Sex and the Single Soccer Mom

For weeks now, I’ve been hoping for a “vanilla” date. Someone who may not be THE ONE, but isn’t intensely weird either. All of my dates have bordered on the extreme and intense in one way or another. Whatever happened to simply grabbing a drink with someone and enjoying the conversation, without feeling like you were in the Twilight Zone the entire time?

M first contacted me three years ago, immediately following my separation. We emailed and chatted and it was friendly and light-hearted. He continued to ask me out, yet I had a great deal of reluctance to accept. For one thing, he is six years younger than me. For another, I was simply in a terrible place emotionally and mentally. I ended up in a relationship with someone else and we, of course, lost contact.

So, here I am back in the online dating scene. I’m seeing many of the same singles that I saw three years ago. We are like hungry fish, all circling the same tiny pond. So when M messages me, I’m not incredibly surprised. He expressed delight at discovering me online and single; I respond with the same friendly and light-hearted conversation that I did originally. This goes on for about a month, while he continually expresses interest in meeting.

While M seems sweet, I am reluctant (again) to go out with him. The age difference is STILL six years (funny how that doesn’t change).  I just get the feeling that he is a sweet guy who will bore me to tears. Plus, there is a lingering humiliation over a half remembered phone call between the two of us.  I was drunk and barely able to focus on his words and kept nodding off, while he earnestly discussed his past relationships. It wasn’t one of my best moments. After several weeks of emails, I finally get an email from him that says: “Aren’t you ever going to make time for me? You might even like me.”

I feel like a jerk. The kid (oops…man) has been pursuing me, off and on, for three years and I can’t given him a couple of hours of my time to at least give him a chance? So I take the plunge and agree. We set up a plan to meet at a local pub and he sweetly and enthusiastically emails: “I don’t want to wait! I wish we could go out right now!”

We agree to talk on the phone the evening before the date and when he calls, I get a sinking feeling after only a few minutes of conversation. I suddenly wonder if my inclination to nod off during our phone conversation three years ago was due less to my drunken state and more to his monotone delivery and choice of topics. I now fear the date, which I feel honor-bound to keep, is somewhat doomed.

The afternoon of the date I receive the knowledge that my youngest child is going to need an invasive medical procedure in just a few days. I’m rattled, to say the least.  I consider canceling for the evening, yet realize that will leave me alone to contemplate complications and ramifications that I don’t want to dwell on. Not to mention the fact that this date has been three years in the making and I don’t want to reschedule. I am discouraged by the fact that I feel more resignation about the evening than enthusiasm. The worry for my child has also lent a heavy feel to the evening. Still, I try to put on a happy smile as I enter the pub, realizing that going into the date in a morose state of mind is not fair to anyone.

What I get is surprisingly pleasant. M is sweet and earnest and is able to carry on a conversation quite aptly. Of course, he also looks eighteen and reminds me somewhat a small, Irish leprechaun; or perhaps a cocker spaniel, with his huge brown eyes and dark eyelashes. After an hour and a half, I let him know that I need to call it an early night. He sweetly asks to walk me to my car; I decline and tell him I will be fine.  At which point he kisses me goodbye, a sweet kiss, despite the lack of butterflies on my part.

On my way home, I think of his big brown eyes and know it is going to feel akin to kicking a puppy when I have to tell him that I don’t want to go out again. I briefly consider accepting a few more dates, wondering if the blow will be easier that way. Of course, I know it won’t be. This is the part of dating that sucks completely.

It occurs to me the vanilla date that I was hoping for may be the worst date of all. Extreme weirdness, attempted groping and offers to spray artificial cheese product on my body are all very easy to turn down. A sweet, brown-eyed boy (oops…man) who continues to text me with enthusiasm for an hour after our first date is not.

I suddenly remember a very bad profile that I had happened upon the day before. One sentence jumped out at me and tugged at my heart: “I just want to find someone to love me.” This very basic human need, to find someone who thinks we are special and funny and beautiful and amazing, is what is driving every single person out there searching for someone.  It is the desire to be loved and cherished and held, despite our flaws and quirks of personality.

Suddenly, I found myself overwhelmed by melancholy.  M, with his sweet smile and puppy eyes, did not have the power to move me the way he indicated I moved him. Yet I wished at that moment, profoundly, that he did. Wouldn’t life be so much easier if we always wanted the people who want us? It is a cruel joke of life that it can’t be that simple; that love and attraction and desire is so cursedly complicated and confusing.

