strange musings of a distracted spunk

Ready for a secret?

Normally, I’m pretty happy with my body image. Normally, I like how my boobs snugly fit a bikini top and how my bermuda shorts ride low on my hips and make me feel sexy. I knew that even if I put on a pair of jeans with a sweatshirt, I would still get looks as I walked down the street, because I am pretty cute. But lately, over the last few weeks, I’ve become victim to self-hatred towards my body.

Perhaps I should start from the beginning. As an overactive, skinny stick who danced five days a week, the biggest complaint I often had was my butt was too bony. It hurt to sit on the ground and other people’s laps. Almost twenty years later, I still have that complaint, but the rest of me has rounded out. I chalk it up to puberty and events in my life that happened when I was seventeen. I didn’t realize how much weight I had gained until post-college, when I was almost thirty pounds heavier than I was when I had entered.

The thing about my body is, I’m not petite and I’m not small boned. I have shoulders; broad ones. They look great in halter tops and spaghetti straps, but they will never look delicate. I’ve got curves, hips that jut out but my stomach tends to be pretty flat; I rock a four-pack pretty easily. I most definitely do not have an ass, but I more than make up for it in the chest region. My legs are muscular; maybe not as muscular as they were when I danced, but my calf muscles are still pretty huge. I’ve been mistaken for a soccer player numerous times.

When everything went down with D last year, I couldn’t figure out how to move out of the zombie phase. One day, a friend suggested I go to the gym with her. I was never a good gym-goer; I felt it was too isolated and too machine oriented. But something clicked that day, and suddenly, I started hitting the gym three, four, five times a week. I would go at the end of my day, after work and class, getting home close to midnight. I felt good about myself, and it showed. The weight I gained in college melted away, and I found myself gravitating towards more feminine clothes, something my high-school and college-self rarely did. But more importantly, I wasn’t mourning the loss of D anymore. I was redirecting my energy to a place where I didn’t have to think, where I could just move and somehow, that blank slate let me move forward.

I struggled a bit when I first moved to California. Living in a strange house where I couldn’t make food or bring home food meant I ate out a lot. And cheaply. When you were only making 800 bucks a month (thanks AmeriCorps!), gourmet meals are not exactly an option. But when I found my apartment, I got back into the rhythm; of cardio, pilates, then weights. I would be at the gym for an hour and a half to two hours, and I felt solid. Comfortable. It helped that a boy loved me, inside and out, even when he was 1800 miles away. For some reason, having someone who thought I was impossibly sexy somehow made me feel even more sexy, which was never a term I would have applied to myself until he came along.

When he and I broke up for the first time in December, I lost the motivation to go to the gym. Sneaks of depression would slither in, and all I wanted to do was go home, curl up in my bed, and zone out with a book or a movie. I didn’t want to think. I was afraid to think, because unlike D, GDB would somehow crawl into the furthest recesses of my mind, even when I was running at top speeds on the elliptical. I wasn’t willing to cry in front of other people at the gym. So I hid from it all at home, where no one could see me cry.

I struggled with my body and him for the next few months. He and I were so up and down, he infiltrated my thoughts so often, I thought it best to find as many distractions as I could. I would go to the gym, but it would only be a half-hearted effort. Finally, when I walked away in March, I started to feel good about myself again. I struggled with how my body had grown softer, but I wasn’t afraid of facing my innermost thoughts at the gym anymore. I still felt sexy, even when it wasn’t GDB who left me messages every day, as much as it was Rebound Boy. I was back in a rhythm. I liked myself and my body.

Of course, that’s when the world shifted again. Remember when I got fired? And had to deal with an asshat of a roommate? And GDB came back? And oh yeah. I traveled for a month and a half. Oh right. And broke up with GDB for good. All in the last two months. Yeah. I’m still recovering from that.

So I’ve taken solace on my parents’ couch, in my bed, eating their food, most of which is not what I would keep in my own house. I’ve seen pictures of myself from Thailand compared to pictures of myself from this past weekend, and something feels wrong. My clothes don’t feel right. My body feels strange and bigger than usual. I don’t feel sexy, at all. I don’t even really feel attractive. I’m putting on my more masculine clothes, hiding my body again, because I’m not happy with my body as it is anymore.

