Author and Columnist
I may get very uselessly poetic and nonsensical. Or I may not.
You more than likely will. I know your ways.
And the intention, more of less, is to lay all the cards on the table and see if they are frightened off. Or to frighten them off because I am not quite ready.
I suppose we can consider this a sort of honestly, though the benefit of time points out a few more times that it scared the both of you off.
I suppose I should retort to her letter by showing her my aforementioned hand. There are truly only two cards in my hand that could matter at all, and I doubt believe they do to her. The Magician and The Lovers.
Gosh, but you do think you are cute, don't you?
I will tend to call them just in a moment of need after they have not heard from me for months or I will stumble upon someone having a crisis because I felt the need to take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Not that this is worth delving into with too much depth here, but this is magical thinking and confirmation bias. You think these things because you only remember the times it works out and forget (or ignore) all the times it doesn't work that way.
Magical thinking becomes a subtle, toxic influence in your life, though I can't imagine you would think that now.
And I am very, very happy being Pantheistic Zen.
I would love to know what letter Eileen sent you that necessitated you expounding your personal gnosis to her. Did this near seventeen-year-old want your take on theology? Why would that come up?
Both very committed, with protection, of course.
Were they? Protection was a slippery concept from the get-go (though you did use condoms almost all the time, a single "accident" could have ruined both your lives). I cannot promise you that infidelity didn't occur before your sexual relationships ended.
At your age, there is a matter of "what you don't make me see, I don't know about."
You were disease-free, is what you mostly meant. How do you know you are disease-free? You donate blood and expect the Red Cross to let you know if you had some horrible disease.
That is not, in fact, how that works.
(You are STD-free and effectively remain that way all your life. A decade from now, a doctor will tell you that your blood shows that you have antibodies against Hepatitis-B after an exposure you did not have going into that relationship. Plus side: you are immune to hep-B.)
I do regret the first time.
That is less uncommon than you may think. Off the top of my head, I couldn't name many people who had the sort of first times that are bragworthy. LH had champagne and dinner in an apple orchard before making love for the first time. With everyone else, there is a degree of embarrassment or annoyance. The media lie about first sex being good sex.
Revel in the fact that you are not so special here. Commiseration in much company is better than self-pity.
The first time she tried, I cried for three days and hated myself for letting it get that far.
That probably should have been all the information you needed not to try a second (first) time. You did partly because Jen said (not unreasonably) that a few ill-fated, unsuccessful, dry jabs that barely penetrated did not sex make. She wasn't counting it and, you felt, had handed your virginity back to you. So, the next time you had half an hour alone, you had a far more successful coupling.
You shouldn't have. Not with Jen. But you would have with someone and the chances are not great that you would have had a first time that approached, to say nothing of matched, LH's.
It was not a good relationship for me to be in and I would actually openly tell her that I was trying to get her a soul, which should have been a huge warning sign to me.
But it wasn't because you liked kissing her better than you had enjoyed kissing anyone before. Sexual chemistry with your best friend is not necessarily a recipe for a healthy relationship, particularly when she dislikes core aspects of your personality and you feel she is soulless.
Were I to have stayed with her, my soul would have died owing to lack of nutrition.
Oh, buddy, when you phrase it this way, it obfuscates that she dumped you because she wanted to be with your friend. You were not going to stay with her. Previous responses make clear that you didn't entirely want to be with her. She was your most convenient girlfriend, and you had been close friends for a while. If she lived a school district away, you would have snogged for a few months before breaking up and not been too bothered.
When she broke up with me because she had bedded my supposed best friend while I was away for two weeks, I literally fell my soul slam into my body with all the force of six months of neglected invisible tugs.
I do not think that they had slept together yet. I am sure it was more than a few heavy words, but you are likely overselling the betrayal.
After I made my peace with it, I saw the horrible mistake I had made in letting her get in the way of my soul and my duty to the world
What the hell is your duty to the world that Jen intruded upon? All she did was engage in a month or so of frantic sex after a decent high school relationship.
The second relationship was with Kate. I do not regret it at all.
Me either, which is saying something. Yours was not a perfect relationship by any stretch, and neither of you was close to perfect partners (as I am privy only to your memories, I am biased against you and your untreated mental health issues). However, it was a good relationship, and Kate was and is a good person.
It was beautiful and pure, especially as my soul grew stronger and the beauty of the world filled it.
Overselling again. It was lovely and worthwhile. That is enough.
I will concede that Kate did good things for your soul and broadened your appreciation for beautiful things.
