X and I stayed in town this weekend. I wanted to begin the much awaited consolidation of households. This will be a long, slow, painful process if I don’t start really making headway, and fast. So in town we stayed and while I didn’t pack one single box, I do feel as though I did accomplish the tying up of some loose ends. Read: Selling things on Ebay and Amazon. Check out seller velvet13 if you want to bid on my porn. No. I’m not kidding…I’m also selling my doggie cameras. I’ve had enough. I’m done spying on the little fuckers. They can do what they want to my bed. They win.

The real reason we didn’t head to the beach was because X’s mommy wanted us to come over for crabs. Crabs turned into shrimp, but whatever. So we get up there and you just have to picture X’s little Greek Mom trying to feed the hell out of us. X put some shrimp on my plate and he said, “More?” I said, “No, that’s good.” There was an audible gasp. In fact, not only was it audible, it was LOUD. X’s mom was horrified. Lady please. Don’t make me fat like my yiayia’s! That shrimp was doing the backstroke in about three sticks of butter. I saw it. X saw it. My cholesterol went up 10 points just by being in the same room with it.

After X’s mom learned that keeping the inside temperature at 94 degrees wasn’t normal and we closed all the windows and turned on the air, the people next door came out into their yard and started playing some weird game. There were sticks and posts and throwing. It was like Bocce Ball, or cricket or something. I called it Polish Bocce Ball but curiosity got the best of X and he went out to find out what the game was. His foot had barely hit the first step off the porch and the door shut when his mother started about his ex. Holy shit. I don’t know which insult hit the air first but all I could do was nod and agree, agree and nod, and shove cake in my face. Until X came back in the house and there we were, sitting in the middle of an unfinished sentence about his ex. Well I guess it was all too much for his mother to take so she just kept going. And hey, let’s be honest. I certainly wasn’t going to stop her.

What I should have stopped, however, was my complete inhalation of the devil’s food bundt cake. Let’s see. I had a slice on a napkin. Then a slice on a plate. Then I started hacking away at it with the serving knife. Lest you think I wasn’t chatting while all these calories were going in my mouth, I was participating in the full range of insults X’s mom unleashed on X’s ex. For a brief second I thought, “Damn, I hope she doesn’t ever think or say things like this about me.” But then I had a follow up thought:

I’m Greek. I have total immunity.

So X’s mom said two things that made my sugar high unleash into full on tear spilling laughter. First, she said, “Does ex have a job?”

Shit I could not stop laughing.

Then she said, “She used to call here all the time and your father would have to go ring the doorbell so that I could tell her I needed to get off the phone to go see who was at the door.”

That woman is a god damned riot.

When X and I got back to my place we weren’t ready for the weekend to end. I’m sick of weekends ending. I’m ready to play house already.

Anyway. I’m on a Survivor kick. Enjoy.

It’s your favorite! Time to rip apart the local yocal beach paper from Delaware. It was a little harder this time to get the images off their website. X is convinced they are on to me. But I prevailed! I used a scanner! In some pictures I even underlined the parts of the items in question that I find so comical.

X couldn’t understand why a dead baby made me cackle for 10 minutes. It’s not the dead baby, it’s the fact that she couldn’t find the baby when she woke up! Or what about that she slept in bed with the baby to begin with. X, if we have babies, we will not hire a nanny from Delaware!!!

The police and fire wrap up includes the following two articles, side by side.

The burglar broke in to eat some Barbeque? That takes balls! And did it ever occur to them that the dead guy breaking into business might be the same one doing all the other burglarizing?

Oh, X, I found a place we can send the kids to camp!!

And just a happy little picture from some festival.  I think their child resembles mom more than dad, doncha think?

Let’s stop in with Miss Manners and see what she’s up to. The second question is better than the first, which was inadvertently cut off slightly.

Why Miss Manners? Have you met Miss Bitter? Miss Bitter lives with Miss Miserable and Miss Alone.

Another great headline…

Where do you put your butt? Mine goes on the toilet. Sometimes it goes in X’s face, butt that’s for another time. Get it? Butt? Ha.

Last one. My favorite this week. Read the entire article. It’s just great.

