Read Online 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life by Kristen McGuiness - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kristen McGuiness
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in front of me down the hallway of my building. There is nothing like Jimmy Voltage from behind: his shoulders, his arms, the way his jeans hang off his ass. I don’t know that a man has ever actually made me go weak in the knees. But this one does. He can feel me watching, and he knows the effect. He shoots a glance behind him, cocky and innocent at the same time, and I know and he knows and everybody knows that we are going to have sex tonight.
I haven’t had sex in a year and a half. Jimmy will be the fiftieth man with whom I’ve slept, if we’re keeping score on those things. And so though Jimmy and I are still getting to know each other, and though I really just met him a few weeks prior, and though I have said I am not going to sleep with him yet, my hormones lurch and I do, that night, and it’s beautiful. I tell him about having herpes, and he kisses my forehead, looks into my eyes, and says, “It’s okay.” And it is, it’s all okay. Afterward, we talk in bed. It feels so safe and so right that I begin to relax. I begin to believe that this thing is real.
“So how could someone like you not be snatched up already?” Jimmy asks me as I lay cuddled in his arms.
“I don’t know,” I giggle as I kiss the tattoo on his wrist and pull myself in tighter. “I guess I’ve been focused on sobriety, but that’s not all true. I’ve fallen for a couple of people. I tried to date someone, but he ended up being kind of mean.”
Jimmy squeezes me as he kisses the back of my neck and whispers, “How could anyone be mean to you?”
I love hearing that. But again, it’s not the first time. My mom was once walking down Third Avenue in New York when she heard a little boy ask his mother, “Mom, why are boys happy and girls so sad?” My mom and I laughed—it’s because boys make girls sad. But at the moment, I am not sad. I am incredibly happy, and I am staying present with this man as I curl naked into his form.
And I forget that others have looked at me with the same intensity and lost it just as quickly. And I forget that sometimes we are mean to each other without meaning to be. And I forget that I don’t know this man at all but am making hopeful assumptions about kindred spirits, and kind cowboys, and these kisses that finally feel like the destination to my very long search. As my eyelids begin to close, I look around this man’s room because at thirty-nine, Jimmy is a man. I look at the stacked cans of tuna in his kitchenette, the motorcycle helmets on his armoire, the wooden horse beside his bed. I draw it all in with my last sleepy breath. And though it all screams Peter Pan, I am Wendy Darling, and I have been waiting sometime for this trip to Neverland.
10
Date Ten: And the RAD Played On
I am beginning to wonder if there might be something wrong with me. If I were, in fact, born with a very rude pheromonal magnet that pulls my instincts in the wrong direction, or worse, that I have simply lost the ability to make people stay .
A year ago I met a man who was mean to me; the one I told Jimmy about. I had ten days sober when Sunshine sauntered into my life. Now, I should have known right then. The name Sunshine was pretty much a dead giveaway.
Sunshine kept telling me that he couldn’t date me; that we needed to take it slow, because I was just newly sober again, and he didn’t feel it was right for us to be in a relationship.
Since I was working under the pretense that I wanted a man named Sunshine in my life, I went with it. I went with it when he failed to call me for weeks at a time. I went with it when I got the feeling he was hitting on my friends. And I went with it when he looked me deep in the eyes and told me that we had a spiritual connection that would last forever. I leaned over the emergency brake in his car, and I showed him just how spiritual I could be, and that was the last time I saw him.
I walked away from that brief
I haven’t had sex in a year and a half. Jimmy will be the fiftieth man with whom I’ve slept, if we’re keeping score on those things. And so though Jimmy and I are still getting to know each other, and though I really just met him a few weeks prior, and though I have said I am not going to sleep with him yet, my hormones lurch and I do, that night, and it’s beautiful. I tell him about having herpes, and he kisses my forehead, looks into my eyes, and says, “It’s okay.” And it is, it’s all okay. Afterward, we talk in bed. It feels so safe and so right that I begin to relax. I begin to believe that this thing is real.
“So how could someone like you not be snatched up already?” Jimmy asks me as I lay cuddled in his arms.
“I don’t know,” I giggle as I kiss the tattoo on his wrist and pull myself in tighter. “I guess I’ve been focused on sobriety, but that’s not all true. I’ve fallen for a couple of people. I tried to date someone, but he ended up being kind of mean.”
Jimmy squeezes me as he kisses the back of my neck and whispers, “How could anyone be mean to you?”
I love hearing that. But again, it’s not the first time. My mom was once walking down Third Avenue in New York when she heard a little boy ask his mother, “Mom, why are boys happy and girls so sad?” My mom and I laughed—it’s because boys make girls sad. But at the moment, I am not sad. I am incredibly happy, and I am staying present with this man as I curl naked into his form.
And I forget that others have looked at me with the same intensity and lost it just as quickly. And I forget that sometimes we are mean to each other without meaning to be. And I forget that I don’t know this man at all but am making hopeful assumptions about kindred spirits, and kind cowboys, and these kisses that finally feel like the destination to my very long search. As my eyelids begin to close, I look around this man’s room because at thirty-nine, Jimmy is a man. I look at the stacked cans of tuna in his kitchenette, the motorcycle helmets on his armoire, the wooden horse beside his bed. I draw it all in with my last sleepy breath. And though it all screams Peter Pan, I am Wendy Darling, and I have been waiting sometime for this trip to Neverland.
10
Date Ten: And the RAD Played On
I am beginning to wonder if there might be something wrong with me. If I were, in fact, born with a very rude pheromonal magnet that pulls my instincts in the wrong direction, or worse, that I have simply lost the ability to make people stay .
A year ago I met a man who was mean to me; the one I told Jimmy about. I had ten days sober when Sunshine sauntered into my life. Now, I should have known right then. The name Sunshine was pretty much a dead giveaway.
Sunshine kept telling me that he couldn’t date me; that we needed to take it slow, because I was just newly sober again, and he didn’t feel it was right for us to be in a relationship.
Since I was working under the pretense that I wanted a man named Sunshine in my life, I went with it. I went with it when he failed to call me for weeks at a time. I went with it when I got the feeling he was hitting on my friends. And I went with it when he looked me deep in the eyes and told me that we had a spiritual connection that would last forever. I leaned over the emergency brake in his car, and I showed him just how spiritual I could be, and that was the last time I saw him.
I walked away from that brief
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