(Cole):

     So, I decided to take Marge’s advice and take a little break from the Rapist.  She is right, actions speak louder than words, so I’m giving him an acrid little taste of missing me.  She talked me out of thinking of it as a game, as using sex as a weapon, because it really isn’t the same, or as she so eloquently worded it:  

“It is not using sex as a weapon. Sex as a weapon, women don't really want to have sex. They don't want to be intimate with the other person. You are using YOU as a weapon. He gets NONE of you.

I have told you and YOU KNOW I AM RIGHT, as long as he has ANY of you... your humor, your battles, his tongue up your ass, makes you orgasm just by looking at you, whatever the fuck... HE OWNS YOU!”

     The woman can be very persuasive!  And in the long ranting email she sent me in response to the first draft of my last post, she brought up several points that I just couldn’t argue with.  Rapist and I have spoken several times about how lovely it would be to “go public”, but that’s all we do.  Talk.  I don’t want to talk about it anymore, I just want to do it, but in order to succeed, I can’t exactly tell him what I’m doing, or he’ll just wait out the thirty excruciating days and on day 31 everything will go back to normal.  Well I am not a big fan of anything “normal”, and I am no longer a big fan of what our year-and-a-half relationship has turned into.  So I told him that I wouldn’t speak to him again until he is ready to take our stock public.  The last time I spoke to him was Thursday October tenth, and I’m still going strong, which is somewhat surprising to me.

     In the entire time we have been seeing each other, the longest we have ever gone without speaking is two weeks, and I was the one who caved.  I’m almost always the one who caves, unless it’s him just rolling up to Shanghai me because he knows damn well I can’t say no to him when he’s standing right in front of me, but this time I have a plan…

His favorite days to kamikaze are Wednesdays and Sundays.  Wednesdays I’m at work, Sundays I’m drinking bellini’s and watching the Raiders game.  He knows he has a better chance of coercing me on a Sunday, because like most unmarried people, when I get a little buzz on, I get horny as fuck!  He knocks on the door, I see him standing there, I “wet” myself, throw on a pair of shoes and I’m out the door.  He doesn’t even need to kiss me, let alone open his mouth to convince me, I am just ready, can’t say ‘no’, or as Marge says, “I start thinking with my vagina”. 

     Wednesdays will be a little more difficult for him, because I can just lock myself in the house I’m working on and turn the music already blasting in my headphones up to full blast, or just turn the air compressor on and ignore him, no eye contact, nothing.  And Wednesdays are made even easier for me to avoid him because, since he is an operator, like my ex, Martychist, I can easily predict which particular Wednesdays he will be working, because like all operators, his schedule is a five week rotation that always stays the same (aside from vacation days, of course).  If it is a Wednesday that I know he will be working, I don’t have to worry.  If it is a Wednesday that I know he is off, I will take precautions, or else just ask for the day off and disappear.  And luckily for me, Marge, my partner in crime, is off on Sundays, so if he shows up at the house I have no doubt she will chase him away with a stick, or else her shotgun, or maybe even hose him down with the garden hose!  Who knows?  All I know is that Marge is crafty, and tenacious, and she will stop at nothing to “protect” me, both from myself, and from the Rapist.       

So, as I said, we rarely go without speaking to each other, unless we are arguing.  Our biggest arguments are derived from me telling him that I am seeing someone else, someone who wants to be seen with me in public.  This is where the arguments begin, and we have never argued over anything other than his jealousy, or my frustration over our “situation”.  First, because he obviously doesn’t want to share me with another man, and second, because he WANTS to be seen with me in public, go out and party with me, go to brunch, etc, but something is still holding him back.  In a way, I think he still likes the thrill of the possibility of getting caught, of being discovered, found out, however you want to put it, because sometimes the man is far from discrete.   

Let’s see…

First, There is the fact that the Rapist just recently drove my car for the first time, as he has wanted to do for so long (and I am always in his truck, but his truck is just like every other truck out there).  My car, on the other hand, is far from inconspicuous, and to make it even less so, there is my personalized license plate, CHIEUSE (French translation doesn’t exactly exist in English).  A ton of people that work at the power plant live in the town I live in, so if you want to remain anonymous, or fly under the radar, you don’t go cruising around behind the wheel of the Porsche S.U.V. of your “secret girlfriend”.  He was more than happy to drive “Juicy”, as he calls her (unfortunately his nickname stuck, because that’s what I call her now too), since he can’t pronounce “chieuse”, so I threw him the keys and we hit the town running.

 

     (At this point, I no longer care about my reputation or his reputation.  I no longer need to protect my ex, though I have no doubt he would still flip out if he knew I was seeing someone in his department, especially the Rapist, despite the fact that he is re-married and has a child.  One thing I’m sure of, even if he isn’t entirely, emotionally ready to move on, he damn well better act like it!  Not just for the sake of his third marriage, but for the sake of his child as well.  The last thing he needs right now is another meltdown at work, at my bosses, at his bosses, or at the Rapist.  He needs to just chill out, or at least act like he’s chill, to save face.) 

     Then there was the time very early on, when my tumultuous work situation was about to go down, when Sedouche was stalking and threatening me (for more information on this go to my very first posts, or even just to jog your memory), and I wrote the Rapist an email saying that Sedouche had found out who he was by “intranet” stalking him, and that we couldn’t see each other anymore or we would get caught.  He wrote me back and said point blank: 

“We're not done!       Who cares if some douche bag is talking anyways? Us not seeing each other is not going to stop that. If you don't want to see me anymore just tell me. But to stop because this guy is talking is not a good reason!”

