In Which Thomas Enters from Stage Right in a Recreation Vehicle

The nearly impossible has occurred. My lackadaisical participation on OK Cupid has yielded a gem.

First of all, I should mention that Lachlan and I have not managed to get in touch at an appropriate time--a lot of bum luck going on there--and I have hardly heard from Caleb except a feeble "thank you" for the letter I wrote him. I was starting to get a little antsy, especially given the growing closeness and increasing time investment between Simon and Ruth. They are totally cute together and I am happy for them, but my relative lack of play has left me with a bit of an appetite.

Luckily, I've been able to coax Simon's clothes off a few times in the past week. If he hadn't been in the mood, I don't know what I could have done with myself. Besides, he's looking so swarthy and sexy since the sun has decided to come out for several days on end. I can hardly be expected to resist.

Okay. Back to the main plot: Enter Thomas. He messaged me rather out of nowhere last week sometime asking if I wanted to go "blow shit up" with him. Naturally, I was intrigued. I had never noticed him on OK Cupid before although he is poly and we are a 99% match. As it turns out, it makes perfect sense why our match percentage is so high. We immediately got along very well, I felt comfortable presenting myself as I am, and conversation was easy. I admired his idiosyncratic, fuck-all attitude and lifestyle; he lives on extremely little money (he is in the beginning stages of building a business on the web), he almost never goes "out," and he almost always seems to find something novel and creative to do instead. I found him interesting and sweet, but I wasn't sure I was attracted to him in more than a friendly way. We ended that first meeting with me reaching to hug him awkwardly and him making an awkward attempt to kiss me that resulted in a sideways peck on the cheek.

I guess that after the first time I met him and felt only the mildest flutter of potentiality regarding the carnal side of things, I thought that he was probably just not my type. I also felt that dating someone like him might represent a weird sort of overlap with the territory that rightfully belongs to my relationship with Simon. I was surprised how quickly my assumptions and my degree of enthusiasm could change.

It turns out that his nerdy, shy, somewhat nervous persona does not extend far below the surface. First of all, he is incorrigibly adventurous in very particular ways. The twinkle in his eye when he talks about getting into mischief is adorably boyish. He has a serious affinity for uncharted, forgotten, or forbidden places. He peeks in every dumpster; he prefers to stand and sit in liminal spaces; and he loves to trespass. I can identify with this impulse. We had a great time busting into a nearly deserted hotel and taking advantage of the swimming pool...and the sauna, which we had to ourselves...

Second, he apparently loses all his jitters as soon as he starts to get aroused. His sexual personality is startlingly assertive and dominant, but perfectly balanced by an acute sense of patience, respect for boundaries, and frank solicitation of consent. Part of me wondered if he had somehow found this diary and studied it to be so educated about my desires. (He did try to find it after I told him it existed, but to my relief, he only came up with my public blog.)

Another part of me just thought that perhaps his levels of emotional maturity, sexual experience, and confidence are a bit further advanced than what I'm accustomed to. He is seven years my senior, and has been through many phases of social, personal, and sexual development in his life. (He has a few jaw-dropping and hilarious stories about the odd places, circumstances, and people he has somehow survived.) He spent several years behaving, as he put it, like a complete slut--not the ethical kind--and has long since reformed those habits. He has had several major relationships, both mono and poly, and he has calm and mature insights about them. When he speaks about all this, he doesn't stoop to blaming or bashing any of the women he has known--always a good sign! It seems that in general, he has already been through many of his lessons and racked up quite a bit of knowledge about what women want. Furthermore, unlike Caleb, he is not in the midst of any huge personal upheavals or regressions, and so I can trust the relatively uncomplicated nature of his interest in me. All of these details make it feel easy on the affective level to open my body to him.

As far as the rest of that equation goes, the boy is a fucking monster. I seriously have no idea how he seems to just know.

After hiking up to a bald rock face with a breathtaking view (no joke, soaring eagles and all that) for a picnic and sneaking into the hotel for a swim and a surprise makeout session in a darkened sauna, we returned to his RV. He was so gentle at first; he had lured me there in the first place by offering to observe the same underwear-on rules as we had agreed on in the sauna, and he kept his word. I think he must have somehow remembered me mentioning the soreness I still feel over the idea that I might have rushed things with Caleb, because it seemed like Thomas knew to be particularly sensitive to my need to feel more secure. (Again, how did he know?)

