The Pedant: a cross-section from two angles.

When I was 16 or so, I was hanging out with a group of friends at one of their houses.  For some reason, a guy not in our usual circle was also there – this skinny four-eyed kid we knew from school.  I’m just gonna call him Dork.

The house was really nice – there was a sauna and pool and we’d all changed into our bathing suits.  Whoever’s house it was gave us a little tour, and when we were in the sauna, the lights got turned off (accidentally?)  and for maybe fifteen seconds we ended up standing in the pitch dark.  During which time Dork – who’d been standing beside me – tentatively placed his hand on my bare back between my bathing suit straps and moved it up and down in an exploratory fashion.  The incident left me confused because Dork had never seemed to take any particular notice of me before, and when the lights came up his hand retreated and he acted as though nothing had happened.

But after we went swimming in the pool for a while, I was brushing my wet hair (which was long then and prone to tangling) and Dork came up and took the task over, putting on a silly “French hairdresser” persona as he did so (“Ah, I love zis hair…I will make you so beautiful, cherie…”).  He was hovering around me and brushing my hair and stuff for the rest of the day.

I did not find Dork attractive at all, but I’d rarely – if ever – experienced attention like that from a boy before, and it filled my insecure teenaged heart with shameful gratitude.  I wanted more ego validation.  And so, a day or two later I asked one of the other people who’d been present that day to do some recon for me.  I don’t remember the exact details; either I’d enlisted my friend to confirm that Dork liked me so I’d feel confident enough to ask him out, or the friend was meant to ask Dork out for me (most likely the former.  I’ve always enjoyed initiating – I just like to know I’m welcome first).  At any rate, the friend reported that – when confronted about the events of Pool and Sauna Day – Dork was like “Pffft. I don’t like Cowgirl!  What are you even talking about?!”

Looking back now, it’s obvious to me that Dork was hitting on me in some capacity that day – if only because he sensed I might be “easy”* – and just lied about it later for whatever reason.  Maybe if I’d been a different, more confident kind of person, I would’ve written Dork off at the time as an idiot and a liar.  As it was, though, this incident made me completely lose faith in my instincts.  To this day, I second-guess myself about whether people like me, even if all signs point to yes.  Although in fairness I’ve had at least a handful of other incidents where a dude gave every sign of being really into me and then either vanished or told me “Pffft!  I don’t like you!  What are you even talking about?!”

Being told “I don’t like you that way” sucks, especially when the person says it in a gloating “ha ha, fooled you!” tone rather than apologetically.  It feels like the person is probably relishing the hurt and surprise on my face.  And so (I’ve realized) I have a tendency to brace myself for romance to go horribly wrong all the time.  So I don’t give anyone that satisfaction ever again.  So I can go “Whatever, dude – I totally saw that coming.”

Here is what I’d like to believe about The Pedant:

• He has romantic feelings for me, which is why he buys me things, volunteers to help me with all kinds of stuff, snuggles me to sleep, caresses my face while we’re watching a movie in the theatre, etc.  But he’s afraid of telling me in case I don’t feel the same way.  He did, after all, start out as the hot thing I was seeing on the side of my big important primary relationship with Minx; it would be fairly reasonable to assume that he’s still just a hot but peripheral piece of ass.
• He cut way back on talking about other women and previous sexual encounters because he had become so enamoured with me that he only had eyes for me.  He slowly started up again so I wouldn’t think he was getting all hung up on me.
• He only comes over every couple of weeks – and doesn’t initiate much communication in-between – because he assumes this is only about sex for me and he doesn’t want to crowd me or make his feelings too obvious.  But he’s thrilled when I text him and can’t help replying immediately.
• The day I offhandedly mentioned that I’m not looking for any kind of deep relationship right now, his hopes were dashed and this is why (for the first time ever) he slept next to me without making any effort to cuddle.
• When I had the bareback discussion with him, he was still feeling rejected (and was probably worried about the STD risks, like any responsible person would be) and so he initially thought he didn’t want to take that step with me.
• The next time I saw him he was unusually aloof because he was still nursing a fractured heart.
• At some point, he reread my texts re: barebacking and realized what a huge deal the offer was to me – how much affection and trust I had for him.  Plus he finally digested the fact that I’m not sleeping with anyone but him (because – in my own words – I’m extremely discerning).  Perhaps previously he’d assumed I was fucking around all over the place, since I do come off as a lusty wench.
• With his hopes of a deeper connection to me restored, The Pedant came over and was super enthusiastic about being with me.  And jumped the gun a little bit on the bareback thing because he was so eager to feel that close to me.  And opened up to me a little more (eye contact during sex, etc.) because he was beginning to think I might have feelings for him.  And mentioned in passing that he’s looking for one or more relationships involving actual love, not just sex, to give me a hint that he’s into me.
• When I eventually ask him what we’re doing/what his feelings are, there will be an epic, cinema-quality confession of feelings, our relationship will move to the next level, and our communication issues will improve because with all our cards on the table, neither of us will be skirting around issues in order not to look vulnerable.