My heart was aching with regret for the hearts that I’ve bruised or broken, as well as the ones that have done the same to me. I was overwhelmed with worry for my child and the ordeal that they would have to undergo, as well as what the results might reveal; I also felt an intense desire to be held and loved, yet recognized the irony of having just left someone who was interested in doing both.

I text L, who’s arms are loving and can often offer sweet solace. No reply is forthcoming and the boundaries of our relationship leave me uncertain if calling at 10:00 at night, when he is clearly otherwise occupied, will be an infringement.

All these thoughts swirl through my head and the only clear thing I can latch onto is the need to remember that every single person I come in contact with during this journey deserves at least the respect of acknowledgement. They may be weird, or distasteful…they may be sweet and earnest. In the end it doesn’t really matter. Everyone just wants to find someone to love them. I may not be able to offer that; the least I can offer is the courtesy of a response, some kindness and the willingness to acknowledge that deep down, we might be searching for the same thing.

I’ve heard my whole life about men and “locker room” talk. I accepted a long time ago that when it comes to dishing the details about the opposite sex, men have absolutely nothing on women. Women, especially close girlfriends, take tales of sex to a whole new level.

My girlfriend and I will talk about the sex act in glorious detail. How long? What position? Had you ever done that before? Did you come? Did he come?

When I have unthinkingly revealed some of these girl-talk conversations to my partners, they have reacted with horror. They make me promise that I won’t talk about them with friends. They profess to never share details. I am stunned and somewhat disbelieving. How could this possibly be true?

My girlfriends have been acting as a social mirror for as long as I can remember. Women watch other women. We watch how they walk, how they dress, how they flirt. We assess their eyes, hair, lips, breasts, ass and legs with voracious intensity. I notice attractive women five full minutes before my date will. Right or wrong, assessing our own physical assets or flaws by comparing ourselves to the same sex is an age-old social game. Are her boobs bigger than mine? Well…maybe they are, but my ass is better. Wow! I love her hair…wonder if mine would do that?

Add to that the fact that women form strong physical and emotional bonds from an early age. Little girls hold hands on the way to the playground. They braid each other’s hair, hug, trade clothes and jewelry. They go to the bathroom and chatter away while the other one pees. They check a girlfriend’s teeth for stray food once she has eaten; give tampons to the friend in need, and empathize over cramps and heavy flow once a month.

It only makes sense to me that once we become women and begin our sexual journey that it would be other women that we look to for answers, reassurance, sympathy and a listening ear. Emotionally, we’ve learned as women to process…and to make sure that we process in detail!

It could even be that after yearly exams that probe our delicate bits with steel and indifference, letting the cute teenage boy in the checkout ring up our tampons, or allowing five medical students to observe our vagina stretched into an unrecognizable shape by an emerging head…Well, the prudishness tends to go downhill.

My girlfriend knows how many partners I’ve had and how I would rate them. She knows who I count as a “half” partner because he only lasted ninety seconds. She also knows about the partner that I don’t count at all because I literally could not tell that we were having sex. I’m actually still not quite certain we even did (yes, it WAS that small).

So it seemed only natural to relay details of a recent sexy weekend to her on my way home from work. She listens, asks questions and makes all the right affirming noises.

Somehow this leads us into a discussion of the differences in the male appendage. She is discussing her partner’s concern over not being totally straight (and I’m NOT referring to his orientation).

“I tried to tell him that I don’t even know any men that are completely straight.” She explains. “At which point he started to cover his ears and insist that I was a virgin before we met.” Yes, her children are, apparently, from God. “So then I just said, well **** has been dating for awhile now and she says none of her partners are ever completely straight.”

“I’m so glad that I get to be a whore to save your marriage.” I respond in a dry tone.

She laughs and we embark on a thorough discussion of length, girth, right-leaning, left-leaning, straight up, straight out, cut, uncut, dark complexioned and fair complexioned penises.

As I describe one that was, for me at least, a startling color, she comments: “Are you pumping gas while on your cell phone? You know that you could blow yourself up?”

“Whatever. What are you doing?”

“I’m putting the meatloaf in while the kids watch TV.”

We laugh together for a moment at the absurd practicality of discussing our sex lives over domestic chores. Still, what else is a soccer mom going to do?

I knew when J first contacted me that it wasn’t going to turn into anything serious. I had already glanced at his profile and skipped over it when I came across the bold (and prejudiced) assertion that he was “looking for a woman who isn’t on anti-depressants”. I was even somewhat amused that it knocked me out of the running. After all, between this man and my happy pills, there was really no contest.

When he emailed me, I quickly followed up with a reply of, “Sorry, I’m on anti-depressants, so clearly we aren’t a good match.”

