Being Good

Apparently, on at least one occasion, he had a little time to spare, wanted to see me, but didn't. Because he felt like he should wait until he had time for more than just a booty call. I think he's trying to be "good" to me, or for me. I think it's sweet. I could also cheerfully kill him. He wasn't the only one unhappily celibate. I would had preferred hours to talk and cuddle and hang out. But I would have settled for fifteen minutes every now and then until he got things worked out. I was tearing my hair out, wanting him, and convincing myself that he didn't want me.

Of course, at the time, he never actually said what he was thinking. And I never said what I was thinking. We are poster children for lack of communication.

The same thing happened when we were first dating and I was trying and failing to get him into bed with me. I was confused, and frustrated, wondering are you really more interested in the TV than me? And he was thinking how hard it was to be a "good boy."

I guess this is about two things, really. It's about our lack of communication. Our relationship was nearly over, several times, and we didn't really talk about it. I said things like I really need to be able to see you again, I need this to get better. But I never said if it doesn't get better I'm going to break up with you, and I'm willing to wait until January but that's it.

It's also about these rules he goes by, to be "good." He's always trying to take me out to dinner (it never works, because our schedules never match during dinnertime); he refuses to let me pay for my drinks. He doesn't want sex to seem important to him. And I don't mind, exactly. I do make an effort to buy drinks when he isn't looking, but I appreciate that he wants me to know that I'm more than a convenient, dependable lay. But sometimes I feel the rules assume that I don't have a sex drive. And sometimes I feel like I've been misplaced on a pedestal.

It's funny, because we met under the labels of Bad Boy and Good Girl. He posted an ad looking for someone to Satan-worship with him. I answered the ad and told him that I bathe twice daily in holy water. And I am, comparatively, a Good Girl to his Bad Boy. (One time, he looked at me and said, as if it were a weird thing to find out, you've never been arrested, have you?) But, fuck, I'm not a Leave it to Beaver character. And he seems over-awed, sometimes, by graduate school, by the jobs I'm applying for. I don't want those things to matter. I want to be cute, or fun, or a good kisser. I don't want to be impressive. I wish he didn't see me that way.