To me, making love is pure and beautiful in a mature, mutually monogamous, intensely loving relationship.
Are you aware that your implicit connection between sex and purity is inaccurate and a touch slimy?
It is cute that you think you or your relationships have been "mature," but they are growing.
Sex just for the sake of sex can be fine. It doesn't have to be the beginning or continuation of a relationship that is meant to last forever.
I say this from a place of having not experienced that as such. I (you) have had several passionate make-out sessions with people who did not become girlfriends, but it rarely went beyond that. I can finger a few times where I might have had sex with people and it would have been, as you would put it, good for the soul, but it did not happen.
To do it otherwise is, to be quite crass and blunt, fucking. Ones soul is not equip to fuck, in my opinion, and will be in torment if one does so.
You get the connection between "fucking" and souls about as well as you get the objective possessive. One can have fantastic sex and not suffer a sleepless night. How did you become such a Puritan growing up how and where you did? I don't recall anyone pounding a Bible into your face or giving you the abstinence talk. You were a skimmer of erotica and lingerer on pornography. You'd read the oeuvre of Tom Robbins and been friends with delighted sluts of both genders. (I use "slut" here in a Dossie Easton, "slutwalk," positive appropriation sense.)
Why are you like this?
But making love can unite the souls of the lovers in true bliss, I think.
The last time you had sex with Kate, you got it. You said that it was as though some emotional/spiritual hooks connected inside her -- apparently, you imagine psychic Velcro in vaginas -- and you felt overwhelmed with the connection. You understood making love, not only sex, and were rewarded with all the oxytocin your brain could stand.
And then she dumped you. When you were making love, honestly for the first time, she was already 95% broken up with you. It was only a matter of letting you know about it.
I shall leave you to puzzle out that your first act of making love was with a woman consumed with the awareness that you would soon no longer be her boyfriend.
Beyond kissing remarkable girls named Eileen, I do not and would not push.
Which you didn't. Not really. You kissed her shoulder and neck, delectable though they may have been. Few would term that having kissed, because she did not kiss back. She blushed and allowed the kisses -- "Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take" -- but she did not reciprocate.
I am certainly not interested in doing anything against her beliefs and character, especially.
You would have, almost without a doubt, been coaxing her toward third base within weeks of her passage into legality.
So I am touched, understandably, though the tenor of the letter is not always what I'd most like.
Gods, you make me wish I had any idea what this letter said. I can divine -- and not merely because it did not happen -- that she didn't write, "Oh, Thomm, I cannot wait for you to be properly my boyfriend. Please, please. I am formally and clearly letting you know that I will be your girlfriend. May we commence with my full seduction at your earliest convenience?"
No, I suspect it was more measured and unsure. Perhaps it was an "I don't want to be committed to a cute twenty-year-old, but I am still presently enjoying your attention."
That relationships are scary, scary little conventions, especially with someone as serious (I've been told I am serious, I am going with it) as me.
You are overbearing in a relationship sense and think it comes off as chivalrous and charming.
Eileen needed a light touch, and yours was anything but, even if your sole make-out session would not have been too out of place in a Jane Austen novel.
I've been edging toward paranoia over how powerless I feel because of Eileen. Even with my experiences, I knew that one word from her could cut me through.
She declines a relationship with you, and you are not slashed to ribbons. At most, you are disappointed, but (and I hope I remember this correctly) respect her choice.
You believe, for some reason, that exaggeratedly pointing at your exposed underbelly and saying, "I will be vulnerable to you," will lure women in. They can smell a trap from a mile away.
And I was having a mite bit of trouble dealing with that after all I've been through in the past months.
Your baggage is not her problem, and how dare you try to place even the smallest overnight bag on her soft, sweet shoulders. Guilt-by-proxy is not sexy.
I still am having slight trouble with her, honestly, though her letter helped. ("Aw, he's being all vulnerable... let's squish him!")
Well, aren't you being overt to arrest accusations?
Putting a knife in her hand and telling her that you know she won't use it doesn't read as the behavior of a lover.
I don't see her as a child she feels she is or a snobby girl in a pea coat (though I think the pea coat is adorable). Or any of the other things that she listed.
It is possible that I still have a slight thing for women in peacoats because of this brush with Eileen.
You also find snobbiness attractive at this point in your life because you mistake it for sophistication.
I don't believe Eileen was snobby, though. Perhaps this was part of her dance? "Reject me for faults I barely have before I get around to rejecting you."
Each contains to DNA for exactly why I am allowing my heart be given to her.
You can give someone an unasked-for gift, but they are under no obligation to accept it.