I won’t say pounds because I try not to go by pounds as much as I try to go by how my clothes feel, but I do want to get back to where my body was. Where I felt tight and fit, where I wasn’t afraid to wear my more feminine clothes because I felt pretty and light, and mainly, where I felt damn sexy. Part of me wonders if it’s because I’ve finally ended something where I felt like the most insanely attractive thing in the world in GDB’s eyes, and am I not able to see myself in that same light? I honestly can’t answer that today. For the first time in a long time, I am taking a break from relationships (if you haven’t heard Alanis Morrissette’s “Moratorium,” I suggest you download it now), from positive reinforcement from guys I find attractive, and from feeling like I have someone I want to dress up for.

I want to dress up for me. But more importantly, I want to feel like I CAN dress up for me, when I am back to being comfortable in my own skin. I want to shed the weight I’ve gained in the last two and a half weeks of being home. I want to remember what it was like to walk down the street and turn heads. I’m not there yet. But hopefully, even though my routine is at best a joke, at worst, a pretense, I’ll get there again.

First off, I’d like to clarify one thing. There have been moments where you have made me giggle, clap my hands delightedly, and grin until my face feels like it’s going to break.I don’t doubt this will happen again someday. There are moments where I feel like I’m one of those movie moments that were someone else to view me, they’d cringe from the sappiness. There are also moments where I wake up in the mornings, completely content with where my life is at and who it’s with at the moment.

But over the last few years, I’ve learned a few things from my experiences with you. You all know how to be mighty big assholes from time to time. Even when I don’t have feelings for you or care much about you, you still know how to get right up in there and make a few tweaks that have me all up in a storm, arms flailing around, ready to pound down on anyone who dares come near, man or woman.

If you feel sorry about something, that’s one thing. If you feel as though you should apologize to smooth things over, that’s another. Why is it that you, as a gender, are so prone to apologizing for things without understanding why you’re apologizing in the first place? For example, Rebound Boy. Telling me that you didn’t really understand that wearing a condom was a part of the whole, “I don’t care if you sleep with other people since we’re not dating, but at least be safe and honest about it,” discussion does not get you out of jail free. Furthermore, contacting me to apologize and then saying, “I just didn’t want you to think I was some asshole player,” when the point is, you were? If nothing else, you’ll always remember me as the first girl who kicked you out of her bed. When you told me today, “I still can’t believe you kicked me out of bed. That’s never happened to me before,” I thought, “Get used to it kid. I’m sure I won’t be the last.”

Why bother apologizing at all? If you fucked up, and you feel bad about it, keep it to yourself. I’d rather you leave me alone and let me think of you as a jerk. Maybe in a year or two, I’ll be too focused with some other idiot who either doesn’t know how to keep it in his pants, forgets that he’s supposed to be the male and whines I don’t need him enough, the distance is too much (incidentally, an excuse Rebound Boy gave me today because South Bay is too far from East Bay? What? Talk to me after you do a Chicago-Berkeley distance) or expects me to demand a relationship from him after a week of dating. I don’t work like that gentlemen; if you want me, you need to know well enough how to hold my hand as we begin the negotiation dance so that I might just take down this wall that I have up.

I’m not going to be that girl who asks you, “Are you my boyfriend?” The very word doesn’t exist in my vocabulary for a reason. Hell, I might not even say, “What are we doing?” until about a year in, and I’ll just refer to you as my person in the meantime, and quite possibly, thereafter. You need to respect that I’m an independent fucker who will do things when I want, how I want, and if I really like you, I’ll ask you to do it with me. But I won’t rearrange my life for you, unless I think you’re damn well worth it. As of this point, only one of you has ever made it that far. Also; giving me a time line? Saying you want children by the time you’re twenty-eight, when I’ll be all of twenty-seven? My body runs in the opposite direction of a clock. Don’t bother imposing one on me.

I am a kick-ass girlfriend, when I get around to being a girlfriend. I’m also an awesome fuck buddy - as long as you’re safe, do what you want to do. Just treat me like I’m the only thing that matters when I’m around, and I’ll do the same for you. But now that my sexual health has been compromised, check it out boys. The boobs? They’re going underground. I know you’ll miss them. They’re damn fine specimens of what real breasts should look like, gentlemen.

