Days are numbered

I start to bundle personal emails into a pile, filing them via names and dates and sending them onto my personal file. It's time to move on.

Has he noticed? Has he sensed things I did not know? I loved everything I did with him. I loved him more than I could ever love another, but even that kind of love grow tiring. Love without growth grows wary.

There was a period where he and I had stopped corresponding. From June to September we did not see each other. We were busy with others. We were busy but not with one another. I did not think he wanted me any more.

Then one day things changed. Things began to resume its normalcy. In November and December I barely saw him. But I loved him more each and every day. Perhaps what we needed was just that simple time to process and digest.

In those days followed I wondered what I wanted out of life, what I wanted from him.

It was quite simple. I wanted a good content life where he was part of my life but he was not the only part of my life. I wanted more but I did not know what he was willing to give. I would rather take whatever it's there and keep it there then rocking the boat.

But boat was rocked. He was uncomfortable with things I said, he thought that I had put him on notice. But I had not. I simply became more aware of my own emotions. I wanted more from him. He retreated. He did not want to give me anything more than just a few moment of intimacy. I began to realize that he no longer wanted me. I knew when he retreated, often there was a reason. I did not think he wanted someone like me, he grew tired. So I retreated. I often went to others in the past, but now I felt that I was able to just do things I wanted to do and not be worried about him or others.

I had to reinvent myself. Days were numbered. He no longer loved me. And if history taught me anything at all, it was when it was time to let go, even when I could not move on, I must learn to say goodbye. 

Friends

I phoned. "What are you doing between now and 7?"

He answered. "I'm just hanging out. Working on my project."

"Okay I'll come over. I have a thing at 7. I have time to kill."

"Okay." He hang up.

I have known him for over a year. But neither one of us acknowledged that. He turned fifty shortly after we met. He looked 50, in my mind. But what does a typical 50 year old look like? I do not know. The man I was obsessed with in my early twenties is now fifty six, approaching fifty seven. I met him when I was 22 and he 39. I barely spent anytime with him but god I loved him. It rendered all my other relationships nil. Not even marriage stopped my love for him. But he barely took notice of me over the last decade. I had not seen him since he was 43, that man who ruined my dating life.

B is 48. B will be 50 in less than two years. That's the definitive middle age for a man.

He is waiting for my arrival. He just returned from his lab.

I announced that I was hungry. He let me help myself with his refrigerator so I did.

He tells me that one of his two girlfriends, is coming around. Good, they would soon live in their happy three people family where the two women refuse to acknowledge each other's existence.

I asked him about his friends. He said, "As you get older, guys don't become close friends. They are not that interested in learning about your dating life or lack of. They don't confess nor do they expect you to. You are the only one. I tell you everything."

I always knew the two of us would become this kind of friends. We told each other everything. We don't judge each other. we each respect each other, we provide guidance to each other. Well, at least he tells me everything, whereas I tell him things I want to share with him.

His relationship with women, in particular, was something that only I knew. I even gave him advice on how to catch and hook other women. I'm a complice.

I don't know how we became good friends. I do know that he sometimes thinks about fucking me and there is absolutely zero possibility for me to want to fuck him. It's one of those arrangements that made sense. We are friends. And the only way for me to be his friend is for there is no sexual act between us. And I'm not attracted to him.

That's one thing I'm good at. Being someone's friend and have them open themselves up to me and tell me everything.

Sightglass Coffee

Through that big tall glass window I saw a man in a blue checkered dress shirt and jeans, with his dark rim glasses, hurriedly walking in. He was the man I was waiting for. For the first time we've known each other, I was early. I turned my attention back to a half constructed email as he pushed the door open, and soon I sensed his arrival, as he gently tapped my hand that was holding the smart phone. "Hi". He said. I handed him a bag filled with pickled herrings in plastic containers and some home made pumpkin bar with chestnut cream. I informed him that I had ordered Non Fat Cappuccino (NFC). They don't do non fat. So almond milk instead. NFC came with same design as the last time I was here. The barista poured a perfect heart on the top of the foam. The man ordered a drip decaf. Said that he would be up all night if he drank caffeinated drink. I would not know that. I did not meet him for coffee much, though that thought had crossed my mind many times over.

