angela

WOMEN 82
We met under the most auspicious and promising of romantic circumstances. She posted a romance ad entitled "FWB/NSA?". The best of both worlds! If she said what she meant and meant what she said, she wanted a sexual relationship with a genuine friend, and made it doubly clear she desired no possessiveness or jealousy.

Hell, she had me before hello.

We enjoyed a week or so of e-mails before we met. She was intelligent and literate and playful. I wasn't feeling any lightning strikes, either in our flirtations or in response to her picture, but there was an agreeable feeling of sympaticality. She was around my age, and had lived most of her life in Italy (if you speak the language, you might figure out her real name). She was a political affairs writer, and dogwalker. An accomplished cook. She'd had her own talk show in her native land. It was obvious the people in her building genuinely cared for her.

The instant we met, she said she knew from my reaction that we weren't going to be lovers - which made for a surprise later that evening, when she kissed me and i responded in kind. There was truth in her intuition, for i hadn't been drawn to her hormonally. But she found me at a time when i was trying to live the way humans had lived before the agricultural revolution, before the poison of enforced monogamy became the prominent feature of our sexual landscape. I knew we all could and should be able to love anyone. Plus, i thought she and i had the potential for genuine friendship, a rarer thing than good sex. So i jumped in.

It was nice being sexual with her. I always responded with hard, ready erections...something i couldn't say for a few other relationships which had had a greater desire quotient (she wasn't my type physically - she'd survived childhood sexual abuse, and like many such, was overweight). During our first post-coital moments, she said something she told me to not take the wrong way - that she had the feeling of wanting to be my lover forever. I enjoyed her enjoyment more than anything i was feeling myself. I knew she'd had a long road to being comfortable in her body. For that reason alone, i wanted to extend our sexual phase as long as i could.

But almost from the very start, it was apparent that would be a challenge.

Had she fooled herself into thinking she'd wanted a relationship under the parameters of her ad? If she'd found someone other than me, could it have gone that way?

I don't know.

But within a week, i was walking on eggs...a dance i made work for another month or so before the shells cracked. At that time, i was starting an investigative series of articles about prostitution, trying to understand the mindset of a john without actually having sex with a stranger. It was my intent to hire a prostitute to hold nakedly. I told Angela about it. Her mind responded with the unhappy thought "Aren't I enough?" An idiotic response on more than one level, but in this broken world, all too understandable.
The fact that my normal openness was a bit compromised, was a telling sign of how off-balance we were. Her breath was sometimes a little sour, but i never told her, even though i could have shared the complex oral hygiene routine i'd adopted.

As i danced on those eggs, i did my best to build something that would survive the shoals i could hear just around the next bend in the river. Our friendship might have endured, given a little more time. She admired my non-materialism. We had similar taste in politics and humor (if you've never seen the FAMILY GUY segment on Italian optometry, get googling). She had a strong accent, and loved making fun of that in others. She'd had quite a journey, coming to this country by herself with almost literally nothing.

Did i mention she was an accomplished cook? Great googily, was she amazing. She would greet me with the most eye-poppingly wonderful dinners in her fancy little Upper West Side apartment. Zucchini pasta that melted in the mouth. The most delicious bruschetta i'd ever had (which i happily agreed to never mispronounce americanly again).

We always had our dinner/movie/sex nights at her place. She never visited me, as our time coincided with my grand bedbug misadventure (she only had two fears - HIV and bedbugs). The minute i walked in her door, she always put my clothes into plastic bags and me into the shower. She also bought a steamer to treat her place every time i left.

She had a wonderful dog. Dorothy. Sweet and quirky.

I did my best, but knew from the start that i wasn't going to have a desire for her that went outside the bounds of the ad that brought us together. At a time when all i needed was simplicity and gentleness, i sometimes endured the opposite, for her sake. The night i suggested we end the romantic part of our relationship, she shouted that she hated me. Then she tried to bully and emotionally blackmail me into having sex with her one last time. I eventually relented. In the process, i understood firsthand an experience that is presumably far more common to women.

Instead of finding the healing and shelter i'd sought, i walked away with another dripping wound...a hurt that literally gripped my chest and stomach.
After some months, she started sending me an occasional note. It took most of a year, but we finally got together again. She was saying all the right things. She felt terrible about her treatment of me. She'd read this memoir, and thought it was very fair-handed. She wanted to give our romance another try. I hesitated, but loneliness and her positive spirit wore me down. Around this time though, i was preparing to leave the city, to try to find healing on a tropical island. I didn't want to put pressure on her, but she was stalling our meeting because of a roommate situation she wanted to put behind her. We finally got together on the night i left town. We had a sweet sleepover. The company was nice as always, and the sex was pretty okay, considering all the damage that had been done. She left the door wide open...