Something More

Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.

― Hunter S. Thompson

The first magic trick I ever learned was how to be invisible. It feels safe when nobody sees me. Which isn’t to say that I can actually turn myself invisible, so much as just irrelevant. Nothing to see here folks, move along.

I’m not an overtly sexy person. I’ve never been beautiful and years of working as a caregiver have had a somewhat neutering influence on how I present myself to the world. I reckon most people won’t be interested in me, and I like that just fine. I don’t want to be sexualized by random people. 

Which isn’t to say I have no sexuality. Of course, I do. I just want to feel connected and safe before I let anyone see it. In the context of a loving relationship, I am both eager and enthusiastic. After all, I want to do all I can to look out for my partner’s well-being, and studies show that sex is good for blood pressure and stuff. Also, though, it’s fun.

I did my best to keep it sexy, even hundreds of miles apart. It was awkward. I’m awkward. I earnestly Googled and made a study of “how to talk dirty.” Even with so much to learn, it was always easier to tell him I wanted him than to tell him I loved him.

Long-distance requires a certain creativity. Being with each other, though, that was always easy. When we were together, it was something that just fit, like hand in glove, like neck in guillotine. We nearly killed each other, unable to keep our hands off of one another on a hot summer afternoon. Decidedly not the worst way to get heat stroke.

Sex was never the point of our relationship, but it was a delicious bonus. Foreplay is very simple for me. Make me think, make me laugh, make me feel, and I am yours. Well, if I’m yours already, anyway. The older I get, the more walls I seem to put up between myself and intimacy, which is to say, between myself and vulnerability, which is to say, between myself and possibly being hurt. Earning my trust is a very slow process. People scare me. The Work Bestie was persistent enough to get my walls down. Most of the time anyway.

Even with a declaration of monogamy and years of friendship and something more than flirting between us, I was always nervous at first. You’d think I was a traditional bride on her wedding night, so full of jitters but also eagerness. The Work Bestie would get this look… devouring, like a lion looks at a gazelle, like fire looks at golden hills in summer. It was always a blurry distinction between my excitement and my nervousness, all trembling and overrun with butterflies.

Worse than the first nights were our last days. I could at least fake a jaded calm on those first nights, but nothing could hide my desperation on our last days. Whenever we’d say goodbye, I would worry that it was the last time. I would start grieving while he was still with me, and I hated it. Everything in between the hello of the first nights and the goodbye of the last days, though, was magical. 

The second night of my first stay at his place in San Diego was kinda perfect. I was staying with him for a work-related event for six nights. Six nights is a long time for a couple that usually only gets a few weekends here and there in person. Six nights is a long time in that middle place where it’s not the first night or the last day. That second night, over the jitters, but nowhere near thinking about goodbye, not yet worn down by the long days ahead, it doesn’t get better than that.

We were working long, intense days while I was there. He was instructing, on all day. I was trying to engage in the workshop while still fulfilling the hours of admin work that I’m actually paid for, and trying to be a good liaison between our nonprofit and the one we were partnered with for this event, and taking notes about how to do it even better next time. By the end of each day, we were both exhausted. We weren’t too tired to enjoy each other, though.

One night, we ran out of gas on the drive back to his place. His truck had a broken gas gauge, and as mentioned above, our work days were very long. My heart started pounding like it was trying to fight its way out of my chest. When I was married, something like that would have thrown my ex-husband into a tantrum. At best, he would have yelled at me for not reminding him to get gas and somehow everything else that went wrong in the upcoming weeks would be because I’d screwed this up. I was terrified.

The Work Bestie had me steer his big ol’ truck, making a right turn, with no power steering, from the left turn lane while he pushed to a safe, well-lit place to park. This would have been nerve-wracking enough for me, feeling responsible for the vehicle he commutes with, without the conditioned panic from years of living with someone who lashed out at me whenever things went wrong. The Work Bestie is nothing like my ex-husband.

We parked the truck and ate our drive-thru dinner while it was still hot as if this was just a thing that happened and not at all the end of life as we know it. Then we went to the gas station and returned with enough gas to get the truck to the pump. 

In the end, running out of gas with the Work Bestie was wonderful. Not because I like running out of gas, but because I like knowing that when everything else goes wrong, we are still good to, and with, each other. The Work Bestie always had a knack for making bad times good and good times better. 

Because he was good to me, I trusted him. Because I trusted him, he had me down for whatever. I’m enough of a dancer to know how to follow my partner’s lead, to match beat for beat. I could be every bit as devouring as he was.

On my last day in San Diego, he had to go to his day job, and I had to pack nearly everything from the workshop into the U-Haul by myself. It was a long day, but I wasn’t feeling my usual, it’s-almost-over, melancholy. We had talked about me coming down again in the summer. If I flew out of San Diego to and from Portugal, I could stay with him for short visits at both ends. I was too busy daydreaming about these summer reunions to be sad about the January visit ending. 2022 was shaping up to be the best year ever.

After his regular work day, he returned, and we finished up the cleanup before hitting the road for a long drive to our own campus to return the building supplies. We talked, schemed, and planned how we would do even better next time. We talked about me coming down more, about him coming up more. I was already looking forward to my next visit with him instead of being sad that this visit was almost over. Between his recent threats of marriage, his declaration of monogamy, and finally this making of personal plans in advance, I found my insecurity was dissolving completely. 

The Work Bestie is a weird kind of stubborn. Sometimes, I can feel it click like a switch inside him, like the tripping of a circuit breaker, then he is digging in his heels, and I have to somehow get it through his thick skull that we’re both on the same team. Sometimes though, if you put the right kind of challenge in front of him, that same fool stubbornness can accomplish anything. 

I’ve never seen a full U-Haul unloaded so quickly. My job was just to time him. He did all the work. And then, with the same urgency, he took me to bed. Somehow, in the excitement of it all, we fell out of bed together. We laughed and finished on the relative safety of the bedroom floor. It had been a long visit, but I guess he wasn’t sick of me yet. 

The next morning on the long drive from our work campus to the San Diego airport, we talked and talked and talked. He makes me think. He makes me laugh. He makes my brain shut off completely until I forget how language works. He makes me fall out of bed. He makes me fall completely in love with him. It was still dark when we started driving toward my morning flight, but I never noticed the sun rising. I was so completely enchanted by the amazing man sitting next to me.

Chart my secret places

Navigate my shores

Map the ocean’s traces

Lick them from my pores

Dry me with delusion and desire

Ride me like a wave

Cover me in spray

Promise you will stay

Janis Ian
Ride Me Like a Wave