We waited for the coffee to drip and caught up. He complimented my new look. "You are making a lot of changes." He said. My mind was somewhere else that day so I said nothing until he said, "You are not even looking at me." I was caught off guard by that comment so I raised my eyes to meet his. I was disturbed by his comment and wanted to know why he was so testy, but just then the decaf drink was ready. He kept his black and bitter. I liked mine foamy and sweet.

I had sent photos I'd taken of this place earlier to this man. In my note I said, "I like the upstairs." So he led me to the stairs. So upstairs we went. The building itself was airy. It was nice to sit on the bar stools and look down and watch others ordering and making drinks. You could see the office and the roasting facility from where we sat. It had more space than needed, which made this place a little out of place in an increasingly expensive neighborhood, but it also made this place inviting. Conceivably one could spread out on that giant farm table next to us and have a review of a recently drawn architectural blueprint for a house remodeling project.

"You've changed. I have not. And I feel that you are expecting me to change. " Man had pointed out that my external appearance had changed, which was an indication that I had made internal changes as well. I had not. I liked to make physical changes to spruce things up, because staying constant would be boring and uninspiring. Man thought the problem was that I had expected him to change with me. A carefully cultivated friendship whereby two people were on a balanced scale, afraid of the other tipping the scale. Now the man sensed a tipping was going to occur.

I drank my drink.

I first discovered espresso drinks made the proper way in Vienna. That was 14 years ago. Before Viennese coffee, I thought Italian espresso were made for people on the go, drunk in a hurry in Rome, during lunch break. Not in Vienna, where cafes were filled with books and music. In France I could sit in a cafe drinking espresso drinks for hours on end while waited for the summer storm to pass. Here in SoMa, people took drinks swiftly as they discussed their latest product for their startups.  But not that day, not with that man, even though both of us worked in startups, and he was in fact working actively on a new product for his firm.

"You know what? I think drip coffee took too long." He all of sudden said. To this man everything was about saving time. He had little spare time to speak of. Everyone had to be slotted in. I was one of the slotted spots for the day.

"But,  did you taste the hint of chocolate? Or was it cherry today?" I asked, while smiling. Sightglass was known for their flavor of the day.

"No, it's just bitter and dark." He said, decidedly.

"Then perhaps you should stick with instant coffee. Like the Kopi Lowak I got for you." Balinese coffee was finely ground and mellow, like how I was before.

Not Sightglass. Sightglass coffee has intensity and personality. It's bold and unapologetic, like the version of me I'd like to evolve into some day; or, as the case may be, at least to this man, like the version I had already become. 

Love, Departure, End

Perhaps, he sensed an end. Perhaps the way it ought to end is when the wall was going to tumble down and there was never going to be a mirage. It was real. I was expressive. I wanted something, something more concrete, something that signified a real relationship, something resembled a life that I would like to live, one that he could not provide.

I think in those terms because I did not think he could love me and give me what I wanted. I did not believe that he would in the end give in and share a life that he had lived on his own with me.

I think that in the process of working out my angst, my frustration, he took notice and he needed to bail. I think he's leaving me for good this time because I had asked him to give me something more.

A less of fluctuated schedule. An unbroken promise, a real date, an afternoon date, a day date that did not involve sex, or just sex. I think he was sensing me closing in so he retreated, in his specific brand way, he disappeared.

The way we ended things. The way we parted ways. The way we left of things.

He did not make a promise to see me again other than soon. He said that I expected him to change, I wanted to shake things up, I wanted change. I was changing and he stayed the same.

How could I tell him that I wanted change, but him not changing was not going to affect me? How could I tell him that I love him no matter what? How could I explain the intense feelings I had for him never went away but I was scared of what laid ahead?

He said the two of us would need to come together. The way he gestured with his hands. His fingers. Two stick figures. How could I tell him that I did not need to "come" together, I would follow him wherever he went, as I knew I belonged to him?

Was I getting too close to him? Was I becoming too intense? Was I becoming demanding and clingy? Was I becoming this woman who had real emotions and was not afraid of showing it? Was I too much? Was I no longer his object of affection? He said that he was concerned of me changing, leaving. I wanted to tell him that I could never leave him. I loved him and I would love him until the day I die.

Yet I did not know how to love him. I did know what it meant to love him.

So I wondered about these things. I wondered as the clocked ticked. I wondered as the world changed its colors.

I wondered why I was still this in love with a man who gave so little. And I wondered to this date when and where all of this would end.