Here is what I tell myself is actually happening with The Pedant:

• He likes me because I’m a good pal and we have good sexual chemistry.  He snuggles with me because snuggling is nice.  He helps me out with stuff because he’s generally a helpful person (he is a helpful person – I see him make posts on Facebook all the time to help out his friends, both male and female).
• He cut way back on talking about other women and previous sexual encounters because, after that one incident, he was afraid of upsetting me again.  He slowly started up again because old habits die hard.
• He only comes over every couple of weeks because we have a casual sort of relationship and he likes his space.  He doesn’t initiate much communication in-between for the same reason, and also because once his sexual needs have been sated, he just doesn’t think of me that often.  But it’s not like he hates me or anything, so if I text him and he’s not busy, he’ll respond quickly enough.
• He didn’t cuddle me that one night because his interest in physical contact randomly waxes and wanes.
• He seemed aloof with me the next time I saw him because his interest in physical contact randomly waxes and wanes.
• At some point, he reread my texts re: barebacking and it sank in that I’m pretty low-risk because I’m not in fact fucking anyone else.  So he started genuinely entertaining the idea because, hey, condoms kind of suck and it would be nice not to have to use them.  And because we really do have good sexual chemistry so if he’s gonna do that with anyone it might as well be me.  And because he likes the idea of being the first partner to take that step with me (or at least the first to do it properly: to make a mutual, deliberate decision to proceed, to take proper health precautions first, and to have the unprotected sex with me on an ongoing basis).
• …And by the time he saw me next he’d become so eager to experience barebacking with someone again that he kinda jumped the gun.  And also, knowing I liked and trusted him that much made him maybe like and trust me a little more, too, and he made himself more vulnerable to me (eye contact during sex, etc.).  And he mentioned in passing that he’s looking for one or more relationships that involve love, not just sex, because I’m the kind of friend he can have those discussions with.  Hell, when we first started seeing each other he continually asked me advice about the ex he was still in love with and trying to win back.
• When I eventually ask him what we’re doing/what his feelings are, he’ll tell me he likes me and he’s having fun and that’s about it.  Hopefully he won’t get weirded out by my question, assume I’m in love with him/about to make huge emotional demands of him, and back away from me.  But I’m not ruling out the possibility.

If I tell him I’m into him and he doesn’t return the sentiment, nobody can accuse me of being blindsided by this news.  I should feel triumphant and prepared right now but I don’t.  I’m mostly just sad that I can never enjoy anything because I’m always looking for the horrible downside.

And I feel I must reiterate: these fantasies I have about The Pedant confessing his undying love (or even deciding that he must have me all to himself – yeah, I’ve pictured that, and I’m vaguely ashamed that my heteronormative monogamous roots run so deep) are barely even about him per se – they’re mostly me missing the feeling of being loved by someone.  I do care about him; I do feel like there’s something there.  Often I even feel as though I love him – but if we didn’t have such good sex, I think that would go away.  Which is a pretty big sign that my hormones are jerking me around right now.  So, while I wish The Pedant would tell me he’s madly in love with me, I hope that he doesn’t.

I do want him to have some kind of feelings for me beyond friendship and lust, though.

*I totally would have been easy, had anyone in fact tried to fuck me.  I wanted the validation of male desire so badly, and was also terrible at defending or even identifying my boundaries.  Plus I was horny and curious.  If I hadn’t been so socially awkward I probably would’ve lost my virginity years before I actually did (at seventeen).

Any Tumblr users out there?

I’m trying to start a Tumblr for my life modelling stuff and the process is FRUSTRATING THE SHIT OUT OF ME (NB: I’m PMSing right now).

I updated the theme – and Tumblr seems to believe it’s displaying my chosen theme – but it is not.  Selecting that same theme several more times didn’t work, and neither did screaming curse words at the screen or restarting the whole goddamn computer.  I’m at a loss.

Also, I’d like this new Tumblr blog to have a title and an “about me” section, and I know these things are possible because other people have them, but I can’t figure out where to go to put this stuff on my page.

On an entirely separate note, I tried downloading Firefox a few minutes ago (The Pedant says it’s better than Safari, and I’m wondering if using a different browser might finally make Tumblr display my page theme correctly).  The instructions said to download Firefox and then drag it into the applications folder.  The applications folder wasn’t with the other crap that permanently resides at the bottom of my screen, so I found it manually and figured out how to put it there.  And the Firefox icon won’t drag into it.  Not even when I tried displaying the app folder as a “folder” instead of a “stack,” whatever the fuck any of that means.

I do not for the life of me understand how anyone thinks the Mac is “more intuitive” than a PC.  Some days every tiny motherfucking thing I want to do on this thing is a struggle.

Aso, I’ve only had this Airbook for six months or so and already the power cord doesn’t seat itself right anymore (it’s wobbly now and I have to carefully avoid bumping it askew and interrupting the charging process) and the cursor does some weird stuff when I type.  For a while, the browser was locking up and needing to be completely restarted several times a day, but I tentatively think those problems ended the last time I did a software update.

I love the physical design of the machine (so light and thin!) and how fast it starts up, but the pants-jizzing evangelism people display toward Macs is frankly alien to me.  Being a Mac user is not at all the smooth and effortless ride I’d been led to expect.

