I Let You Stick Your

Dick in my_______?

Fill in the blank.

I mean, use your own imagination as I am already going way too graphic to start the blog, and sex, though a topic I skate around, is not one that I go into details.

Some things are best left in the bedroom.

Or the kitchen.

Or.

Well, what ever room you prefer.

I ran into an ex today after work, I almost did not recognize him, and that was the first thought I had, “I really let you….”

Ahem.

I don’t apologize for my brain, that’s the way it goes, I just do the reporting.

We caught up for a few minutes.

He has not done much.

I have done a fuck load of things.

Just to break down the basic gist of things, in no particular order since I dated him I uh, moved to Paris for six months, went to Burning Man a few times, rode the AidsLife Cycle ride from San Francisco to LA, went to London and Rome, moved around a few places in the city, took French classes, wrote a lot of blogs, finished a book, learned how I prefer to eat persimmons, got a few tattoos, and made a bag load of friends and acquaintances around the world.

“You know, same old, same old, still living in San Bruno, working for Cisco, keeping out of trouble,” he said eyes torn between my messy fog hair and my cleavage.

Stop staring dude.

Most of the time when I run into someone I used to date or sleep with there is no awkwardness.

There are only two men in San Francisco that I run into that are a little uncomfortable and awkward and I wonder who side it is on, mine or theirs, but it is there.

The one thing that the two have in common, aside from they both slept with me, is that they both slept with me around the same time.

“How’s Shadrach’s mom,” he said, “do you still spend Christmas with his family?”

He remembered.

“I haven’t in a while, but I am still in contact with his family, spoke with his mom fairly recently, she’s retired from teaching, his brother has a two boys now, his dad’s good,” I paused.

“Memory like an elephant,” he said, “nothing escaping this.”

I shivered.

REALLY?

I slept with you.

Nothing physically unattractive, in fact, he’s a very handsome man.

A little heavier set then I recall and a lot more grey hair, and I noted how he compulsively shoved four pieced of gum in his mouth during the conversation which led me to believe he was trying to quit smoking for the umpteenth time.

Just, not really a personality match.

I have a lot.

Him, well, not so much.

There’s nothing wrong with this, we just were not a match and it is really interesting to look at that time and see it right in front of my face at the corner of 7th and Irving.

I hooked up with Mister Gum Popper less than three months after my best friend died.

“Oh, look at you, how cute are you!”  My room-mate at the house said, poking her head into the room, seeing the two of us inclined on the love seat in my room tucked into the huge dormer window of the old Victorian at 23rd and Capp Street.

That was about all the excitement in the relationship.

We looked cute together.

We talked about doing things.

Rather, after a few weeks, I talked about doing things.

He used to surf and had a board in his garage and lived by the ocean and I wanted to learn how.

“I went out surfing!” I told him, remembering suddenly the numerous times I tried to get him to take me out.

“You did not!  Good for you, I haven’t been, well, I haven’t been in, awhile, I guess.” He frowned trying to figure out the last time he went, “we never went out, did we?”

I smiled and shook my head negative sir.

“You are surfing and you went to Paris, just like you said you would,” he finished.

That startled me.

I don’t remember telling him that.

“You really did it, I knew you would, no doubt in my mind at all.” He shrugged deeper into his coat, “well, uh, nice to see you, you, uh, you look amazing, welcome back to the city.”

“‘Night,” I said and turned toward my destination, steering my bicycle up the small incline of 7th at Irving.

I locked my bicycle up and took off the lights.

“I don’t doubt that you are going to,” my friend said to me the other night over a cup of tea.

He was referring to my taking up of the write a novel in a month challenge.

I said I would.

So I am going to do so.

I don’t know exactly where this stick-to-itness comes from, some times I think it is a characteristic failing of people pleasing, but hey, whatever, it is fucking working.

I am going to do it.

I walked around the Irving area scoping out coffee shops and cafes.

I have an idea where I will be doing a lot of the writing and went there later this evening and had tea with a ladybug and did some reading with her as the fog swirled in from the ocean and the temperature dropped another few degrees.

They have a good tea selection and just the right amount of anonymity, I’ll blend in and be left alone, I think.

My thoughts then went to the other man, the other man I slept with around the same time as my ex-when Shadrach died, he had once lived across the street from Tart to Tart on Irving and as I sat in the window sipping my tea I looked over and realized his apartment, where I first met him, was across the train tracks, directly in my line of sight.

I worked with his room-mate for a while and knew him through her.

I ran into him the Saturday before Shadrach was pulled from the life support.

He came up to me and said, “you look amazing, your hair,” he gestured at my head, “wow.  And you are like the incredible shrinking woman, you are smaller every time I see you.”

News flash, friend, I dropped more weight.

But that is neither here nor there.

He was a bright spot in my week, the only bright spot in a week drowning in tears barely hid beneath the fog I would watch out the window on the third floor; it ceaseleesly billowed over the tops of Twin Peaks and rolled heavy, somnolent, and drear toward General Hospital.

He invited me to a movie with friends and we went to the AMC on Van Ess and watched some stupid comedy and I leaned on his shoulder the whole time.

Afterward he tried to flag me a cab and none would come.

“I would invite you home, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said as another taxi with its car full zoomed by.

“I know what you mean, but I could use some not a good idea,” I replied.

I think sometimes had I not slept with him, we might have dated, I sort of blew it.

But I didn’t.

I wanted to be comforted.

I was.

The ex was also a comfort.

All we did was watch movies and lie in bed.

And unfortunately, not have as much sex as I thought we would at first, it petered out.

He was depressed, living at the edge of the ocean, anxious, on Antabuse, not my way to stay sober and I don’t recommend it, heavily smoking, working a job he hated, getting money regularly from his parents, eating out on coupons.

The best he could do to comfort me was wrap up under an old quilt in the basement in-law studio he was living in and sleep with me.

I watched a lot of movies and broke up with him a couple of months later.

“You needed the comfort,” a confidant said when I asked what the hell I was doing.

I suppose I did.

What I have found since, is that action is my comfort.

I like to sleep in, who doesn’t, but I have to do things too.

I have to get out there and be remarkable.

I want to live.

Even if that means walking cold through the streets of Paris lost.

Or riding my bicycle through the heavy wet fog of the Outer Sunset.

I want to do.

And be.

And grow.

Compassionate.

Kind.

Generous.

Sexy.

Abundant.

Travelled.

Well read.

Well written.

And loved.

Yes, that.

Always that, the love thing.

But you know.

Loving can stop your fear.

That’s the true comfort for me now.

 

But it’s not always that clear.

Tags: AIDS Ride, burning man, dating, death, friends, friendships, hindsight, love, memory, men, Morcheeba, Paris, postaday, remembrance, San Francisco, sex, surfing, travel, writing