Woman in love

Some time ago I met this man who had, among other things, decided to become a lover of mine. He was not what I'd expect, he was younger than me, way taller than me and not exactly the intellectual type. He was very smart and he was quite hip, we took on a different journey. In some days we spent more time than others, in some days we drifted apart. But inevitably every few weeks we'd get together and spend an evening together, or at least, a few hours. We did not really have very much in common, but the things we did have in common are were significant. He liked food, making or eating. He loved electronic music, so did I. We had much to talk about in terms of work, and in some ways we were similar and in some ways we were extreme opposite.

He was married and he had trouble conceiving with his wife. Over the years they tried and the more they tried the less he became enthused about sex. Eventually sex with me became a highlight of his pass time. He read, he masturbated, he watched porn, he worked.

When his friends came over for food, he thought about inviting me but he was concerned that his wife would become a friend of mine, because he knew she'd like me, and he was afraid that she'd want to spend time with me.

In those days we met up, we spent hours in bed, he explored my body and I did his. I often worried that I'd get too attached to him, but instead we barely made any contact with each other, so that each time it felt like two strangers meeting in a bar and decided to hook up for the first time. In truth I knew he was going to go away one day but I hoped that he was going to be here a little longer.

The last time we had sex it was a raining night. I had come with him and we rested, I folded into him as he drifted. I never told him about B. I thought he would be hurt and frankly I only shared my private life with those who I considered friends. He was not a friend, he was barely someone I fucked. I didn't want that information to be known to him.

That evening after sex I told him the truth. I told him that I had fallen in love with a man who I barely saw also. But I knew that he was my soul mate, he was the person I would like to grow old with, even though I had never spent more than a few hours with each time. I did not know how to go from point A to point B, but I needed to stop seeing him, so that I could start anew with B. I wanted to be B's and his only.

That night he was shocked and showed a little bit of emotion for the first time. He said, "why can't you have both? You are already married. You barely see this guy. You barely see me. How could it matter? You have been doing this for years. Plus do you really know what love is? I've never seen you with any emotions other than happy, up."

I paused for a bit. I had nothing to say. Because it was not important what I had to say really. It was about time. I needed a clean slate. An untainted heart to give my real relationship a chance.

When we parted ways, he said, "See yo around."

I saw him from time to time. I ran into him on the street recently. He asked me out for lunch once or twice.

We never spoke about our affair again. We moved on and we moved away from one another's orbits.

Sometimes he'll say when he had a drink, "I loved having sex with you back in the day. You were great in bed. You gave the best head".

I'd pretend I'd not heard of him.

That was what was so interesting about women. When we move on, we move on. We never looked back and went back to those we  used to be with, we simply put one foot in front of another, and we looked for uncharted path not as possibility but as eventuality.  I supposed that's what happened when we women fall in love. We tried to do things right.We wanted to be guilt free. We moved on.

Quit before it gets boring

Once in a while, I wondered if B was simply creating an illusion for me to believe. In that I think he actually has never changed and will never change. I'm one of his several women that he saw, and that he was perpetually trying to one up me.

This thought crossed my mind from time to time because it's difficult for me to believe what he felt about me, said about me, was true when he dismissed me just as much as he claimed that he loved me.

In those days where I tried to find an answer, I failed. Because I think I didn't want to know the answer. In some cases, I tried to let him go, so I dated other men. I had sex with them. It worked. Until it did not. Men tend to want something more. They liked it when I acted that I was into it, they found it disturbing when I could not relate to them at an emotional level. It was easy to shut down when people wanted to access a part of me that was not accessible to them. I made it so because men often bored me. They all did. Sexually and otherwise. It was difficult to find a true connection. Sexually I had fun, but even then it felt forced. I had to manufacture emotions. I liked new crop of men, by the time I started to re-date again in my late 30s, I was getting access to a lot of them, but the issue was not access, the issue was connection.

Men were not as smart as I was bored me, quickly. Men who were good in bed had very limited range, and the moment they realized that they could never have me emotionally they started to panic, plot a different way to lure me in, or simply got angry or passive aggressive with me. And I left them.

The issue was not accessibility to men, the issue was conflict mitigation. I never wanted anyone to access me emotionally, except B. And the reason that happened was that I thought he was incapable of feeling anything, and therefore by me opening up to him it would not create any issues because it was one way street. He would not feel a thing about me. And I was therefore willing to share my emotions and thoughts. He would never love me. It was going to be just a one way street. Until he did. To my surprised, he seemed to have feelings. And that scared me.