Pedantic musings

I went out with my friend The Social Worker last night.  I mentioned that I’d sent The Pedant a text complimenting his oral skills and two days later still hadn’t gotten a reply, and The Social Worker was really adorably infuriated on my behalf.  He sputtered that The Pedant is just a total douchebag and nobody would ignore a woman’s sweet, complimentary message like that unless he was only using her for sex.

I’m charmed by TSW’s outrage, but I disagree with his premise.  When I think “using someone for sex” I picture a person going over and fucking the object of their lust and then immediately leaving, without much other interaction.  It’s true that The Pedant doesn’t maintain as much contact with me between visits as I might like, but his stays with me are epic marathons of not just sex but also affection and movie-watching and discussion and sometimes shared domestic chores.  We’ve gone to dinner and movies and stuff, and when we do, sometimes he pays my part as well as his.

And, I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious to The Pedant that I’m really attracted to him and really into the sex, and therefore would still fuck him even without all the talking and dinners and stuff (if he began to withhold the snuggles, well, that might be a deal breaker).  So one presumes that he’s doing all the “extra stuff” because he wants to, and not as a down payment on my vagina.

Also, during our last visit he actually said that he wants to at least be friends with whoever he sleeps with or else it feels kind of empty.

Anyway, he still hasn’t responded to my text message lauding his oral skills (and I assume at this point he won’t – that he’s just forgotten about it or whatever) but he did respond to my email about our recent unprotected sex (and also, at the same time, to an email I’d sent him earlier this week.  I think he just forgets to reply to things sometimes).

Here, for the record, is the email I’d sent him:

Thoughts re: the unprotected sex, now that I’ve had a couple of days to mentally process:

In initiating things in the heat of the moment, you kinda forced me to make in impactful decision while I had very little blood in my brain.  A discussion at a neutral time when we were both calm and rational would have been ideal.

Having said that, it was wonderful to feel so close to you.  I’m glad to have had that experience and I’d really like to explore with you some more.  Just, y’know, with some discussion first to make sure we’re both on the same page.

I’ve done some thinking and – as I touched on briefly when you were over – I think my initial conditions for unprotected sex have loosened slightly.  I tentatively think I’m okay with us conducting things as many poly couples do: bareback with each other, protection with everyone else, and STD tests every 3 months (and obviously if one of us has an unclean test, we start wrapping it up again).

What are your feelings on this subject?

He wrote back:

Hey, thanks for writing to me about this.

A discussion ahead of time would certainly have been ideal.  As I told you, I hadn’t meant for things to go that far on that day, and I’m sorry to have forced this discussion in this manner.

Obviously it’d be a good idea to wait until test results are in hand before doing that again, and I’m going to kick down my doctor’s door this week to make an appointment to get full blood-testing done.

I’d also suggest that it might be a good idea to get tested more often than once every three months.

That said, I enjoyed the experience as well, and I’d certainly like to do that again if everything comes back clear.

The reply came in while I was having dinner tonight with High School Friend – she had already been given the background story so the second I saw that The Pedant had replied, I read the email aloud, guessing (correctly) that it wouldn’t contain anything embarrassing or mushy or anything.  HSF laughed at the formal tone of the email, but really, mine wasn’t that much different.  I made a point of saying I “felt close” to him rather than some variant of “that was really hot/fun” because I’ve got feelings a-brewin’ again for him (dammit) and am trying to suss out whether they’re mutual, but other than that I’d say my email was just as clinical as the reply I got.

I am once again itching to know what The Pedant’s feelings are for me/what he thinks our relationship is.  And I’ve finally figured out why I need to know this: I’m mostly happy with the way things are between us, but I’d really like two changes: 1) To feel like I can be physically affectionate with him around people he knows (I feel sometimes like I’m a dirty little secret), and 2) more contact between visits (banter, “how’s your day going”s, etc.).  I feel (perhaps wrongly) that requests like that can only reasonably be made of someone you’re dating/“seeing”, not just fucking.  My “demands” are kind of relationshippy in nature, plus arguably when you’re casually fucking someone you’re not really supposed to impose your emotional needs on them.

So I don’t need to know The Pedant’s feelings per se, so much as I need to know whether I have the leverage to ask for the changes I want.

I can’t put it off any longer: I will need to have a discussion with The Pedant sometime soon – whether it’s asking how he feels about me or simply asking for these things I want.  And if it turns out I can’t have what I want from him, I’ll have to decide whether or not I can live with that.

I think The Pedant’s substantial “pros” of companionship, snuggling and super-hot sex outweigh his “cons” of secrecy and frustrating radio silence.  But I won’t really know unless the hope of getting those extra little things I want is definitively taken away.

Rethinking.

After a bit of time and sleep, plus some excellent perspective from my awesome commenters, I am feeling better about The Pedant introducing me to unprotected sex the way he did.

When I was a teenager, it sometimes seemed as though every guy I dated tried to do a similar thing – wait til I was too turned on to resist, and then slip his unwrapped dick into me.  So this sort of thing is a pet peeve.  But it should be noted that in those cases:  a) I had expressly said ahead of time to always use a condom and b) The guys were fertile.  In other words, they decided to override my stated boundaries and put me at a huge risk because, hey, condoms are a drag…and if I get pregnant that’s my issue to deal with, not theirs.

