12/5/13 (Cole):

Well, it’s been so long since my last post I hardly know where to begin.  I suppose I can start by apologizing for lagging so tough and making excuses, and then I can try to piece together all that has gone done over the past few weeks, up until my vagina started calling many of the shots for me and I decided that I would spend a large portion of my free time with the Rapist, since he finally decided to pull his head out of his ass and we are now officially dating (yes publicly), and all that entails.

So, first thing is first.  I’m sorry.  There is my official apology for being a lazy piece of uninspired shit and not posting a word for what I think is almost four weeks straight now.  I personally think that is one of many benefits to writing a blog with another person as apposed to just writing one alone.  In addition to getting two different experiences and perspectives from two different women of different ages with different although sometimes similar theories, as a contributor, I get the benefit of Marge picking up the slack when I have writer’s block, as she benefits from my spurts of inspiration when hers has on occasion run dry.  We are like that in life, and we are like that in our writing, and I am grateful to have her there for me in both situations, no matter what. 

Ok, on with a story that I need to cut WAY short or it will practically be a novel, because a lot has happened over the past few weeks.  But before I jump right on into it, I feel the need to inform the reader that I quit smoking over three weeks ago.  I wore the patch for a week and then ditched it because I didn’t need it, but that’s beside the point.  The thing is, and maybe the lack of cigarettes has also contributed to my writer’s block, but to me, smoking and writing go hand in hand, so this post might be just as painful for you to read as it is for me to write, at least until I get the hang of not going outside to suck on a tar and nicotine stick for inspiration when my mind draws a blank.  Here’s to making a nicotine free effort!

It happened the night Marge, Amyless and I went to go see Thor opening night.  Two weeks after having to start “Marge’s thirty day challenge” all over again and a week and a half after I thwarted the Rapist’s Shanghai attempt.       I was sitting outside on the back patio (hiding from Deliverance across the street) smoking a cigarette and sipping a scotch, waiting for Marge to finish getting ready as she and Amyless chatted in her room, when my phone buzzed with a text.  I picked it up, saw it was the Rapist, and wondered what he wanted “that” time.  Was he calling to text me “happy h-o-l-l-o-w-e-e-n”, lowercase h, spelled wrong, on the wrong day like he did the day before Halloween, to try and trick me into responding, or was it another grammatical nightmare he knew I would be pained to read and would possibly be too disgusted to ignore?  This time it wasn’t a game.  He wasn’t trying to trick me.  All he said was that he was ready to go public and that he was sorry that it took him so long.  Two little sentences that meant so much to me, so much, in fact, that I was too overwhelmed to really wrap my head around the situation right away.  

 At first when I saw the text, I felt that I had been punched in the gut.  I was paralyzed, incredulous, didn’t know what to think or say, and was therefore hesitant to respond.  After going to watch the new Thor movie with Marge and Amyless, I finally texted him back and told him that I didn’t believe him and that I wanted him to prove it.  He said that he couldn’t straight away, because he was on nightshift, which made sense.  Twelve hour shift, seven PM to Seven AM, an hour drive to and from work, and eight hours of sleep only leaves two remaining hours, which are spent getting ready for work, showering, drinking coffee, packing a lunch, eating “breakfast”, etc, but he promised that he would prove it to me as soon as night shift was over.  He said he was sorry it took him so long, but that he wouldn’t say he was ready to take things to the next level with me just so he could talk to me.  He assured me repeatedly that he meant what he said and that he was anxious to prove it as soon as he could.  I really, really wanted to believe him, but after a year and a half, my guard was more than up, it had a fucking mote around it.  A mote with sharks with laser beams on their foreheads swimming in it!

At first, Marge was “disappointed” in me for speaking with him.  She said I should have waited the entire thirty days no matter what.  I could see her point, but honestly, I was sick of wondering who’s court the ball was in, sick of ignoring him, and sick of not speaking with him, seeing him and touching him.  I didn’t want to play games anymore, I wanted to be happy.  Will it cause more damage in the long run, that I didn’t wait out the entire thirty days, or would it have been silly to continue to ignore him when he finally agreed to my terms and gave me exactly what I wanted?  I suppose the answer to that remains to be seen, but thus far, I am extremely pleased by the results of my decision. 

Fast forward to our first date:  I arrive at his house after work, freshly showered and made up.  It was a work night for the both of us, so we went out at about 7:30, while I prefer to eat in the European style and would rather not eat dinner before nine PM at the very earliest (unfortunately the central coast basically shits all over that, seeing as how most restaurants are already closed by the time I want to eat).  I jokingly said that it was more like lunch for me. 

When I got to his house I was shocked to see that he was nervous.  No, maybe not nervous, certainly excited, but it was more than that.  There was a level of clumsy uncertainty that I had never seen in him before.  He had dressed up nice, done his hair, had put on cologne.  It was obvious to me that he had put in effort, even more so than I, and it was adorable.  Unfortunately I was either somewhat uncomfortable at the sudden change in our relationship, or else I underestimated his sincerity, because our first date kicked off just a wee bit awkward…

Before I arrived, he asked me where I would like to go.  I wanted to keep it casual since it was a work night, and I assumed he would too.  He said we could go wherever I wanted, whether I wanted Mexican food or sushi, but if I wanted him to decide he would pick an Italian restaurant that he loved in Los Osos, where he lives (as do my parents, but I’ll touch on that another time). I said I would bring a bottle of wine with me that I had that would go great with Italian, but that I wasn’t all that hungry since it was so “early”.  He said we could get Mexican instead if I preferred, and I said “I don’t drink wine with Mexican food.”  He told me to shut the hell up and get my ass to his place. 

