polite but you don’t know if they mean it." I concurred with him.

"That’s why I do better here than New York." He agreed with me as he continued his task at hand. 

This was not the man I knew from years before. Even as late as three years ago, he did not tell me how he felt. He just said pleasant things and shielded me from knowing anything substantial. He tied me up, slapped my butt cheeks, stuffed his cock inside of my pussy, and then pulled it out to just jam right back into my throat. When he’s tired of that, he’d bind me and fuck me as I struggled to break free. 

Now he was showing me his real temperament: polite and irritable. “I”m always polite and irritable.” He said, while smiling, and stuffing the comforter into the cover. I tried to help but I was not doing it right. He stopped me abruptly and told me that I was doing it wrong. “Stop. That’s not right.” He was irritated by my lack of skill and direction. I stopped and let him to do it himself.

"You know, I really liked our little trip. It was so much fun." He switched topic.

"I thought that you wanted to sleep alone." I was confused.

"I do. Whenever my son wanted to spend time with me, I send him back to upstairs. I like to sleep alone." He lived with the son’s mother, and he allegedly had a room allocated by the baby mama. He called it the "downstairs". Baby mama, as I learned, lived in Inner Richmond, and his child, went to school with my best friend’s son, as it turned out.  I had no idea about their arrangement, and I did not think I was entitled to know.

"I liked sleeping with you." He was contradicting himself. One moment he said that he enjoyed sleeping alone, and another he was thanking me for stayed with him in the same hotel.  I wondered if this was what he meant by being a Midwesterner, always saying nice things but did not mean a word of it. 

We finally made the bed the La Colectiva lady failed to make. 

"You know, I don’t know what she was doing. For hours that she cleaned. Since 2 PM. " He was not so impressed with the service rendered. His normal cleaning lady was unavailable that day. 

I could tell that he had gotten more comfortable with me over the years. He used to never complain. Always upbeat and polite, never a moment of irritation. But over time, he had become more comfortable around me. And I had started to sense the real him coming out. 

He was leaving for the Far East. I bought him a Lonely Planet book for his trip. He said that it would be great to read it on plane. 

"You are always so nice to me." He whispered for some reason, like he did not want me to hear. I often brought him treats, books, and other small things wherever I traveled. I was always very generous for those who treated me well. For him, I’d do anything.

I remember one year, when we first started seeing each other, I was in Munich and I brought back a lot of chocolate from Dallmayr. Since then, wherever I traveled, I brought something back for him.

Later on, when the house was repositioned, he held me and told me that he loved me. “You love me.” He also said, as if to assure me his love was based on my love for him. 

I wanted another trip like we did the last time.  I demanded. I stood so close to him. And then I heard him say, “Do you want to come with me to my sister's?” When he caught himself inviting me to go and visit his sister in Boston, right after Christmas, it was too late. It was unexpected of him, and he was shocked by his own invitation. A woman like me, never been seen by others, was to finally meet his family. He was having second thoughts immediately.

"What? Your invitation came too soon? You now need to digest it? You want to uninvite me?" I asked. I couldn’t help myself. 

He would not answer but he smiled. I knew it was his way of saying “Oops, I slipped. I’m not ready for you to meet my family.” But I pretended that did not happen. And I made a mental note to ask him again, sometime in the future. 

He said that he still owed me a proper dinner for my birthday. I said yes indeed when in fact i didn’t care about the dinner I just cared about spending time with him.

He needed to leave. So I knelt down in front of him to give him blow job, like I promised, like any good girlfriend would for their boyfriend. Always give heads. Always. Always. 

He stopped me from proceeding to the finale., instead, he flipped me over and started to fuck me, with my plum stockings and black lacy panties pulled to my knees, with my shoes intact, against my wishes, he entered me from behind.

And then he kissed and kissed me. “You love me.” He’d say to me. 

"Yes I do, baby. I will love you until the day I die." I assured him.

The day light savings time had ended. The evening sky hastened its speed to pitch black wilderness. 

I faced down on the coach, exposing my buttocks, as he thrusted himself in and out of me. 

When it all ended, I cleaned up myself, said goodbyes, and left the house with him from the back door. 

"Bye sweetie." He said as he headed to the other direction. 

There was a trace of calmness that washed over him, the irritation was gone, the politeness was gone. It was just calmness and peace.

I stopped by the video store on my way home. For nearly two decades we’ve known each other, I had never asked him where he was from. What city and state he was born in and what his childhood was like, until last week. 

Like I did not know that he could be polite and irritable at the same time, I had no idea he grew up in Nebraska.