The Pedant has had a vasectomy.  He tested clean for all STDs six months ago and has used condoms with every partner since, and I’ve been tested a few years back (and had HPV, actually, but I bet it’s gone; my immune system is killer) and have used condoms with every partner since (and there have only been two, including The Pedant).  And I’d told him that I might be willing to bareback with him.

I would say that, all things considered, The Pedant and I pose an approximately equal risk to each other sexually, so this wasn’t a matter of him thinking “Bah, fuck her health and safety, that’s not my problem.”  This was (I think) a matter of him being so keen to take me up on my offer that he got carried away and jumped the gun a bit.  I’m sure he wouldn’t have done what he did if there was a pregnancy risk, a substantial STD risk, or if I’d told him condom use was non-negotiable.  And I’m sure if I’d said “No, not until you’ve been tested” once he was in there, he would’ve pulled out again.

He absolutely should have discussed things with me beforehand – I had not given blanket consent for him to fuck me without a condom, I’d said I was willing to do so if he got tested for STDs and came out clean.  He hasn’t gone for testing yet.  So he was absolutely doing something with me that I hadn’t said yes to.  Or, I mean, I’d said yes to the act but I’d placed conditions on it that he hadn’t met.  Which is…not great.

The Pedant is a person who gets tested for STDs semi-regularly; he has no reason that I know of to avoid it (fear of needles; fear of what the results might be).  And after the sex he told me he’d make it a priority to get tested as soon as possible.  Ergo, he was not manipulating me into the sex in hopes of permanently getting around my conditions.  He just had a failure of will power.  As did I, since I didn’t tell him to stop.  So whatever.

I will say that when he asked permission to come, he should have insisted on an actual yes from me instead of conveniently interpreting my incoherent frustrated sound as approval.  That’s what I would have done in his place – stopped and said “I need an actual English word from you right now.”  But my body language during the sex was happy and participatory; I believe if I’d appeared frozen up and terrified he would’ve stopped.  So he’s not a monster or anything.

So the email I finally sent him was a bit less of a lecture than I’d originally planned.  Basically I just briefly asked him to please use his words more in future because it’s not nice to force me to make decisions when all the blood has gone out of my brain, and then I told him that despite that problematic thing, the barebacking had been amazing and I was glad it happened and I’d like to explore it more.  I laid out my [new and reconsidered] conditions, and asked if we were on the same page.

I have a feeling he’s gonna take five thousand years to answer me and it’ll make me insane.  And - oh god – he never did answer my text complimenting his cunnilingus skills, either.  So now I’ve got two ”OMG sexytimes with you are so good” missives just dangling out there in the ether.  Don’t I feel like the little sycophant.

Argh.

 

 

 

Aftermath

Some feelings are starting to kick in about the unprotected sex.

I was curious to try it; I was even at a point where I would have considered going ahead with it, had The Pedant asked me to.  I mean that in-between Pedant visits, when I was alone in my apartment and my mind wasn’t all clouded by sex, I started thinking that I might be willing to go for it even if The Pedant was sleeping with other people, as long as he always used condoms with them.  And if The Pedant had initiated a rational discussion about this before we engaged in any sexytimes – if he’d been all “I have decided that I probably would like to forego condoms with you, but let’s negotiate the terms,” it’s possible I would have agreed ahead of time to the stuff that actually ended up happening.

And I’m certain if I’d said “stop” during the sex at any point, The Pedant would have stopped.  So technically, I wasn’t forced or coerced into doing things I didn’t want.  Or…not quite.  I’d still probably rather have waited on the bareback stuff until he’d gotten a fresh STD test.

But I warned The Pedant that close genital contact doesn’t constitute safer sex after the first time he was rubbing up against me, and he went ahead and did it (and more!) again the next time we started fooling around.  And he never used his words – not to tell me he was warming up to my offer and not to ask me how I’d feel about trying stuff.  Basically, he put me in a position where the bareback sex was opt-out rather than opt-in – he forced me to make an important decision about my personal safety while I was all stupefied and turned on.

He is looking so shitty and manipulative right now.

I brought up the idea of unprotected sex to The Pedant because I trusted him to keep me safe.  The fact that he said he wasn’t sure he wanted to do that with me and would have to think about it made me trust him even more – made me believe that he was a really safe bet because obviously he wasn’t the type to just throw caution to the wind with any girl who offered.

If he’d fucking told me ahead of time that he’d considered my offer and was interested (and didn’t start putting his junk all up in my business without my explicit permission), I’d still trust him right now.  Hell, even if he’d done everything the same right up to asking me if I wanted him to come inside me but then pulled out and said “Y’know what, I shouldn’t put this decision on you right now” and put on a condom, I would still trust him (and I wouldn’t have protested him stopping and putting a condom on; I would’ve felt relieved, actually).

But rubbing his dick up against my ladybits and just kind of hoping I’d be too turned on to stop him?  What the actual fuck?

