I am sure my boyfriend Paul tries his best. No. I am being nice. Polite. There's really no reason to be. Paul has gotten lazy. The foreplay is predictable. He does what is expected. Humps me. Fingers me. On what is supposed to be perceived as special occasions he even goes down on me.
I wonder if he expects me to be grateful. I wonder if I am being ungrateful. I hear girlfriends complain. For the first time I understand them. Sure, I have had average, even bad sex, but I never stayed in a relationship where the orgasms were lacklustre.
That also means I have slept with more guys then I will admit to, and the times I stayed with a guy, sex has been more important than any other sort of connection. Though I do get a tad emotionally involved, I've gone through these few years wondering if I will ever fall in love.
I fall in lust. That has seemed to be enough. I would even argue it is more than what some of my girlfriends have felt for their boyfriends. Sure they exchange sentiments and words, the guy meets their family and friends, they even move in together. Eventually, however, they start complaining, something is lacking. He never listens. This other one never picks up after himself and always mention how his mother did things better. Another refuses to move in and locks himself twice a day in the bathroom for forty five minute showers. Eventually, after a few months if they are lucky, if not a year or more, the relationship breaks down and they start over again with another one.
I had a couple of friends who did have long time boyfriends. Four years together and still going strong. Sure they complained but they stuck it out. The only way I could explain it to myself was that it had to be love. What this means is that intellectually speaking, I do believe in love. I am sure it exists. To hell if I know how it feels.
If I stay with a guy, through drama and random idiocy, it's because I am entertained, I am having fun, and a large part of it is based on sexual compatibility. I tried a couple of times to look past the lust and settle for nice. Those relationships barely lasted a month. Until Paul.
Paul. My mom's ideal. My dad's logical choice. My sister's hopes for me. Paul who seemed perfect on paper, until it came to sex. He tried. He had his basic technique down. I was needy and he knew which buttons to push. He was efficient.
Really, am I a bitch for complaining? I came. He would make me cum. He rubbed the right place, humped at the right angle, and pinched the right piece of flesh. Was I crazy for feeling restless? We could have intelligent conversations. We used to go out. We used to have fun.
Was it just the recent time apart that had me doubting our compatibility? Where we ever compatible?
We had met at the movies. Jessica had ditched me for a booty call and I decided I still wanted to see the most recent premier. It was a summer afternoon and the theatre was empty. I would have gone to the movies just to escape the summer mugginess. Still warm and damp with sweat from being outside I sat in the centre of the middle row. There was a couple sitting in the back. I did not need to look to guess what they were up to.
I thought about the last time I had done anything naughty in the back of a theatre and who it was with. It had probably been about eight months back. The guys I had been seeing since then had not been in to movies.
I was still warm, even with the strong A/C in the room. I took off my cardigan, leaving me in a thin white camisole and sheer baby pink demi bra. Normally I would have probably been more discreet, but apart from a couple of people sitting in the upper rows and the couple in the back, no one could see my top.
I had dressed with sexy underwear because when I went out with Jess... Well, I never knew where the evening would take me, who we would tease, what crazy things I'd be tempted to do. But alone in a theatre, if it weren't for the heat, I would have not taken off the cardigan.
Safe in the knowledge I would not be flashing any kids as the previews ended and the movie started I settled down to immerse myself in the war story.
The movie was five minutes in when a guy came in and sat two seats away from me. Since he did not sit directly next to me I did not pay him any attention. The first fifteen minutes of a movie are crucial to me. Either the rest will make sense if the movie is good or none of it will. During a particularly wordy exposition scene, where the main character argues with his superiors about the report they received from the battlefield I heard a cough coming from next to me.
The guy was eating nachos and seemed to have swallowed sideways. He tried to be discreet and drank his bottled water to help stop the coughing. Distracted I saw him chug half the bottle and noticed his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. He has a nice profile, I remember thinking to myself and turning back to the movie.
I felt like I missed and important piece of dialogue and frowned at the screen. I then turned around and frowned at the guy. A petty move, I know. I had expected to throw a petty angry frown at a profile but he had turned his head, catching me.
He's actually cute! I surprised myself thinking. I tried to morph my angry frown in to a worried frown as I turned my head down and pretended to look for my purse on the floor. Finding it I started rummaging through it, deciding to settle on a tube of lip gloss that I took out and put to use.