The front bumper sentence made me cry I was laughing so hard. And that picture doesn’t show any jabbering with witnesses. It just shows him playing pocket pool.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sigh. This is what X and I are surrounded with when we head to the beach. There’s another newspaper out there but I can’t find it online and it’s too painful to scan this particular article I wanted to share. It would seem that someone in our subdivision (how dare they turn on me!) got themselves the lucky break to be writing a column for the locals! Except, it’s less of a column, and more of a plea for someone - anyone - to give her some news she can report. She took a half a page this week to detail the comings and goings of people in the deli in town, with detail so excrutiating you learn what they ordered down to the condiment, who they were with, and where they were headed after. I read it to X over the phone and he had to put me on hold to stab out his eyeballs.

X and I had a great time in New York. We managed to escape each place containing my family just prior to an implosion. Because X and my parents rise before the roosters, there were several hours on Saturday and Sunday  morning where he was alone with them. Scary. Though, he did well.

I should probably say that the highlight of last Saturday was seeing my nieces in this unprovoked-by-adults act of sweetness in Central Park…

but…the day wasn’t over. X and I ate dinner in Little Italy, and that, like the Keys, are one of the memories we have that we talk about all the time. So, um, sorry nieces. You’re highlight #2. Being #2 isn’t so bad, is it? Well, too bad. Maybe you should try harder next time. Just try to outdo that Cannoli. Try. I dare you.

X and I left New York really late. In the Holland Tunnel I had these grandiose ideas about having sex when we got back home because you know I wouldn’t let him lay a finger on me at my parent’s house. But then we didn’t get back to his place until after midnight which put me home closer to 12:45 a.m. with work in the morning. No sex. Damn it. I had vowed we would make up for lost time by hopping in bed, but that wasn’t to be. We figured we would catch up for lost loving this past weekend but then we found out his kids and my friend would all be joining us at the beach house. Damn.

Unable to wait any longer, X and I closed the door and ripped off our clothes on Friday night. But then we realized it was just a little too noisy, and this is where things go awry. We got out of bed and went into the bathroom and turned on the shower to drown out the noise. I hopped up on the counter and we finished. Relief. Finally.

I slid off the counter and caught something on my hand. It was gooey. I said, “Um, was there a wayward shot?” He said, “Weren’t you in the room too?” I said, “Well, there’s something weird all over me. Turn on the light.”

X flipped on the light and there’s neon blue toothpaste (with mintstrips!) all over the vanity and all down the side of my leg. X? Did you need to brush your teeth? Just scrape the toothbrush against my thigh. Make sure you get some mint strips. Don’t miss the glob by my ankle.

Back to regularly scheduled programming.

X and I are going to New York this weekend. My brother and his family are in town and we’re meeting up with them at our designated place and time on their highly selective secret schedule. Since the beginning of time, my brother has this way of putting his family dead-last. We’re all used to this and we smile, nod, play with the nieces, then we all get on with our lives. Unfortunately for me but fortunately for X (because it’s entertaining to outsiders) the Greeks are already in major warfare. My parents are wayyyyy beyond smiling and nodding. They’re more so in the mood for tire slashing. I’ll have to keep the Ginzu knives away from them.

X is rather looking forward to this. We are staying with my parents, Gloom and Doom, in Connecticut. Much to my surprise, back in January that they overturned their prior rule that no unmarrieds can share a bed in their house. I think that, gasp, they are going to let us share a bed. Unbelievable. X said he can’t wait for this momentous occasion and he plans to commemorate it by sticking his dick in my ass. I said we will not be having any sex, anal or otherwise, in my parents house in my childhood bedroom. No. Fucking. Way.

X says, “We’ll see about that.”

Groan! Stay away from my sphincter!

He’s been reduced to negotiating by text.

This morning:

X: Ok. How about this. You can “dip” your own finger and put it in my mouth?
V: No.
X: Excuse me for being attracted to you! Okay, how about this? Masturbate with your panties on and then just hand them to me for the night.
V: Again, no!
X: Well this weekend should be good at 123 Asexual Lane.

X told his mother he was going to New York with me and we were staying with my parents. She said, “Oh, will you be talking to them about something when you’re up there?”

X played dumb. He asked what she was talking about.  She said, “A wedding.”

X had to respond that I’m all liberated and stuff, and I don’t believe in weddings.  Then she said something odd.

“Well Velvet looks like she’s ready and she told me that her mother said to not let me get away.”