Aside: I really don't know why I've been putting up with this vague attitude of entitlement from men like James for so long, or why I've come to expect it, or why I'm so surprised when a man is genuinely respectful of the boundaries I set for physical intimacy. Society has trained me in the most worrisome way. Nevertheless, I was super excited that he was such a gentleman and I didn't have to worry so damn much about that particular struggle. I was able to just enjoy what I was doing and feeling without wondering if I would have to resist being pushed further than I had already said I wanted to go. When I thanked Thomas later for his respectful behavior, he playfully mocked me by saying something like, "What? You're thanking me for not date raping you?"

So yeah yeah yeah, he was gentle and sweet. And then? And then?

I had the most delicious feeling when we were fooling around in this dimly-lit trailer under a streetlamp that I was being mauled over and over and somehow living through it. How did he know how much I love to be gently but firmly and authoritatively manipulated, to have my legs and arms and entire body picked up and placed where my lover wants them, to be enfolded, spun around, held down, parted and pressed into? Is it because most women love the same thing? I thought that there were many women who preferred soft caresses and light touch. Or is that just an invention of the social construct of femininity? Anyway, it was exhilarating.

He turned out to be deceptively strong and hard-bodied, too. If you saw Thomas in a bar, you might peg him for a wallflower. His posture isn't particularly assertive, his voice falters and cracks a bit, and his eyes flutter around as if looking for a place to land. In other words, he is easy to feminize in the imagination as a beta personality. I don't think I am alone in the tendency to assume that outward assertiveness and physical prowess somehow go together, and that shyness and physical weakness are likewise correlated. Yet again, my useless stereotypes were proven wrong.

I think I first noticed his actual shape when he was holding onto the upper edge of a window frame that was weirdly positioned in the pool, a sort of useless portal. His arms were stretched over his head as he held himself up, and the blue light reflecting off the water outlined him against the window. I felt a tingle deep in my belly when I noticed how beautiful his arms and shoulders are. His back was turned towards me, so I was free to stare. That may have been the moment when I realized that I had jumped to a hasty conclusion about what kinds of bodies I can and cannot feel sexually attracted to...because right then, I certainly felt an intense desire to feel his arms around me.

Later, in the dim light that stole in through the cracks in the curtains, the effect was even more dramatic. I could hardly believe his strength; he could easily pick me up by clutching me to his chest, pressing one hand into the middle of my back, and sitting up. When I was squirming against him this way, my fingers would land on impressively firm pectoral muscles, slide over sinewy shoulders, and claw at the rippling flesh of his back. His hands were strong and incredibly sensitive, too. Although he mostly grabbed and pushed and pulled (which, as I've said before, is a delightful habit to discover pre-packaged in a lover), his hands made these wonderfully intelligent shapes and paths, neglecting no part of me. All this with no penetration or even oral sex. It was terrifically intimate and exploratory in a way that I feel like haven't experienced since I was a teenager, when the delight of sexual play was not so cluttered by the expectation of an orgasm.

Feeling how we interlock and move while we were fully clothed was both a delicious glimpse of delights to come and a joy unto itself, intense in a very different way from the actual fucking that we are probably going to be doing in approximately ninety hours. (Can you tell I'm excited?)

If all continues to go well, we've agreed that the ideal situation for both of us involves a fairly regular relationship in which we expect to see each other once a week or so on average. He has also agreed to meet Simon at some point in the not-too-distant future. His other partner, on the other hand, has no desire whatsoever to meet me. I am fine with that, but I hope for her own sake that she can change her mind and realize that this town is too small to expect not to run into me, or us, by accident at some point. She may as well come around to the idea that we should be friendly, but it's hardly my place to say.

Wow. I have spent a lot of time composing this hymn to my new lover. I have nearly forgotten that I still need to work today. I can hardly blame myself, though, for losing my concentration when I have electric jolts vibrating through my organs at frequent and unpredictable intervals. Wish me luck getting it together, reader.