Also: initially he’d agreed that we should both be tested for STDs before embarking on unprotected sex.  I haven’t been tested in years, and he knows this*.  So…all I can think is that his desire to get his dick wet ultimately overwhelmed all practical considerations and he caved.  So much for him being someone who wouldn’t throw caution to the wind.

I hate when I have hot sex that makes me feel conflicted.  I was totally gonna use that incident as wank fodder and now I don’t think I can because it raises icky feelings.  And I’m not sure I can fuck The Pedant bareback again, either (or at all, the way I’m feeling right now…).  He’s shown himself to be someone who caves to temptation too easily and doesn’t use his words enough and I can’t afford to take risks with someone like that.

I’ll give him maybe a day or two of silence as a courtesy, since he’ll be dealing with the family shit surrounding his grandfather’s funeral.  Then I’ll email him basically telling him everything I’ve said above.  I’m hoping he can reassure me enough that I’ll feel comfortable continuing to see him; I really like fucking him and would prefer not to stop.  But if he gets defensive or doesn’t understand what the problem is…we might be done here.

 

*He also knows I’ve only slept with one person since then: Minx.  But he doesn’t know Minx’s STD status and he hasn’t asked whether I’ve had other, non-intercourse kinds of sexual contact with people since Minx.  In other words, The Pedant is not being as careful as I’d want a sex partner of mine to be.

 

Amazing Pedant is amazing: the final chapter

It was a pleasant surprise that The Pedant immediately set about giving me an orgasm after having one of his own.  Usually he’s too sleepy.

Sadly, I never did manage to come.  The Pedant – perhaps emboldened by having made direct clitoral contact on me with his tongue the night before – was sort of dragging the Hitachi up into my clit from underneath, grinding the vibrator right up against the tip.  My “sweet spot” for getting off is actually above the tip, through the hood, but I decided to go with what The Pedant was doing just to see what would happen.  I mean, clitoral contact used to hurt and now it doesn’t, so who knows what else about my responses might have changed?  And The Pedant has been pretty perceptive about a lot of sexual things in the past.

The direct Hitachi stimulation did feel good.  Oddly, at times the sensations left me kind of vulnerable and tearful the way I often get after an orgasm – except without the orgasm part.  As I gasped and squirmed, I felt The Pedant (who was kneeling between my legs) shift his weight – I think he remembered what I’d said before about wanting something to fight against and he was angling to pin my legs under his if I began to come.

At one point I kinda-sorta started to feel like it might happen.  I reached out blindly for The Pedant; I grasped his wrist and he grasped mine and I squeezed as my body began to slowly tense up.  And it struck me that there’s something about him that makes me feel…safe.  That it’s not just BDSM that can be a scary journey, it’s sex and orgasms in general, and this is a boy who knows how to pull me through the fire and out the other side.

The spectre of orgasm receded again.  I had The Pedant move the Hitachi to my customary favourite spot, but by then it was too late – the jackhammer vibration had kind of numbed me. I told The Pedant I was numb and needed a break, and he switched off the Hitachi and said “I’ll get back to this later, then.”  And he leaned his back against the wall and for a while we were both just silent; contemplative.

“So…the sex was intense…” I said, finally.

The Pedant laughed and agreed.  And tried to tell me it had been a total accident – that he’d thought he was way further toward the front, rubbing my clit, but then oops he just kinda slipped in.  I call bullshit on this, not least because he was looking down at his hand so he obviously knew damn well where he was pointing his business.  I kind of wish I’d called bullshit out loud because come on, who does he think he’s kidding?  But I didn’t want to fight with him after having just been so incredibly vulnerable, so I let it pass.

I asked The Pedant how he was feeling about it all.  He said “Well, I’m going to try even harder to make that doctor’s appointment now.”  Which I took to mean “I really enjoyed myself and want to do that again – to your standards, next time” but I suppose it just could’ve meant “Arrrgh I’m afraid you’ve given me cooties.”

I crawled across the bed to straddle his lap for cuddles and pointed out that poly folks often have one partner they bareback with and a bunch of others they use condoms with, so probably it’s not all that risky.  By which I meant “I’m willing to loosen my initial conditions so we can do this a whole bunch more times” but now I’m wondering if he took it as “you’re not likely to have gotten cooties from me so don’t worry.”

“Promise me you don’t pull dangerous shit like this with your other partners, though,” I said.  ”No rubbing-together of unwrapped genitals.  At all.”  The Pedant swore it’s only been me.

We drifted off into small talk for a while and then he asked me “So…you really only have one other person under consideration right now, and nothing’s happened there yet?” I think he was referring to Willow, whom I’d mentioned before.  I told him that Willow might very well be out of the picture for all I knew (flaky bastard), but now there’s The Baby Duck, with whom I’m having a second date soon.  But I don’t anticipate things with him going to a naked place for a long time*.  And, again, at the time I assumed he meant one thing by his question (“I’d like to fuck you without a condom again and I’m assessing my risks”) and it’s only just now occurring to me that he might mean something else (“I don’t know yet if I want to bareback again – I’m just making sure this time wasn’t too risky for me”).