X said, “My mother is hallucinating.”

I said, “You can bet your ass she is because my mother would never tell me not to let you get away. She’s lives her life believing that her children can always do better. Wait until you see how she treats my sister-in-law. That is, if she even bothers to show up.”

Should be fun!

It’s the end but it’s not the end. This is the last piece of the story, but the story keeps going, and yes, the blog keeps going. Shutting down hasn’t occurred to me, at least not yet.  And I don’t have a big engagement ring picture to show you. While that would be a happy end to the “story,” it’s not my end. (Caution. Big Femmie speak coming.) These last four years of blogging were about empowering ourselves as women to weed through crappy men and not settle for less than the best. Somehow, making the story end with a big rock and a wedding seems like selling out to me, to you, to everyone. I’m more introspective than that. That’s a major reason I hate Sex and the City and all that those dumb bitches stand for. They pretend to stand for empowerment of women, but really, they spent six seasons chasing unworthy men and shopping. Not exactly role models for any of us or our daughters or nieces.

Thank you for taking the journey with me, and with us. X is the great love of my life, and I feel so fortunate to have found him, to have been found, to have found each other.

I could keep going because life keeps going. I could regale you with stories about an old girlfriend who showed up in X’s life and temporarily made ours miserable. I could go through the details on when the ex Mrs. X found out about me and how she turned all her children (you know, the ones he raised and supported but didn’t contribute his sperm to) against him in a flash. I could tell you that he genuinely didn’t care, and that was the ultimate in satisfaction for me and closure for him. But all of that is just life. The details aren’t always important.

The lyrics from one of my favorite songs comes to mind here:

There are places I’ll remember all my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living in my life I’ve loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers there is no one who compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning when I think of love as something new
Though I know I’ll never lose affection for people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them.
In my life I love you more.

I can’t lie and say that there aren’t conversations about marriage and babies, well, one baby, but we’re still trying to figure out where all of that stands. You know…we’re older. I’m 36. And sometimes I’m not sure if I have it in me to have a life with a baby in it now that I’m more set in my ways. And X is older than I am, and he’s been through the kid thing already. In five years, his kids could be off at college and we could have a nice simple life together. But in five years, when his kids are going off to college, we could be scouting around for a kindergarten class worthy of our prodigal child. I just don’t know which life we’ll have.

I was never that person who desperately wanted to be a mother. I know there are women out there who are maternally hard-wired. I’m not sure I’m one of them. Though, I can say out of dead honesty: I do think if I don’t at least try, then I will always wonder what having a child would have been like. My main reason for wanting to would be what X said to me one night over dinner: “If there are any two people in the world who should have a child together, it’s us.” I believe the impact of that statement would be lost if you hadn’t just spent the last four weeks reading about our history, because everyone thinks that. But with X and I, it’s been such a long journey and such a deep love resulting from the journey, that I believe not trying to have a child with him would be an epic fail.

As far as marriage goes, I’m not sure if every prescription to happiness includes marriage and kids. I’m a pretty staunch feminist, so I have spent the better part of the last month asking why people get married and why it’s necessary. In times when women couldn’t earn the same as their male counterparts, marriage was the only way to create and build a family. But now, no one can give me a valid reason to get married besides the usual crap:

Because it will make your parents happy.

Because it’s right for the kids if you want to live together.

Because you own property together.

Because you are going to have a baby together.

Because the ex wife could sue you for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. (That one was courtesy of my father.)

Because if he dies you have no claims to anything.

Because if he dies, his half of the house and car go to his kids, and because they are under 18, the ex wife will be the one you’ll deal with.

Yikes on that last one…

I remain on the fence. X said before we get married he will tell me exactly why we should. I’m still waiting. It’s a big joke with us now. Not to say we won’t get there, but, I’ve never been that girl. Bride’s magazines and visions of a perfect wedding dress? Yeah. Not so much. That’s never been me. Don’t bother looking for that Glamourshots photo of X and I in the New York Times or WaPo or anything like that. Anything commercial surrounding the wedding really pisses me off. A Vegas drive through or somewhere in the Keys on the beach would be just fine with me.

