the solipsist in love

Truth or fantasy?

I’m coming to realize that this blog will act nicely as a chronicle of my ever-changing thought processes, my rationalizations and the ways in which I compromise or deceive myself. With that said…

I went to sleep last night thinking about Luke’s cock, and woke up this morning with its image stamped in my retinas. This shouldn’t be surprising given that I must have stared at the picture for a good two hours straight last night.

He got online in the late morning and started saying dirty things to me again, which I was plenty in the mood for. Somehow, though, the conversation turned to more mundane/personal matters in a strange course.

“What are you wearing?” he asked.

“Truth or fantasy?” I knew the honest answer would not be what he wanted. I basically live in my pajamas these days, in a house in which the ambient temperature is perpetually fifty degrees.

“Truth,” he replied.

Truth? Since when is our interaction based on truth? Granted, he continues to reassure me that he does want to fuck me in actual fact, not just in some dimly-lit corner of cyberspace. But still – to tell someone, truthfully, what you’re wearing seems like an intimate thing, a peeling back of one layer of the artifice required to make a good impression on strangers (or potential lovers). Maybe he asked because he was willing to take the risk of honesty on the chance that I might actually lie around in nothing but black lace panties in the middle of the day, fondling myself.

My response – “Pink flannel pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt” – failed to elicit a response from him, so I returned his question. “What are you wearing?”

“Truth or fantasy?” he wanted to know.

“Truth,” I said. I thought about elaborating: “I’ll take the truth over fantasy any day.” That’s not entirely true, but it’s close enough. Instead, I said nothing, opting to avoid inadvertently suggesting that I might desire a human connection with him.

After he answered my question (“Jeans and a snugly fitting gray t-shirt”), which of course failed inspire a response from me, he said something else that surprised me.

“What are your stories about?”

I had mentioned to him that I had intended to edit some of my stories this afternoon. So, for those of you who don’t know, asking a writer what one of their pieces is about is kind of a crappy thing to do. At least, it is for me. I’m disinclined to try to explain my work. The whole point of it is that it defies a neat summary. It takes however many hundreds or thousands of words to say exactly what I am trying to say. (I think I might be paraphrasing another writer here… Charles Baxter perhaps?) But that he asked was another indication that he was trying to treat me like a person, which I found baffling. Maybe this is the kind of thing people just do, to be nice, or to make themselves feel less guilty for being solely interested in fucking someone’s brains out. Or maybe he thought it was what I wanted.

The thing was that I did want it, but not like that. I want it with someone I can actually have a meaningful connection with, someone who gets my crazy bullshit, someone who fascinates me. My conversation with Luke wandered into literature on philosophy and spirituality; while I was impressed with the fact that he reads some moderately dense philosophy for fun, and that he gave me cogent reasons for disagreeing with aspects of Eckhart Tolle’s first major publication, The Power of Now, I mainly felt that the whole interaction was forced and uncomfortable. Afterward, he tried to steer things back to sex, but I wasn’t in the mood. The exchange had served merely to highlight the gap between us that we tried only half-heartedly to bridge.

So he sent me another picture of his cock.

This brought me somewhat out of my funk. Lust is a powerful thing. I gave myself a few minutes to think about it: why would I not want to sleep with this guy? I came up with this:

1. Casual sex, no matter how momentarily fulfilling, leaves me feeling acutely the lack of the affectionate intimacy that I’m really craving. Being that vulnerable with someone, no matter how flip I am about it sometimes, always marks me. It makes me want to continue being soft with the person who has just fucked me silly… but that kind of softness is suddenly inappropriate as soon as we put our clothes back on. It’s depressing.
2. He’s seeing someone else, and given our lack of connection on other fronts, there’s no chance anything emotional could develop between us, which means if I do become attached at all I will hurt for it. It also means that if he and this chick do get serious, I will at some point get dropped without fanfare. In a lot of ways this is a repetition of my relationship with Poly Dude and his girlfriend. I will come in last, and I will be discarded. I don’t know if my self-esteem really needs that extra kick in the nuts right now.
3. Given that there’s virtually no chance of this becoming anything more than a casual fling, I could be putting myself at a significant risk in terms of my sexual health because I’d be sleeping with a guy who is sleeping with someone else, and they’re not exclusive so she might be sleeping with other people, which means a whole lot of question marks in terms of risk of transmitting STDs. Doesn’t seem worth it.

Well, after my few minutes were up, I decided that a little more emotional trauma was bearable in exchange for some nice kinky experimental sex, and I could bring up the STD thing and that would be fine. So I did. And that seemed to go well – he will be checking on his test results from June and he will bring it up with his girl-thing to make sure she’s okay with him sleeping with me (ha, that should be a fun conversation) and to get confirmation of her test results too. I’m thankful that he was mature and responsible about it in our conversation.

Two rounds of text-based nastiness ensued. In the second round, I got to top him… which was pretty exciting. And, interestingly, it made me like him more, feel more comfortable with him. I guess there’s something to be said for a person being willing (and even eager) to be tied up and tortured by you. It’s flattering. He called me “sweetheart” before he logged off to take a nap, but I think that might have been due to his serial-orgasm-induced delirium.

I’m going to be suffering over this in a couple of weeks; I can taste it already.

Misery is a great distraction from misery. I hope I get a few bruises out of it, at least.