I'm sitting here at the computer, wondering if it's wrong for me to feel as dirty as I do over something that seems so relatively mundane...
So, there's this guy...
Yeah, REALLY crappy way to begin an entry about feeling dirty. I know. Whatever. Let's move on.
So, there's this guy I used to live with when I lived in the dorms at Evergreen. He lived down the hall from Louise and I, and occasionally visited our room to say hello and so forth. This guy was, to say the least, eccentric. He believed in dragons, and worshipped anything and everything associated with the SCA, and thought of himself as some sort of fantasy novel hero. I liked him because he wasn't normal. By ANY stretch of the imagination. Admittedly, he was irritating, and I was irritated by him just as much as Louise was. But he was unique and that made it worth it to hang out with him occasionally.
Well, I made the mistake of sleeping with him a time or two. I think it was just once, but I'm not really sure anymore. In any case, it was definitely a mistake. We were friends -- kind of -- and that should have been absolutely it.
This guy eventually moved out of town, and we didn't talk much anymore -- not because of any hard feelings, because to my knowledge there weren't any... We just sort of drifted apart. We've had exactly one telephone conversation in the past two years, and we didn't have anything to talk about -- like, not anything at ALL. We've exchanged a few emails, but those, also, have been fairly boring. There just hasn't been anything to talk about.
I got an email about two weeks ago from him, apparently just saying hello and checking to see if I'm still breathing. Except... when I asked him what he'd been doing, what kinds of activities he'd been up to, he replied that he dated a lot, and "did more than dating" when he could.
Um... okay. Great. So, the guy who used to live down the hall from me, whom I haven't seen in years, is emailing me to tell me he's getting laid. Well, yippee, I'm thrilled for him.
A couple of nights ago, I get an email detailing some sort of scratch-mark fight he'd had, involving two girls he liked. One girl was upset that she'd drawn blood, but he had discovered he'd really liked it. And one of the girls has told him that she's very interested in coming over to his house and taking baths with him.
Okay, what the fuck?
I haven't talked to this kid in freaking YEARS. Furthermore, any romantic or sexual interest I had in him was minimal to begin with, and has LONG since faded into oblivion. One would THINK that these facts would preclude messages about one's newfound kinks and the specifics of one's exploits. Right? Not to mention, of course, that I TOLD him I have a boyfriend. No, not just that I have a boyfriend, but that I found Neil, and that we're together now, and it's wonderful... This kid ought to remember well enough to know exactly how important Neil is, and always has been, to me. The night I MET this dude, I was talking about Neil for like, two hours or something.
If I were at a party, and ran into an old acquaintance, with whom I hadn't communicated in two years, I WOULD NOT automatically start talking about scratch marks and bathing with others. Particularly not if I was well aware that the old acquaintance was deliriously happy in his or her relationship.
Now, circumstances might be different if, say, I were talking to a very close friend. If Aaron, for example, emailed me filthy details of kinks and exploits (and knowing Aaron, I know they'd be filthy...), I'd probably grin and slap him five and say, "way to go." But actually, upon reflection, Aaron is probably the ONLY exception to that rule. I'm just NOT comfortable hearing about other people getting it on. It tends to provoke mental images, and I don't WANT to imagine people having sex who aren't Neil and myself. It feels kind of dirty. It feels like touching sticky stairway bannisters at a mall at Christmastime. I long ago managed to flip a switch in my brain with regards to Aaron, and haven't actively pictured much of ANYTHING he's said to me in the past five years or so. But like I said, Aaron is an exception.
It just seems kinda sick for somebody who's nearly a stranger to be talking about this kind of thing with me. No, actually, I think I'd be MORE comfortable if he were a stranger. As it is, I have actually been intimate enough with this dude to be able to actually imagine scratch-fights and co-bathing, with, I suppose, some amount of accuracy. And I don't WANT to imagine those things. I don't even want to imagine the guy with his shirt off, for gahd's sake. At the MOST, I want to imagine him having a great life with his job and his hobbies and his friends.
What the hell would possess him to send me messages like this, anyway? An attempted provocation to jealousy? Is he bragging about it, teenaged-boy fashion, in order to impress me with his prowess? Is he stupid enough to think it's just friendly conversation?
I emailed him back and told him I didn't want to hear it. I told him that neither one of us is sixteen and that, hence, it's not my idea of fun to brag. Besides, I told him, I've heard it all an done most of it, and stories about such things don't tend to impress me much anyway.