The love lessons here are inherent. You have to fall in love with your best friend. It’s truly the only way. Sometimes the person you are supposed to be with is right in front of your face. They don’t always come in the obvious form either. Sometimes you end up realizing that the situation surrounding the person you are fated to be with is not what you thought it would be. People have baggage. We all do. No one should feel that they are above it. Relationships take work. It’s important to know when to let go. But more important to know when not to.

Cliche, but, when two people are meant to be together, everything just aligns for them to do so. X had a wife for the first three years that I knew him. For those years I never considered for a moment that we would end up where we are today despite an obvious attraction on both sides. You can’t engineer fate, so while we may decide to “take control” of our lives, most of the work is done for us I believe by putting us in the right place at the right time. The little details are what lies in our hands.

Little details like sending a text, long after someone is seemingly gone from your life.

Now, my Grammy style thank you speech, only, with tidbits of unsolicited advice:

Cyndy - I’m glad you listened to your heart and kept going back.

Redhead - Call him. Or at least email him. It’s worth it, even if it is just to say hello.

Tyler - Thanks for hanging in there with me all these years!

FreckledK - He’s around the corner. I’m sure of it.

Allezoop - I know for a fact - you got a good one!

Laura - I’m glad the advice of three years ago worked out and you’re happy and in love. So glad!

Jessica - I’m not leaving! Yet!

Hungry - Thank you as well for sticking around all these years and don’t worry about prying. That’s what a tell-all (or tell-most) blog is about.

Pook - Facebook friends! Come back to DC!

Michelle - Thank you for reading all this, you probably know more about me post-DC than when you lived here!

Marie - Don’t know if he will post his side but I’ll continue to ask.

Jo - Congratulations!

Sally - If you do a chronicle of your relationship, even if it’s for yourself, you will be happy you have it. I know I am.

Phil - One of the few men who can tolerate the sappy. Thanks for hanging in. And we lost Cubie!

X - I love you. Thank you for making my life an Epic Win, every day.

September 2008 - February 2009

September would be the witching hour for this divorce. The conversations between X and the hopefully soon to be ex Mrs. X were in full force. She was on the emotional roller coaster from hell and dragging everyone down with her. Seriously. Sometimes I wished she knew about me so I could call her up and tell her to have some fucking respect for herself and to stop acting like a child. Oh. And while we were on the phone I’d also tell her to stop using her uterus as a paycheck. By then she would have hung up on me.

She was wavering between bouts of being sick of the kids and wanting him to pick them up immediately to threats to take the kids and leave the country. It was exhausting. The problem for her was that X was burned out on her anger and emotional bullshit, so he was unresponsive to almost everything. Almost. Threats to take children are the trump card. And she knew that.

After a particularly grueling Labor Day weekend afternoon of texting wars between X and the soon to be ex Mrs. X, he put his arms around me and said, “I am so in love with you.” Sometimes all you have to do is be the non-crazy woman in a sea of crazy women and you come out smelling like a rose.

Later that night, we ended up with another of our firsts. These moments happen so infrequently in long term relationships that you just have to pay attention and know when they are happening so you can record every moment in your head and burn it forever into your happy place. We ended up taking a shower together. When the shower finished and we moved to the bed and shared the sweet words across the pillow that couples share, we were again at a new place. Before he left the next morning he said, “Something changed.” I agreed. It did change. I can’t explain it, it just did. I think at that point we just knew it was forever. And that we were forever.

It of course didn’t stop more on and off drama with the impending divorce. It just wasn’t moving fast enough for me. Up. Down. Up. Down. For what started out so well, September was a rough month until the fated, long awaited for day where he sent me a text that said, “I have the signed divorce agreement.” His attorney filed and they got a court date for shortly into the new year.

The fall was spent running back and forth to the beach house, doing walk throughs, making sure everything was as it was supposed to be. It was an incredible growing experience for our relationship to have something that we thought of and then built together - not necessarily literally as much, but figuratively.

There’s a huge gap of time in my precious Microsoft Word documentation of our relationship. October, November, December. Blank. Blank. Blank. Nothing. I wish I could remember what I’m missing here, but no news was good news. We were finally on track to divorce court with no further encumbrances ahead.

The holidays rolled through town and we spent New Year’s Eve this time in bed with dueling bottles of champagne. We settled on the house in January and promptly started nesting. Shortly after the settlement at the beach, X officially became divorced. Oh. My. God.

