from lovers to friends, reluctantly

Sleeping on the sofa
Sunday 24 August, 5:30 p.m.

His shirt is ‘salmon’-pink, as he calls it; his face is also pink; the pillow-case is light blue, the quilt I’ve thrown over him is a pale mint-green; the living-room sofa is red. That’s the symphony of color before me as I watch Plan C napping.

But my eyes are mostly focused on his face, his face without glasses. I’m reminded of what he looks like during sex, when (surprise!) he also isn’t wearing his glasses. I like watching him sleep. I think of his mother and wonder what she would feel if she could see her 66-year-old son napping. He seems to be comfortable, and although he has asked me to wake him up in half an hour, I let him sleep for an hour.

This is the first time I’ve seen him since our talk three weeks ago to the day, when I told him, in so many words, that ‘this isn’t working,’ and he said, with Plan-C-esque passion, ‘Don’t write in the blog that it’s over!’ – as if writing those words would have ended things more definitively.

He’s concerned about what words we use. He won’t allow words like ‘over’ or ‘break-up.’ Several times he says, ‘It’s not ending: we’re friends now.’ In a long phone conversation last week, he asked, so poignantly, ‘Well, if we’re not going to be dating – (a long pause) – will you be my friend?’

Boy if that didn’t start the tears welling up in my eyes.

‘Of course!’ I said. ‘I already am your friend. We are friends.’

* * *
He came to visit me this Sunday, to return some things of mine that were still in his house, and to hear what more I had to say. I had told him I had some interesting things to tell him about himself. If they’re unpleasant, he wrote me, I probably should hear them, but I don’t want to.

They’re not unpleasant, I wrote him; more like ‘tough love.’

He arrived just before 2, and he was very, very tired. He didn’t know why. Perhaps, he hazarded, he hadn’t gotten enough sleep – often a cause of fatigue, at least as those not medically trained understand things. Was his lack of sleep due to anxiety about me, about us? Was it because his cat Polly woke him up early for breakfast? Was it because he had hurt his arm trying a new golf swing?

We talked for a couple of hours, snuggling closely on the sofa, kissing often. We went out to get food for Plan C, an enormous corned-beef sandwich. It gave him just enough energy to move from the table to the sofa for a nap. I went upstairs to get the quilt I covered him with; I love covering someone, anyone – a child, a lover, my great-aunt, a friend – with a quilt. And this quilt is made of a nice silky fabric, very smooth and comfortable.

exchange of goods

I had already mailed Plan C’s stuff back to him two weeks ago, in a 16.5 lb. box that hasn’t yet arrived at his house.

I’ll be very upset if it never arrives. Very upset. Plan C keeps saying that it doesn’t matter, but it contains things that matter to me, like his old striped bathrobe that I took a wonderful picture of him in, and the chocolate bars remaining from the birthday present I gave him, as well as a pair of khakis (so Plan C), a checked shirt, two pairs of shoes, and some other little things. Why would the Post Office screw this up? Idiots.
[update: The box, mailed Monday 11 August from Manhattan, arrived at Plan C's house (2.5 hours away) today, Wednesday 27 August. Whew!]

* * *

Plan C brought a suitcase with a few things of mine left at his house, the wonderful fluffy white bathrobe he gave me, and an old pair of clogs I used as slippers.

He also brought some foods he had (long ago) bought just for me, that there was no point in leaving in his house (two bags of salted Quaker ricecakes), and so I gave him a jar of artichoke hearts I’d gotten for him that was in my refrigerator.

* * *
As he took them out of the suitcase and put them on the table, he said, I thought there might still be a chance, when I came today, that you would change your mind.

talking on the sofa

Of course we didn’t get into the heavy stuff right away, but after a while of snuggling, kissing, and small talk, he was impatient to know what I wanted to say. The gist of what I wanted to tell him was what I wrote in the Mr. Havisham post, that I thought he needed to stabilize his feelings about his late wife, W, before he could have a good relationship with a new woman. After I had laid out the main argument, he didn’t want to hear much more of what I had to say. He felt that he had now, finally, accepted W’s death, or at least was much farther along than he had been when we met. He wasn’t going to make the mistake again of expecting another woman to be her reincarnation. All that was history, he thought. I didn’t think so, but I didn’t press the subject because he very much didn’t want to talk about it.

* * *

In fact, Plan C was much more focused on me: he said, several times, ‘I know I’ll never find another you,’ invoking the old song only because that was what he wanted to say. He talked about scanning the women on jdate and yahoo personals and a few others he’d discovered, and wondering as he looked at them, Will any of these women be as funny as Mimi? Will they enjoy sex as much as she does, or will they (this was his phrase exactly, not an idea I ever would have thought of) just do it out of duty?