We decided it was time to eat some dinner and watch Spaced.  Somewhere in there, The Pedant checked his email and learned that his dead grandfather’s viewing was the following afternoon; he warned me that he might have to leave that night.  He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to go to the viewing and the funeral or if just the funeral (which was a day later) would be enough, so he called his mom to ask.  It seemed obvious to me that his mom would tell him he had to go to the viewing – she is, after all, kind of biased on the subject – but whatever,  The Pedant has to do what he has to do.

As he bent over to pick his phone up off the floor, I gave his ass a little squeeze.  ”Oh hi there,” he said, as he (adorably…) always does when I surprise him with lewdness or physical affection.  ”None of that while I’m on the phone, okay?”  I don’t know why but I found this pre-emptive scolding really cute.

It felt weirdly intimate to me, eavesdropping on The Pedant’s conversation with his family.  It’s a window into his life that I never had before.  His mom told him he had to come to the viewing, of course.  There was a long negotiation about whether she could throw his best black shirt into the laundry that night or not, and then he hung up.  Initially, he sadly told me he’d have to leave later that night instead of staying over as planned.  But then five minutes later he was talking to himself out loud and saying “Hmmm so the thing is at 1pm tomorrow…I should leave here by 10am at the latest, just to be safe…”

I guess he really, really didn’t want to leave my apartment.  D’awwww.

We watched the first disc of Spaced, and The Pedant was gloriously cuddly and affectionate the entire time.  For a while he was spooned up behind me and would randomly plant kisses between my shoulder blades.  Later, we were sitting up side by side and he kept stroking my back and nuzzling his head, catlike, against my shoulder.  I was so totally blissed out.  And yeah, in that moment, I loved him.  The feelings may be inconstant and caused by sexy brain chemicals, but they’re still present and they feel exactly like any other time I’ve “genuinely” been in love, so fuck it, I’m calling these feelings real.  Still probably not worth voicing to him out loud, but real nonetheless.

After the first disc was done, The Pedant said he needed a break from it – he said our previous Drawn Together marathon had made him feel kind of spacey and “out of it” so from now on he doesn’t wanna mainline an entire season of something all in a row like that.  We snuggled and talked for a while and then I suggested we watch Sex, LIes, and Videotape, which I’ve been dying to revisit for a while and totally wanted to share with him.  He was up for that.

The Pedant is totally down with watching the kind of slow, cerebral, character-driven movies that drive most people insane with boredom.  He likes these sorts of movies and likes discussing them afterward and I looooooove that.  It’s one of my favourite things about him, aside from his fingers.  And his mouth.  Rawr.

So we watched Sex, LIes, and Videotape, and he said he thought it was really good, and we deconstructed it for a while.  And then The Pedant regretfully told me that he should get going soon, after all.  He said he knows I’ve been having sleep problems lately and he didn’t want to be making me wake up at 8am for his benefit on top of all of that.  He said that sure, maybe if we went to sleep right then (it was 10:30ish) we’d be totally rested when the alarm went off, but he didn’t feel like he’d be sleepy for at least another four hours.

“Is there anything I can do to make you sleepy?” I asked, licking the side of his neck.

“I’m afraid I’m still pretty spent from earlier,” he said.  Damn – I’d been hoping to fuck him one more time before he left.  Without a condom, because as long as it’s during the course of the same visit, it still counts as one mistake, not two.  (IT DOES TOO.  SHUT UP.)

“Yeah…jeez, we had sex twice within just a few hours,” I marvelled.  ”That’s pretty impressive, actually.”

And then we got on the topic of the first night, somehow, and I started giggling controllably and The Pedant smirked “What’s so funny?” and I pantomimed giving a hand job while giving a little soliloquy: Hmmm.  Is he…is he breathing like a person who’s just fallen asleep?  Or could this just be sex-breathing?  Oh, no, he’s got the leg twitchies now.  I guess it’s time to stop.

The Pedant protested that it had been a really long day, and I was like “Dude!  I’m not criticizing.  It was adorable.  I just can’t get my head around this thing you do where you can’t predict whatsoever that you’re about to fall asleep.  I mean, you said yes to sex, and then five minutes later – zzzzzzzzzzz.  This is not really a thing that happens to me, so it’s interesting.”

The Pedant kept being mildly defensive and I kept telling him he’s adorable and then I think we just shut up and kissed a little bit.  Then he went and showered and came back into the living room to get dressed again for the first time in like two days.  My floor is dusted with grit and cat hair and he didn’t want anything to come off his feet onto his clothes, so he ended up balancing precariously on one leg, cleaning off the sole of the elevated foot with his sticky lint-roller thing, and stepping into one leg of his underwear and pants simultaneously.  Then repeating on the other side.  ”As amusing as this clearly is to you,” he snarked, as I sat on the couch ogling and giggling, “I still think you’d benefit from getting a Roomba.”

Before he zipped up his pants, he pulled then down again slightly to reveal a pair of boxer briefs I’d never seen on him before.  ”How do these look on me, by the way?” he asked.

“Uh, pretty fucking spectacular, actually,” I said, my mouth gone dry with lust.  The Pedant has never asked me how he looks in anything before: another first.

