I am struggling to choose what story to tell you next. How could you possibly understand what it is in my poor soul that stops me from letting go? For someone who floats along life, letting it happen and living at the rhythm of her desires, how could I explain the control freak in my brain that refuses to live in that moment? I am struggling with either telling you a nonchalant, fun story that will allow you to escape your drab reality, or telling you more about mine? Looking back to the things that led up to my unique moment of loss, and ultimate gain, I realized all the fantasizing that I had written up in my head.

I wrote a script, back in 2007, before I ever knew I was going to be writing this. I wrote about a night in a man’s bed. He was a decade older than me. He told me about movies and art and the seventeen year old that I was, was hooked. Ses baisers sont légers, incertains, fragiles. It was a night that really happened, and the words I used to describe it are filled with insecurities, tainted with fear and naïveté. The most noticeable to me, is that I lied. I lied to my own self, describing multiple orgasms I knew too well never happened. The shallow self-awareness I was expressing in the parts about knowing him was heart-warming, yet still encumbered by the lies all around it. I wanted so much to fit in; I wanted so much to be a certain person.

Today, I sit here staring at who I really have become. She may not be the best woman I can be, but this girl in the reflection of my computer, she is real. She stopped romanticizing (mostly). She stopped wanting to fit in. She lives her own little life, trying to be true to that gut feeling that has always commanded her choices. I think the first time I saw pieces of this woman, was another night, back in 2005. It was one of those nights you spent hours, weeks and years envisioning. He was my first. He was my first love, my first kiss, my very first boyfriend.  We met when I was eight and he was nine. We saw each other every summer after that. It was like my holiday home, my beach boyfriend. To this very day, he is one of the dearest persons in my life and I will love him forever. He was the sweetest, most caring boy. Year after year, each summer was a new benchmark. That particular night had been long coming.

Like every first time, it was far from spectacular. Drab is the word I am sticking with. There was no fighting reality with romance. It was reality slapping you in the face, giving you a preview of what love was going to feel like: sharp pain, want, sadness, fear and intimacy. He was gentle; it was not his first. He looked me straight in the eye. He held my hand every step of the way. I wanted for that first second to push him away. I was overwhelmed by the pain, sharp and so deeply personal. I wanted him to disappear and for no one to ever touch me again. Then he was in and it became bearable again. The whole ordeal lasted about a minute. No, it was not glorious like some will have you think. It was overrated and underwhelming once it was over. But yes, I was left wanting more. I wanted to persevere, see what all the fuss was about. It is so far in my memory it saddens me how much I forgot. I do remember the stray cat bursting through the door of the basement of my house. I was staying there for a week because the rest of the house was rented out. There was a bed, a fridge and a toilet. No shower, no furniture but a couple of plastic patio chairs. Romantic as hell. The fucking stray cat scared the shit out of me and broke the little “specialness” this moment was to hold. After he managed to kick the cat out, we laughed a lot, loudly.

Those are all the things I have left from that over-romanticized moment: pain, a new intimacy, the cat, the concrete walls and his eyes. I realize now, writing this, that again, I am struggling with the words to express what I truly do remember. It is a very mixed feeling, at the pit of my stomach. It is a feeling of something being over and done with, and an open door. The loss and the gain. Language is universal. We have rules, grammar and undertones that are supposed to be used in the same way by all. But life! Life is far from universal. Each word is used contextually for each and every one of us individually. Life is nuances. The woman staring back at me is smiling, thinking of him so dearly, wishing she could hug him. She knows he was part of creating a little bit of her that remains. She is also wishing that this control issue in her head would stop. I do not like to lose control. It is for that reason that I do not do drugs. See you can snap out of being drunk, if something happens, if something needs you back to reality. I like knowing that I can be in control (to a certain extent) if I need to be. Yet I like the unknown; I love travelling for that precise reason. You can however think through the unknown, you can ensure that you have thought of possible scenarios, and escape routes, even if the reality often exceeds anything you would have ever predicted.