He counters: “So, I’m a smoker. No one is perfect.”

Unwilling to be drawn into a debate about a prescribed drug that treats depression versus nicotine addiction, I simply respond: “Clearly, our dysfunctions don’t line up well. Thanks for the message though.”

“So, want to meet for a drink?”

A couple of weeks of witty email banters are bandied back and forth between us. I’m not looking for anything from him and certainly don’t think he’s going to be “the one”, but I finally agree to take him up on his offer because he seems amusing. I think that it might be nice to simply enjoy a relaxed evening of conversation over a glass of wine, without the pressure of determining if we work well together. For me, the determination has already been made that we don’t. So this will be a cake date: Fun, with no pressure.

As soon as he shows up it is clear he is his biggest fan. He is witty and charming and funny and outrageous, at least in his own mind. I feel absolutely zero physical chemistry, but I’m still aiming for low-key fun. I’m getting a strong bad-boy vibe, with a deep thread of geek running through and, as the conversation progresses, I’m admitting to myself that I find his company annoying.

After the first hour, his conversation is studded with phrases that he seems to consider edgy and clever. Referring to his roommate’s refusal to drive him to the restaurant: “I said, cunt, it’s only a few blocks.” When I suggest ordering food, he loudly calls out, “Feed us, bitches.” He punctuates every few minutes with a shoulder bump and a loudly intoned, “Cheer up, will ya?”

I’ll admit it. I began to focus heavily on my wine. Even more so when he started to hold and kiss my hand, then leaned in while I was chewing and kissed me. Chewing! Does the fool know nothing about women? As time passed, he morphed from a merely annoying and juvenile forty-something into a human octopus. Everywhere I turned, there were his hands. He continued to lean in at will and kiss me randomly, while petting my back (much lower than I would have preferred), my hair, my face, and my hands.

Since when did slobbery PDA become acceptable on a first date?

I escape to the bathroom to text L, my on-again, off-again lover and friend. While that statement, in and of itself, may seem to require explanation, it would take too long and I digress from the events at hand.

Me: Oh, dear lord

L: LOL…that bad?

Me: Ugh…A geek with as many hands as an octopus. I have escaped to the bathroom.

L: Like touchy feely?

Me: Oh yeah

L: You poor thing

Me: Ok. Back into the fray to try and wrap up this night so I can go home. Pray for me…

L: As they say, pimpin’ ain’t easy

Me: ..to whatever deity you need to

It occurs to me later that some might consider it odd to text a lover from a bathroom stall, while you’re on a date. Nevertheless, in a sea of dysfunctional and distasteful dating companions, I find L to be a reassuring presence in my life.

I return to the table slightly buoyed by the texting and announce that I’m very tired and that I need to go home and go to bed.

“I think you’re wonderful and beautiful, young lady.” He says with what I think is meant to be a tender smile. “You could always go home to my bed.”

“No, really, I think I can’t.” My smile is frozen in place as he leans in for another kiss. I wonder at his ability to misjudge my reaction, as his tongue darts out to attempt to find an entry-way to my tightly sealed mouth.

I stand abruptly and begin to walk toward the entrance. My disgust is such that when he offered to pay, despite my innate inclination to go Dutch, I readily agree. I figure after the slobber and octopus hands, I could handle a free meal.

At the car, he ignores the distance I am keeping between our bodies and swoops in and takes me in his arms passionately. Leaning me backward, he again attempts a full-on mouth assault.

“Kiss me.” He intones passionately, his smoker’s breath panting in my face. “Kiss me like you mean it.” Awkwardly caught between my door and his body, I kiss him chastely on the lips and then dart backwards.

“Thanks for the pizza. Be careful on your walk home. “

Then, blessedly, I am on my way home. As I daydream about my bed and sinking into unconsciousness, in the hopes that I can rid myself of the sensory impressions he left me with, one more thought occurs to me. I text it to L.

Me :I’m going home to gargle…with bleach.

L: Ouch

Somehow, that seems to sum up the evening quite nicely.

I never realized how complicated dating, relationships, love and sex could be until I got a divorce. Granted, I married young and was married for over a decade, so I wasn’t exactly hip to the dating scene. Gone are the days of boy-meets-girl simplicity. Sometimes,  it seems, you need a full-blown contract that lay out all the terms and conditions of the “arrangement” that you enter into.

These days, there are lots of non-traditional forms of getting your groove on with the opposite sex and they don’t exactly scream “committed”. Now, sex without commitment is not exactly a new concept. Still, I’m finding that there are a few twists that can be both liberating and extremely complicated.