* * *
Hah! I thought: I’ll be the ‘baggage’ when he meets these new women. I’ll be the one who gets in the way of the new relationship.

* * *
And then I added (I think this is what I said, or something like it), And will they be able to do what I do to you with my tongue?

And wow! did that embarrass Plan C. He smiled a very embarrassed smile and rolled his eyes the way he often does, so that he looks like the late Diana, Princess of Wales, who had that same shy, coy way of looking off to the left….

Of course I was really amused that he was embarrassed: he loved and praised my blow-jobs, but he was uncomfortable hearing them mentioned out of context, i.e. the context of bed.

* * *
And then we had a brief discussion about – I guess this is the best way to put it – the relation between blow-jobs and ethnicity, or rather religious background.

This subject came up when I was suggesting Plan C consider putting his profile on match.com, and he began wondering about non-Jewish women, and about what ways they might be different: would they be more or less interested in sex than Jewish women? And how it came up I can’t remember, but the issue of what kind of women (Jewish? Protestant? Catholic?) gave bjs came up in our conversation.

I said I wasn’t used to thinking of that subject according to demographic categories, and neither of us had any relevant information…but I guess Plan C was just mulling over his losses.

* * *

I said something else (besides the tongue comment, but I can’t remember what it was) that embarrassed and surprised him, and again his embarrassment amused and surprised me. In many ways Plan C is very worldly: he was in the army in a part of the world where sex was easily available, and he has lots and lots of experience in his own country – and yet when I casually refer to something sexual in a very graphic, precise way, he appears jolted.

Other women don’t talk about sex this easily and openly? I asked, and he said, No way.

I’m sure there are lots who do, I said, thinking of all the sex-bloggers I read, to wit, Suzanne Portnoy.. Who are these women Plan C has slept with who are too shy to allude to sex in the middle of an ordinary conversation?

It’s not that he doesn’t like women to talk about sex; he loves to hear dirty-talk. But interjected into the middle of an otherwise analytic or nostalgic conversation, between two fully-clothed people sitting on a sofa, sex talk surprises and almost shocks Plan C. I call him ‘maidenly’ sometimes.

* * *
And once when we were kissing, Sunday afternoon, and I began deepening the kisses, with more tongue, he said, ‘We can’t kiss like that!’

!!!

* * *
I guess he meant, because officially we’re not dating any more, we have to kiss just with the lips?

That ‘rule’ struck me funny. After all, we were snuggling pretty close.

So I said, ‘We can until you go out the door.’

But we didn’t, because it seemed to bother him.

* * *

He seemed so sad about the ‘change’ in our relationship (remember, I’m not allowed to use words like ‘over’ or ‘break-up’), that I used something I had in reserve. I told him that if we stayed together, he’d soon see that things wouldn’t work: first of all, we’d have to decide where we wanted to meet next weekend, and neither of us would want to commute. I’d come here, he said, but not with much energy. And also, I said, because of the provisional nature of our relationship over the summer, I was detached and didn’t complain about anything he did, but if we got back together, I would complain when I didn’t like something, and then we’d fight, and we wouldn’t be so happy, and we’d probably break up anyway.

I told him one of the things I would have protested against, namely the way he was unpleasant and yelled ‘NO!’ when, at the wedding, three weeks ago, I resisted dancing when no one else was.

* * *

Plan C said, ‘I’m a jerk.’

I should have known that would make him feel bad, but I did want to give him a realistic sense of what our relationship would be like – hugely imperfect – if it continued.

You’re not a jerk, I told him, but you’re at the mercy of your impulses.

‘I’m a jerk,’ he repeated.

* * *
He was (as I’ve always thought) adorable-looking, handsome; I told him he was a ‘walking temptation’ (I must have been thinking of what Miss Prism says of Canon Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest, that a single man is ‘a permanent public temptation’). He smiled and made his coy Diana-face, but didn’t seem convinced that he would therefore soon find another woman he could love.

I reminded him of advice he had mentioned once over the summer, advice I intended to take, not to sleep with a man too early in the relationship. He assured me that what I did with him was fine (second date), because ‘there was such a strong attraction,’ and when I said, So you don’t think I’m a slut, then? he winced at the word and the thought. Of course he didn’t think that: he was in love with me.

So I’ll wait till the ninth or tenth date, I said, or until the man has pledged eternal devotion.

Goodnight on the street is fine for the first date, he asserted, and a goodnight kiss at your door for the second date.