Consciously renouncing all control is something I struggle with. It would be like taking away the universality from language. It would be removing all structure, on purpose. Even if I trust the person in front of me in that moment, there are so many things in my life that demand my attention, in my own head, at all times. What if? is not merely a question for regrets. It is also what if I forgot the stove on, what if I did not attach the file to that email, what if he is not turned on by this particular position… Suddenly I am filled with sadness. The beauty of simplicity I am able to enjoy in so many other moments and instances in my life… Life is nuances and contrasts and contradictions. Ecstasy might escape me still; she might be but an acquaintance. She might be the one choosing when she wishes to meet me next. It is out of my hands, so why can I not let go? I struggled with deciding what story to tell you because the truth is, it is all one big story. It is my story, my shades of grey, my insecurities and failures, as much as my unexpected moments of life’s glory. Most men reading this by now will think I think too much, that I should relax. Most women reading this will finally feel like they know me a bit better, understand the complexities and perhaps identify with me, more or less. Still I do not think my overanalyzing—let us call it that—is a gendered issue. It touches each individual differently. This is why I am choosing these words for you right now. In a society that so easily edits and creates time lapses, for all of our faults to be hidden, it feels good to create room for them. The sadness has left. The woman I see in the reflection is now smiling, feeling something like hope; she sees an open space for the nuances in her personality, a space for her soul to breath.

He was going down on me and I was going down on him. I was surprised at how easily I multitasked whilst still enjoying every movement he made. I was so tired; my focus was blurry; all I remember is his tongue slowly hitting my clit as his fingers thrust so deeply. I feel shivers writing this. He had his mind set. He had a goal. I was so responsive. The delusion from the lack of sleep, overload of emotion and utter inability to comprehend what I had done to myself were all that I knew at that point. He kept jabbing, precisely, right there. I died a little bit every time. I was trying to suck, but after I while I could not do anything but fall at his hands. I was panting, moaning, and groaning. My legs were leaving my body. I was losing control and for the first time I did not mind. For the first time, there was no control left in me. My entire body was separating from my brain, in a sort of evanescent fashion. I told him not to stop. I did not say the words. I mean I did, but they came out of somewhere that I did not control. He kept doing exactly what the voice coming out of me was telling him to do. His tongue was wet, gliding like velvet, stroking me. His hands reached into my soul; I could feel it in my gut. My stomach was shuddering. Finally, the voice took control of the body. I slammed him down, jumped on top of him, swiftly sliding him as deep as I could, inside of me. I had control, I lifted myself up and down rhythmically, maintaining our bodies stuck together right where they needed to, but I had no control. Something stronger than me took over. It was speeding up; it was gearing up for the finish line, leaving me totally unaware. I was out of… out of breath… It could not possibly go on like this—I could not possibly withstand more of this. It did not stop. He was staring at me, focused, set on his goal. He was grunting too, joining me in this maddening feeling of want. I was unaware, dreaming; there might even have been singing in my head. And it hit. It hit and my entire body convulsed. The tremor consumed my every ounce of being. A loud laughter emerged from my mouth. I could hear my breath. It was rugged and broken, as if I was sobbing. I rolled over because my legs were unable to sustain my weight. I needed air… I needed…

The giggle. It would not stop. I giggled. I was overwhelmed and giggling.

There it was. I had finally stopped thinking. The man had literally consumed my last thought until all I had left to offer was complete surrender. All I could possibly do was abandon myself in the mistake, miracle, blessing, or horrible error, whatever this was. I bombed the midterm because of him. I would never have let myself do that at any other point for any other man. So I gave up, I surrendered to whatever had dictated me to give in, to forgive, to love at a price, to booty-call when really all I should have done was run. So I ran, but straight at the wall. I said: Fine, Tornado, take me, I’m all yours to swallow and spit right back out, destroyed, disheveled, eaten.