By the month of June last year I hit a wall. I was stretched too thin. I had men demanding my time, I was having too much of a high and low, and I did not know what was going on but I was getting dizzy all the time. I was so stressed out mentally that the high resulted from sleeping with other men while still being in love with B did not compare the low I felt from feeling betraying B, or not loving him as much as I thought I did. In the end, I asked myself: "How could you love B when you just came like you've never come before with another man's cock inside of you?"

At some point, being with another man became a burden. And I was losing myself and B at the same time.  So one day, it just stopped. There was no longer sex in my life, including B. Days and nights became hollow. Men who wanted something from me had a diminishing effect in my life. I was not interested in any of them. I was getting bored.

Eventually, by September I saw B again, we were rather casual and he was rather absent. For months and months we danced around the subject of love. He told me that he loved me and I told him that I loved him, by the spring of 2014 it felt solidified, yet, I began to doubt him.

I began to think that he was playing with me and I was going to get hurt again. Worse, I thought I might get bored.

I fantasized about asking him - "Should we break up? Now that we love each other, wouldn't this be a perfect way to end it? I would never love another like I have loved you. You love me. It's the perfect story. It will be a perfect ending to a perfect love story. Let's preserve this moment. Please, let me go. This time. For good." 

I rehearsed that speech in my head often that I think he could hear me.

When I was upset with him last February, I was walking down on Harrison that I literately heard his voice calling my name in the wind. The same way Jane Eyre heard of Mr. Rochester calling out her name, I heard him. It was then, quite coincidentally, that same evening I got his text message. I sensed him. He sensed me. He needed me as much I needed him.

I often felt a sharp knife puncturing my heart when I thought of him. I often wondered why he would never want to take me out on a day date, and I often wondered if he had many women that he fucked and I was one of his many.

When I thought that I could lose hope in the matter, I terminated my longing for him by switching my emotions off and turning on that rational asexual being. In that mode I stopped feeling. I saw the other sensitive me crying as I saw the new me rising. The new me was dismissive and unrelentingly business oriented. She had no sexual life and she was going to be okay with it.

In the office I work now, there is a man who often stared at me. He did not wear a ring, he's in his mid 40s. He stared at me and often did not say a word. I sometimes returned his stare. It was becoming a game. I was always involved in my own thoughts. When I walked around him, I'd feel his stare burning. I would look up and there he was. I never spoke to him. A man I met during my interviews lived in the south bay, he was interesting and smart. And he liked me.  A man I met at a party sometimes would write to me, about possibly meet up for coffee.

I have not responded to any of them.

I terminated my relationship with someone for good last week. I did not even want to talk to him or be his friend. I deleted his cell phone. He wanted me to not be with B. He had no right. I broke off many friendships over B with men who seemed to be threatened by the relationship.

I often wondered if I'd be in this perpetual longing and searching for something new and if the only way to curb that longing is through temporary fixes.

I wondered because I fear intimacy, commitment and long term emotional and sexual relationships.  B was the longest emotional and sexual relationship I'd ever had, and it was always dysfunctional, from the get go. And if that was not a sign of fuck up, then I don't know what would be.

Should I quit this relationship while I'm in love with B? Should I leave when there is no way but down from here on out? Should I leave B before it would get boring? 

Time will tell

He does what he does and when he misses me it feels genuine enough at times. He goes in and out of my life but when he's in it, he tells me that he loves me very much. 

A raining evening. He arrived late. He said from D.C., he had a proposal to do with the department of energy. He left on Saturday and returned late evening on Tuesday. I had not seen him for sometime, and had not been intimate with him for sometime. 

He stood there and I unzipped his pants so that I could get him hard with my mouth. The way he embraced me was quite instinctual, he embraced with his taking of me, by force. He did not ask for permission. I'm just his. He grabbed my ass and my breasts and claimed them. It was always that way. A sense of urgency, a sense of togetherness. 

"What does 'I love you' mean?" I asked.

"It's a feeling. I've never felt it before. I miss you. When I'm not with you. I think about you. I only want to be with you." He explained. He explained some more but I was drifting into sleep. 