For that matter, what part of man break did you not get, men? Why is it that when I want nothing to do with any of you, that’s when you break out the olive branches and declarations of love?

I’m tired of you all saying, “You were amazing. I had a good thing, and I don’t know why I ruined it. I fucked up. I made a mistake. You were pretty cool. [Insert variation of how awesome I am here.]” I’m tired of you saying “I know I lost a good thing when I screwed things up with you.” I’m tired of being lost, period. You know where I am boys. I was never that difficult to find in the first place.

But please. Respect my need for a break from you, without any apologies, without any desires, without any words that are guaranteed to make me go back on all the promises I made to myself and find me wanting a future that I had already said goodbye to. Please just let me make it through a day, without heated tempers or tears or words that I’m not sure I mean anymore but want to mean. Please just give me some time.

I don’t doubt that in the future, I will look forward to spending time with you again, and will admire how well I incorporate your lifestyle into my own after years of fierce independence. I love running my hands through your hair when you look at me, just after you’ve kissed me. I love how you can sometimes nuzzle your face in my shoulder and make me jump by breathing cold air on my bare skin. I love how you’ll sometimes say something so ridiculous, I can’t stop laughing and think I might fall over. I love how getting a text message from you will make me grin ridiculously, to the point where I’m not sure my face is altogether there anymore. But today? Is not that day. Until then, please. Keep your space, and I’ll keep mine.

Respectfully,

distracted spunk.

“I still want to be with you,” he said. “Just give me another chance. I can’t stop thinking about you, I know how much I messed up, and you were so amazing - you ARE so amazing. I’d be lucky to even have you again.”

I got this speech last week. Unfortunately, not from the one I wanted to hear it from. Because try as I might, while I sleep, my dreams subconsciously wrap to the arms of a boy in Chicago, his green eyes humoring mine, his voice deep and still rumbling through my body when I don’t want to feel those vibrations anymore.

Facebook is the devil. It shows me pictures of the girl who has since replaced me, because she was willing to give him everything I wasn’t. I don’t regret my decision. I wish somehow, the part that has attached itself to him would slip away, no longer the barnacle of my love-weary existence. Physically, I let myself reach for another man. Mentally, I think he’s not him. Yeah, this new one can make me shake and quiver, but it’s just sex. It’s just lips on mine, not much more than “I like you,” floating through our heads. The dance party in my room might be silly, but it won’t ever compare to the times where I would dance out of boredom and fall into his lap, to strong arms that would catch me and hold me, before sending small electric shocks from each synapse as they delighted in his touch. Will I ever feel that again? Of the crackling air when we touched, when we kissed, even when we argued? He could make me feel like the sexiest girl on the planet, even if I was in pajama pants, a t-shirt, and glasses. I want that again.

I don’t want to compare them. I laughed when my high school boyfriend, who I spent more time trying to break up with than stay with sent me that message, asking for another chance. Even when he finally acknowledged cheating on me with multiple girls (mind you, after a whopping six years almost), he still seemed to think I would accept him flirting with me. I laughed at him, and wished that his words were someone else’s. Someone who once called me his girl, made me feel as though no matter how scared I was to take this huge leap into the big L, he would be right by my side the entire time.

Is it all ironic that “And I’m Telling You” from the Dreamgirls soundtrack is playing right now? He was the best man I had known, until December. I won’t pretend that it was all sunshine daisies and mellow yellow, but it was damn good, and for a long time. I think of how he would demand truth from me when I couldn’t quite figure out what it was myself. Or how he promised to break my walls down, which he inevitably did. Of how he managed to make me smile when I was so stressed out, between looking for an apartment, realizing my job was shit, and finding a new one. He was there for all of that. It’s still strange not to be able to talk to him about where I want to go from here, where I want to be, who I want to be.

Of course I want better. I deserve better. But that doesn’t make the missing him stop. I don’t think we can ever truly cut out those memories, as painful as they may be. Though I often wish I could carve out that small section that belongs to him, put it aside in a sealed jar where I can look at it and admire those snippets from our life together when I feel particularly nostalgic. When I am ready again, to wear him under my skin, beneath my heart valve, in every pulsing blood cell, I can twist off the cap and let him infuse me with the warmth I felt for so much of our time together.

