Sex and Plan C

Warning: Federal Law prohibits anyone under age 55 from reading the following post without the signed permission of a parent or guardian.
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Phase 1: Bantery emails
mid-evening, 5 February, ‘Super Tuesday’

Plan C’s introductory emails are full of romantic compliments (‘I am looking at a pretty woman’, ‘Such a pic. Pretty for sure’) but not sexual. His stance is more like that of the courtly lover, elevating the woman, denigrating the man: I can’t believe I did that he wrote when I told him that I had initiated email contact with him back in August 2006 and he had told me he wasn’t interested. Thank you, then, if I did, and I must have, for being forbearing, understanding, and giving me this extra chance.

My responses are jokey but not sexy: ok so I wrote you, you said no; now you’ve written to me. So I say, okay, he writes very well; he’s literate and articulate; and he has seen the error of his ways and now wants to make my acquaintance…

Phase 2: The Kisses
first date, 5:27 - 10:25 pm Sunday 10 February

[taken from 11 February post My date with Plan C: before and after]

Greeting (5:27 pm)
I put out my hand to shake his, but he gives me a kind of loose embrace and some kind of little light friendly but insignificant kiss somewhere on my face. Maybe it was on the lips, but I can’t remember.

An exchange in the restaurant (about 9:30 pm)
PLAN C: I want to see you Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
MIMI: All those dates?! (long pause……) But you haven’t even touched me yet.
PLAN C: I kissed you when we met.
MIMI: That didn’t count.

Good-night (about 10:25 pm)
He kisses me good-night down the block a bit from my building’s awning, as I always request of my dates, so that we aren’t directly under the eyes of my doorman. I like all the doormen, but —

I think his plan was a quick light kiss on the lips. I let it evolve into something more interesting, and he appeared quite surprised and pleased (duh). My thought is, Well, if he’s planning his whole future around me, at the very least we ought to have a real kiss.

Phase 3: Discussion of The Kisses
email, Monday -Tuesday, 11 - 12 February

He sends me a poem about our first date. I write him, i notice you didn’t mention the good-night kiss[es].

And he writes back, I did not dare write of those good-night kisses and I surely fear, no, I know, I did them badly. You took me by surprise. I was eager. I was inept. I remain eager. I can be ept.

I write asking him about the ‘surprise,’ and he responds, The surprise was that they were available, so startling and wondrous, and then the very, very sweet, sweet promise of them. So, an admission. Thought about them all day long and I could spend eternity kissing you because the rest is the rest but kisses are, oh yes they are, sweeter than wine (oh those lyrics) and yours were like honey.

* * *
So you see the kind of person he is: amazingly romantic.

Other quotations from his messages in this period:
Kisses and hugs and soulful glances
and
you make my heart sing.

Phase 4: Plan C turns maidenly
Wednesday 13 through Friday 15 February, mid-day

In email messages, Plan C begins discussing where he will stay over the weekend when we have our two (or three; not yet decided at this point) dates. He may stay with his friend Maureen, but if she’s away, he’ll stay with his younger son Jeremy. More messages. Maureen is away. He’ll take a taxi Friday night late to Jeremy, who lives with his girl friend at the end of Manhattan diagonally opposite from me. He will ‘crash’ on Jeremy’s sofa.

* * *
This is beginning to sound complicated to me. I write Plan C that (like Maureen and Jeremy) I, too, have that exotic piece of furniture, a sofa.

* * *
He responds, I think I have a solution to my overnight problem. If not it will be a hotel. I think it is too soon to be visiting. I don’t want anything wrong to happen. I am so afraid of anything going wrong with us that I would not chance it. I want to court you and woo you and win you and do it as a gentleman and a gentle man to a most exciting, challenging and beautiful woman of independent mind. I took out all those women just looking for and expecting and hoping for maybe a nice, call it acceptable, compantion. I did not think anything like this would come around again.

* * *
‘Hotel’?

* * *

Plan C writes back, Dearest Mimi, I suppose that salutation sounds Victorian and 19th centuryish but it is how I feel and you know that already, and I know how you are feeling. And if we are both, and yes we are, then we have time to make it right and not be late 20th century about that part of life. Better all things in their time and the right time and moment. Better to savor, anticipate, and above all for me to show and give you my feelings and respect, and make that part of us coming together, and not part of that until and if it’s right. Embracing you, Plan C.

And I write back, ummmmmmmmmmmmm — you’re not talking years, are you?!?

* * *

And then, before I get a response, I write again, but i know what you mean: don’t get ahead of ourselves. hope my kidding didn’t bother you. probably it didn’t. anyway, i agree in principle Altogether with what you said [so long as you're not thinking, well, maybe 2009, 2010, etc!].

To which he responds, No your kidding didn’t bother me and I may be being chivalrous but I am with passion. Now enough of that. It is not to be talked of; it is to happen as and when and be a wondrous surprise.

* * *

At noon Friday, I tell RS (Rolly’s shrink, also mine) about this new relationship. All is fine and wonderful, I say, but I’m a little concerned that Plan C is not interested in sex, or not as interested as I am.

RS (age 70…) quotes Hamlet (talking to his mother) to the effect that older people don’t have much sex drive:

You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday in the blood is tame…

I demur, and after I’ve left his office I think of the right responses:
1) Hamlet was obviously wrong, because it seems clear from the play that Gertrude and Claudius do have a significant sex life;
2) Hamlet’s a young man: what does he know??
3) if anyone is an expert on the sex drive of middle-aged men, it’s I: I’ve dated 33 of them.

