Dating and the Timing of Sex
For some, the decision on making moves towards sex, even the most innocent kiss, can be fraught with fear and awkwardness. Here’s my criteria for working through the early emotions:
First Date: No. Its rushing.
Second Date: Eh, not really. Its impatient.
Third Date: Ok, maybe a kiss goodnight.
Fourth Date: Hmm, maybe, maybe. a little more, but check for signals.
Fifth Date: Alright, are we doing something here or not?
Sixth Date: Ok, Alright. So let’s talk about why you don’t want to have sex yet. Sigh…
Seventh Date: Why haven’t you called me?
Eighth Date: There’s an eighth date?
Anyway…
Explain: IMHO, excluding buffoonish teenager, and twenty something hormone moves, early date sex advances disrespect the woman, or man. They also disrespect the unique moment in time, that you can never get back, once its crossed. The moment, or moments between two people in which physical attraction and sexual curiosity simmer below the surface of a psychological and emotional experience between those same two people. Whether there is an intellectual exchange, or one of less substance, the last moments, hours, or days before a sexual boundary is crossed is a special, memorable place to be, that no one should be overeager to depart.
Catch and Release
Similar to Her, my first one-sentence stream written a year before this one, Catch and Release brought out from me another spontaneous flow of words about, well…okay…yes…another woman.
I remember this one being more practiced, as a second to an original always is. Still, I liked feeling spurred enough to do it. It was not quite as effortless as the first, but it was close enough. I remembered her name this time. Maybe because we went just enough further that she stuck in my head.
Cara wasn’t the original stream girl. That honor goes to Lady M. But I don’t see another stream coming again for anyone else. Cara closed the bookends, and for that, she deserves just as much attention.
One sentence.
He meets the American who’s been japanized, living the better part of seven years in Tokyo as a successfully recorded pop singer, and doing an Americanized radio DJ gig on the side, now deciding to return to America because she can’t stand the loathsome role of women in Japan and started turning into a Japanese thinker unconsciuosly because most of the men have affairs anyway which she slowly started to accept but inside really rejected, but she did sell alot of records and liked being famous even if it was across the globe but still was happy to be sitting with him, a typical but classic and harmlessly unpredictable American male who wouldn’t think twice about planting an unexpected kiss on her small and very appealling asian-like lips that had the nicest heart-shape and cushiony feel, even though it took more than one try after the two martinis and bottle of wine they shared because she’s totally unused to having a man show any public display of affection because in Japan the men wait until the very last minute to make any move whatsoever, usually in a cab, and then proposition the women to a “love hotel” which serves as neutral ground and preserves the privacy away from the very thin walls that most apartment dwellers contend with in Japan, and besides, Japanese men live a lie anyway because they have a wife at home waiting while they’re out carousing, perhaps with the likes of Cara, his date, who almost decided to play the game but then said No, and came back to Philadelphia where she could take him out and impress him with her totally fluent Japanese to the Sushi waitress who was explaining to them the slightly-seared sushi dish that he was trying to order last Saturday but couldn’t describe because he didn’t speak “the language,” and went on to say that this seared-one-side sushi, which is Bonito, not Tuna, is not found in many restaurants because it has to be so fresh, but he really doesn’t care anymore because he’s already trying to figure out how much further he can get in public in this corner table which has just enough room for two coffees and a dish of green tea ice-cream, where the only other people are this chain smoking platonic couple who totally don’t care, and when the adorably cute giggling twenty-something waitress leaves, he makes another move on those little heart shapes which now generously accept his advance, until she catches his hands, that have wandered just the slightest bit up the sides of her waist so the top of his thumb barely brushed the lower part of her right breast, which he suddenly realized was quite large, and she puts her two hands on his and gently but firmly halts any progress, intentional or accidental, and says, “okay, that’s far enough, and yes, they are real”, and “I think it’s time for you to be going home now,” because she knows that at Twelve Thirty AM, being two hours from home he could make an excellent case for rearranging their plans to include an American version of a love hotel in downtown Philadelphia, but would still probably regret it in the morning because he’d wake up and realize that even though she had nice breasts, pillowy lips, graduated Harvard, and spoke sushi, she was not the fish for him.
COPYRIGHT © MICHAEL BAILEY | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Her
Further back than I care to accept, before I moved out of NYC, but right on the cusp of my exit to supposed greener pastures, I pulled into a gas station in the Bronx community of Riverdale.
I just stood there watching her walk back to the pump, as I filled my tank. I wasn’t prepared for the paralysis, nor the seductive irony of her baseball cap with a giant generic M on it, as it coincided with my decision just weeks earlier to switch to my middle name in mid life.
The rest is hard to describe in ordinary terms, which is why I wrote the following run-on sentence later that week after we met for dinner. It just flowed out of me. There was just no end to it.
A day or two later, I presented her with this thing. It left her speechless. Just like I planned. 😉
She deserved it. Not because she did anything special, but because anyone who brings passion and creativity out of someone else deserves to know about it. People have power over one another. It’s not always deliberate. It’s sometimes by accident.
I can’t quite remember her name, Mara? Meg? But, I remember…her.
One sentence.
