A PERSONAL RESPONSE

I got a response to a personal ad I had posted one day. It was the best response I had ever received. It was funny, personal, moving, and beautifully written, with details pertaining to what I had said in my post, not a form letter. It probably took close to an hour to compose; it was everything I could hope for in a response. And it was from my ex-boyfriend.

I sat frozen in front of my computer monitor. We hadn’t spoken in over two years. Things had ended abruptly back then. I was hanging out in his living room one afternoon – he was in the next room, in the bedroom, on his computer. I reached for a magazine. It had a mailing address sticker on it – the name was Sarah, his old girlfriend. I confronted him in the other room, asked him why it was there, she worked in the ‘hood, had needed a place to crash one night during a snowstorm last week, that she had slept on the couch. I remembered the night, I had been sick, he had come over to bring me dinner, we spoke on the phone later, but I didn’t know that she was in the next room – he had kept it a secret. I tried to remain calm, with my best game face on, delivered what I thought was a rational speech about protecting what we had from harm, was he willing to do that, or did he want to break up here and now. He asked if he could think about it, that he would call me later. I never heard from him that night, 8PM, 8:30, 9:30, 10PM, nothing. I knew that it was over. I finally gave in and called him, he whispered that things weren’t working, and that was it. The next few weeks were painful. I was really touched by this man. He was extremely bright, sensitive, had a fascinating personal history, one juicy enough to be recounted by his writer sister in a novel that ended up on The New York Times bestseller list. He had amazing listening skills, a keen sense of what made me tick, he had a whole house in Brooklyn that he was lovingly restoring. He collected cool antiques as I did, tended to a beautiful garden, rode a motorcycle, and had a cool daughter. When I first met him he was a super cop, a Sergeant for an undercover organized crime unit in NYC. He used to call me from the surveillance van, telling me he was on a coke buy, and did I need anything for the weekend, with a wink. He was hysterical, wry, and sensitive. And he went down on me with incredible expertise, so much so that I found my mind flashing back to the memory of it every time my hand found my clit. Since putting his 20 in with the NYPD, he had retired, he was now a big guy at Habitat For Humanity, and was being considered for a position to tour the country with Jimmy Carter, everything Brian touched turned to gold. And he was my man. I went to visit him on a Habitat project on site one day in Queens. We had lunch at a Jamaican place, for dessert I sucked his cock in a Home Depot parking lot. Things were really good.

Now it was two years later, his letter now in front of me. He hadn’t realized that the personal ad he had responded to was mine. I hadn’t attempted to contact him those two whole years. If someone leaves you, you leave it alone. You move on. But this was a strange turn of events, receiving his letter. It was ironic; this is the way we met in the first place. Online, with a devastatingly terrific letter from him, followed by more I-could-love-this-man correspondence, and then the unlikely turn of events, that the online connection follows you on to the phone, and then into reality. And now, another deft letter was engaging me, however unintended for me, but it was an opportunity to reopen that door. Did I want that? What did I want to be behind that door? Did I want to say a simple hello? Embark in a friendship? Engage in a possible quick sexual encounter? Or perhaps revisit our romantic past. One thing was for sure: I was going to reply. And I did, with a picture of myself, a close up of my hips clad in pink satin bikini panties accompanied by the line, “hello, it’s me.” I knew he would recognize me. He had seen me in a lot of pink panties – my pale skin and perfect belly button would clench the deal. He sent me back an enthusiastic receipt of panty picture, which I responded to with another visual, and the line, “you haven’t seen me in awhile”. Two days later I received a Happy Valentine’s Day email, a day that had gone without card or comment when we had been dating. We discussed whether or not we should get together, would it be too complicated, would it draw us back into bed, what would be the caveats. At the same time I started to date a man that I had met a few months ago, that had been married, but was now separated. It was a passionate affair, filled with drama, great sex, and plenty of heartache. Brian became my safe haven. The man I could sit quietly by while he worked on his house, or tended to his garden. He would offer to talk through the drama of the man that I was seeing, or simply buy me breakfast at the diner we used to frequent after slow, intense sex. No matter what we were talking about, my relationship, his dating life, our shared love for making things, his new career as an English teacher, the bond was becoming rich. We were closer than we’d ever been before, and we were not having sex. On the one hand, I was having an intense sexual relationship with one man who offered me complete emotional disarray, and a moving, substantive bond with another, who respectfully never laid a hand on me. I wondered if we moved our relationship into the bedroom, his tongue between my legs, would the deep friendship dissolve with each orgasm? Was it worth taking that chance?

When I placed that personal ad that day I heard from Brian, it was my hope to find the one man who I can have it all with. Still, of all the responses I received that day, the only one I answered was the one from my past. I still suspect that one man exists, and I suspect I haven’t met him yet. He's not the one I've been sleeping with, or the one I've been sharing with. Hopefully he's the one that's right around the corner.