The one who asked for a second chance (or was it seventeenth?) six years too late is the only one of whom I will never think fondly. I consider him my learning experience, the mistakes I had to make to know what I would never do again. In a way, we do that in every relationship, refine our list of who we want, what we want, until hopefully, someday, we find what it is we’re looking for. It amazes me that I can still chat friendly, almost affectionately with the other two, who hurt me in ways I never thought imaginable. I want that again someday, to be able to call him my friend and not just the boy I loved and walked away from in anger.

Until then, until I figure out how to carve out the part of my heart that wears his name and the fragrance of his skin, I’m left to wonder what it all means when I wake up from dreams of his smiling face after we have just agreed to give it another go.

Every Saturday night of our senior year in college, one of my closest friends and I would get dressed up. Or at least she would. For me, it was a black top of some sort, with my tightest pair of jeans which weren’t very tight at all, and a pair of black boots that pushed me up to about 5′9. We would arrive before 10, so as to take advantage of the free entrance for girls, and while we would always find something to talk about, inevitably, she would attract attention and find a man (or three) to talk to. I never minded, because a few minutes later, an amaretto sour would come rolling down the pike, as I sipped on my straw and she chattered away. Having lived in Spain for the last year, she would get especially excited when she found a native Spanish speaker with whom she could practice the fluid rolling r’s of the language she loved.

The music would start, and we’d grab hands and make our way to the dance floor, regardless of how many people were dancing. If there was one thing we both knew how to do, it was dance. She moved her body with a spanish flair, the rhythm of the samba and flamenco rolling her hips to the music, a native Spaniard despite her New Jersey roots. As for me? It was always the beat pulsing, vibrating from my foot to my ears, making me part of the music rather than someone dancing to it. My body instinctively would reach out to the notes, the bass the unspoken language of its movement and it was on the dance floor we’d unleash our inner goddesses and let them follow our curves to the music.

It was no surprise that guys gravitated to us, when we were dancing so freely and without abandon. However, while she would dance with anyone because for her, it was about having a good time and dancing, for me, it was purely the movement that appealed to me. Guys would sidle up to me, their bodies pressed against my back, their hands on the lowest points of my hips, sliding down my thighs as they sought to tame the beat that resided within. Very few could move their bodies the way I needed them to for me to feel comfortable with them. There always needed to be a level of attraction for me to feel so close, so comfortable with them, and then they needed to quite simply, be able to move. Only a few guys were able to follow my body as it gyrated; most would rotate to the left while I veered off to the right, or their legs were uncomfortably close to mine, hindering my ability to dance freely, and I would always end up walking away.

I don’t mean to say she was loose or undiscerning, but I do mean to say that much like how I pick the men I dance with, I am also incredibly selective about those I date. For almost a year, I was a one-guy girl, a phenomenon so new and rare to me, it took me several months to acknowledge the fact I was in a relationship. It is rare to find a man who can keep my rhythm, one who won’t stumble a few beats into the music when the note pitches and my body shifts. As I can only dance alone for so long, I’ve made do with those who could dance along with me for a few notes, their feet tapping to the count of unh, unh, unh, yeah as we slid into a night of sloppy kisses or debonair tongues, bodies pressed against one another with hands in those most private of privates, a lick here and a lap there, but not to be repeated more than a few times. My standards for one-night stand type boys were considerably less than they were for the boys I’d date. A dash of nerdiness, a pint of intelligence, occasionally a measure of good wit and banter, and ideally, an appreciation for me. Alcohol sometimes smoothed these deals over.

But the ones that would stay with me, even beyond the messy breakups and tears, were the ones that could keep up with my dance, in every pitch and change of note. I may not be high-maintenance, but I am high-energy. To date me requires challenging me intellectually, mentally, emotionally, physically, and ways that I couldn’t possibly think of, simply put. My standards remain quite high, because so few people can successfully press their bodies to mine and make me want to stay connected through the vibrations of our fingertips and our mouths, or when the music slows down and there’s a brief respite to talk.