Phase 5: The Second Date
beginning 7:55 pm Friday 15 February

Plan C prefers not to meet me at the restaurant (a different one from our first-date restaurant) because he wants to ‘call for’ me at my building.

As soon as we are out the door and past the awning, he turns to face me, looks at me, and we begin to kiss. He initiates a series of long, deep kisses. After a little while I get embarrassed, because we’re still awfully near my building, and people I know may be going by on the street.

We smile and go to the restaurant.

At times, over dinner, we hold hands across the table. He mentions that he can stay at Maureen’s even though she isn’t there, and he has left his suitcase there.

* * *
Back home after dinner, not long after arriving in my apartment, we (surprise!) begin making out on the sofa. After a while, Plan C opines that maybe he won’t stay at Maureen’s. I say that’s fine.

Phase 6: Why Plan C was maidenly
very late evening Friday 15 February

I can’t remember how Plan C introduced this subject, but the conversation took place on the sofa in something like the following way:

Plan C suddenly tells me that until right before he left his house to go to New York this afternoon, he was terribly worried about something. A woman with whom he had a fling last November had asked him (during their affair) if he had been ‘tested,’ i.e. tested for AIDS.

Plan C said no.

The woman said he ought to be.

* * *

Although Plan C 1) had not slept with any men (he’s straight, entirely) and 2) had only had complete intercourse with two women since his wife died and 3) neither of them had AIDS or any STDs, and 4) he had no symptoms of illness, nevertheless he immediately became terrified that he might have AIDS.

Not long after that date, sick and tired of the whole dating process, especially internet dating, he took his profile down.

He didn’t put it back up till late January, and then only (he has told me several times) so he could write me (which he did on 5 February).

* * *
As the prospect of meeting me loomed, and then the prospect of meeting me a second time, and with it the prospect of sexual contact of some kind or another, Plan C got more terrified.

He convinced himself that he had AIDS, and that we could never have a relationship. He got more and more terrified. He would have to tell me this terrible news; we could never kiss; we could never have sex; and he would die.

* * *
Plan C made an appointment to be tested. On Thursday 14 February, Valentine’s Day, the day before our second date, he was tested. The doctor told him he would have the results the next day.

* * *

Friday morning he hadn’t heard.

Friday afternoon before leaving home he hadn’t heard.

He called his doctor’s office, and the doctor wasn’t there.

He called his doctor’s house (the doctor is also a friend), and his wife said he was out. Plan C told her he had to speak to her husband.

She heard the anxiety in his voice and called her husband, wherever he was.

* * *

The doctor called him back: Plan C (he said), you’re going to live. The test results were negative.

* * *

Plan C was reborn.

* * *

He went happily off to New York. Now he could kiss me freely.

* * *

After comforting Plan C, because his anxiety even in retelling the already-happily-ended story is so great, and soothing him, I say, So that’s why you were so maidenly!

Plan C is slightly, but only slightly, amused at the word ‘maidenly.’ Even thinking about the scare, ended only eight or nine hours before this conversation, brings back all his fear. But he’s happy now, and I am too.

* * *
And it turns out there’s a second reason, almost as important: he also didn’t want me to feel that he was ‘like all the other men,’ namely, just anxious to get in my pants. He wanted this to be different; he didn’t want anything sexual between us until it was clear that he loved me and was planning to love me forever. He was so afraid of making even one wrong move that he didn’t even consider, say, holding my hand across the table on that first date. He took all his cues from me, he said, letting me (unconscious that my apparent choices were determining the way our sexual connection developed) make all the moves, or rather, letting me be the one to move things forward.

* * *

And it’s also the case that he wanted to differentiate me from ‘all the other women’ he had dated since his wife died.

* * *
He had said I love you in the restaurant (second date), only minutes, I think, after we were seated. That’s the soonest in a relationship any man has ever, ever said that to me. I didn’t return the phrase till sometime the next day, I think. I had planned to take a little longer, but by then it was clear that I did love him, and he was very emotional when he said, that if this relationship didn’t work, if something happened, he would be ––

I have no memory at all of the words he used. I just remember that it became instantly clear to me how intense his emotions were, how vulnerable he felt, and how distraught he would be if I didn’t return his feelings.

And this a man who sometimes negotiates with Donald Trump!

He’s – well, I don’t know how to describe him.

(But I’ll say this: he’s not a real estate man. Just so you know.)

Phase 7: in bed together at last
about midnight Friday 15 February

PLAN C: I really like sex.

MIMI: You do?? Thank God. You had me worried.

Phase 8: Taxes
8 o’clock Sunday morning 17 February

Plan C and I have just gotten up, brushed our teeth, and returned to bed (naked).

The following conversation occurs just as we get under the covers.

PLAN C: I give $1,000.00 every year to [his college] and $500.00 every year to [his late wife’s college]. I also give $500.00 to –

MIMI: You’re telling me your charitable deductions???

PLAN C: I want you to know what kind of person I am. I want you to know my values.

MIMI: This is your idea of foreplay?

PLAN C: [makes a face at me]

MIMI: Maybe when we get even more intimate I’ll tell you my professional deductions.

PLAN C: [starts laughing uncontrollably]

* * *

Later that day, Plan C and I are walking between Madison and Fifth with our arms around each other.

I turn to him and whisper seductively, ‘You know what I’m going to do to you in the bedroom when we get home?’

PLAN C: [with interest]: What?

MIMI [still in seductive voice]: I’m going to let you look at my Form 1040.

PLAN C: [collapses on sidewalk laughing]

* * *

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