Not ANOTHER one.

At first, AJ just seemed really respectful. We had gone home together several times and kissed and cuddled, but he always wanted to wait.
“For a certain level of intimacy,” he always said. I thought it was endearing. And it made me feel safer. I wasn’t with somebody who was just looking for a chick to bang. This was a relationship. He wanted it to mean something. And that was refreshing. So I went along with it.
For four months.
The questions started forming in my head when we went to a wedding, stayed in a beautiful hotel room all night, and all I got was a cuddle and another $34.50 on my Visa courtesy of Victoria’s Secret. Why didn’t he want to have sex with me? What the hell was he waiting for? We talked, we emailed, we saw each other at least twice a week. Why weren’t we getting to that level of intimacy he was looking for?
I asked him. I got a very vague answer that I didn’t really understand. And, by his tone of voice, I could tell he wasn’t interested in talking about it. I left it alone. We were having a nice weekend, I didn’t want to push the envelope.
I thought, after coming back from a very long vacation that I had planned before I met him, that he would be bursting, that he would barely be able to wait to get me in bed. I mean, it was four months. I knew I couldn’t wait.
Instead, he wanted to go to a “dear, dear friend’s birthday party” (already my gay-dar was starting to hum in the back of my head … who’s got dear friends? Victorian-era fictional heroines, that’s who. Real men don’t have dear friends. And was the second dear really necessary?). Not exactly the homecoming reunion that I was hoping for, but I decided to just roll with it.
When we got to the party, he introduced me by my first name. No “This is my girlfriend, Hopeful.” Just “This is Hopeful.” I thought it was odd, but I wasn’t going to make a big deal of it.
Then, while he was in the bathroom, his “dear friend” asked me, “So, how do you know AJ?”
“I’m his girlfriend.” I said.
“Oh, isn’t that cute?” she responded. Normally, that would sound bitchy or catty, but it didn’t. It sounded slightly condescending, but it a way that made the gay-dar increase it’s buzz. She said it the way you might say it to an 8-year-old who has a crush on somebody four times her age. You want to indulge her because you think it’s just so cute, even though you know, unless the tale takes some horribly “Thornbirds” twist, you’re never going to get the invite to their wedding.
We went home together that night and crawled into bed. Like every other day. Except, this time, when he pulled me in to spoon me into our very non-sexual cuddle, I felt something different.
“Did you shave your back?” I said, pulling myself away from the chest stubble.
“Yeah, last week.”
I could barely hear my own words over the buzz. “Why?” I asked. “Why would you shave your chest?”
“I was heading down to Key West and I did it for aesthetic reasons,” he’s getting hedgy again. Meanwhile, all I was thinking was “aesthetic reasons”? Was he taking his SATs next week? Who uses words like that when you’re in bed with a 25 year old in a tiny, tiny negligee? You shouldn’t be able to use words period in that situation, never mind multiple-syllabic ones.
And then there was the whole Key West thing. I’m pretty sure Ernest Hemmingway was the last straight man to head down to the Keys by himself. AJ and his boys went down for a bachelor party that was starting to sound more and more like a circle jerk.
All I kept thinking was, “Not another one.” This one was trickier, because he wasn’t a theater director who, a full year after we broke up, was sending me pictures of himself in a tiara (lord, how I wish I was kidding), but there was definitely something familiar about this situation.
AJ interrupted my thoughts. “Hey, wanna go shopping with me Saturday afternoon?”
The buzzing in my head kept me up all night.