X moved from one place to another on pretty short notice and I was the helper-bee. Going from the fourth floor walk up to a townhouse, my ass and legs saw their fair share of stairs that weekend. At the end of the 24 hours of hell, he opened a bottle of Captain Morgan, took a swing and said, “You know, if this keeps going like it’s going, one of us is going to want to get married.”

Oh? Which one?

2008: June - September

It might seem like telling about the fighting is personal, almost too personal. But I want to tell the whole story. It’s not always roses and lollipops, even when the love is the deepest and most lasting of any love of your life. And it’s important, for me anyway, to convey that there are sometimes it’s worth it to stay and fight and sometimes it’s not worth it and you should walk away. Differentiating between the two is only something you can answer by looking in your heart. Honestly looking in your heart.

We recovered from the argument where he mailed my keys back when I drove back to his house and gave them back to him. It wouldn’t be the last of the bickering about the divorce. I tried to remind myself over and over: What if this was your last day with him? Is this how you would want to spend it?

At this point I believe I realized that I (we) were just so in love, that any of this time wasted arguing was exactly that - time wasted arguing. The subject of taking a break had come up during the arguing, but when we were calm and discussing everything we determined that it was impossible for us to really take a break because it was just so difficult to be away from each other. He said, “I’m not going to lose you over this shit.” I said, “I’m not going anywhere.” He said, “I’m not either.” During all this drama would be when he finally said out loud that he was in love with me. Fucking finally. Jesus Christ.

Spring moved into summer and one Saturday we went shopping and bought a game that was a box of questions for couples. Inevitably these games bring about conversations that people may or may not be ready to have. While we sat on the roof of my building drinking a bottle of wine and eating cupcakes from Cake Love (um, eau, not good) X and I had to answer a few questions on issues we had never discussed - like marriage and (more) kids. I believe we turned another corner and entered the “don’t want to be without each other” phase.

The summer was great. We had a lot of fun. We still talk today about the time we just woke up and bolted out to Annapolis to find a restaurant to eat crabs. We both sat facing the water, drinking a pitcher of beer and hammering away at crabs. We kept saying through the next few months how fun that was.

As X recently said to me, “Ideas just constantly swim in your head, don’t they?” It’s true. The little squirrel is always kicking things around up there. One day in August, I started looking at beach real estate again. I hated keeping the dogs cooped up all summer in the city. I wanted a place to go. I googled dog beaches and found some on the Eastern Shore that looked promising. X and I convened on the phone with dueling laptops to see what was out there. We made appointments at several new home communities and drove out that weekend. Shortly after arriving at one closest to the beach we were interested in, we were signing a contract. The house would be started shortly and finished by mid-winter. Great. Not what I had hoped in searching for an already-built (spec) home, but it would do.

The following weekend X and I went to New York City for a few days. He met my parents. I’d cheer and say “Woo Hoo” and explain to you how monumental this was considering NO ONE meets my parents (because they are judgie mcjudgiepoohs) however, at lunch my mom put her personality on display by maligning someone my family knew who had “gotten divorced.” X and I just looked at each other. Insults included at no extra cost.

We had this minor altercation in New York centering around a bartender and X and my suspicion if there was something that went on and wondering if that was why X came to New York alone on New Years Eve. The whole thing spiraled out of control because I apparently saw something that wasn’t there, and X was confused why I was acting the way I was. When we were hashing it out, he told me that he didn’t see anyone past me. I told him I loved him. He said, “I love you too. Maybe one day you will believe me.”

If we weren’t in the fast lane to closure and happiness before, we were heading there fast. During the early days of September, there was movement in the way of the divorce paperwork being signed so as to avoid court. To quote something I wrote at this time, “I have been waiting for this day for so long, I’m afraid of how my emotions will strangle me when the day finally arrives. There is so much about this relationship that I want to broadcast to the world, and yet, as X is my best friend, he is the only one I truly care to share anything with anymore. I’ve isolated myself. But that’s fine with me.”

I’ve become “that girl.” Damn it.

2008: May

As we approached summer our relationship was moving forward by its actions, but there were some ridiculous administrative details in a holding pattern. We had two elephants in the room:

1) Despite the months of banter on the subject, X couldn’t say he loved me. This on its own isn’t bothersome because as he said during this time period, “Do I treat you like I love you?” Well, yes, but, but, but, I have become everything* for you buddy and it would be nice if you could just admit it.

