Author and Columnist
I realized that, recently, I speak more of events than thought and feelings.
Yes, I want to read about events. They are more interesting than navel-gazing. I remember the things you've done more than the ones you've thought, though it might also be that I am more distant from your thought patterns than your misadventures.
I am wavering. See, that should be a bad sounding sentence. But in the mythical land of the Xen beast, it isn't.
You are wavering because you have not gotten over the fact that you rushed. You don't know that you want to be with her. You do not feel about her as you should for a relationship. I suspect you also continue to feel for other young women and miss being single.
Let us pause to explore that latter condition because it is not directly connected to the former. You like being on your own. Though, yes, a part of it is enjoying the possibility of future love, you like seeing your friends and doing what you wish. You like yourself or at least get to like yourself better. When you are in a relationship, your personal growth slows because it is partly about trying to graft yourself to this other person and grow with them.
You have growing to do. I feel it should be under the guidance of a trained mental health professional with prescribing privileges, but any guru would do who wouldn't let you seduce them. Or just on your own.
If you could have had six solid months without contact with Kate, maybe you would have been ready for Emily, but that's not the important thing here.
If you could have given yourself six months away from falling back into Kate, you could have become a young man who wouldn't have wanted to. You wouldn't have tumbled into an ill-fitting relationship with Emily because she is the first serious enough contender for the girlfriend role, and you were trying to prove something. (Amanda was too inexperienced and pushy but could have been a possibility if she flirted with you months later. Shelly was a one-night you blew, but she could have been a worthwhile fling. Eileen was too young and unready for what dating you would be. Although the same age and more ready, Nancy was still younger. And then there are the nameless others.)
I was having trouble with the relationship for a little while.
You've been dating for twenty days. This is a sign that you should not be together. You haven't even been with her for a moon cycle.
This was, I should state, in no way M's fault.
I will give you that. Her fault is mostly that she wants you. You do not want to be desired by her because it makes you feel guilty knowing you are not reciprocating fully.
My problem is that I really got to like being alone.
Here is what you say: "I am sorry. I am not as ready for a relationship as I thought I was. It is not your fault. You've done nothing wrong, but I should not have pushed this so much. We can still see one another, but I do not want it to be romantic or sexual. These are not feeling I am presently interested in having. I agree that this isn't fair to you, but spending seven and a half years together would be much worse if I was not 100% invested."
Experiencing the world entirely in my own head and reporting to anonymous internet freaks. It was appealing. It still is highly appealing. But you know what? It's not my life anymore and I would be a fool to throw away what I have with M for some sudden penchant for a solitary life.
What do you have with Emily? An infatuation with a clever woman? You haven't built a life together. You've dated for a few weeks, possibly fooled around a little. You try to avoid sex with her as long as possible, so I don't think you are having it here.
What do you have?
And allow me to point out that, twenty-one years later (more than twice your age), I regularly report the contents of my mind and life to the anonymous internet. In these entries, I have written many millions of words on this subject in a fashion that borders on pathological habit. To think anyone will read this is hubris at best. The best I can hope for is that I write enough fiction that some graduate student in 2147 is tasked with sorting through this mass of verbiage as a research project. (Though, on reflection, it would likely just be an AI doing the brunt of the work.)
In addition, we have called off sexual stuff between us, much to our mutual delight. Things got too hot and too heavy too quickly. I am just not ready for another sexual relationship.
So, do not date someone. Maybe you did have sex, though I am not confident. I vividly recall how little you wanted to have sex with her the first time you did, that she goaded and guilted you until you gave in. You hated yourself during it and loathed yourself the following day, trying to figure out how to dump her while eating an ice cream cone on the curb.
She doesn't let you retreat from "hot and heaviness" for long. She will say what she must to keep you, as she is more invested in this relationship than you, almost until the six months before she leaves you. (I do not know that she would agree with this assessment. I see no reason to ask. This review and these responses are for you alone.)
I will say that, for at least the year before she left you, you do love her. Not as you will love later women, but you abandoned all your regrettable behavior on display here.
M knows this and is quite agreeable to a slower moving, less intense romance. See, isn't she wonderful?
She is a hormonal, unsteady woman in her early twenties. She does not mean this.
If this were the right relationship, I suspect you would not be asking to turn down the volume so quickly.
As of June 1, I shall be wholly unemployed.
This is one of the reasons why you stick around with Emily a little longer, but we will get there soon.
So, yeah, I graduated.
You are self-deprecating about Dutchess, but it was the best college experience you have. At New Paltz, you are a second-class citizen because you do not live on campus, much as you ached for it to embrace you. Mount Saint Mary was an inconvenience, and you never felt love there. Dutchess tried to make its exclusively commuter students feel like a community.
Kate left this morning to be a clerk at a strict boy scout camp in New Mexico. I will not see her again for three months.
I wish she had done it in October. You needed those months.
Hell, I wish that she had done this at any point before this. I wish she had had some spectacular semester abroad, and you could only communicate through handwritten letters. If only you could have thoroughly purged her from your system before you did something stupid.
