Spicy Orange Part 1

He said I was a soft shell crab. He had me figured out. Was he talking about my personality, or how I tasted? My personality, he said. My pussy tasted like a spicy orange. My ego got a big kick out of that. After all, I was recovering from J, who had desired me intensely before we slept together and apparently less so afterwards. My ego got a big deflating kick in the balls out of that.

But I already knew that I was going to break up with the Spicy Orange guy, and nothing he did the rest of the night changed my mind. He groped my tits while I was parallel parking the car. Which also reminds me that he can’t parallel park or drive a stick. We went to see a really great young brass band (who knew Richmond had such a thing?) and he hung on me the whole time. He put his hands in my back pockets. He put his nose in my hair. He was even more clingy in public than in private, which made me suspect that this was as much about marking his territory than about affection and desire.

You could accuse me of being the kind of girl who doesn’t want what she says she wants, because here is a guy who clearly wanted me and appreciated my charms. He was smart and had a career and wanted to spend money on me. He wasn’t all that good-looking, but less attractive men have put my heart in a sling. You could accuse me of only wanting what I can’t have, but you could accuse everyone of that and you’d be little bit right. Cue Amy LaVere’s “Take’em or Leave’em.”

But he was just too fucking much. Clingy like saran wrap and needy like a baby kitten. He gave me flowers on our first date, our second date, and the date after he came in my mouth. That was our fifth and last date. I kept telling him to chill out and back off and he thought he was listening to me but I could still feel the walls closing in every time he touched me. He was an awful, slobbery, suffocating kisser. I sent him an explicit email in which I explained that “it’s the clitoris, stupid,” and he got all hot and bothered by it without actually absorbing anything in the message. Later that spicy orange night, after I took a sleeping pill, he informed me that he’d taken a Viagra (!) and in a groggy act of misguided charity I lubed him up and let him climb on top. After complaining (again) about having to wear a rubber, he pumped away for a bit and then asked if I was close! Jesus Tapdancing Christ!!!

Any man with any sense or experience would have sensed a certain chill the next morning at breakfast, but he just blathered on about whether my parents would like him and how he couldn’t be expected to refrain from groping me when my mother was around.

If the above seems cruel and snarky—I sympathize with him but I don’t feel morally obligated to put up with him. He hadn’t gotten laid for eight years, so you can understand why he might overreact to finally getting some. But at the same time, when an intelligent, employed, reasonably attractive man does not get laid for eight consecutive years in his prime, you can’t really write it off as a cruel accident of fate. He is responsible. Six of those years were the last, sexless years of his marriage. And again, who would stay in such a marriage? It wasn’t a long marriage—eight years in total, six sexless. They didn’t have kids; he wasn’t an old man—the sexless years were late thirties into early forties. Neither party was incapacitated; he had the chance to commit adultery but didn’t take it.

He wanted to have fun. He thought I was fun. It had been a decade or more since he’d been with someone fun! But he was the anti-fun. Any glimmering of real fun terrified him. He was anxious and neurotic and so unsure of himself. He had a cute arts and crafts bungalow filled with arts and crafts furnishings but everything was too careful and unimaginatively just-so, like a bad museum setting.

He was a red-headed WASP who liked to imagine he was the lost Kennedy. He was political true believer, naïve in a way that shouldn’t survive one’s mid-twenties. That naivete extended to sexual politics.

Now he send me pathetic emails about how he misses me and how I made him feel alive again, and how if I gave him another chance he wouldn’t blow it, not understanding that he’s blowing it just be sending such an email.

I sympathize. I’ve been there. I sent similar emails to Mr. M at one point; and while the message was different, I engaged in emotionally needy pestering of Adam and of JPJ after we broke up. I understand the pain and loneliness that motivates him. But when I look back at my behavior with Mr. M and Adam and JPJ, I am only ashamed of myself, not resentful of them for not giving into my emotional blackmail. I’m grateful and amazed that I still have a friendly relationship with Adam; and that Mr. M came back around. I am embarrassed that I was behaving like that in my early thirties, when I should have learned the relevant lessons much earlier. The Spicy Orange guy is now halfway through his forties. I will not feel guilty about telling him to get a grip and back the hell off.