2) By summer, I started (really) asking why the divorce wasn’t moving forward, as opposed to my prior comment here and there on the matter.

*pause for ” * ” clarification: by everything, I mean, I had become X’s best friend and therapist, constantly performing my armchair psychology routine on the who’s what’s and why’s of the psychosis of his “wife.” I felt like if he still didn’t know whether he was or wasn’t, then he was an idiot. And I also felt that if he did know, which he probably did, then he should just tell me, because what the hell was he holding on to? What’s the victory in holding back your love?

We had a series of fights all related to this lack of progress toward a divorce. At the time, I was keeping a “blog” in good old Microsoft Word, and I wrote, “I’m tired of nurturing a relationship that’s a freakshow on wheels.” I was still a big secret from the “wife” because we couldn’t tell her otherwise she may never divorce him, and I was a secret from the kids because of, see above: “wife.” One of our fights - and I know he forgot all about this until now - was over the stupidest thing.

I went to his place and he basically ripped off my clothes and were totally done in under 10 minutes from me walking in the door. I said, “Damn, you must have needed that.” He said, “Well, I didn’t need it.” We went back and forth over the word “need.” He couldn’t even admit that maybe just once, I satisfy something for him that he needs satisfied - whatever it is. It was part of a bigger picture. I got up, got dressed, walked out, and shut off my phone.

The next day when I turned my phone back on, I saw that he had texted over the night that he didn’t know what happened and he didn’t get it. The mere fact that he was up at 3 a.m. thinking about this should have been clue enough to him, that duh, you’re in love and this shit bothers you so much you can’t sleep, but sometimes you have to spell it out for them. I texted back. (Yes, I know. You want to know why all these important conversations occur over text. I rather prefer it that way. I can get my thoughts out uninterrupted and get a mostly instant response.) Anyway, here’s what I said:

“It is really tiring trying to be with someone who so carefully plans their words so much that they can’t give any remote clue to what they are feeling. The whole need/want thing is symbolic of a bigger problem. The fact that you emotionally have nothing left inside of you coupled with the fact that it looks like this divorce will never happen - it looks like a losing battle from my end. Too many hurdles to overcome. And all you want is for me to just be patient. That’s just insulting. I actually think you enjoy this bullshit. It feeds your ego that she still wants to be married to you. I get to hear on a daily basis how mad she supposedly makes you but you don’t do anything about it. Why do you need me as the motivation to end the marriage with her? You should want to end it on your own, because it’s over, not because I’ve come into the picture. I hate the person I’ve become. Nagging you on a daily basis to stay focused. I shouldn’t have to do that but I’m afraid if I don’t, it will be 2009 with no divorce. This is a colossal mindfuck for me - I will have spent all this time in something that stands no chance because the divorce will never happen, and you will never stop calculating your words so intently that I get nothing back at all.”

There were reasons for all of this divorce delay of course. X had to extract from the marriage without getting hosed. And we didn’t want to end up in court - me included. The truth was we had done nothing wrong. But if it went to a long ugly trial, the simplistic cliche would be painted of “boss fucking secretary” and it would have been a total disaster. The fight that ensued with the above texting happened on the same weekend where X’s father died. Damn if I didn’t just pile on to his stress. And damn if his “wife” didn’t get to go to the funeral.

Here we were - at a point where this man was sharing his heart with me, and because of a stupid miserable technicality that should be on meds and in a straitjacket, I couldn’t be with him at his father’s funeral. I really grew to despise the situation I was in. We repaired it - but we didn’t go long without another fight. Two weeks to be exact.

The “wife” had decided she was taking the kids and moving away. He was freaking out and panicking and I, with my fantabulous bedside manner, said, “This is all your fault. If you had just divorced her when you left to begin with, there would be a custody agreement and she couldn’t do this. All I see is that you have the same conversation over and over where you ask her about a divorce and she blows you off and you back down. I’m fucking sick of it.”

We didn’t talk for three days. He mailed me a goodbye letter and included my house keys. Fucker.

2008: January - April

During December, ex-boss and I got seemingly more involved with each other by way of some really deep conversations, but at the turn of the new year, I think I shook myself awake, literally. I just realized that maybe this wasn’t going to pan out the way I had thought and I should just refocus my life on me and going back to work and getting my life together.