I had forgotten what I was wearing and did not consider that bending down would leave my cleavage in full display and that using the gloss would bring attention to my lips.
To this day, Paul tells me there is little he prefers more than seeing me bent over or with my lips covered in cum.
***
"Honey, babe, sweetheart. We can get together tomorrow but I won't be able to stay too long, I have to drive back to the site to see how the new piece is working out. William, I mean Professor Stark, asked me to finish preparing the ..."
I tuned out. Paul had been talking increasingly about work. I once had admired his passion but lately I felt like he would talk shop to distract me from my frustration. How he felt about the material they used, or whatever new piece they had developed for the prototype using the new 3D printer, and how Professor Stark was a freaking genius, and how he hoped he would be able to secure a more permanent position with his consulting firm when he graduated. All of this added to my annoyance, all I felt was burdened with having to listen to all of this.
How did I end up in this situation? God! I wanted to hang up and call Jess. Tell her that I had changed my mind and to wait for me back at the apartment so we could go to the party together. But that would mean telling her Paul had stood me up, again. I did not want to deal with her "I told you so" eye roll, or worse, see her concern. I could deal with a sassy Jessica, but seeing how worried just made me face the fact that my attempt at what I thought could be a healthy adult relationship had been another failure.
"Vic! You're too young to settle down." She would say in exasperation. "So what if you sister already had her career, wedding and future baby names planned out by the time she was your age. She does not have one adventurous bone in her perfectly shaped but stiff body!" She would add, gesticulating. "Stop trying to be something you're not! You're deceptively wild with a creative streak only rivalled by hallucinating madmen. Fuck. You make me so angry at times." She would finish, more hopeless than mad but I had to give this relationship a try.
Annie, another of my friends would have debates with me about why 'Nice' had become such a derogatory comment, proclaimed there was nothing wrong with being 'Nice'. I would reply that there was nothing good with being 'nice'. Saying someone was nice was like the default setting, it was like saying a human being was a person. It did not say much about anyone and if the best you could say was that they were nice, then you had to just assume the commenter either had nothing to say or did not know the person at all.
As time has gone by, I have begun to accept that I think of Paul as 'Nice'. As a person,I have many more epithets to describe him, but as a boyfriend? If someone had asked me at the beginning what being with Paul was like, I would have probably responded politely with a 'Nice'. Was it because I had nothing else better to say or did I know nothing about relationships?
Lately, however, being with Paul no longer felt 'nice'. It felt like a chore. Five months together, the longer I had been in a relationship. If we made it to the New Year it would be six months. Half a year. Zero point five years. For some reason I wanted that. Not because of Paul, but to prove to myself I could be serious. I could be tame.
By that I do not mean I could be tamed. I do mean tame, that I could act, from my own volition, as a tame individual. That I could control my urges. That I could control my whole being. That I could only be pushed if I wanted to be pushed. That I could only be tied down if I wanted to be tied down. I wanted to demonstrate total self-control. Just because I had wild tendencies did not mean I could not reign in my actions.
Frank laughed when I explained why I had to stop our little game this past summer. That I was seeing someone seriously and wanted to see if I could make it work. He did not push, he did not ask me to reconsider, he only said "Whatever you want babe" and kept drinking his beer.
With the amount of alcohol that guy could ingest, I still wondered how he could have the flat stomach and abs that he had.
God! Thinking of his abs and the way they taste has me distracted in a different manner. How long has this call been going on? Is Paul still talking about the rig, or arm, or whatnot?I wonder what he would say if he knew I was thinking about Frank and his delicious panty dropping body.
Frank had recently gotten a managing position with his father's company. But he still kept in shape. He was still as tanned and had the power to have me begging like a bitch in heat if I was not careful; and I had to be careful, the party was at his apartment.
Knowing Frank's father owned the construction company explained how he could afford such a nice apartment on a construction worker's salary. He had gone to college but decided he would rather spend time working with his hands, and boy did he know how to use them. At 27, he was older than me and Jess by 6 years. He still had the power to make me feel like a silly little girl and going to his party without Paul as an anchor could potentially have me drowning in what many would consider inappropriate behaviour.
Inappropriate behaviour he knew too well how to get me addicted to, encouraging me to indulge two years ago, starting with Sal.
***