Suddenly my mind lost direction, and lapsed back to that gas station, watching her pull the baseball cap off with the giant M on it, and shake that incredible head of hair in the brightest of sun lights, while waiting for her tank to be filled and coffee to arrive, but maybe sneaking a quick peek at this guy standing across the other lane, wondering if he’s looking, thinking that he is, and then, knowing that he is, so when she smiled and said hello she was totally prepared, as he comes over, probably to do his charmer routine, because that usually works and she likes it anyway, besides, he’s wearing denim and guys in denim usually know what they want, even if they act like they don’t, but she’s in one of her moods anyway, because its a brilliant day and coffee’s coming, the country’s ahead, and hey, he smiled, so what’s a girl to do but shake her head in the sun, smile back, and almost take him away with her, even though when they finally get to where they’re going she may have to run off for her four-mile ritual, which isn’t all that bad, because he can stay behind and make some kind of home cooked meal that she’d transform into a fire insurance claim anyway, so it just happens to work out perfectly, until she lands back to earth for that moment as the man from the deli kisses her cheek and breaks the spell, but she’s already decided she’ll try this guy somehow, for something, so she gives him her name and lets the gods take over, which really isn’t bad, because it’s so much easier that way since they’ve been through this since time began and are more than happy to take over and let her be on her way to the country totally alone, which is absolutely the coolest because that’s when her best inner work gets done, her deepest thoughts come out; her brain unwinds; her body relaxes; she’ll stretch the widest; reach the farthest, and its great because she knows he’ll call her, unless he’s blind and stupid, which he’s not, because he wears denim, and then, he does the charmer routine again, and the flowers smell great, because he knows it works and she’ll like it anyway, because romance and passion are fun if they are nothing else, and that’s all that matters if you think about it, because all that other serious stuff the gods can’t handle alone unless the timing’s just right, and no one knows that right off anyway, so she kicks back and relaxes because she does want to go out, and it’s an excellent idea to cozy up in that hip little restaurant she likes, where they can check each other out, which he definitely does, and soon enough finds himself swimming in her luxurious hair and hypnotically wrapped into her curving smile, which the gods seem to relish in tempting him with, as he struggles to concentrate on an intellectual point; the human condition; and a medium rare tuna steak; all of which pale in comparison to her traffic stopping beauty that sits irresistibly close to him, gazing just barely behind his eyes so he can maintain his concentration while still entranced by the way she pushes her hair, crosses her legs, and picks at the zucchini, and still he’s able to hear her voice, which hooks his ears like a song he’d play over and over because he loved the bass track, which only deepens his sudden desire of returning to the big town for more than an occasional visit, until he lands back to earth for that moment as the table one over encroaches their space and breaks the spell, but he’s already decided that she’s in his system just enough to interfere with the nerve endings that allow him to shave without nicking himself, and so, he says it was fun, kisses her cheek, and quietly deposits her eyes and lips in the little front pocket of his denims, knowing that the gods have been here since time began and are more than happy to take over.
COPYRIGHT © MICHAEL BAILEY | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Phono Needle Screech
So, I tell you this. You tell me that. We meet, share a table, smile, laugh, flirt, go to the movies, say good night, share another table, watch the sunset, kiss, have sex, have breakfast, and presto, we have someone who gives a damn for some indeterminate period of time about our existence. Only…PHONO NEEDLE SCREECH!!! It ‘aint that easy.
I am not quite old enough yet to bury the dream of once again feeling a knowing touch on my tum tum, kisses on my boo boo, and the gaze of adoration into my paralyzed eyes.
(Are they really paralyzed eyes? No. not really. You see, when I stare at the computer too long, my eyes become fixed, stop blinking and tear less. This is triggered by a complex group of factors related to horizontal and vertical axis, dot pitch, aspect ratio, and refresh rate.)
There are a lot of reasons why I wouldn’t have to be here in another life. I would already have you sitting next to me sharing some Bordeaux, stroking the glass with your finger tips. We would already have reminisced about the drive through Ontario and our stay in Algonquin, the walks in Paris, the eating in Tuscany, the hikes in the Canyon, the glaciers in Alaska, the walks in Paris, the cobblestones of Seville, the plains in Africa, the dysentery in Calcutta, the bullets in Kabul, and the hysterical snake pit incident in Bangkok. Or, maybe we forgot about all those places and just holed up in a cheap Amsterdam hotel collaborating on a coffee table photo essay book about…coffee shops.
We would already have discovered the evasive secret of smiles and laughter. That to pursue them too vigorously is to chase a shadow. That they come with the least effort. When they want. With whom they want. Not by accident, nor by study, but, by an open door.
We would already have shared the amazement of how much better life is with the Three Stooges, than without them. We would already be laughing about the time I locked you in a trunk accidentally. The time you dosed my soup with hot sauce or, when you woke me at night with a sheet over your head.
Of course we really have a simple life. Not so much to speak of other than…us. We fall asleep on a grassy hill doing nothing but bearing each other’s weight. We do ordinary things, and feel monotony from time to time. But there’s a difference in how we play it. Somehow, we figured it out.
We would already be driving into the sunset, perhaps in an old car, well past its timing belt replacement. But there we are. On our way to yet another county fair, BBQ, folk town, motel, and plenty of asphalt trance. While listening to music we don’t have to sing along with, and silence we do.
A scrapbook of memories would already be dusty and dog-eared from squished in photos, endless page turning and, more recently because I let it get mixed in with the kindling and a month’s worth of old newspapers. But, that’s okay. Because you forgave me. You stared at me the way you do, and said calmly, “Sweetheart, we have iPhoto.”
I have other scrapbooks. Most are a step away from a lighted match. Not that I am bitter. I keep them stashed in my sister’s attic inside broken cardboard boxes underneath a dusty Persian rug long feasted on by field mice and two mischievous Weimaraners. Once in a great while, I go up there, leaf through them, and say to myself “What the Fuck?!”
I have more to say, but, whatever is left is reserved for that bottle of Bordeaux. By that time, watching you stroke the glass with your fingertips, you will have rendered me speechless anyway.
As an old crack head I once knew said, “Don’t be comin’ round with your stories and promises. I got all I need right here!” Okay, I made that up.
COPYRIGHT © MICHAEL BAILEY | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Soul Mates
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Her Personal Ad
