Forgive me, I Forget Faces

There are a couple of things I'm having difficulties with:

1. Why do I feel I have to save people?
2. The whole sex thing.

The other night after work, after going dancing, after a brief debrief with company over how many striped shirted men with those annoying bleach marks down the fronts and backs of jeans there were that night, eating a can of sardines (really yummy straight out of the can, sprinkled with Kosher salt, cracked pepper and sesame oil), I headed home @ 5:00am. I wasn't tired yet, so I went on Lava to check messages. I had 8 emails waiting for me. Seven of them were from a new stalker. Great.

This is not a story about a stalker.

The other night I'd been having a rather fun and friendly IM conversation with a 29 year old fella. He gave me his hidden pictures right away. Cute. We were chatting for a bit and things were going well; he matches me in that one facet of my personality that is completely idiotic. He asked to see my pictures and pulled, "I know you from somewhere."

I'm thinking:
1.Sure you do.
2. Fuck!

He asks where I work/ live.

As if I'm going to tell him that! I do say I work in a restaurant in the east end.

Turns out I served him a few months back. He couldn't do anything as he was having dinner with his, now, ex-girlfriend at the time. I didn't remember him.

Bad sign.

He didn't forget me. Apparently he kept asking me to bring him water just so he could chat with me, which was sweet. The other sweet thing he said was my personality was pure and sublime. The problem is he doesn't have many other facets other than fun and friendly. Also his name is Mike, so there's no way in hell it could ever work. The name Michael, or any derivative of it, is forever off-limits, as it is the same name as the ex-husband/ best friend.

An anagram for my new friend: Is Gem-like.

I found myself in another IM conversation with The Gem at 5:30am, early Sunday morning, unrested, a new, familiar exhaustion set in from a night of work and dancing to Dancing With Tears in My Eyes (Ultravox). The conversation ended in a dare. Which ended him up at my place at 6:15 am.

I still didn't recognise him when I saw him again. I'm the saddest thing that way. I hope never to have anything serious happen to me just in case I have to spot a criminal in a line-up, because chances are I'll forget. Faces. Sometimes I forget people I shouldn't. Those are the worst times.

This reminds me of a party I bartended once. All the invited guests wore nametags. Sometimes I love the idea of people walking around with nametags on. It makes conversations start much sooner. So I say to this one guy who approaches the bar, "Hi, Dave", or whatever his name was... alas. I'm like that with names, too. "Dave" looks at me with panic on his face. I started laughing because it was obvious he thought we'd slept together and he was trying to figure out the where's and how's. So I say, "No, Dave, we didn't sleep together. You've forgotten you're wearing a nametag." He wipes away a few beads of sweat that had started to collect between his brows and said, "Okay good, because I was totally thinking that, but thought, 'Did I?! Because I would have remembered!'"

So Gem and I have cocktails. Things are light. He finds me "fascinating" and singularly the funniest girl he's ever met. He likes the great outdoors. He promises to teach me how to fish, taking me to his secret spot for bass. We'd moved to the couch, sitting cross-legged facing each other. By 8:00 we were tired. Out of the "blue" he asks if I'm a cuddler. I thought it was a serious question, not a leading question, so I answered honestly: I'm a touchy-feely person, but because I've been with fairly undemonstrative men in the past, it's kept me harnessing it. Which led him to ask again, a little more pointedly, "yes or no"?

Well, things aren't that simple, I'm thinking. But then I realise he's asking because he wants to cuddle.

Oh. (Christ, I'm an unseasoned sow sometimes)

So we do. I lay down first, on the couch. He snuggles up along my side, rests his little head on the curve between my boob and waist, makes squishy noises. This is not to say they sounded like things that squish, but "squishy" as in happy noises. He asks to move into the bedroom where we could do more in the way of wrapping ourselves around ourselves.

So we do.

Which leads to kissing. Which leads to my ability to have orgasms just thinking about them. Which leads to sex. Which leads to me cracking my eyes open, which feels more like prying open with a heavy crowbar, just enough to see what he looks like on top of me.

Which is not good.

He was not him. The last one.

I always liked looking at the last one, mostly because he reminded me of my first one; I loved that fucker. I loved the last one because he felt like high school - one big ball of innocence, slow exploration, sweet gentleness and pure longing.

This one didn't.

It felt good for a while, while my eyes were closed, but these thoughts were filling my head while we were doing it:

All the emptiness I felt near the end of my marriage came flooding back.
I was disappointed in myself for not having any feelings for him.
He dug me way too much and I was worried about hurting his feelings.
I was working out how I was going to tell him how I couldn't see him again.
I was thinking of someone else.
I was a bit disappointed he wasn't that someone else.
He didn't kiss me like I like being kissed.
This was just sex.
Fucking Death Cab's lyrics, "I need you so much closer...", screaming in my ears.

So, mid-coitus, I asked him to pull out and lay next to me. He did. There were too many thoughts that simply shouldn't have been there. He asked if I was raw, but I wasn't... not in that way. I just couldn't go through with it because it felt dishonest to everyone involved.

I haven't had sex since July. And July was the best sex I remember having. This was, at best, average.

And then I started crying. I hate crying during sex, but it seems to be a recurrence in every single sex partner I've had this year. Three. I turn into a streaming mess.

He was worried. He asked what was wrong.

I had all these thoughts running around in my head, but nothing was really cohesive. It all pretty much boiled down to me not loving him, having the foresight of not being able to ever love him, which made me spiral down to this statement, which, with proffered back, I expressed:

I don't think I'll ever find love again.

And then the harsh realisation came: Sex cannot exist for me if there isn't love.

So, I thought I'd never have sex again because I'd never love again.

Just before he left, he looked at my dresser's surface.



He said it was telling.

He was more than just fun and friendly. I hope I don't forget his face.

I'm never doing this again.