This last dance I had? Is probably the most exhausting one I’ve undertaken yet. So I’ve taken a small break, sipping on the wine of restoration, before tentatively making my way onto the floor again. It’s about time for a partner who won’t stay with me for more than a few beats, perhaps a single song, because while he may be able to keep my gyrations in tune with his for now, it can’t go much further. And for the nights he may spend in my bed, or leave small reminders of his presence in my life; a frisbee here, some nuts there, and finally, a shirt, it’s only for a few songs. Giving myself some time where I let it flow through me and into someone else, as we combine our bodies to create a new, shorter movement is just fine with me.

I know someday, the club will pitch, the lights will roll, and someone will slide up and as his hands reach down my waist, my hips, the fabric of my jeans will melt underneath his tips as we begin the new dance, one that will leave me breathless again, and in fervent movements that remind me of how good it can be when someone else knows the song.

Choking back sobs from my diaphragm, tears running soundlessly across my eyelids, cheeks, to the bottom-most earlobe, I told him I was crying because I always cry when I come. Truth was, I was crying because I felt like I had cheated. He lay beside me, pleased with himself, while I fervently hoped my thoughts wouldn’t untangle themselves in my mouth and reveal the truth.

“Why can’t you just acknowledge that you still have feelings for me and then we can both just move on and be friends?” I implored. I couldn’t move forward, waiting for the day he would open his eyes and accept what was in front of him, something he’d let slip time and time again. A familiar refrain, song, second verse. “We’re just friends, DS,” he said. “That’s all we’re ever going to be. What happened last summer was a mistake. I’m not going to ruin our friendship over one week together.” I didn’t know I would be the one to sing the last chorus back to him.

His arms were wrapped around me, his blond hair shining in the early morning sunlight. We lay naked under a blue and white striped sheet, accessory to my twin-XL bed provided by NYU. I noticed him looking at my body, and asked him what he was doing. “Just admiring you. I hadn’t seen you in the light yet.” I turned to my side, propped up on an elbow. “See anything good?” I asked.

“You have to be the most confusing girl I’ve ever been with. You want me to touch you, but you don’t. You’re not ready for this, but then you kiss me like you want me anyway.” I couldn’t see him in the dark shadows of my room, feeling as though my body betrayed me, wanting something my mind couldn’t wrap itself around. I tried to explain I hadn’t been with someone new in a long time, unable to explain that I just broke my own heart weeks ago.

His body covered mine, his mouth reaching for mine, two and a half years of tension unfolding. Drunk on grey goose, the party atmosphere, and each other, the room blacked out as we found each other, again and again and again. He lip-read to me. “You’re beautiful. I don’t know why we wasted a whole summer.” The sound of our friends whooping and cheering in the background as we finally knocked down that seemingly impenetrable wall was the soundtrack to what would soon become my devastation.

“I can’t do this. I don’t want to be long distance anymore. I want to be with you, here.” “But I can’t do that. Not till December at the least.” I told him. “Then I guess we can’t be together anymore.” The words unfolded themselves off my screen, burning its way down my throat, my vocal chords, my heart. I watched the memories we had yet to create, so firmly entrenched in my mind, shatter into shards of ash, melted by all the tears I would be unable to cry that day.

His fingers marked trails down my spine, mapping out new territory, land recently unmarked. Part of me was annoyed. I wanted him to leave, to pull out my vibrator for release, and cap off the night with Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It was too soon, too fast. What kind of a girl does he think I am? I just wanted his arms to lie in and nothing else, to feel safe when I felt lost.

Hidden within tall blades of grass, shaded leaves verdant and bright over our heads, his arm provided the cradle for my head. I teased him with a blade of grass, sweeping it against the paleness of his skin. He sighed. “Being fondled by grass is better than man.” I laughed, wishing it could always be like this. Just us.

He donned a pair of gold spandex shorts, tight, perfectly fitted, with a grin on his face. “The things I do for love,” he teased. On the heels of my realization that my job was a farce, my fear that I moved across country for nothing, he shook his shiny butt, determined to make me laugh and smile again. “I’d do anything for you,” he told me. “Would you do anything for me?” “I’d go to Timbuktu and back again,” I answered. Partially serious, partially joking, I was falling.