I wouldn’t do that, I said; the doorman would see. The kiss goodnight will be on the corner out there.

And I told him to change his profile name and to take out a few awkward sentences he had added.

He thought it odd that we were sitting there, close and affectionately together, touching one another, still obviously attracted and full of warmth for one another, and yet we were giving one another advice about dating behavior, profiles, and internet dating sites.

He shook his head at the incongruity of it.

reluctantly

And he said so many nice things….at last….

* * *

About two weeks ago, he wrote over email,

Have you as I asked you to do, thought all this over and reached any different conclusion? Oh, and if you have seen me looking around J-date that has been to fill time, out of curiosity and to understand comparisons. In any comparison, you are totally Mimi, wholly unique and terrific. None of which is said to impress you or appeal to the better angels of your nature, but only to say what it is to say.

At any rate it seemed to me worth asking one more time, although a package made up of large shoes, a chocolate bar and a half, or so, and an old bathrobe sounds definitive. Well, tell me what you are thinking about this, or tell me not as you choose and we can have that awful word, closure, or we can have reopenture.

Love,
Plan C
***************
(He writes well, doesn’t he?)

* * *

And I wrote back,

i don’t know what i think, except to repeat things i’ve said — i want / need a man who kisses me goodnight and who says ‘i love you’ and who signs his emails love. is that you? i’m not sure, but experience — experience of you — tells me it probably isn’t. … i don’t think you want to become the kind of man that i want.

and that’s not even to mention the miles betw our zipcodes: “will not relocate.”

* * *
And among other things, he wrote back,

You became and remain a large part of/in my life and I do miss you.

And I thought to myself, That’s what I never heard from Performer and needed to hear…

But never would, of course, because he didn’t feel it.

* * *
In our post-nap conversation, he said over and over that he would ‘be there for me,’ that he would help me with anything if I needed help, that he would be my friend. He said I love you a few times

* * *
So as, over a three-week period, I slowly and sadly took my leave of Plan C, at least my leave of him as a lover, he became the kind of man I wanted, in a way, to some extent. He said ‘I love you’ often, and he signed some of his emails ‘love.’ And over and over this past Sunday he told me he would ‘never find’ another me etc.

And when he arrived home, around 10 p.m., he wrote, Back in [his town]. Guess I never really left. Love you.

* * *

My mother used to say, quoting I don’t think she knew what, Blessings brighten as they take their leave.

I googled the phrase and found the source, from a poem called ‘Night Thoughts’ by Edward Young:

Like birds, whose beauties languish, half conceal’d,
Till, mounted on the wing, their glossy plumes,
Expanded shine with azure, green, and gold,
How blessings brighten as they take their flight!

I’ve had to remind myself that, from Plan C’s point of view, I’m like those birds, all my wonderful qualities, my ‘blessings,’ becoming apparent to him only because I’m ‘taking my flight.’ Is it that he didn’t realize my value – or how much he loved me – before, and in fact it simply took this long for it to become apparent, or did the leaving cause him to say all those things?

* * *
Fortunately I’ve had the good sense to recognize that it was the latter case. He was of course looking quite fetching and adorable and handsome (not that he was trying to; he was sad and exhausted), and it was sweet to hear all this stuff, but my head is on straight. I could easily imagine what our relationship would turn into two or three weekends down the road. He’s a ‘handful,’ as I told him then and three weeks ago. We’d be arguing: I’d be complaining about his behavior and he’d be apologizing.

* * *
I mentioned, when he asked me to tell him yet again why I thought things wouldn’t work between us, that I didn’t want to be apologized to all the time. And of course I mentioned the distance between our houses. There were a few other reasons I could have mentioned but didn’t, because I had no desire to destroy his ego or attack him: that I wasn’t entirely convinced of his character: he wasn’t in some respects 100% trustworthy; his public behavior would become burdensome to me, things like all the complaining he did at that wedding in July; he would not always be as sweet and loving and full of praise as he was now; and he was often more interested in golf (in the morning) or drinking (late at night) than he was in me.

* * *

I could say, our parting was sad, but definitive.

But Plan C would not want me to call it a ‘parting.’

Our romance changed to a friendship, and we were both sad, because the connection between us still feels strong; but because we want to be friends, the loss is less.

Joe Biden

Biden is the same age as Plan C; Mrs. B. is four years younger than I. As I watched them at the convention last night get up from their chairs and stand with their arms around one another, I was admiring, moved, and hopeful.

That’s what I want.

[picture from wednesday]
* * *

Explore posts in the same categories: Plan C, bodies, first-dates, jdate, match.com, new guys, the taxonomy of dating, years and years of sexual experience