As I've said before in this journal, it makes me feel kind of sick to think of being unfaithful to Neil. Most of the time, I have problems making physical contact with anybody else. As in, hugging friends is difficult sometimes. I don't think about bedding down with other people. I don't think about touching other people. I don't imagine other people naked. My heart belongs to Neil, and my body belongs to Neil, insofar as he's able to share it with the baby. And that's IT. And it seems horribly invasive to me for someone else to project sexual images into my head, for any reason. Obviously, if somebody's giving details about these things, it DOES provoke mental images -- I think that's a natural phenomenon common to everybody. Why would somebody want to do that to me? It's as if I ran into this kid from my past and he decided to strip naked in front of me. THAT is exactly what it feels like, and it's not a nice, friendly feeling.
Whatever.
Stupid schmuck.
I don't think I'm going to be emailing him back anymore. We weren't great friends to begin with. We weren't good lovers at all. We had nothing to say to each other after we didn't live in the same town. There's no fucking reason for him to be any part of my life, however minute. My only regret is that he's one of the only people lately from whom I've gotten ANY email, and my inbox is gonna be kind of lonely. But I'd rather have a lonely inbox than an inbox crammed with pictures -- mental or otherwise -- of scratch-marks and prancy naked women soaping up a guy I used to know a few years back.
I took a bath shortly after I read his last email to me. The email was an apology, but it doesn't sound like an apology. It sounded defensive and bitchy, like I'm over-reacting by asking him not to talk about this kind of shit with me.
I felt unclean even reading that. A bath was necessary.
I am almost 27 weeks pregnant now. My belly still isn't huge, which disappoints me a little bit, but it's big and round enough so that passers-by can tell I'm pregnant. My belly-button is doing this weird almost-sticking-out thing. The skin sort of spirals; my doctor said that's because the blood vessels or something in the umbilical cord twist like that, and so belly-buttons are kind of spirally if you have an opportunity to see them turned kind of inside out. Weird.
The baby doesn't move around much when I take baths or showers. I think they put her to sleep. When she sleeps for long, I start to worry a little bit, and try to provoke her into kicking me. I have several little games that seem to work well. One of them is the Jurassic Park game. In that one, I place a full cup of tea or other liquid on my belly, holding it as I usually would. She always seems to know when I'm doing this, and kicks directly under the mug, making the tea ripple. It's kinda like that scene in Jurassic Park when the T. Rex is sneaking up on the kids, and they see the ripples in the water cups from the footsteps of the dinosaur. Another game is the Kick Milo-the-Buzzing-Turtle game. Milo-the-Buzzing-Turtle is a stuffed turtle with a pull-string on his backside; if somebody pulls the string, Milo vibrates. Milo is definitely one of the more absurd toys I have ever seen in my life. I sometimes pull the string and place Milo on my belly. The baby seems to find endless amusement in trying to kick the shit out of Milo-the-Buzzing-Turtle. I wonder what on earth she thinks Milo really is... I suspect she's awfully curious about the whole matter. I wouldn't blame her.
Her favorite game, though, is to kick Neil. Whenever I hug Neil, she kicks me. Whenever he touches my belly, she kicks harder. I've been slightly nervous that one of these times, she's going to kick a hole through my abdomen. The two of them are excellent playmates. Already. Even when the two of us are just talking, and not touching in the least, she seems to hear him. It seems to delight her. This has not been the case with anybody else. She loves Neil. Even more than my tea mugs and Milo-the-Buzzing-Turtle. At times, I'm a teensy bit jealous -- but just a teensy bit. The vast majority of me is freaking ecstatic that the two of them appear to have bonded before she's even born.
It's strange to look at my own body in the bathtub and realize that it suddenly doesn't look much like the body I've been getting used to over the past 24 years. It feels funny, too. It's nearly impossible to shave the hair on my ankles, and certainly not possible to do so with any amount of grace. Bending over is less and less pleasurable; I have to bend with my knees most of the time now, instead of bending at my back. This makes the simplest of household tasks slightly more difficult. If I drop a fork on the floor, it's a pain in the ass to pick it up. If I'm putting clean dishes away, it's a pain in the ass to stoop down to the pan cupboard. And needless to say, I'm becoming more and more irked at the amount of effort it takes to lace up my new fourteen-eyelet boots. Come November, I think I'll just wear my sandals, cold rain be damned.
I'm getting kicked as I type.
It's really very funny and cute.
It makes me forget most of the unpleasantness of the world.
~Helena*