He told me the underwear was a new brand he’d found at a discount store and he likes them because they’re Canadian-made.  Then he casually said, “We need to get together again soon to make up for me being called away early.  I never did get to help you tidy in here.”  This is the thing about The Pedant – when he says he’ll do something, he generally does it.  He doesn’t just toss out offers of favours and then never speak of it again.

We talked a bit about how we would attack the mess.  He thinks I should hang a bunch of shelves, and asked me to save them for him so he can play with a drill “…and possibly some spackle.”

I said “Well, if you think you’ll end up needing spackle, I should probably do the drilling.  I’ve hung up all the other shelves you see in here and as you can see, I did a decent job.”

“Fair enough,” The Pedant said, “But save the shelf-hanging for me, anyway, because an extra pair of hands is always handy for that sort of thing…I mean, there are lots of tasks a person could do by themselves, but that doesn’t mean they should.”

I bragged that I put my bed together by myself and that actually said on the package that two people are required “…although, there was one corner where I couldn’t get the bolt to go in so I just left it out.  And part of the infrastructure is kept in place by a wad of Q-tips.”

“Dude!” The Pedant said. facepalming.  ”Okay, the next time I come over we’re gonna fix your bed.  And I think you mentioned you were thinking of buying another dresser – do that, and save it for me so we can assemble it together.  And buy some shelves, too, and we’ll put those up.”  It really is amazing to me how eager he is to do things for me.  And for a while there, this eagerness seemed to disappear.  Why is it back?  What happened?

The Pedant was finally dressed and ready to go.  I walked him down to my front door and we kissed a few times.  ”We’ll do this again soon,” he murmured.

“Yes,” I said.  ”Once the funeral dust has died down, make me an offer.”

“‘Funeral dust’?  That was a really unfortunate turn of phrase.”

“Well, you try to be witty or coherent when you haven’t slept properly in a week or so.”

“Fair enough.”

We kissed again and he left.

When I got back upstairs, I realized that I’d never specifically complimented The Pedant on his oral skills.  It suddenly seemed vitally important that I do so – I didn’t want him to get discouraged by my lack of orgasm or lack of commentary and not do it again.

So (after a brief debate over whether it would look too clingy) I texted him: “You’re amazing with your mouth, btw.  I think I was too incoherent to say so in the moment so I’m making sure you know now.”

That was around two days ago and he hasn’t replied at all, which – predictably – is driving me insane.  But he’s going through a bunch of family shit right now so I’m just gonna back off and wait for him to emerge.

I hope he actually does want to get together again soon (sooner than the every-two-or-three-weeks thing that is our pattern).  And I hope all these lovely new characteristics he’s been displaying stay intact.

Seriously, WTF happened to him?  I feel like his behaviour toward me for the past month or more has been “pleasantly neutral” at best, and now he’s:

-Telling me repeatedly that he’s looking forward to seeing me

-Asking upfront to spend two consecutive nights in a row with me, and being disappointed when it turns out he can’t

-Being super-eager to help me out around the house again

-Being extra-kissy and snuggly with me again

-Being more passionate and responsive in bed than he’s ever been before

-Making eye contact during sex for the first time ever, deliberately, as though looking to foster a deeper intimacy with me

-Revealing to me that he wants loving relationships and not just meaningless sex

Somewhere in my psyche is a little girl living in a world of rainbows and glitter and ponies, and she would like to believe that The Pedant has suddenly had an epiphany about my awesomeness and is falling for me.  Or that he’s been falling for me all along and any hiccups in the process were just me being paranoid and misinterpreting things.  However, cynical grown-up me is willing to attribute all of this to some passing fancy.  Maybe springtime is making The Pedant extra-horny.  Maybe he’s just moody for no particular reason, and his affections randomly ebb and flow.

Whatever.  I’m hoping these new changes stay steady but I’m bracing myself in case it all goes away, or in case the closeness scared The Pedant and now he’ll back way off for a while out of self-preservation.

Oh, by the way, I am aware that him fucking me without a condom was very, very sketchy.  Yes, I’d decided I didn’t mind barebacking with him while he was seeing other partners, after all, but I hadn’t told him that.  And it was unfair to put me in a position where I had to make the “should I or shouldn’t I” choice when I was turned on and my judgment was all compromised.  I would never do that to him.  Never.  Hell, I didn’t do that to him; the first time I saw him after our “bareback” discussion, I didn’t rub my crotch up on his and try to tempt him into going further.  I didn’t even make reference to our conversation.  I just used condoms with him as I always do, and let him process his feelings about bareback himself without any prompts or pressure.

So I should be pissed right now, but I can’t really deal with that, so I’m not.  The truth is that I wanted to fuck The Pedant without a condom, but felt that I shouldn’t; in effect, his sketchy behaviour gave me what I wanted without me having to take responsibility.  And the sex was so mind-blowingly intimate that I’m still kind of processing everything and there’s just no room right now for me to be processing the sketchiness, too.

Don’t judge.

*And I didn’t, either.  But today I’m feeling frisky and dominant as all fuck – a combo of The Pedant awaking something in me and it being the horndog week of my cycle, I think – and I’m increasingly wondering whether I’ll end up stuffing and mounting the hapless Baby Duck tomorrow.

