It's Cold Out…Do I Have To Leave?
By Anonymous
I lay curled up under her duvet. I was still naked. She, however, had put back on her bra and underwear.
“I don’t like being naked. I’m self conscious. It’s just the way I am.”
Outside I could hear the wind blowing. It had snowed earlier in the day, and the wind was going to add to the bitter coldness that is northern England. I asked if I could stay the night (I really didn’t want to go out in the cold). She said no.
“My room’s my safe space…it’s not safe anymore if there is someone else in it”.
We just finished what I guess was technically sex. I say technically because neither of us had finished. I guess I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t (do ANY women actually finish without the use of a vibrator or their own fingers? Who knows. Not me. We never lost control. Except… we did).
Despite all forms of encouragement and assistance from her, I couldn’t finish either. We kept trying until she finally just said
“Give Up”.
I don’t think I ever felt so let down from myself.
I was lucky we even got to that point… I had thought I brought condoms from the vending machine in the campus restroom. No. They were lube packets. Gross. Thankfully she had some under her bed.
She claimed that she had no idea this whole situation would happen. But come on… What do you expect if two single young people go out for drinks, throw snow at each other, and go back to watch a movie? Granted, a few days ago she wasn’t single.
Oh yeah, the movie. We never made it past the opening title screen before our bodies were twisted around each other.
After our awkward fumbling and failings, we lay in bed and held each other. Which was nice. Was very nice.
We’re both quite broken, just in so different ways. Which I guess is why it makes sense that we found each other. One part of the healing of my brokenness in my twenties was to finally walk away from my childhood Christianity. Her’s was quite the opposite – she embraced it.
At one point she asked:
“What happened to you back then…why did you give it up? What hurt you so much?”
She then told me that if I ever wanted to go to a more compassionate place of worship, I was more then welcome to join her some Sunday. Definitely not what I expected in terms of pillow talk.
I won’t be. This isn’t going to last long as it is. She’s going away in a few months, I have a Master’s degree to finish, and then traveling/jobs/PhD…
I wonder if I’ll ever settle down. Probably not. Maybe yet another result of my nascent ADHD is that I get too bored easily by being in one place for too long. Maybe, just maybe I’ll find someone else whose just as messed up that I’ll be able to make love to while it’s snowing outside; and by then I won’t be addicted to porn, I’ll have finally quit smoking, and I’ll have realized I don’t always need to be running.
Until then, it’s nice to have found a friend.