In the interest of fairness, because I have been getting a little more David Sedaris than I'm strictly OK with. In the words of Guildenstern, "There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said- no. But somehow we missed it." So, since I missed that moment, and I'm forced to admit that things happened as they happened and I didn't think most of them weren't actually all that bad until I opened my eyes to look around, some good things.
This one is mixed, because he actually hated my singing voice, but he never complained when we both sang along to duets at full voice in the car. This is the only consistently unusual thing that was permitted, and since I secretly sing everywhere, I liked having the chance.
I liked the way he looked in black. Which was fortunate, as that was nearly half his wardrobe.
While I think now that he was both initially surprised and then a little too appreciative that I'd never done anything with anyone else, he actually did a lot of that right. He checked in, he asked. I could say no, things could stop. What I regret now was that I was in such a hurry to try everything that I didn't notice I wasn't getting much of an opportunity to backtrack until much later, when we got to the end of his list of interests.
The same was true the first time we had sex. He had done research. He really didn't want to hurt me. We tried, and we did several things partly right, but I didn't know enough about my own body at that point to realise that it was going to take quite a bit to ensure I wasn't hurt. Years later, when some of that initial pain kept recurring, I worked out what the problem was. This is really, really too much information, but, the downstairs equivalent of a split lip hurts. A lot. And there are a couple things to be done about it (1.more often, 2. greater time and attention paid) but only once you realise that it's not *you.*
I said I was going to say good things. All of the good things have these nasty other sides to them now. Omit them, and the good things are still good, but, I can't see them without the others.
Because the next one is exactly that. Due to his particular history, he happened to have a wealth of knowledge about sex shops, including the local laws regarding video booths. I've been in three sex shops, all of them Romantix brand. I dislike two things about the porn stores I've been to- the smell, and the fact that your average Spencer's gifts is a classier establishment. And, really, those two things are related. It's been years, though. Now that there's a smoking ban, I'm not sure whether the smell would've gotten better or worse, because that seemed to be the root of it, cigarette smoke and cum.
It was the summer I worked at summer camp and he worked at summer stock about two hours away. When you live in a canvas tent surrounded by tents full of children you can't use your cell phone. And this was in the days before data plans and wifi, so the single computer with Internet means that you feasibly *can* get emailed at the camp address, but those messages will be printed off and put in your mailbox. We'd been together a year. Our downtime corresponded exactly twice all summer. The second time, it was pouring rain, so rather than drive down empty gravel roads looking for a dead end, he drove to the college town where the camp staff would usually go on our nights off.
Instead of going to the movie theatre, we pulled in to the porn store. He'd explained before that they had booths in the back that were supposed to be for watching videos, and were supposed to be single occupant, but because they had doors, they were useful for other purposes. My "night off" was six hours long and a hotel not being worth the trouble, it was not difficult to convince me.
That was a little bit surreal. Again, I don't think I'm actually an exhibitionist, because it wasn't about being seen -doors- which also meant it wasn't quite public; it was a very OK kind of different. But it never, ever happened again. After that, I could never get him beyond our bed. I don't know why. Later on, I asked, several times, "We have an *entire house* Why can't we try something different?" He didn't know, which means he knew and didn't want to tell me. Sometimes I think that anything I made it clear that I really enjoyed never happened again.
Ultimately, I think that's the total benefit, that because he was mostly vaguely ashamed of his own sexuality and experience, my exposure to it wasn't, "hey this is what I'm in to, are you in to it, too?" which would have been the big bundle of red flags that would have sent me running. Instead it was piece by piece, this picture of all of what he was, so I had time between them to understand, process and occasionally justify every single one. There was probably a better way to learn all of that, but this is what I've got, when I look back, the knowledge that he's going to remain a big part of my sexuality because he was such a big part of its development, and if I can't remember that not all of it was not entirely bad, I'm going to carry him around a lot longer than I want to. At least until I get some replacements in.
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