 The One Night Stand

A fairly simple concept; a one-time hook-up, often (but not always) accompanied by adult libations. The concept has never been very appealing to me personally, but apparently there are more and more women who are willing to enjoy the occasional romp with a stranger. In fact, one acquaintance posted on her Facebook page after a night of bar-hopping: “Since when did it become so hard to find somebody to fuck?”

The Fuck Buddy

This is a step above the One Night Stand in that it is a standing arrangement for as long as is amenable to both parties. Gone is the fear that someone won’t find you fuckable. It is like built in sex insurance. The relationship does not involve commitment; often it doesn’t even involve friendship. Rather than hit the bars when you feel the need, you simply call up the fuck buddy and hope that he is available. Hanging out as friends is probably best avoided, because otherwise it can escalate to the next stage…

Friends with Benefits

Hanging out is a strong component, because the relationship is about more than just the sexual intimacy. For one reason or another, the relationship doesn’t cross over into “committed”, but it isn’t platonic either. After all, you have a great time together. You’re both hot and sexy. Why not double the pleasure?

Non-Monogamous Lovers

A variation on the Friends With Benefits theme, in that you clearly have more going on than just friendship and more going on than just sex. Yet…there are just so many other people out there! Maybe neither partner desires a committed relationship. Maybe neither partner wants to limit their options. It could cross over to committed, but for right now you’re just enjoying the ride (no pun intended).

 These twists and turns on the way to true love have their pros and cons. Today, “single” rarely means “celibate”. To find the option that meets your needs for physical and emotional intimacy, while waiting for “the one”, can be tricky. As you move through the hierarchy of uncommitted intimacy, the potential for payoff and disaster rise exponentially.

In the end, it is all about boundaries. With a one-night stand, it a little more clear-cut: This is about the pleasure of the moment and not being alone for a few hours. That is, if both parties understand…

With the Fuck Buddy and the Friend with Benefits, what boundaries do you draw around the relationship so that neither gets hurt? Is dinner with a Fuck Buddy acceptable? Do you cuddle afterwards? Or might it smudge the line if you eat pizza before you have sex? For that matter, what is the line? With a Friend with Benefits, what happens when one person decides that they feel something other than friendship? What happens when one of the parties involved meets someone they want a relationship with, therefore ending the “benefits” portion of the relationship? Can the friendship survive?

If only human relationships were like contracts, with places to initial and sign on the dotted line. Perhaps it would make this modern dating scene easier to navigate. Then again, perhaps it wouldn’t help at all. Aren’t love and sex and all the emotion that surrounds interplay between the sexes fraught with potential complications, despite the “terms of service” that you might choose?

Yet it is surprising how much grayer I see love and relationships these days. Perhaps it is getting older. Maybe it is realizing that if the person that promised to love and cherish me until death (and had what is very nearly a contract saying as much!) can stop doing both, then there is really nothing that is permanent. It could even be that now that I’m a mother, my children are very beautiful time markers, always making me aware of the forward movement of time. I’m not sure that I want to go without someone touching me, holding me, cherishing me (if only for an evening) until I find the person I hope to be with long-term. I’m trying to live much more in the present. Commitment, wedding rings and white picket fences don’t guarantee forever.

In the end, I believe in love; I think that two people who work at it can find long-term happiness together if they choose. I’m simply no longer certain that I want to pass up the opportunity to grab life and love right now, simply to wait for an ideal. Sometimes, being held and knowing that no matter where that person will be the next night, they are with you at the present moment…well, that is a shade of gray that can be a beautiful thing.

Where does a busy, single mom go to find dates? I’m not a huge fan of the bar scene. The few times that I have gone I have sat there on my chair and watched the crowd, filled with the innate sense that this was not a good fit for me. I would leave, weary and disgusted, reminded of the lyrics to a poetry slam by Katie Makkai, “drifting home, crestfallen, because not enough strangers found you suitably fuckable.”

No, the bar scene is not the place for this single, soccer mom to find dates.

Like many others, I decide to try the online dating market. Shopping for love from the comfort of my desk chair; how could I possibly go wrong? I am not a cyber dating virgin. Nay, I ventured into these waters shortly after my marriage ended, with very mixed results. I got up the courage to try again a few months after a relationship ended, meeting a man that I feel head-over-heels in lust with. That led to a relationship that was (is) complex.

Now, like a dog going back to be kicked (Can you tell that I’m ambivalent?), I go about setting up a profile. It is a free site; let’s call it…Plenty of Psychos.