Okay, if you are reading this and entries exist three months from today, go look at how this turns out. Please? Okay, thanks. Now write me a letter telling me everything and send it to me now. What? Your letters cannot bridge the space/time continuum? What bloody good are you then?!
Hey, funny you should mention that.
How does it go? You exchange some letters. You envy that she will have a formative experience, and you are, yet again, sitting at home, scared of real adventure. She has torrid campground sex with at least one of the men there. If I recall correctly, he visits her in New Paltz once. She assures you that his visit was so intense that they broke her bed. This is not information you wanted or were able to get out of your head.
So, she had fun.
One of the not too-thinly veiled purposes of this visit was for M and Kate to sniff each other out, as the case may be.
As a person, I do not think that Emily cares much about Kate. Your ex is charming in her way, but Emily would have been indifferent.
As a symbol? As someone bordering on a holy/curse object whom you refuse to dislodge from your soul wholly? Emily detests Kate, as well she might.
I don't recall Kate feeling any particular way about Emily. At the very least, your girlfriend was not much of a threat to your ex, who is about to have oodles of Boy Scout camp sex.
Kate was pleasantly surprised that I remembered to get her something for her impending birthday.
Your parents did not appreciate that you gave Kate Christmas presents last December, I believe in hopes that this would somehow warm the cockles of her heart, and she might, in turn, warm yours.
This water bottle may not have been too dissimilar in intent.
We just played out a little scene with the dolls, though Katie said much with her silence when my My Buddy doll nudged her about a sleepover that she had with her friends Mike and Amanda. Hmm...
Yeah, I'm not touching any part of that, buddy.
I pointed out tiny landmarks on our walk, while Katie mock me and I attacked her.
What a great friendship the two of you have fostered. You sure were sweeter to one another a few weeks ago. I wonder what has changed in the interim.
M and I kissed good-bye as Kate looked on, in much the same way your dog looks at you when you are naked. The beast doesn't actually care what it is seeing, but it feels to you that its gaze is burrowing into you.
That is remarkably accurate, Younger Thomm. Good job.
I asked her impressions of the departed Miss M. Kate stated that she felt that M was "rooted and solid" as well as "very thin." I stated that M was in fact an impetuous lark and that she was not frail of build. In hindsight, I take this to mean that Katie pays very little attention when it suits her.
Yes, it was an odd thing for Kate to think and say, but it might underscore how little she cared about Emily.
Also -- and understand that this is pure speculation -- but there is a nonzero chance that Kate would have kissed you here, and you knew it. Not because she wanted you, really, but because she could.
Slowly, but still far too fast, she began to lie back upon my reclining form. I quickly played three pillows between her declining head and my rigid torso. Better safe than sorry, of course. I was not at all comfortable with the idea that she would be attempting to lay her head on anything, save my shoulder.
Did I say "nonzero"? It just rose exponentially.
Would you have stopped her from kissing you if she tried? We both know that answer.
I reiterate: I detest your current relationship with Kate.
So we left and spoke further in her car. It was actually the most intimate, completely non-sexual, non-romantic experience I have had in a long while. I gave her a very chaste shoulder massage as she told me about the drama program at her (and my future) school.
I have not exploited my "one gag per response" chit recently.
I would like a gag right here. Not for me. For you.
Shut up. Seriously, what is wrong with you? You are just daring her to kiss you or more. Begging for it. You gave her a shoulder massage? If I were Emily and read this, I would have dumped you on the spot.
But that's what you wanted, for Emily to take that decision out of your hands. "Oh, but it was only an innocent shoulder massage with the ex I still lust for, alone in a car for an hour! But, if you have to dump me for something that was obviously not remotely unfaithful, I guess I respect your position."
So I held her and kissed her cheek, giving her tongue-in-cheek pseudo-parental advice I knew she didn't need but wanted to and expected to hear. Who am I to disappoint?
You disappoint me.
Listen, I know you are essentially just a kid. I am hard on you because the things you do frustrate me. This "intimacy" with Kate is weakness and dishonesty. But you also are trying to feel your way through the first time you've had to navigate a situation like this. You did not do it correctly. With some medication and therapy, I pretend you might have, but I don't know.
It could have been worse this night, which might have been better for the next six thousand.
Yesterday, Emily decided (winning herself the springtime award for carpe diem) that she wished to have a camp-out with me to celebrate the emergence of summer.
She deserved better than you.
Before I delve into the rest of this entry, let me state what I remember most.
You somehow tried to discuss how you were not attracted to her in the right way, then backpedaled because she looked devastated. You covered that you meant that she had larger breasts than you were used to (smooth, Younger Thomm), but you meant that she was not shaped like Kate or Jen, which is the only way you understood to be attracted to a woman.
I couldn't deal with myself, let alone her. She shouldn't have been seen as something I had to deal with, but it was a hideous state I was in.
She is something you need to deal with. You just don't.
The prior night I had spoken to Sarah for the first time in months.
Don't do that. I don't ever know Sarah's agenda, but you should always suspect it isn't what she says.
Sarah, who is well acquainted with my passions (through stories and conversations, my dear perverted readers. I have not even shared a proper kiss with Miss Sarah), advised to allow myself nothing so unpleasant as this monogamy. That I was not truly happy and should much rather enjoy my solitude than a romance I was unsure of after such a short spell.
