On cheating (14): willing to experiment

And so began my addiction to a man who had made a hobby of randomly calling female Harvard students, hoping for what (their fear?  their disgust?  a connection? an easy rush?), I don’t know.  He never did explain.

He did, however, call me back a few days later to my great relief and this time, after initially questioning him about his identity again (and being reassured that, no, he could not see me), I asked him what he wanted me to do and eagerly followed his instructions on how to touch myself.  Over the course of the semester, he would suggest my putting bottles or cucumbers up my vagina (which I never did do) or ask me to shave my pubic hair (which I did, as noted before) or put my pussy right under the faucet in my shower-bath (which was really quite difficult, both because I shared the bathroom with four others and couldn’t risk having a leg peek out awkwardly from the curtains and also because it was such a compact square basin of a tub, though it was well worth the effort when I got it to rush full pressure–and what water pressure it was–against my clitoris).

What was his name? I finally begged to know.

“Mike.”

“Mike what?”

“Mike Edwards.”

“Are you serious?”

“Why?”

“it’s such a generic name.  It sounds fake.”

“Well, that’s my name.”  And i had no choice but to think of him as Mike Edwards, though I knew this was probably a lie and, even if it weren’t, there were too many Mike Edwardses to be able to track him down.

I was so eager to know if I ever missed his calls, I got a dinky caller ID box from Radio Shack, though I knew this wouldn’t provide me with his number, which he kept private.  (I once called the police to ask if his number could be tracked down, saying I had a stalker, but they said they could only do so if I pressed charges, which was completely out of the question.)

And like the best of phone buddies, we often lapsed into discussing other subjects, like what I studied (psychology), what I was reading (books on manic depression), how he coped (religion, surprisingly), and his views on current events (it was Fall 2000, after all, and we were in the midst of Bush vs. Gore–he was a practical moderate understand-both-sides guy, in contrast to my own hopeless idealism).  He also asked to see photos of me, but I had none, so all I could do was describe myself as objectively as I could, though my low self-esteem from having never dated must have made me paint a rather bland impression of my face.

We spoke several times a week, for over an hour each time unless I had to rush off to class, and by the time Fall term was ending and I was preparing for a much-needed leave of absence back in New York to sort out my unsteady moods, raising thoughts, anorexia/bulimia/whatnot, and sexual frustration, he’d suggested I visit him in Florida: he’d said he was in the Midwest–Michigan perhaps–but his parents had a free condo in Florida we could use.  Just before leaving, my roommate Marguerite returned from a semester abroad in Chennai, India, and she offered to take photos of me when I explained i needed a photo of myself to send someone.  I tried on a bunch of my outfits and, when I returned home, where my brother had set up a scanner, I sent him this photo of myself in  a dress I’d bought the previous summer in Singapore and whose asymmetrical hem had ridden up my thigh while posing.  (I’d shown the photos to my dad and he chose this one as the best of the lot.)

Seeing it now, I cringe for too many reasons, but primarily because of the baby cheeks I still had

He liked the photo and even called my home number once (I didn’t have a cell phone yet), which my mother answered and handed over to me, but he never did call again, perhaps aware because he didn’t like the other photos of myself I sent him or because the Bronx wasn’t as sexy as Harvard (had I lost my intellectual credentials suddenly?).  So I never heard from Mike again, though I thought of him when I began dating that Spring and wished I could tell him about what was happening in my life (I met someone over the internet and he got us a hotel room without even knowing I’ve never been kissed (we never touched as I went up to the room to wait for him while he had a meeting, then I left before he returned but also left my underwear as an apology)!  He invited me to London when he found out I was a virgin!  I went out with the most attractive man I’ve ever met!  I’m now having phone sex with a Hollywood producer and I got to see his apartment!  I had sex!  Call me!).  but he never did return my emails.

When there was an article in the Crimson about the Harvard phone sex caller several years later (here’s a more recent one about a whisperer getting at uptight girls), I wondered, why wasn’t I interviewed for this article?  But then, I know how little research the students did for their articles and they’d have had no reason to know of my knowledge of him unless they’d spoken to one of my friends about it.  Besides, it probably wouldn’t have been appropriate to report that I enjoyed his calls and missed him.

Back to the present, this was all to explain why I never thought to masturbate alone and instead liked to speak to a guy when aroused (I could be very near to coming at that time without touching myself).  And this was how I ended up having sexually explicit conversations with men while I was dating Frank but couldn’t get in touch with him.

So when I needed to connect with someone yesterday to the point of feeling vertigo, I thought momentarily of calling an incredibly desirable guy I knew with a beautiful speaking voice.  But no, I couldn’t do that to Frank–it wouldn’t be worth ruining everything to unwind myself–so I forced myself to channel my scattered energy into writing (ah, that’s what she’s feeling when she writes blog entries and book reviews) till Frank returned with the dogs and I could release my energy by rambling to him about various news topics (like the recent events in Israel and Iran).

I asked him if he would be able to have sex with me sometime and he said he was building up to it.  I asked, could he build up to it that same day, and he said with a wince that he was working on it. . . . (Think long-term projects.) So I didn’t have sex, but I didn’t cheat either.  And thankfully, the dogs’ energy as they ran about soon capsized my own.

That said, I had a fabulous evening meeting Tammy, an upstairs neighbor who’d come over to deliver a batch of chocolate cookies she’d made for us because of Lucky’s passing.  She has great energy and completely understood me when we spoke about bad photos, living cheaply in New York, finding financial backers without becoming a prostitute, and avoiding guys who say they pity you.  Here she is singing “Make You Feel My Love” by Bob Dylan.

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