After we made plans, he suggested a phone call. “Heading home in 1o and then I’ll call.” The pattern continues of course, the one where he says he’s leaving work but he doesn’t leave work. Something to keep watching and being curious about, seeing if it shifts.
I was putting the kids to bed when he texted and told him to go home, get settled, eat something. I know he doesn’t take care of himself consistently, that he rushes from A to B and fuels himself in frantic sprints in between. And there’s the cigarettes, which we know is gonna be a thing eventually, but it’s early enough on this journey that I feel like something could shift.
45 minutes later I messaged him, “OK ready! In bed and drinking my sleepytime tea!”
“Just leaving work.” He called me from the car, smoking out the window while he drove and we talked. He walked in the door talking to me, fed the cat while talking to me, made himself a wrap while talking to me, and then finally sat down. Exactly what I was trying to avoid. But maybe it doesn’t bother him?
“So what do you want to do Friday night?”
“Umm…”
“Should we go straight to bed this time?”
“YES!”
I had another intensely chaotic work week, where everything is changing hour by hour and I am honestly not sure if I should keep working there because the universe keeps trying to throw me off this horse and somehow I keep insisting on hanging on, but that’s another story.
I worked a bit later than I would have liked and decided to go to the work gym to shower off the day and prep for a night of SEXY TIME! I texted him at 6:30 to say I was prepping but might be a bit later than 7:30. “No rush! Still at the office.”
Me, sarcastically. “Where else would you be?” Not cute, Maria, not cute. Passive aggressive snark is not a good look. Stop it.
Packing my overnight bag was a bit of an ordeal as I didn’t know what we were doing the next day so I overpacked and that took time to sort. I decided to Uber instead of taking public transit due to tardiness.
“I’m here!” I texted at 8 p.m. (A beat as I looked in the windows and rang the doorbell for the third time…) “But you are not.” Harumph. My phone rang immediately. It felt like he was giving me extra French accent to make up for it. “Hi sweetie! You’re there? Have a seat in the front or back. I’ll be there in 10.”
So much for going straight to bed. I was pissed and staring at an ashtray of cigarette butts. I decided to write a dirty story on my phone of what I’d like to happen (I walk in the door and he is all over me before I even remove my coat. His hands are up my shirt, undoing my bra…) when he showed up.
DAMMIT. That smile. Those piercing blue eyes. Dammit dammit.
But also… no crotch heat. Just friendly familiarity. We hadn’t seen each other in three weeks. I thought… I thought… (I walk in the door and he is all over me before I even remove my coat. His hands are up my shirt, undoing my bra…)
He produced the French wine he brought me from the place where he visited his parents. I produced wine from the same town, bought here though, because that’s how I roll. We drank both on the couch and ordered pizza and watched American Idol clips on YouTube and it was all comfortable as hell, but, but, but…
It’s a bit soon for this level of comfort, no? I wasn’t getting any crotch energy from him at this point. Whenever I playfully approached him, got the feeling he wasn’t into it, so I backed off. He seems to be stuck in these habits: work more than is healthy for a human, come home, drink and smoke and watch purely entertaining things on YouTube. So I went to the bad place. The place where I’m so triggered by someone who consumes too much wine to relax, triggered by someone who watches too much YouTube to relax. The place where someone is avoiding my advances. I was married to that person.
But then we had such an intensely personal conversation. He said that he could tell I was feeling frisky, but that he felt so gross after work that he needed to relax and have fun a bit first. I was glad he told me, and I get it. It’s not always going to line up perfectly. But let’s just say that I like nothing more than forgetting about work with a good romp. I’d had too much wine by that point and I have no idea what I was saying, but if I’m this candid when I’m sober, you can imagine what I might say when tipsy. It’s all blah, blah, blah in my memory right now, but I do recall saying something about how our values are so aligned and how much his children would adore me.
“You don’t need to sell me on this. I know my kids would love you. I see it (pause) but I just can’t.”
That’s when I realized that it hasn’t even been a year since he left the woman he lived with AFTER his marriage ended. Slow your fucking roll Maria. If you think you’re scared, he’s doubly so. “I understand, and I respect your boundaries.” And I truly do. But I can’t shake this niggling question in the back of my mind. “Is this working for me?”
“Right now, I want you to look at me like I’m sexy,” he demurred. As if. I guess I’d turned off my searchlight eyes when I got the cold crotch. Blink. Just like that, back on. I’m amazed that I’m in my forties and still this horny all the time.
“It’s 11 p.m., time to put you to bed.” So to bed we went and it was fun, but still a bit rushed. I forgot my earplugs, so his damn jealous cat kept me up all night. I was uncomfortable and stuck in a negative thought loop, and lo and behold I woke up with an old neck injury from 2012.
I have talked about the metaphysical before. The body has a funny way of showing you the secrets its been keeping. If I read my diary from 2012, it’s the beginning of the end of my marriage. At about the same time, my neck got severely pinched, causing parasthesia (that’s a feeling of tingling, like spiders crawling on you) on my face. It took months of chiropractic, massage, desk adjustment to repair it. I used to joke to Theo that he was the literal pain in my neck. When he left, the pain and tightness disappeared.
Monsieur Magique had to go to an appointment first thing, so he kissed me and left me in bed. “Maybe you can sext me,” he joked as he left, inferring to an article I’m working on about the ubiquitousness of the medium. I slept for a bit and then I had a shower and got back into bed. I light sexted. “Showered and back in your bed, waiting for you…” He’s still new and not ready for tit pics yet.
I lay in bed, lucidly resting, when I heard him come home. He came up and saw that I was “sleeping” and then went back down. What?! Did I look too cosy? I fell asleep again and when I woke, I realized he wasn’t coming back up. How much time had passed? Was I merely being impatient? I began to get dressed. Suddenly he was outside the bathroom door.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m getting dressed.”
“I just got your text right now.”
Whoops. Signals crossed again. I made my way down to find a gorgeous spread. Croissants, hand-chopped to perfection fruit salad in pretty bowls, tulips. Sigh. No crotch energy, but so fucking romantic.
We loitered a bit. He tinkered in the yard while I closed my eyes and tried to stretch out my neck. But I was stuck in a horrible place mentally. Like with the neck pain, an old version of Maria, one I’ve worked through (or so I thought), showed up and wouldn’t leave. And she was picking apart all of it and mad because the day wasn’t meeting her expectations of hand holding in the sunshine and going for walks. Also that we weren’t shagging again. I just assumed it would be a weekend fuckfest. Nope.
Instead we ended up at the mall to buy his daughter a birthday gift. Then we went for tacos. I was exhausted and repeating myself and just not my sparkly self. It felt like there was a wall where normally I’m happy to just orbit in his energy. I could not shake it. We decided to break after lunch and meet up later. I needed some alone time to clear my head, maybe do some yoga and some work. Little did I realize that my mood would get so much worse.
To be continued…
Dreaming of Maria Callas 
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