I was giggling. “What are you thinking about?” he said. “I’m not: I’m staring at that corner, I’m staring at the top of my closet’s door.” I giggled. “Hallelujah!” he exclaimed.  I rolled around, still shivering and shaking. The pleasure was of epic proportions. I was blank with bliss.

I had to stand up to go to the bathroom and I nearly crumbled. I was high, high on life, high on SEX! I walked around to get water and just felt, inside and out, like a zombie. A happy one, and overwhelmed one, but a zombie nonetheless. The ecstasy. That is the word. “Intense delight, intense feeling, and loss of self-control.” I was in ecstasy. Now, are you going to tell me what that was supposed to mean, life? Why him, why now? This had to be sudbina. It do not know what else to call it. On that October afternoon, he gave me my very first orgasm.

***

“Aren’t you going to text your girlfriends? Aren’t you going to scream at the top of your lungs? Liam did this! He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro!” He laughed. “No, nobody knows you’re here, remember? We don’t like you right now.” Oh my god. He did though; he did do it. I mean I did it. I was in a particular set of circumstances, a particular state of mind (or rather lack there of) and I had conquered my own brain. Yet life had managed to somehow intractably link him to it. Now I knew I would not forget his name, not even twenty years down the line when he will have become a stranger, a passing name, a phase of self-torture in my twenties. No, he was the first to do that. Certainly not the last, and I will one day be able to give them to myself, but he was the first. He gave me the taste of it.

Oh, yes, right I did not tell you yet, dear reader. No, that’s right. I am unable to get there on my own, for now. I mean I get close; I get almost there. Every time. But never do I cross the finish line. Never do I get to say “I’m gonna cum.” I just don’t. So no, the many, many, many men before him, none did. (Sorry guys!) I can still distinguish the good from the bad ones, but all of them failed me. It does surprise me that in my plentiful sexual dances, not one came to blow my brains out – literally. Not one of them had a trick, not one of them was surprising. I knew the moves; I had studied them. It is fascinating that patterns emerge amongst men, in their most private of behaviors. Yet, I cannot really blame them, when I do not even know how to get there myself. My problem is my brain. This brain, writing this paragraph today, it has second-guessed every word, every coma, every semi-colon. It over-analyzes every little detail. It remembers every single color, every word, every smell. It allows me to be the excellent student that I am, the semi-efficient writer that I would like to become. It just does not like to lose control. It is a hard thing, fighting your own self, to make space for the ultimate pleasure. And yes, I enjoy sex without orgasms. Hell, that’s all I had known. I still do. I love it. I revel in it. Every time something feels good, I get to analyze why and how: double the pleasure! But ecstasy… I just met her. She is still a stranger, and I am in love. I am sincerely hoping this infatuation informs my sanity that it is due for a vacation.

The week that followed, we kept on texting quite regularly, very nonchalantly. He continuously apologized. He was realizing what he had done and he was sorry. He had not cheated. He had not done anything against any outright written rules. He had betrayed me. He had betrayed the trust of the one person who had not been using him. It caused him to finally start dealing with his underlying issues. I was happy for him, for his progress, yet the nightmares would not stop. He still called me baby, and still did not prioritize me at all. So, I tried to keep living, tried to process what the hell I had been feeling. When my friend called me on Friday to ask if I could help her shoot her first video for one of her songs the next day, I could not be happier. Helping someone else and evading my own life was exactly what I wanted to do. So I went, and it turned out to be a true Christine kind of day. I met a handful of wonderful people and potentially got myself a job. I was networking—one of my all-time favorite things to do. My friend looked gorgeous and it was really cool being in a video. All around, I was ecstatic to be reconnecting with myself. I went to work that night with a smile on my face. I had a big presentation on the Monday, so I had to work hard at it all Sunday, iron my suit and run some errands. It was looking like a very productive weekend.