Into the profile I pour my creative energies. I want to appear sexy, but not easy; intelligent, but not intimidating; and definitely not needy. I choose my pictures with painstaking care. Then I send it off to the netherworld (aka, the Plenty of Psychos gods) for approval. It is, of course, approved.

I’m now ready for the emails from attractive, intelligent, and evolved men to start pouring into my inbox.

Well…that isn’t exactly what happened. Indeed, emails poured into my inbox. Emails from men twenty years older than me, from tattooed men who looked like they were just released from prison that day (one was even wearing what appeared to be an orange jumpsuit!), one that was entirely in Spanish, and lots of badly phrased innuendos.

Then I get a couple of emails from men who actually seem literate, attractive, and as though they are looking for more than a fling. One man, P, seemed to have potential. We exchange emails for a couple of days and all was going well. He asked me to call him and I thought, “Why not?”

The conversation went okay for awhile. Until he got pissed off when he thought he heard me making a derisive noise when he mentioned his favorite football team. It was actually the sound of me swallowing a drink of water while trying to make affirmative noises; no matter, he was offended.

Still, who would have thought it would be the mention of NASCAR that would have led us to this?

“I like sports. Except NASCAR. I don’t like NASCAR.”

“I can’t say that’s a bad thing.” I reply with relief. “Don’t like the idea of Daisy Dukes and Cheez Whiz?”

(I should note that while snobby and somewhat mean, this comment was meant to relay a certain understanding that NASCAR can sometimes, although there are exceptions to the rule, draw a certain niche of people)

“Oh yeah. You could come over and I’d spray Cheez Whiz all over your ass.” This is said in a voice that is intended to be playful and sexy.

“Uhm…,” A moment of silence from me. “That sounds kind of messy and disgusting.”

“Okay, Then how about all over your tits?”

“You mean my breasts?” I ask archly.

“Well, if you want to be all politically correct about it.”

I made one last attempt at humor to lighten the mood by saying, “Sorry, I could only accept organic whipped cream.”

He, however, did not sense the sarcasm.

Somehow I don’t see P and I being soul mates. Strike number one for Plenty of Psychos. Now, it’s early in the game and I haven’t given up hope yet. Still…

I think that perhaps my fruit is going to get a little bit more time to ripen.

I never thought I would find myself trying to date in my thirties. I certainly never thought I would be attempting to balance a challenging full-time job, two children, two pets, a house, a yard and dating…in my thirties. I know that many people do it; I just didn’t think I would join the growing throng of divorced single parents trying to recover and rebuild.

Yet, here I am. On the average day you could find me driving my children to school in my mini-van, with various backpacks and lunchboxes and musical instruments rolling around in the messy floorboard. Or I’m at work, trying to be professional and efficient, while also trying to juggle the parenting duties when children fall sick, have doctor’s appointments, plan field trips, need help with class projects and…well, you get the picture.

I’m the mom in the grocery store, trying to make sure that the fruits and vegetables outnumber the sugary treats my children beg for. I’m the woman who has fantasies about lying topless on a beach somewhere while a hot man rubs oil on my back. I’m the mom who welcomes my youngest into my empty bed after she wakes in the night. I’m the woman who prays my children never find my special drawer and ask me about it. Sometimes I’m the mom with the bulging eyes and stage-whisper hissing, threatening my little angels with, “If I have to tell you one more time, I swear I will take away everything you love in life.” Yet, I’m also the woman who wants to be held, kissed, caressed and listened to by that one man that will one day “get” me.

I must confess, however, that when my children poke me in the stomach and giggle because I remind them of a certain dough boy (totally their fault!), or the cute checkout boy at the grocery store asks me if I need help out (gone are the days when they actually asked me out); Well, those are the days that the thought of trying to put on some heels and a cute little outfit and go hit “the scene” is about as appealing to me as the mold that I know lurks on the leftovers in my fridge.

Still, I’m in my mid-thirties. The fruit is ripe. The flower has bloomed. The wine has matured. I need to be pollinated. Or, if I cut through all the pretty bullshit…I’m lonely and horny.

I love being a mom (most of the time). Yet I also realize that there is a lot more to me than the mini-van and endless juggling, the bed-time stories and school lunches. I am deep and interesting and sexy…along with frazzled, scattered, and far too busy (and old) to hit the clubs.

So now I’m back into the dating scene. This blog will chronicle the ups and downs of dating as a single mom. It will lay out the good, the bad, and the ugly of trying to be sexy and sexual (while always keeping a cell phone close in case the kids need me). Who knows where the journey will take me?

This blog is for single soccer moms everywhere. We are many, we are strong and we are SEXY!