(no subject)
Jul. 20th, 2004 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslut(I was working on this as a possible submission to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
final_girl's upcoming anthology project, but it's stubbornly refusing to become more than a very short reminiscence. So I'm going to post this here instead.)
It took a writing instructor* to teach me that I'd had an affair with a married man.
She was critiquing a story of mine. We were examining a scene in which a woman confronts her lover about his recalcitrance over sharing details of his personal life. (His reticence is understandable -- he's a vampire.)
"She wouldn't say that," my instructor said. "She'd ask if he was married."
And a whole chunk of my life fell into place.
I don't talk about this much because I'm ashamed of it. Not of the affair per se, but of some of the surrounding circumstances. For about a year of my life, I was a MUSH** addict. I don't use the word addict lightly, either -- near the end, I was logging in from work surreptitiously, hooking up an unused phone line to my modem. I was spending hours online, in front of the computer. I walked more than a mile in deep Chicago snow to the computer lab just so I could get a faster connection.***
As a result of the MUSH, I'd fallen into a torrid online correspondence with an older man who lived outside of Boston. He pursued me pretty relentlessly, even after I told him I was fat and queer and freaky. And I was young and flattered by the attention. We started calling each other on the phone. It wasn't love, but it was something.
Eventually, as these things go, we made arrangements to meet in person. I took a side trip up from a New York road trip to see him.
I could not go to his house; we met at a mutual friend's and went to dinner. Oh, it was so late when we got back, wasn't it best he crashed on the living room floor with me rather than take the long ride back? Of course, he wasn't so tired that we couldn't have sex, right there on the living room floor. It was good sex. He was an attentive lover. I was happy.
His friend hinted to me that he had a secret, but wouldn't tell me what it was.
Here's the part I am most ashamed about. Some time after our first meeting, we were having a fight. A miscommunication. I called his house, late at night, without any warning. A woman's voice answered. I hung up.
And I still didn't figure it out. Not until that moment in the critique session, a handful of years later.
I totally bought his line. That he'd had some longterm girlfriends in the past but was single now, and lonely. Sexually curious, but with little chance to try certain things. In fact, I thought of myself as the sophisticated one in that regard. I probably was -- sexually. Relationship-wise, though, I was still dreadfully naive.
I wouldn't say I was hurt by my realization. On good days, I can be amused at my own overly trusting nature, my openness, and how it was so easily taken advantage of. On bad days, I'm ashamed at being conned. More than anything else, I feel shame at being conned. It's one thing to knowingly have an affair with a married man, to go into it with eyes wide open. It's another thing to play the fool.
*Octavia Butler, if we're dropping names.
**Multi-User Shell, for those who don't know -- a text-based online multi-user roleplaying game, generally non-goal-oriented in style.
***Yes, G., this is what I did instead of clubbing. I got better.
final_girl's upcoming anthology project, but it's stubbornly refusing to become more than a very short reminiscence. So I'm going to post this here instead.)It took a writing instructor* to teach me that I'd had an affair with a married man.
She was critiquing a story of mine. We were examining a scene in which a woman confronts her lover about his recalcitrance over sharing details of his personal life. (His reticence is understandable -- he's a vampire.)
"She wouldn't say that," my instructor said. "She'd ask if he was married."
And a whole chunk of my life fell into place.
I don't talk about this much because I'm ashamed of it. Not of the affair per se, but of some of the surrounding circumstances. For about a year of my life, I was a MUSH** addict. I don't use the word addict lightly, either -- near the end, I was logging in from work surreptitiously, hooking up an unused phone line to my modem. I was spending hours online, in front of the computer. I walked more than a mile in deep Chicago snow to the computer lab just so I could get a faster connection.***
As a result of the MUSH, I'd fallen into a torrid online correspondence with an older man who lived outside of Boston. He pursued me pretty relentlessly, even after I told him I was fat and queer and freaky. And I was young and flattered by the attention. We started calling each other on the phone. It wasn't love, but it was something.
Eventually, as these things go, we made arrangements to meet in person. I took a side trip up from a New York road trip to see him.
I could not go to his house; we met at a mutual friend's and went to dinner. Oh, it was so late when we got back, wasn't it best he crashed on the living room floor with me rather than take the long ride back? Of course, he wasn't so tired that we couldn't have sex, right there on the living room floor. It was good sex. He was an attentive lover. I was happy.
His friend hinted to me that he had a secret, but wouldn't tell me what it was.
Here's the part I am most ashamed about. Some time after our first meeting, we were having a fight. A miscommunication. I called his house, late at night, without any warning. A woman's voice answered. I hung up.
And I still didn't figure it out. Not until that moment in the critique session, a handful of years later.
I totally bought his line. That he'd had some longterm girlfriends in the past but was single now, and lonely. Sexually curious, but with little chance to try certain things. In fact, I thought of myself as the sophisticated one in that regard. I probably was -- sexually. Relationship-wise, though, I was still dreadfully naive.
I wouldn't say I was hurt by my realization. On good days, I can be amused at my own overly trusting nature, my openness, and how it was so easily taken advantage of. On bad days, I'm ashamed at being conned. More than anything else, I feel shame at being conned. It's one thing to knowingly have an affair with a married man, to go into it with eyes wide open. It's another thing to play the fool.
*Octavia Butler, if we're dropping names.
**Multi-User Shell, for those who don't know -- a text-based online multi-user roleplaying game, generally non-goal-oriented in style.
***Yes, G., this is what I did instead of clubbing. I got better.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-20 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-20 02:25 pm (UTC)You know it is possible to have affairs and club at the same time. C'mon you can multitask with the best of 'em.
:)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-20 03:52 pm (UTC)