I actually made a deal with myself, I was going to slowly slide out of his life. I was tired of realizing I would come last in a long line containing a wife that might never have the “ex” in front of it, her kids, and their kids, and his work. I stopped responding so quickly and so enthusiastically to his texts. I swear, men can fucking smell it when they are being blown off. I wasn’t playing a game, I was just prioritizing as per my goal of the cross country trip. My priorities were to get a job, be closer to my family, and be a good mommy to Sammy and Thora who suddenly started having annoying and costly health problems. I was also well aware that I was in love. It just didn’t feel like it would ever be requited.

I was laying in bed one night (alone) and leaned over and wrote on my trusty nightstand notepad:

“How is the love for my first love, K, different from what I’m feeling now, which is obviously love? K and I were like two kids whose parents left us home alone with money and keys to the car. It was always fun. It was always a party in our house. Our love grew not because we were so compatible, but because we had this mutual admiration and respect for each other. We really liked the other person - he really wanted to be more “responsible” like I was, and I wished I could be more of the free spirit he was. When we broke up, it shattered my world.  A lot. I had a six year drug run ended in April 2007 when he reappeared in my life, fresh from his stay in rehab. One week after our first conversation would be the last time I would ever touch a drug. My pain was over. He was alive and sober and we were friends and my life could officially go on again. My current growing love now? Totally different. With K, we spent most of our time dissecting other people around us with “issues,” ignoring our own issues, which ultimately destroyed everything. With the ex-boss, we spend 99% of our time discussing and dissecting ourselves.”

It was true. The ex-boss and I spent hours on the phone in Jan/Feb analyzing each other, our thoughts, actions. It was so different than what I had been used to. With the ex-boss and I, it was all about us and how neglected our emotional needs had been. We became each other’s therapist and best friend.

Through several ridiculous events, I believe I helped him realize the manipulation operation in full force by the wife - the tricks she was using to deflect his attention on the divorce, the cries for help, the illnesses, the E.R., the drama, the temper tantrums, the demands that he fix things in what was now (or going to be) her house. During one of these groundbreaking conversations I texted to him: “You are opening up with me more than I am used to. Not that this is a bad thing. I’m just surprised because everything is usually a joke with you.”

In January, he officially became jobless. He was laid off as well, or took the imminent layoff, and then he suddenly had much more time to play with me. We would sit on the phone for hours looking at websites, clothes, sex toys. You name it, we shopped it.

It is around this time that we started speaking daily. In early February, he sent me a text that he wanted to go to Key West. He booked it for early March and we went on our first vacation together. We had a great time.  We finally spent not only a full night with each other, but a whole weekend. When we returned back home, we had turned another corner and hit the speed lane. Now we would split up who went to whose house, but he more often than not left by 5 or 6 a.m.

I saved a text exchange that was a pretty defining moment for us.

Him: Are you in love?
Me: Yes
Him: Hmm
Me: Brave of you to ask. I figured you knew.
Him: No. I didn’t really think too much about it. But I’m learning about how you drop hints. Like putting your toe in the water.
Me: Did I drop hints? I honestly think we both are. And have been for a while. And the extent to which we feel and acknowledge is different. But it’s there.
Him: I could get there but I don’t want to let myself get there. I convince myself I can control it.
Me: I’m not sure if one has a choice in this. You know how you think about me during the day? You know how you say you are closer to me than any of your exes? It’s like that. It’s like where I think I could hold your hand and just be happy to touch you when my past experience with men never ever brought a desire for hand holding. Kissing. Talking on the phone for hours. Most people annoy me. So that’s how I know.
Him: I’m glad I do that to you. You just made me laugh. You write well - even texting.
Me: Just try not to get scared. I have no desire to be with anyone else. Not going anywhere and not getting psycho if you do.
Him: You are very non-threatening. I enjoy you in many ways. You won’t scare me. I don’t scare away easily.

We continued through the spring making progress similar to the text exchange you read above. I admitted I was in love, and he found it difficult to admit. We would joke about it back and forth because he would walk into it all the time. You know when someone is in love with you. You can tell. They say things like, “I woke up thinking about you today,” or ” “You popped into my head today and I realized how happy you make me,” and you just know.

