Palm Springs
Last night I had a very intense sexual dream...about my vibrator. That’s where I’m at right now in life. In this dream, I was staying in a very modern home somewhere near the ocean. I remember lots of perfectly squared rooms, sharp corners, very geometric. The walls were all painted a different pastel color: pinks, oranges, blue. Think of a mid-century Palm Springs home belonging to an eccentric aging former Playmate. Anyhow, I’m in this home with my daughter who’s visiting a friend. The entire time I’m just thinking of where I can masturbate. Just hours of walking around and talking and having tea and then finally, finally! her and her friend go outside to swim in the pool and I retreat to a walk in closet and pull out the vibrator from my purse and smile for the first time in the entire dream. Even my subconscious dream-state knows not to imagine actually having a sex with another person. Even my subconscious dream-state is laughing at me.
I don’t need a dream dictionary to interpret this one. I am literally trying (and failing) to balance having an active sexual life with a 16 year old sleeping 10 feet away from me, separated only by one thin, badly painted white wall.
I’ve had sex maybe 3 or 4 times in the last 7 months. One doesn’t count because it was comfortable drunken desperately clinging sex with my ex. One had promise of being a regular thing but I got ghosted after the second time. The other was fine - just fine. Not worth shaving and going through the whole charade of mindless dinner date chatter for.
I would probably date more, but I’m held back by not wanting to go out too much, leaving my kid home alone. I mean, she’s not a kid anymore but still. I don’t want her to watch as I get dressed up, full of promise and intrigue, only to come back disappointed, over and over again. I don’t want her to think I’m just randomly dating multiple people. But, you kind of need to randomly date multiple people in order to find someone even remotely interesting. I have equal fear of being seen as a hoe, and of being seen as desperate. I’m acutely aware that she’s in her own hormonal, transitional phase of learning what it is to be a woman. Her own budding sexuality and interactions with men are naturally going to be influenced not by what I tell her, but what she watches me do. And I have no idea what to do with that pressure.
So I’ve just kind of put everything on hold for now.
I would love to say “hey, let’s go back to my place”, after a fantastic night of laughter and espresso martinis, but my place isn’t just my place. It’s our place. It’s our home. I have this irrational instinct to keep out any type of invading,foreign energy from our home. Everything here is so calm and balanced. I’m afraid someone will come over wearing ridiculously delicious smelling cologne that will linger in the home for days after he’s already left. Or someone with a deep-throated laugh that will echo in through the kitchen each time I try to cook dinner. I’m afraid of inviting in someone (again) who won’t stay.
On my last date (which was actually very lovely, but it was about a month ago and no invitation for a second date appears to be coming anytime soon…) he asked if we could take the kids out together. I quickly, maybe too quickly, said no. I’ve always been the type of mother who kept her dating life totally separate from her child until it was “serious”. Define serious? There’s not one hard, fast definition, but suffice to say she’s only met two men I’ve dated. The first, we were together for two years, the last we were engaged. It’s hard when I realize I’m being: ghosted, breadcrumbed, haunted, take your pick of the latest term for being played; it would only make it that much harder if my daughter was also involved. So if we all went out bowling together and then I didn’t hear from him for two weeks after, well, that would hurt way more than if he’d just left me on read for weeks (which seems to be par for the course while dating these days). But then again, if your kids don’t like the person you’re dating, that could also save you weeks of pointless talks of “future” planning and nip things in the bud that much quicker. So, there’s great benefits to that mind-set as well. Again, I have no answers and as of yet have not figured out any of this at all, except to do nothing.
And dream about vibrators and Palm Springs.