laura

WOMEN 75
I came across a personal ad from someone “looking for a pirate”. Having swashed a few buckles (or is it buckled a few swashes?) in TREASURE ISLAND, i responded. She turned out to be cool and quirky, into fairies and sci fi and renaissance fairs and online video games, with an offbeat sense of humor and fashion (the few aspects of Weird Al’s “White N’ Nerdy” that i didn’t embody, she covered). She’d been in the city for a couple years, and worked as a vet tech in an animal research lab. We started dating almost immediately, and were together for a couple months. She had fun friends, and lived in Queens. We took things slow physically, as she had some intimacy issues, having been molested by a father and then a brother. She'd also had some destructive, dysfunctional grownup romances. I didn’t worry about that (though in the end i got a bit steamrolled). When we finally had vaginal intercourse, there was blood on my penis afterward, which she said was the result of an abortion that had gone wrong. She said it wasn’t anything to worry about, and didn’t want to talk about it. But i wasn’t going to continue having intercourse with her if it made her bleed, and also not until she was ready to talk about things more openly. She had a bisexual side she’d never explored, which i found perfectly cool. She asked whether i’d be willing to have a threesome with another girl, and i said yes, with the right person. Sadly, the relationship soured before we explored that. I liked her a whole lot, and didn’t care about minor differences and incompatibilities…i was open to growing with her as far as we could. But in the end, i was too open and too loving. One night, i told her i loved her (love, not “in love”), and she didn’t handle it well. Another night, i innocently told her that i’d found one of her best friends attractive. It’s understandable that she didn’t handle that well, but i was just trying to be wide open…and i also had her threesome desire in the back of my mind. The relationship destructed soon after. At one point, she called and asked me to give her number to my brother John, as she wanted to fuck him. I did so, but gave Johnny ample warning about her questionable motives. I tried to stay patient and loving as she blew us up. Early on, a silly moment of pirating on the subway, making “arrrrhs” which led to “Ohhhs” and “Uuuuus”, led me to write a play about a silly sea where pirate bands have different “letters” they say in conversation. I was finally able to read it with her months later, and was so happy we were able to share that, as she enjoyed it very much...which avoided having our last memory be about hurtfulness.
Postscript: this is the first time that posting these memoirs triggered contact from a lost friend...Laura just wrote to me about a couple more of her darknesses i'd forgotten (a then-recent sexual assault) or never knew (anti-depressant O.D.s). She was touchingly loving in her tone with me.