Blast From The Past

Everyone has a "ran into someone I used to fuck" story. Mine wasn't very exciting, but it just happened last week, so here it is.

"Grace," the one-night stand from three years ago, works for Playboy Magazine. She was so proud of it that she gave me her business card the one night we spent together. Last Tuesday I made my way to a theater downtown to see The Wrestler (very good film). It was the same theater that "Shelley" and I visited several times during that tumultuous relationship, so if I were going to run into someone I used to go out with, I thought it may be Shelley. I feared that it may be Shelley, I should say. I even had a flashback sitting in the theater because the seat I sat in was in the same position as the ones Shelley and I sat in to watch Rent. That was an emotional movie and an emotional night. So I had to concentrate hard on The Wrestler in order to avoid thinking about that. But anyway, the movie ended around 4P, and I made my way to a bus stop to go straight home. A minute after I got to the bus stop, I felt a woman walk near me, stop maybe six or seven feet away on my right side, and stare at me for like 10 seconds. I had my earbuds in as I listened to my iPod, so I wasn't paying very close attention, but when I felt that stare, I turned and looked in the general direction of the woman but not directly at her. It took a few seconds for her visage to come clear in my mind as someone I knew, but I wasn't totally sure it was Grace until I saw her back and noticed the Playboy logo on her jacket. At that point, I took out my earbuds and started thinking in my brain about what to say to her, or if I should say anything at all. She stood there smoking and not acknowledging me at all, and I walked all around her but never closer than a few feet. I really didn't know what to do. I had some things I wanted to tell her, but I didn't know if they were things I necessarily needed to say, or if she even wanted to hear them. Finally, I chickened out. My bus came and I decided to get on it and not say a word to her. I made sure I didn't look out the window at her as the bus pulled off, because that would have been the ultimate punk move--don't say a word, but then stare her down as I'm riding away and she can't say anything.

The next morning, I woke up thinking about Grace still, and I decided that running into her must have been some sign for me to tell her how I felt after 3 years. So I wrote her an e-mail. And I detailed the fact that I didn't communicate with her after our night together not because I was disappointed in the evening, but only because I started talking with the woman who is now my fiancee right after that night, and I didn't want to ruin what was happening by tempting myself chatting with a woman I fooled around with. It was important for me to tell Grace that she was great that night and that I was immature not explaining to her why I fell off the face of the earth. I knew that she didn't necessarily need the explanation, but I had wanted to get that off my chest all this time, and I was able to do it in that e-mail. A couple of hours later, Grace responded, saying that she was stunned by the letter and didn't know what to say. I told her that was fine, and thanks for at least acknowledging it, because I was afraid she might just laugh at the stupid little boy writing after 3 years and ignore it. We then chatted via IM for a while, as she let me know that she actually didn't recognize me at the bus stop, but was staring because she was "checking me out." Hey, she screwed me, so I guess she's attracted to my type. I told her that because my fiancee is devout to her religion, we had not had sex, so she's still the last person I have slept with. "You poor baby," Grace said. "3 years! I'm getting lightheaded just thinking about it." It turns out that Grace is in a relationship herself, a new profile pic of her and some black guy in glasses side by side as evidence. Instead of reacting with jealousy as I probably would have a few years ago, I actually said, "Aw." Being settled in my own personal life made me more mature as far as seeing exes with other men goes. Grace ended our chat by saying she was very happy now. I couldn't be happier for her. And, unlike my other exes, she was able to grant me some closure.

Just Flew Home, Boy Are My Arms Tired

Well, that was a fun weekend I just had. I had already been planning to fly to Wisconsin to visit a friend, getting the plane tickets over a month ago. The other three times I flew as an adult were all last year to go to Minnesota to screw "Torrie," so this was to be the first trip I made where I wasn't going to get laid. Normal people fly places for reasons other than to get laid, so I was proud of myself for doing that.

Ironically, I almost missed my Saturday flight because I was busy Friday night getting laid.

"Grace" became the sixth lover in my life Friday night, and it seems to back up my claims that women want assholes and not nice guys that she responded to a dirty, straightforward personal ad I put out for no other reason she says than to "put me in my place" and scold me for being so "vulgar." I had rented a room in the town that my friend "Jacob" lives for the trip I made to northern Wisconsin this past weekend because I didn't plan to stay in the humongous house that he, his girlfriend, and his mother live in because his sister asked me to come up as a surprise for his 30th birthday, which occurred last Friday, two weeks after my 30th birthday, and I didn't want to ruin the surprise by arranging to stay in his house. But I also didn't want to spend two days in a hotel room by myself. Just seemed like a waste, you know? So I put out a very direct online personal ad on several different sites saying that I would be in northern Wisconsin the weekend of January 7 and I was looking for a woman in the area who wanted to hook up, and Grace responded to the ad that I put on the site where I met "Karen," coincidentally. She said that she wasn't in Wisconsin, she actually was in the Chicago area, but she wanted to talk to me to let me know that I didn't have to be so vulgar when looking for some tail. So we chatted for several days last week as I explained to her that I am not the vulgar individual that my ad portrayed, but that since being a nice guy has gotten me shit on for 30 years, I was trying a new approach. She really liked the things that I said to her after I got to know her, you know, the usual respectful way that I treat a woman, telling her that I found her attractive, speaking to her adult to adult and not in the "Hey yo, bitch!" manner that I'm sure she was expecting when she contacted me. So, one could argue, she probably would have responded much better if I put out a straight-up respectful ad, and we wouldn't have had to go through the headache of me explaining to her that I'm not an asshole. Here's my point: I HAVE put many, many straight-up respectful ads out there, and I have several out there right now. I GET NO RESPONSES. Apparently I have to put out vulgar ads saying things like "You please me, I please you, we're both happy" and "Bonus points if you swallow" in order to get any responses from the women out there. Argue the opposite if you like, but this is the first woman I've hooked up with that responded to my personal ad, and it was a rude, disgusting ad. The other previous five internet women I met didn't respond to my sweet, heartfelt ads. Four of them had dirty, slutty ads out, and I found them because they seemed like they would fuck anything. And Torrie saw some sexual things that I talked about on a message board and sent me an IM. So as far as I'm concerned, the facts are out there--I don't get responses to my personal ads unless I come off as a misogynist prick. Therefore, women don't like nice guys, they like assholes, just as I've always figured.