The gel pens, the distaste for chocolate, the love of books, pea coat, your elbow, cheek, eye freckle, voice, the little things and the huge things. Every part is something that I want because they are her.
This, more than the rest of your one-sided communication, brought a little of Eileen (as she was then) back to me.
For all my chiding, you had every reason to have desired Eileen. You were not rebounding or projecting on her. She was a worthwhile prospect -- or would have been one had she been in college instead.
What can I tell her to ease her mind? Well, I can tell her that this gets easier very soon. And very rewarding.
Yes, the charge of a new relationship, especially a first(?) relationship, is one of the better sensations you experience.
It would have been a whirlwind few months until you broke up with her, leaving her to tell her next boyfriend what a bastard you are.
Every time I heard Joseph Arthur singing "In The Sun" since Sunday (the song Eileen has chosen to dub mine), I have thought of Eileen.
I had completely forgotten that song and now have delved too deeply trying to decide if Eileen meant this to be significant or if she only liked the sound of it.
She did tell you that she wished that someone would spontaneously and in public sing "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic." When you happily offered to do this despite your tunelessness, she said that it wouldn't count since she had told you about it. That didn't seem sporting.
I wonder if she ever had this experience.
I do not dislike her for trying to push me away. But I don't much feel like being pushed, so I shall stay right here.
Oh, see, when a woman tells you that she is pushing you away, even if you were not aware you were being pushed, you should listen. Eileen, for her own reasons, is putting distance in your relationship. Was it so you would again bridge the gap to prove your interest or to keep you at arm's length? Impossible to know.
She certainly has quite a bit of personality!!!! Not to sounds arrogant (yet knowing full well I am about to), I know that I am attractive and do not have to "settle."
Bit arrogant, but I suppose you are and wouldn't have to.
You know that I am offered companionship frequently.
I want to contest this more, but I recall Shelly and the random woman. Technically, you are telling the truth, but I don't have to like your phrasing.
Eileen, however, I will not decline.
No, you surely didn't, which I do appreciate. I would like to have seen a reality where the two of you date a little longer -- even a month. Selfishly, I suspect this would have detoxified your blood a little. Also, I do feel the unresolved potential in your interactions. Knowing what little I do about the woman Eileen became, I can't help sensing that there was much of her to discover and admire, even at nearly seventeen.
Were she as bad as she has made herself out to be, I do not think I would be at all interested in her.
How did she say she was bad? Was this an honest warning? Self-defense? A request for the flattery you were only too eager to heap upon her?
She is, in herself, perfect to me as she is ceaselessly unfolding like a rose blossom.
Here I shall use my one allotted gag per entry.
Carry on.
I write down little stories and anecdotes from my past that I want to share with her so that she will have a bit more light into who I am.
You will have a few lovers and potential friends who will read through his journal to get a feel for you. Most, if not all, will give up after a short while. There is so much of it, and 90% of it bears only a faint relation to who they want to know.
So there is this boy in PA. There is this girl in New Paltz. And another in Red Hook. But I don't want them anymore.
Fine, fine. Kate is in New Paltz, Sarah is in Red Hook.
Who is this boy in Pennsylvania? Since I cannot think of anyone like that -- and we are not bisexual, so this would not be someone on the level of Kate or Sarah -- this, by implication, is someone in Eileen's life.
There was a boy? I don't know what that means now, but it does suggest that she was presenting you with facts you might have better considered.
I can't escape her, aside from that I wouldn't want to, as she has made little effort to capture me. But I'll be sorry if she doesn't try someday.
You put too much romantic energy in women before it is reasonable or wise. It is off-putting.
But I am sorry that nothing more happened between you two, so I suppose you have a point there.
She says thing to me that honestly fascinate and touch me (to quote: "I want to be sitting next to you as you read this, to watch you blink your eyes, to see you smile and frown, and to hug you when you've finished.") For that alone, I think I would kiss her.
Eileen was a charmer, no question.
She cries over stories I write about her. Do you know that I have never written a story about another person? She is my first.
Honestly, most of what you write -- particularly the fiction -- is about other people. She may be your first, but I could not count how many people you've chopped up for your literary salmagundi.
I'm frightened of what I say to her, that I could say the wrong thing.
You should be. You do.
And I don't blame you.
You tell the girl you were falling in love with her. I recall that being true. The two of you had been chirping romance at one another for weeks. It was not an unfounded confession, and you didn't think it would be unwelcome.
You were both smitten with romance. It was inevitable that you would crack eventually.