To: yikes!izzy
Date: Friday, September 2—7:12 PM
Subject: Re: Hello stranger
Dear Isabel,
Try to shock me all you want, I’m not going anywhere. For your information, I’m not the prude you think I am. Trust me, I have plenty of dark thoughts late at night, alone in bed with only myself with whom to communicate. So there. Who’s blushing now?
Since you asked, Alice and I are still an item, although she’s been more distant of late. She says she’s “figuring some things out” and I’ve barely seen her since I got back. I’m trying to think what she could be figuring out and why it involves not talking to me, but I’m at a loss. Her parrot, Gerard, died over the summer, so that might have something to do with it. They grew up together and, honestly, theirs was probably Alice’s closest relationship. And what does that make me? Less than a bird? Oh, the plight of the horny, marooned poet.
Since you mentioned the “S word,” I must mention that I’m dying, perhaps just figuratively speaking, but if it were possible to expire from sexual frustration, I’d most definitely be a goner. Alice was kind enough to bless me with some oral compassion on my return from camp, but then rescinded her kindness at the last minute, just moments before my—shall I say it?—ultimate Thank-You. I was left there in the back of her mom’s Prius, writhing in unreleased tension, and she just dabbed at the sides of her mouth with a Kleenex and informed me that oral strikes her as inherently misogynist because the girl receives nothing in return and is effectively silenced in the process. I said I was more than happy to return the favor, or perhaps find a configuration more conducive to tandem pleasure, but she would have none of it.
Honestly, I don’t know what I did wrong. I can’t imagine a more attentive and sensitive boyfriend than me. My sensitivity to the feminine condition borders on pathology. So why does it sometimes feel like she considers me a kind of danger to her? Was she traumatized in some past life? Does she see me as nothing more than a stand-in for a former abuser? Or is she just a cold fish? Isabel, help me figure her out. You’re my only hope.
Hypothermic from cold showers,
Connor