By this time, he had taken on his commenting name on this blog. In case you haven’t figured it out - he is indeed Mr. X.

2007: August - December

We were still laying in bed at 3 a.m. when I rolled over and said, “That’s funny, I’m usually gone by now.” He found that particularly amusing. It was just the truth. I’m not very good about staying around. I like to use the dogs as an excuse to go back to my own bed and sleep like a starfish. Seemed like I couldn’t really do that in this case because I had probably handed him my playbook over the past four years in my stories about other men.

When I walked out the door and got to my car, I texted one of my best friends who is also my real estate agent. I said, “I just fucked your next client. You can thank me later.” I’ll always be somewhat evil. I readily admit this.

I knew I would never make the move to contact him first. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. When I was ramming my car through the throngs of club kids at the intersection of hell and chaos, 18th Street/Connecticut Ave, he called to make sure I got home okay. We texted on and off throughout the rest of the weekend. On Sunday night, we actually, gasp, talked on the phone instead of texting. We were on the phone for 4 hours. We covered a lot of ground.

The second time I went to his house he actually looked at me in the middle of having sex and said, “You still see me as your boss, don’t you?” I was clearly very transparent. Guilty as charged. He said I would have to get past it. I asked if he still saw me as the employee. He said, “Not at all.”

We fell into a habit of seeing each other about once a week. Weekdays would be filled with texting foreplay, weekends would bring the adult activities.  We had really scaled it down to quite an efficient operation. Rarely would I stay over. Never would he come to my place. At one point in time, about a month in, I stayed pretty late - for me. I woke up with major dry eyes and went looking for my eyedrops in my bag. While I was digging around for them, my phone started vibrating. It was 4 a.m. K was calling. He had been driving through town on a trip up north and wanted to see if I was home so he could come by. I told him I wasn’t. The ex-boss walked out and saw me on the phone. It was a pretty uncomfortable moment - not because I couldn’t be honest with him, I could. But because I figured he would think I was just juggling him and others and I didn’t want him to think that. He responded by saying, “Let’s go out to get breakfast.”

I think that looking back at this time period makes me depressed. I don’t know why but knowing him now and how he is, and knowing what these five months were like from the startup until the holidays - it was weird. He was evasive at times, didn’t seem as into me as I was into him, was busy with work and trying to keep the company afloat - which would prove to be an effort in vain, and he was probably still seeing someone else. This time of his seeming apathy was when I would put my job search in New York into full force. I really really wanted to leave. Truth be told, I still do.

By October there were signs that this was moving to a new level. We would sleep intertwined with each other which was all very new for me.  I’m used to relationships where I get up in the middle of the night and sleep on the couch. In fact, I can’t recall one old boyfriend where I didn’t routinely do this. We talked about this place we were getting to one night and he said, “It just feels so good when you walk in the door.”

December is probably where we turned the corner. He hadn’t even see my condo until he came to a tree trimming party in December thrown by my real estate agent bff but even then, he didn’t stay over. All the years of the friendship and now, we were totally in relationship retrograde. It was out of sequence for the way relationships typically go. We had already done the getting-to-know-you and had become friends. Then we weren’t friends. Then we reconnected to rip each other’s clothes off.

Somehow though, all of this was very unsatisfying. I don’t think at the holidays of 2007 I could look back and say that the last five months had been anything other than sex. It was getting there, slowly. Not fast enough for me to be convinced that I wouldn’t have traded the sex back for the prior friendship we had. I’d waited over four years to get to this point, and suddenly, I wanted everything and was all about instant gratification.

Even though we had made some progress in the way of having some pretty deep conversations about each other and us as an “us,” it didn’t seem like it would go far. He was still mired in a separation that didn’t seem to be making any progress toward a divorce and my heart was, is, and probably always will be in New York City. And speaking of New York City, he wanted to go up there for New Years Eve. His now estranged wife and kids were in Europe, so he had no hangups in his way. I had somehow thought we would see more of each other in that timeframe. We didn’t.

He had half assed invited me to New York but then the next thing I knew, he was driving up there alone. Very very weird. Really weird. He told me I should come up, but I refused to drop the dogs last minute on someone for his half-assed invite, and I didn’t go. I don’t chase men. I went to a friend’s house for New Years Eve and at that party, I made a resolution to move to New York in 2008.