Amazing Pedant is amazing, part IV

In the bedroom, The Pedant once again flung me down on the bed and got on top of me.  He stretched himself along my body, his weight supported on one elbow so he didn’t crush me, and we made out some more.  He was still just insanely sensitive everywhere and responding strongly to everything I did.  I don’t know what the hell got into him on this visit but it’d be nice if things stayed that way!

After a minute or two, there began to be a sort of…knuckle-y pressure at the entrance to my vag.  At first I thought it was just The Pedant’s hand (although in retrospect it’s odd I didn’t question this more.  Who presses their knuckles against someone?  How is that sexy?).  Then he broke off kissing me to look down at his hand that was pressing against me; I followed his gaze and oh – it was not just his hand.  It was his hand wrapped around his dick so that just the very, very tip was exposed.

Before I go on, I should mention that I’d given the barebacking more thought since he and I first discussed it.  Back then, I’d said I’d go bareback with The Pedant if he tested clean for STDs, and only until he slept with someone else.  I had since tentatively decided to waive the second condition; it’s such a common thing for poly folks to “fluid bond” with one person while having protected sex with a bunch of other people that I figured it’s probably not that risky.  The Pedant has only two other partners, both of whom he only sees occasionally and always uses condoms with.  I think I can live with that.  And just for the record he got tested for STDs six months ago and was totally clean.

So The Pedant was lying between my legs, alternately kissing me and looking down at his fist-wrapped cock as he pushed it against me.  I felt his body shaking with the effort of holding back; I felt his internal struggle between desire and self-control.  And I knew he was watching his cock nudge up against my entrance to torment himself even further.  All of which turned me on so much I could’ve just about died.

I couldn’t get enough of him…I was kissing and clawing at him, pulling his hair, biting his mouth.  Biting and hair-pulling have never generated any reaction in him before, but on that day, all of these things got him worked up further and further.

And then…he was supporting his weight on both elbows.  And the head of his cock was just.  Right.  There.  With nothing to impede it from sliding inside.  Our eyes locked for a moment and his gaze was just…smouldering.

By the way, few (if any) of my previous partners have been able to penetrate me hands-free.  My labia got in the way or their dicks were too big or the wrong shape or I don’t know what, but I’ve always, always had to guide a dude in myself.  The Pedant, for some reason, doesn’t have this problem.  He’s slid into me before without either of us having to use our hands.  So I knew he only had to push forward and he’d be buried smoothly to the hilt.  And I wanted him to.  So fucking badly.  But some distant part of me remembered my rule that he get tested first, and I knew I’d probably regret it if I broke that rule.  I also didn’t want to push The Pedant into something he might later regret.

I held my breath and kept my lower body perfectly still.  If The Pedant chose to push forward (oh please oh please) it was going to be his decision and only his decision, and therefore not my fault.  I would not thrust up at him and drive him inside me.  I would not wiggle in such a way that he’d think I was inviting him in.  And anyway, he was way more cautious about the idea of barebacking then I was, when I brought it up.  He’d seemed like he was going to say no.  Probably his intention right now was to make out with me and tease me until neither of us could take it anymore, and then get out a condom.

And so we kept on passionately making out, with the blunt tip of his erection lightly nudging against me and me holding my hips absolutely still so as not to seem like I was encouraging anything.  The Pedant and I kissed and kissed and I teased his nipples with my thumbs and grabbed his throat hard and pushed his head back and he wailed helplessly at the ceiling and then he did push forward and the head of his cock went inside me with an almost audible pop and I gave a deep, loud gasp and wrapped my legs around his waist.

The Pedant slowly began to thrust and y’know, I don’t think the physical sensations of bareback were that different to me, after all.  But the increased feeling of intimacy was electrifying, as were The Pedant’s reactions – the physical sensations were obviously way different for him.  After thirty seconds or so he murmured, “Do you want me to come?” and all I could do was make a frustrated mewling noise because I did and I didn’t and I was really not in any headspace to make important decisions.

The Pedant must have interpreted my mewling noise as a “yes” – or maybe things just got away from him a little bit.  He thrust one more time and then held perfectly still and I felt his cock pulsing deep inside me.  He didn’t make a sound and I actually wasn’t sure at first whether he’d come – guys also go still and pulse like that when they’re really close to coming and trying to hold back.

“How’re you doing?  You still with us?” I whispered.  The Pedant just kind of chuckled and buried his face in my neck.  For the second time that visit, I did a surreptitious nipple check.  He didn’t notice me brush up against it at all, and that’s when I knew for sure he’d come inside me.  The act of coming always transforms his erogenous zones back to ordinary body parts.

After a little while The Pedant lifted his head and looked me in the face.  His expression was just…completely raw.  Undone.  For my part, I felt utterly disarmed, vulnerable, peeled open – and I knew he was seeing this in my eyes, just as he knew I was seeing the same thing in his.  It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to him.

We lay like that for a minute, just staring into each other’s eyes.  I wiped the hair out of his face and caressed his cheek.  And then a look of determination seized him and he got up and retrieved the Hitachi.

Stay tuned for more.