In any event, Grace seemed pleasantly surprised at how nice I am, and after we chatted last Wednesday, she said that next time we talk, we should plan to meet. She works downtown but lives in Lombard, a western suburb, so I figured our first meeting would be lunch downtown or something. But Friday night, while I was doing laundry and preparing to fly the next day, she logged on and said that she was very bored and that all of her friends were busy. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she actually responded, "Ideally, get laid," which prompted me to put a couple of condoms in my wallet and hit the shower. She offered to drive here, but as anyone who knows me can attest, my place is a mess, and it's small, so instead I took the train to Oak Park and she met me out there. She's a jeans and sweater chick, but I actually prefer those, and she really is attractive for a big girl, with this cute, cherubic face that glows like an angel when she smiles. My definition of attractive is no makeup, pretty smile, and dresses respectfully so that the whole world doesn't know about the tattoos on her back or breast, and Grace fits all of those. She actually resembles Torrie physically, tall and juicy in all the right places, and she drinks and smokes, too. But I wasn't thinking of Torrie or "Shelley" or anyone else while I was with her. I was having a good time and enjoying myself, which is the only thing I'm interested in right now. I don't care who else Grace dates, I don't care that the reason she was alone Friday night was because her original date canceled, and when it came time for me to put the dick down, I didn't care if her teenage sons' bedrooms were on the floor above us. If she wanted to jam with the kids in the house, by God, I was ready to jam. Grace actually reminded me of "Sarah" in that her nerve endings were extremely sensitive. I've never been with someone who wanted to touch my skin so badly--we had four hours of foreplay before we actually fucked because she wrapped her legs around my leg and humped while we cuddled for like two of those hours as she cooed to me how good it felt to lie naked with a man. Then she showed why she really responded to a sexually explicit ad by biting my back and actually saying out loud that she wish she had another man fucking her while she was on top of me. Um, sorry baby, but I don't swing like that. She made up for that by ruining her sheets squirting all over the place, which was cool because I never made a chick do that before, and waking me the next morning with a fantastic blow job, then she drove me to the train, kissed me goodbye, and told me not to call her every day. I just had to laugh, but hey, last year I would have been hurt and rejected; this time, I thought about those plans to live with three of my last four lovers when all they wanted was sex, and how distant those memories felt compared to my new mindset of just having fun in every situation. Big difference.

I made it home, spent maybe an hour doing some puter stuff and packing my suitcase (not easy when your muscles are sore and stiff), and ran out to O'Hare, and I made it about 40 minutes before my flight, allowing me time to enjoy a Cinnabon and mentally applaud myself on my performance. Then I flew to Wausau, WI, home of the smallest airport I've ever seen. I was going to go to the other side of the airport to see if my carry-on bag had been placed somewhere else (since I had to tag it and give it to the crew for storage because that's how small the plane was, I couldn't take my little suitcase on wheels on the actual plane), and then I realized that there was no other side of the airport. Then Jacob met me, which was a surprise because I thought his sister or her husband was going to come out and pick me up and keep me as a surprise until I got to Jacob's house. That airport apparently is the closest major airport to his house, which was more than an hour away. The first NFL playoff game had just started when he picked me up, but by the time we got to the house, it was the 4th quarter. But it was a typical weekend with Jacob, staying up until 3A both nights playing video games, making my hands swollen, watching football, throwing darts...just hanging out, something I don't do anymore because I don't have any male friends at all. His girlfriend cooked breakfast and dinner for us, in between accusing me of cheating at darts, lol. Jacob had a couple of big surprises--MLB 2006 for PlayStation2 as a birthday present and a Tom & Jerry DVD as a Christmas present, because we used to sit on the phone watching Tom & Jerry when we were kids and rating each episode's violence factor. He said that our favorite is on this DVD collection--the one where Tom tries to fly but gets caught in midair and falls so hard that he splits a redwood tree down the middle with his crotch. Yep, we were big geeks. I was very pleasantly surprised by the gifts. Even Jacob's sister gave me a birthday card and a Best Buy gift card. My present for Jacob was more of a gag gift--his favorite football team is the Atlanta Falcons, and their quarterback Michael Vick was caught earlier this year trying to get herpes treatments secretively, and the pseudonym he tried to use so that he wouldn't be exposed was Ron Mexico, so I got him a Ron Mexico jersey. The look he gave me was priceless, like he wanted to put a cheese grater to my nuts or something. But it was a great weekend, just relaxing in a peaceful environment and enjoying the company of my best friend of 23 years and his family. I don't know when I'll be back up there, but I can't wait.

Now I'm back home and back to my daily routine of eating and looking online for work while watching old wrestling tapes. But it's already been a hell of a start to my new year. I really feel good about my new approach to dating and life in general. I may even be meeting someone else this weekend. No matter what, things are looking up, and I'm smiling and having fun...now I just have to remember to avoid sodium before flying so that I don't swell up like a balloon.