Golly, thank heavens that Emily, your girlfriend, doesn't read your blog. Imagine what she would think of this cowardly but bald declaration that you don't want to be with her.
What is that, you say? She reads it? Religiously? And yet you wrote this?
You are kind of trash, my boy.
When I first started dating Kate, it was markedly similar. Intense infatuation, cooling off, uncertainty bordering on dislike, then I wholly fell in love with dear Kate one night when she carpe diemed that she wanted to spend the night with me.
I do not remember cooling off. You might have only made that up to fit the narrative, though perhaps I should trust that you know better something that occurred to you three years ago given that it happened to me almost a quarter-century.
I cannot trust that you ever told the story fully. It is my prerogative to try now, even with the haze of decades clouding it. It provides a telling counterpoint to your camping with Emily.
Kate had escaped her parents' home. I am unsure what transpired between them that night, only that she called you and said she wanted to sleep over. You were not averse, though you did find her worryingly erratic that she would do this. She was seventeen, after all. Once you have your own car, it seems less like running away and more like a night out. (I will eventually tell the story of the time she did run away, months from this night, but I will not distract now.)
To this point, concerning physical affection, you were hovering around the short stop to use the baseball analogy. You understood that "sleeping over" would mean a rapid escalation. You had never spent the night with a girl. You had sex, yes. You slept over with the girl and your friends, of course. But it was never just the two of you in a bed all night. However, it was summer, and Kate was cute.
You could not do this in the bedroom you shared with your younger brother. Your parents' house did not offer another place that would suit the possibility. (You did share a single bed with her several times during your relationship, but I hope you did not canoodle much, your bunk being under Bryan's.)
Perhaps you ought to have gotten out a tent. Surely you had enough of those in your house. Dan might have lent you one for the occasion. Likely, there was a blowup mattress you could surreptitiously inflate.
This is not what you did.
You assembled pillows and blankets into a nest in the concrete shed that your parents had on the hill. It could not have been comfortable, but it is the solution you chose. I think you gathered candles for light, but that could be a confabulation.
The two of you did just about everything two teenagers left alone on a horizontal surface would do ("just about" because things did not proceed to a home run, to hearken back to that tired analogy, though not for want of the attempt). She was surprised that you could tell that her contact lenses were dry. It was the first time you had spent long enough looking into a girl's eyes.
Did the two of you fall asleep? I suppose you must have at some point -- comfort be damned -- but I could not swear to it. I know that, amid attempted sex acts, you told one another almost everything you could.
After she left in the morning, you loved her. That night -- the talking more than the nudity -- gave you a more profound definition of the idea. You felt more adult, though you were only advanced children.
I had a truly delightful time roasting a marshmallow on a fork over a scented candle (remarkable effectual, that).
That's probably not healthy.
I realized a great deal of my issue is not with Emily, has never been.
Okay, this sounds like realization, but we must untwist this cord a little more before letting you pat yourself on the back.
Your issue is that, though you like her (she is likable), you did not want a relationship. You were not emotionally ready to have another long relationship. You needed considerably more healing -- especially from Kate, but you have not been without romantic and sexual trauma in these months -- before you had any right to subject a woman to your continued affection.
And let us not be cagey. The chances that it would have been Emily are small. By the time you were ready -- and it would be the subjective time of when you did the work, not pages on a calendar -- she would undoubtedly have not been.
I wish you had the backbone just to be her friend. Start there, become best friends in time, and then consider her bed. You did it backward and suffered.
I am not condemning the relationship as a whole. I hope that is clear. However, you harm one another amid some great companionship and story-worthy adventures. I cannot say who hurt the other more. You emotionally lusted for other women in writing and were not shy about it. She lied and manipulated you. By the time your relationship ends, you will realize that you have spent years being a fictional character because you cannot love where you are and what you are doing.
the dear girl can affect a Scottish brogue that makes me want to bite her (in a good way. Always in a good way)
Yes, I can't deny that her accent, honed from a semester abroad, was attractive.
Ah, so I had a party for my graduation. It was a bit of a disappointment initially. It was just Zack and me, eating a big sandwich. Slowly (like, after two hours) others began trickling in.
I don't think I have mentioned recently that your friends suck. They are incessantly flaky and just shrug and say they are free spirits and can't be pinned down by such nonsense as "when we agreed we will show up somewhere."
Two hours late to your graduation party. I doubt standing up to them would have done you much good -- they would only think you were being high strung -- but let me be angry on your behalf.
(Incidentally, this is not something that leaves some of them well into their thirties. Melissa skipped my wedding because she wasn't feeling emotionally up to leaving the house. Though I cannot compare my depression and anxiety to hers, there are some days when you suck it up and tell the demons to stay home or put on pretty frocks and bowties because you have plans.)
Kate was being purposely obnoxious to me, so I wrestled her to the ground and won the spontaneous wrestling match. It is good to have her back as a friend, it feels very right.
Especially as I can beat her at wrestling.
I utterly hate this stage of your friendship with her. It is the equivalent of yanking each other's pigtails in hopes it will result in kisses.