Perfectly Flawed

this morning b left for the airport. for the next sixteen days she’s going to be in russia.

i’m alone. i haven’t been alone like this in two months. for as much as i complain about b we really quite get along. i suspect we may both pity and envy each other sometimes. i’m sure we also occasionally feel superior to the other.

i went to the chiropractor today and had my neck twisted and cracked again. i still have a kink in my neck from the accident. i’m hoping that by dealing with the situation now it won’t become a chronic issue in the future.

i wandered into b’s room after she left. i was looking for a book i knew she had. i’ve never read catch-22 and i want to someday. i think my next few weeks of quiet would be a good opportunity. as i gazed at the titles on her bookshelf one book in particular caught my eye. jane austen’s guide to dating by lauren henderson.

this surprised me. an antiquated approach to dating does not seem b’s style. i suspect it may have been a gift. it doesn’t look like it’s been read.

i tend to value my approach to relationships and dating. occasionally it has gotten me into trouble when after three years with a man i still think i can go on dates without consequences. after all in my mind we weren’t serious so why commit?

through some subtle development on my mother and grandmother’s part i’ve come to have a philosophy very similar to this ideology. i don’t play games with men. i don’t equate dating with a real relationship. i don’t believe sex or initial physical chemistry are indicators of anything other than a physical attraction. i also don’t believe in giving it away if it isn’t worth it.

my mother never took my boyfriends seriously. when i finally told her that i had broken up with aiden she echoed the statement and looked only very slightly surprised. she then went back to doing whatever she was doing.

i asked, “you don’t have anything to say about it?”

“i’m indifferent either way. he was a nice man. i hope you aren’t hurting him.”

that was it. after three years of dating this man my own mother realized there wasn’t much of a serious committed relationship. her only concern was that i handle the situation appropriately with dignity and grace. there was after all a boy’s heart and my reputation to consider.

aiden’s mother accosted him with questions. especially after i got tipsy at his birthday party and put my hand on his leg under the table.

my mother still likes aiden. aiden’s mother looks at me with slight distrust.

i suppose aiden looks at me with a touch of lust, a shade of understanding, and a level of acceptance that borders on complacency.

my point is i don’t commit quickly or easily. aiden and i dated for over a month before we accepted the labels boyfriend and girlfriend. we were dating for eight months before we told each other we loved one another. it wasn’t a game. i suppose it was just caution.

despite it all we had a great relationship. it certainly wasn’t perfect but it was built on friendship. i suppose love too.

there is a passage in the book that very strongly reminded me of b.

“to some of her friends, jealous because emily always has men calling her, and to emily herself, it seems like she has it all. but emily doesn’t in fact have what she really wants — a good relationship. emily acts this was because deep down, she doesn’t trust men, and she won’t let anyone get close enough to her for them to see the ‘real’ emily; she’s frightened that, if they do, they will reject her.”

b has said that there have been incidents that have damaged her trust in men. i’m going to try really hard not to make assumptions but i think she may use it as an excuse on occasion. when she suddenly told me she recently slept with a man on their first date she pulled up the incident from her past immediately and held it up next to her action. their second date was this past tuesday and she drove an hour to his city to see him, slept with him, stayed in his bed until 6:30 in the morning, and then drove the hour home to get ready for work. i shrugged. b is who she is.

last night she went downtown with a new guy. at three in the morning my allergy medicine started to wear off and i drowsily awoke to the low rumble of a man’s voice. she had brought him home to her bed. this surprised me. she was sleeping with the man from the other city that she met in a bar, had recently slept with a man she met in a shop, and now she was sleeping with another man she met downtown. not exactly simultaneously but in a very short frame of time.

i worried about her. i saw a pack of plan b pills on the bookshelf the day after she spent the entire night with the man from another city. i had thought she was on the pill. i thought she was protecting herself. i worried that she was using the emergency contraception as primary birth control and i worried about stds and all the men she’s slept with.

i thought about asking her about it but decided against it. she’s an adult woman. she can make those choices. at some point in the future i may approach her as a concerned and supportive friend but for now it’s none of my business.

so last night as she and her most recent partner were getting it on i was taking more allergy medicine. i can sedate myself into sleep at about 11 pm but by the middle of the morning the drugs wear off and i’m up again with a tickle in my chest and some trouble with my throat and lungs.

after i swallowed all my pills i quietly lay there in the dark. occasionally i heard gasps and moans but i was quickly quite relieved to realize whatever they were doing they were most certainly not hitting the bed against the wall. i really don’t like that. i stared at the ceiling willing myself to fall asleep or the drugs to suddenly sedate me but no luck. i stared at the ceiling some more and listened to my ceiling fan.

eventually the man left. i’m getting used to the men. i do sincerely appreciate that as far as i’m aware she has only brought home men i’ve met even if only in passing. i’d be uncomfortable with a complete stranger in the house.

my allergies were still keeping me awake so i got online. b was on facebook chat and was surprised to find me awake at almost 4 in the morning. we talked for a while. neither of us mentioned the man who had just passed through our home.

strangely, aiden got online at about 4 in the morning too. he’s on vacation with his family and had been out drinking with his cousins. we talked. i told him i’d be coming home a few days after my birthday and asked if we could just celebrate it when i was in his town.

he immediately guessed what was going on.

“do you have a new guy you don’t want me interfering with?”

i technically don’t have a new guy so i explained my intention of not having sex with him anymore. he tried to tell me how badly he wanted to tie me up and make love to me but i told him that fantasy and reality were very different.

he did eventually concede that i had a point.

we ended up chatting online for almost an hour. it was uneventful. eventually i shut my laptop i looked out the window hoping to fall asleep before dawn. my allergies have been messing with me quite severely.

sometimes i wish i had a lot of lovers. the different men the different experiences the different everything. i still find immense satisfaction when i relive memories of my relationship with aiden though. i wouldn’t ever want to give up what we shared.

b has told me she wants a boyfriend. someone normal and nice that she can relax with. she still finds great satisfaction in sleeping with many men though.

you see what i mean about both envying and pitying each other?

i want to see how my philosophy works in practice with nickel. i was pleased to read this jane austen book and find that i am already following a lot of the suggestions. i’m going to keep reading and maybe write another post about nickel and how i’m approaching the situation. we had a conversation on tuesday but we still haven’t really begun to explore things much further than friends yet.

you know me. of course i’m taking it slow.