When I arrived at his house, his appearance shocked me.  It isn’t that he always looked like a bum before, I had just never seen him dressed nice, at least not in person.  He usually just wears jeans, a t-shirt, and flip flops, usually a hat too.  I didn’t even know he owned a pair of nice, close-toed shoes aside from his work boots.  I was taken so off guard that at first I forgot to tell him how nice he looked.  I remembered when I was in the bathroom urinating, and told him he was a “sexy bitch” and looked very nice as soon as I came back out.  He beamed, so obviously proud of himself and proceeded to break down his outfit decision-making process in a play by play that fascinated me, because I never thought the man had the capacity to care so much about an outfit, and what I would think about his choices.  (He did the same thing before we went to brunch about two weeks later, starting to plan his outfit aloud the night before, and then the day of, asking my opinion on which of three shirts he had picked out because he just couldn’t decide.  By this time I was over my initial shock and was sure not to mock him, finally understanding and seeing how much the man really does care for me and how my opinion effects him.  It took us going to the next level for me to see that it had pained him to go so long in the closet as well, and that he truly regretted waiting as long as he did.  He apologized for it so many times that first night that it almost embarrassed me.  It melted some of the ice that incases my heart.)

Back to our first official “date”…  When we arrived at the restaurant, they were closed for a private party, and would not be open to the public for another half an hour or so.  I told him that I didn’t mind waiting, but he said he was starving and would rather go somewhere else than to wait.  We got back into his new commuter car that he got for work, which he deemed more appropriate for a date than his truck that he usually drives, and headed out to Turri road to see what kind of balls she had, and to think about where we should go to eat instead.  

We zipped around blind corners in the dark as I clutched the “oh shit handle” and prayed we didn’t hit a loose cow, because although I love to drive fast, it’s only when I’m the one behind the wheel!  Finally after getting back onto Los Osos Valley Road in one piece, he decided we should go to Morro Bay, to this fabulous little Mediterranean place called Giancarlo’s (http://www.giancarlorestaurant.com/), since I had brought the delicious bottle of red wine, a blend of Lagrein, Merlot, and Syrah made by a retired, Italian ex-rocket scientist for NASA who now makes wine for the winery Piedra Creek, located in San Luis Obispo (http://www.piedracreek.com/).  I had eaten there once already, with my mother and grandmother and knew the food was delicious so I happily agreed, and we headed to Morro Bay.  

He was at the top of, I guess what I would call his “game”, that night, behaving like the perfect gentleman and it totally threw me off.  For as long as we have been together we have kept the mushy love stuff to a minimum, and mostly just laughed, fucked, made fun of each other, shared funny stories, and talked about all of the things we would love to do together “some day”, thinking perhaps that ‘Some day” would never come.  But romance, no, that had never been something we shared. 

He walked behind me, opened the car door for me, pulled out and pushed in my chair, stood up when I left the table, and when I returned.  When I pointed this out and said, somewhat sarcastically, that he was such a gentleman, he frowned and asked if it was stupid.  He said he didn’t want to act like an “ass clown”, he just wanted to do things right.  I quickly recovered and assured him that it was perfect, silently scolding myself for being such an asshole.  It wasn’t that I was trying to be an asshole, it was just so different than what I was used to.  It was familiar yet foreign at the same time, virginal territory for two people that had been intimate lovers for quite some time, but had never once been on a date. 

Once I realized that he was totally serious and not mocking me, I relaxed a little and allowed him to play his role the way I would ordinarily expect a man to behave in the first place, I just never could have imagined it with him.  He would lean in across the table and kiss me, refill my wine glass when it ran dry, stab a perfect little morsel with his fork and feed me, tell me to let him know if he was doing anything wrong, and about halfway through the meal he leaned over and said to me, with a giant smile on his face: “oh my God, Nico, we’re on our first date!”

He asked me if I was happy and I told him that of course I was.  He seemed disappointed in this response.  He said he thought I would have seemed happier.  I reiterated that I was extremely happy, just a little overwhelmed.  I didn’t know what else to say.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy.  I was fucking elated!  It just didn’t seem real.  I was in this strange, intangible, dreamlike state, where I could see the things happening in front of me, but I couldn’t feel them.  It was surreal.  Surreal and terrifying at the same time.      

I started to wonder if, now that we could have a “normal” relationship, would it change us?  What if our sex life changed?  What if becoming a “normal” couple destroyed all the good things we had going with each other?  Would it still be the same without the struggle, the strife, the sneaking around and the feeling that it was still somehow wrong for us to be together?  What if it all just fell apart now that we were out of the closet and out in public, have a perfectly romantic and civilized dinner right in the front window of Giancarlo’s, for all of SLO county to see?  

Would the lack of “danger”, whether real or imaginary, make us common and stale?  Without the possibility of getting caught, would we still get the same rush, or would we become placid and ordinary?  The last thing I could ever want with the Rapist is ordinary, the thought of anything ordinary between us made my stomach churn and my heart ache.  So were we really ready, or was I forcing something that maybe still could have used more time?  Now that I had the gentleman, what happened to the Rapist that I used to know?  Did the gentleman slay the beast inside him?  Did the dominant part of him shrivel up and blow away?  Did he turn into a pussy just because I wanted to be able to have a nice dinner in public with him from time to time?  Had I made a huge mistake?  

It was so scary, and I was really starting to think that maybe we were moving too fast when he leaned across the table, looked at me, narrowed his eyes, curled his lips into that evil little grin of his that I love so much, and whispered “I’m going to fuck the shit out of you as soon as we get home.”  At that moment all my fears left and I smiled a smile so big my face hurt.  I didn’t need to hold my breath anymore.  I finally got what I wanted.  I could have my cake, and eat it too…