But before I drifted, I remembered him saying that he'd never felt that before. That feeling of in love. He said that previously when he was in a relationship he often got bored. He stopped wanting to have sex. But with me, he wanted still and it grew. I wanted to tell him that he had a bad reputation. He stopped me. He did not want to hear. He said that he knew what I was referring to but he did not want to talk about it. 

He called me a cynic. I was being cynical that evening. I asked a lot of questions and disputed his theory of love. I did not believe that he could possibly be in love with me, not that constant love but love that made one's heart hurt. I couldn't express myself. I listened and told him that I was unable to describe how I felt in words. I  was better at writing it down, because when I talked to him about it, it felt forced. I couldn’t admit to him that when I thought of him, it felt that my heart was breaking. If that was love then I’d rather not be in love. Shouldn’t we feel happy and not sad?

He liked to hurt me. That was always part of our dynamic. He liked to force himself into me. I liked that. When he finally was tired, he folded me into him, in that spooning position we slept, and in the middle of the evening he and I would change our sleeping position. Sometimes I would put my head on his chest and in that position we slept. He would tell me that he loved me. He would then tell me about the other women he occasionally had sex with. What they looked like and how they liked to be fucked. He knew that I told others about him. About how he liked to piss in my mouth, my pussy, hair and drench me, and he asked if that turned others on. I told him, no, most of my guy friends find it disturbing. They did not want to hear anything about him. They refused to acknowledge my relationship with him.

“Is our relationship real?” I asked.

“Yes. I only love you. It’s real.” I made a cat purring like noise and then rested my head on his chest.

Early in the morning he put his cock in my mouth and then he jammed it inside of my pussy. He sometimes would withhold himself in the evening and not come until we made love again in the morning. He loved the way I gave head. I thought that it was because I had a lot of practice.

He wanted to know how those men and I fucked. I told him that one guy liked to go down on me. He had ginormous cock. He would make me squirt. Another liked to put his finger in my ass, and as he went down on me he also put a vibrator on my clit. He was excited as I described my sexual act with others to him. He told me that he liked that I had a lot of men in my past, and that I was very sexual. He said that he couldn’t believe that he was fucking a hot girl like me and that despite the fact that I was married I chose him.

“You like that I am married. No chance of real attachment. No chance of making it permanent.” I said.

He said that he did not mind that I was married.

But in the middle of fucking he asked me “Baby do you want to get married to me?” I answered, “No, because you will never get married.” He corrected me, “I have not been married.” I told him that to me, marriage did not necessarily affect a relationship. It had to be the right kind of relationship. Marriage is just a certificate. It’s not the marriage license that we needed to be concerned about. It’s how we feel about each other.

I woke up in the middle of the night to pee. When I got back into the bed, he grabbed me and spooned me tight. I could hardly breathe under his hold. He grabbed my hands with his own and he tightly wrapped me with arms and legs.

He shared with me his travel plan for the summer. He would be in Europe when I was in Europe. He would be going on a tropical vacation with his friends and his son. He was flying to Los Angeles on Friday to meet up with his best friend, when I was going to be in L.A. “Are you going to talk to him about me?” I asked. I had met and worked with his bestie many years ago. “Of course.” He said.

He woke up early as usual. I did not want to leave. I asked if he had a spare key that I could use to lock up. He found a key and an envelope. He asked me to lock up carefully because he won’t be back for another week and half.

“Where are you going?” I asked while I was half asleep.

“You know, conferences and such.” He was not being specific.

I reminded him about the up and coming lecture. He had agreed to go. I bought the tickets months and months ago. But he seemed a bit noncommittal.

He asked me to wear a wig the next time we fuck. He wanted to fuck me in a wig. “Do you just want to fuck another person?” I asked.

“No, I just want to fuck you in a wig.” He answered.

I knew why he liked having sex with me. I was more or less a sex toy to him. I did exactly what he wanted to do, he could do anything to me, and I enjoyed being used. Like I enjoyed going down on him and I enjoyed giving head to him, I enjoyed being tied up or pissed on.

I told him that I did not do such things with others. I was never like this with others. With him, it’s different. It felt that I was brought to this world so that I could please him.

I asked him when he felt that he loved me. He said that it evolved over time. But he knew this was love because it was different than other relationship he’s had. Apparently love could grow over time. Apparently he loves me. Now I need to see if he really means it. I know that I’d do anything for him. But would he really mean it? 

I suppose time will tell.