Soulfood
Went to the movies last night with my good Toyboy friend John.
He is 27, about 6’3”, good looking in a Johnboy from The Waltons kinda way. Blonde, blue eyed. Wholesome.
Over the last year, he has always been a text away with a ‘hang in there,’ a ‘call me if you need me,’ ‘are you ok?’ texts.
In the deepest hours of the divorce, he would somehow text when I least expected it but needed it most.
Even the other weekend when I heard my Daddy had broken his arm and was in the hospital getting a heart cath.
He was at a party in Putney when I texted him and he was like, give me 15 mintues, I will be right there.
And he was.
He was at my front door, like a skipper taking the helm when it’s the middle of the night and dark and its blowing a force 9 and you know you’ll be ok because he’s at the wheel.
He held me in the hallway of my flat while I literally sobbed my heart out, then he slept on the sofa.
I guess that is how he got his nickname, Skipper (one of my Toyboys is sticking around I swear just because I have yet to give him a great name or write about him).
When we first became friends it was sailing and the love of it that took us past that initial flirtation and made us friends.
Just like any other sport, sailing has in jokes and a whole language that goes with it. It is a big thing in common. So even if we never fancied each other we could always talk boats.
When we came back from the moives the other night, Skipper was sitting on my sofa having a glass of wine chatting about this new business venture when he leaned in and kissed me.
You could have knocked me over with a feather (a whole different columns’ worth at least).
And the kiss, well it was more like a ravaging really.
Kisses come in all different flavours and intensities.
Since being single and dating, I have found that some guys kiss with a Don Juanesque technique that is guaranteed to be technically good and soft and all that.
Some guys are just bad slobbery kissers.
Some guys involve teeth and not in a good way.
Some guys need to see a dentist.
And don’t forget there are Bobby Rae kisses.
But then there are the kisses that are born from somewhere else in a man.
Somewhere deeper.
Its so difficult to describe what I am talking about, but I’ll relate it food. You go to eat at a 5 star Michelin restaurant. Technically the food is perfectly cooked and presented. Not a grain of sea salt out of place.
Then why do you feel hungry after 5 courses?
Because the food hasn’t got any soul, any guts.
Good food is made with soul, with sweat and dirt and yes, love.
So are good kisses.
The way Skipper kissed me was soulful. Maybe its his own personal kissing trademark, but I honestly believe these kinds of kisses aren’t fakeable.
These kinds of kisses are born of….I think of a love that was lost but taught you.
And I’ll be dammned, Skipper kissing me made me think of The Toyboy.
I hadn’t in months; four to be exact.
His kisses were like that. Everything he did was like that.
When we left it in July, we sort of agreed we had hit a wall.
I cannot speak for what was going on in his head, but looking back, six months later, I realise I was worried about all kinds of things and so unready to like someone properly.
Treat someone properly.
Deep down, did he know I wasn’t ready for anything more than mind blowing sex, pure escapism and lots and lots of laughter?
Maybe.
Did it bother him?
Maybe.
Did he worry that he cared about me more than I him?
Maybe.
Did he think I cared more for him than he for me?
Maybe.
We never talked about it. Back in July I don’t think I could have talked about it even if I had wanted to. I was so screwed up from just having left a long marriage, I was just getting through each day. Piece by little piece trying to build a new life for me and the fellas.
So when we called it off, we didn’t do it very warmly. Kinda like our sex and our humour, it was raw but very, very good. It left a mark.
On both of us.
Then in August he starts texting me while he was on holiday. The typical I’m thinking about you on holiday fare. Did I text back?
Sure did.
I would challenge anyone to not text back a man that gave you regular and quite out of this world orgasms, loved to play games of gin rummy buck naked drinking Bollinger and made you laugh until your sides hurt. Course I texted back that I missed it all too.
A few weeks later, he gets back from holiday and I get this huge email telling me how he’s seeing someone and its all horribly complicated blah, blah and for me not to get my hopes up about us getting ‘back together.’
Oh, golly this was news. Were we ever ‘together’ in the first place?
I thought we had been just using each other for sex and escaping our real lives and oh, I hoped, becoming very good friends.
Bottom line? It was patronising as hell and I told him to literally ‘f–k off.’
It takes a lot to get me riled, but that email really did it.
At the time, I was being massively selfish and just wanted more great sex and dirty weekends away, not a boyfriend. Not a stepfather for the boys. Jesus.
Why do men always assume we are thinking relationship when we are actually thinking, multiple orgasm?
The ‘f—k off’ email was not a hit. In fact I didn’t hear from him until yesterday after this kiss from Skipper.
Weird. Weirdo. Weird.
He emailed. He tells me about how they have just put their last issue to bed for 2008 (he’s a journalist) and how he’s been reading my Ms. Mags all afternoon.
He apologised properly for his behaviour at the end of the summer, etc. and said how rough it must have been falling for the T-Rex so hard (I am sure I am not the first or last that will fall hard for that infuriatingly gorgeous hunk of man) and all that.
It certainly was a very grown up email. I wondered what serious crap had been thrown at him in the last four months?!?
He sounded not broken, but humbled.
I left it a week and then emailed back apologising for the ‘f—k off’ email because it didn’t do our months together justice and how I hoped we could be friends, etc.
He emailed straight back, which did surprise me and asked to meet up on Sunday night.
Well, I had been booked to play tennis with Solid Boyfriend Potential (SBP) and then brunch and then ‘hang out for the day and do some Christmas shopping.’
He had hinted at what I was doing Sunday evening and implied that he didn’t have to be at work early on Monday, in fact didn’t have to go at all.
Yep, he wanted to spend Sunday night.
Nope, not having that (dammit, I don’t fancy him, okay, there I said it).
So I made up a ‘crisis’ with the boys and blew him out for Sunday evening to see The Toyboy.
Probably created massive amounts of bad karma doing this.
Why did I do that?
I have no idea really. I just get the feeling The Toyboy, probably, like me, is quite in love with someone (or the idea of someone) or trying not to be quite in love with someone.
That makes two of us.
What I do know is that he has got ….more funny, more sexy, more angst, more Woody Allenesque brutal hot confidence in his left nipple than poor old SBP will ever have in his entire body or estate that makes up half of northern Scotland.
And there is so much to catch up on.
Talk.
Laugh.
Been writing this on the 27 bus on the way to Camden to have dinner with my Gay Best Friends (all 3 of them) and we just passed the spot in the middle of the street where he first kissed me.
So much to catch up on.
Heal.
By Ms Magnolia
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