I realized around 11am on Sunday morning that I had not heard from him since Friday afternoon. All I could picture, from then on, was him, balls deep inside of her. Aha! The self-torture had permeated from my subconscious, my dreams, into full consciousness and all hope of relief was lost. The images, the sounds, the words, the looks. I saw it all. I heard it all, in my head, even the witch’s voice had somehow become real. I had to work through it; I had to keep my head above the water. It was a daylong battle against suffocation, a twenty-four-hour drowning in shallow waters. The next day as expected, he texted me from work. How very convenient I thought. When I had not answered two hours later, he texted again. Never mind that I was actually busy with the presentation, he knew something was wrong. You see, it does not feel good when someone stops prioritizing you; let alone when they never did in the first place. So I started answering, sheepishly and slowly, shyly gloating about my eventful weekend. Until I realized that evening that I could not keep doing this to myself. I had to be my own best friend and acknowledge what I was letting him do to me.

So I told him I did not want to see him again. I confessed to the self-torture of the previous day. I said all the things I had not said to him all this time. I needed and deserved more. Not in a preachy way, but in reality. I deserved a lot more than what he had been giving me. I had never wronged him. In fact, my roommate kept repeating I had been a saint to him. She did not understand how, or where I got the strength from, to keep my cool and listen and not judge him. I did not know either, but now the pain was all there was left of this and I had to stop it. I told him his lying and pretending abilities scared the shit out of me. I said I could not deal with the ugly parts of him anymore; there was nothing to outweigh them. And then he said “I talked with her about it yesterday. I don’t want to lie to anyone. It’s a path I’m also disgusted with myself for.” So he was with her on Sunday! TA-DA! I knew it! Damned stupid woman intuition: her perpetual, refractory presence, taking over all other thoughts in my soul, always every so uselessly retroactive.

I said I was sorry for everything he was going through, the self-doubt, the disgust, the terrible choices… I just could not care anymore. I needed him to become a better person in the end so that this all, my pain, would not have been in vain. But I was done being the good one, asking for nothing, and standing there by his side, invincibly. Well, I was not invincible. And then, he must have felt I was truly giving up. I did not want any more explanations. I just wanted out. I needed out.

He must have known, because he said he was especially sorry that he had no fight left in him, and that I was worth the fight. He said I was incredible, that I made him smile and laugh and cry and truly be himself. That that’s who I was to him: Real. And extravagant and incredible and I wish I could be something more to you. That he truly did but that he could not. And that he did not deserve me.

I had to be my own best friend. I had to be my own mama bear right that instant. It was becoming more and more clear we could never go back. It never had returned to what it had or might have been. He was not the one for me, however much I had wanted it. I wished him well. I told him I loved him. It had to be goodbye. He agreed. So it was.

I went to bed exhausted. I realized his ugliness, his faults and his betrayal had made me better. That week following the night in hell, I had made amends with all the people in my life I still held grudges with. I buried hatches. I did good deeds and reveled in the smiles and the laughs of the wonderful people in my life. It felt great to be able to look at myself and see that I had done no wrong here. Yet there was that little resounding voice in my head: Oh you feel great? No, no I don’t think so. See that pinch in your stomach? You know what that is? That is how you really feel: shortchanged.

***

I saw his towel hanging on bathroom door again as I was exiting the shower the next morning. I smiled and put it in the wash. I went to help my friend Sam* with her baby. She has such a warm soul and Thanksgiving had helped me feel so much better that I could not have hoped for a better task that day. We ended up having coffee and I told her the whole story. She understood my feelings of confusion between caring for him and being so angry at his failures. She comforted me and smiled. We could almost touch the love we truly share for each other and both left feeling warm and fuzzy. She is an amazing, strong and beautiful woman that simply inspires greatness. I went home with all the best intentions in the world, of studying my butt off for this midterm I had the next day.

Instead at 2.48 p.m., I booty-called him.