         There is the fact that he knows that Wednesday Addams knows who he is, what he looks like, what his real name is, and is dating the son of someone on Rapist’s crew at work.  I would say that Wednesday is certainly “wise” and mature beyond her years, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is a teenager, and the subject might come up, making our six degrees of separation, that already started out as more like one degree of separation, go down to tiny decimal points…

And I have several other examples.  Suffice to say, he is aware of all of these things, and he simply does not care.  So who knows?  Maybe he is just waiting to get caught, and the thought of it works as an aphrodisiac.    

     Right now I imagine he is treating our current situation like a game, which I guess in a way it sort of is.  He is kicking back, waiting for me to cave again, as I always have before.  He knows the extreme anxiety I get when we are angry at each other and not speaking, and he is using that knowledge to his advantage.  The thing he doesn’t know, is that this time, his cockiness is not working to his advantage and in fact, it’s working against him. 

     He tried and tried to get a hold of me the first few days into what I call “Marge’s thirty-day challenge”, but I stayed strong, did not answer the phone, and did not respond to text messages.  Now he’s in the ‘two can play that game’ phase, and he is ignoring me right back.  Knowing that he is probably snickering to himself at work, thinking, knowing, that at any minute I will give him a page, a call, or text him, apologize for having feelings, and forgive him for being an obtuse asshole, is, for some odd reason, not filling me with anxiety this time, it’s fucking pissing me off, which helps a little bit every day to renew my convictions and stay strong for a minimum of thirty days, if not longer.  It’s been a week and I am anxiety free and going strong.  I’ve also been reading a lot and staying busy, but that’s beside the point.  

     The other thing he has working to his advantage is my “brain penis”, and just recently he has begun to notice even more little nuances and eccentricities that he says makes me “like a guy”, or at least more so than most women, most noticeably in issues involving sex.  The last time we fucked he commented that he knows he has given a particularly noteworthy performance because afterward, instead of slapping him repeatedly in the face or teasing him over some random little thing, I just roll over, close my eyes, and take a catnap, unwilling to move or even speak for a good ten minutes.  Like a man, sex is my weakness, and he damn well knows it.  He knows that the longer we go without speaking or fucking, it isn’t just he who will suffer, I will suffer as well, so it all comes down to who can hold out the longest.  I might need to get some batteries, because I want to “win” this time, damnit! Marge says I’m a bigger man than he is anyway.  I guess this time we’ll see…        

The last thing he has going in his favor is that it’s times like these that piss me off and invigorate me the most.  The times when I know we are so pissed off at one another we want to rip the other’s face off, and then their clothes, and hate fuck each other into oblivion!  It seems as if, when we are the most pissed off at the other, that we collide with such violent passion.  We begin with arguments and end with epic orgasms.  Nothing resolved aside from knowing that we hate each other as much as we love each other.      

               

     I think, or I guess I am hoping, that it will go something like this:  The first week, he tries to get a hold of me several times and then pouts like a bitch (which I have already proven to be a correct assessment, because that what he has done).  The second week he is laughing, thinking that I am going to cave at any minute.  The third week he starts wondering just what in the hell is going on, and by the end of the fourth week he will either submit to my terms or at the very least be willing to negotiate.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll make it five weeks, or even six.  Maybe at the end of 30 days I will be so disappointed in him that I won’t even want him anymore.  Maybe my “empty threat” of not speaking to him anymore until he is ready to take it to the next level won’t turn out to be so empty after all.  Maybe my vision will become a reality, no longer a theory put to the test but a truth, the truth being I am no longer willing to waste another minute of my life with a man who is content to live his life on cruise control as apposed to stomping on the gas and taking the risk of getting a speeding ticket, because the temptation and exhilaration of acceleration is too enticing to resist, because life is too short to waste playing it safe all the time, because relationships are investments and with every investment there is some level of risk involved, and that sometimes it’s worth it to gamble because sometimes people do get lucky.  

The thing is that I’m not sure I want to waste my time with someone who isn’t courageous enough to take risks from time to time.  Go big or go home.  My life has been a serious of risks, of chasing dreams, of aspiring to do anything and everything I wanted.  And yeah, I fucking struggled, and sometimes some shit has blown up in my face big time, but I’m still alive, functioning, happy, and ready to take yet another risk.  I’ve hurt others and I’ve been hurt myself, but if it’s true what they say, that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, how will you ever get stronger if all you do is hide under your blanket to protect yourself from failing or getting hurt, either physically or emotionally?  Maybe Marge is right.  Maybe I do have bigger balls, and the Rapist is nothing more than a coward, scared to live a life full of passion, ambiguity, of the possibility of having to suffer through the disappointments that make the successes all the more sweet because you had to suffer through the cold, harsh valleys alone in the dark before you could truly appreciate the sweet nectar of sunshine and success that awaits you on the peaks.

Is Rapist a coward?  Will he disappoint me for the last time, or will he reach between his legs, remember that he has balls, and realize that he wants to try a life of passion with me on for size?  At this point, it’s too early for me to tell, so in the meantime, I’m just waiting, hoping that my thirty days of nothingness will eventually provide me with something, because the thing is, I want to be with someone who is willing to fight for me, not someone who is content to just let me slip away and then swallow the bitter pill of regret later.  I want to be with someone who feels like the passion and chemistry we have between us is something rare, and special, and that a life without that kind of passion is not a life worth living…