Broken Hearts Damaged Goods (6 page)

And thinking that we
were now good to go outside and rejoin the party, I started to turn the water
off.  Jack then stopped me.  “Before we get out of the shower, I have a sort of
odd request.”

“You’re going to ask me
to do something while we’re in the shower with our clothes on”, was all I could
think of to say.

“I know.  I’m insane,
but I’ve always wanted to kiss a girl in the rain.  It’s on my virginity list.”

“Your virginity list?”

“It’s what I call my
bucket list.  And I know that it sounds really bad after just faking an orgasm
in the shower with our clothes on, but I just thought that, if you were
willing, we could...”

And since he wouldn’t
shut up, I started to kiss him.  And I mean that I kissed him.  I kissed the
boy I was falling in love with and hoped he would know that with that kiss I
was giving him my heart.

And as the water was
coming down on us, he put his arms around my waist and seemed to be enjoying
the kiss.  He was at least kissing me back as somebody that had some sort of
feelings for me.  It was loving and passionate, but not dirty or raw.  It was
beautiful.

And when I left him
wanting more, I asked him, “Was it good for you?”

He slowly opened his
eyes and in a drawn out way said, “Yeah.  That’s something I’m definitely going
to be doing again.”  He then turned off the water and said, “We had better be
going now.”

And with our wet
clothes on, we exited the bathroom.  The drunk guy looked at us in amazement. 
Everybody else just looked at us as we left the party hand in hand.  As I
walked by Brittany, I held up my hand to show her the ring on my finger.  I
then flipped her off, which made me feel a whole lot better.

And then Jack and I
walked home.  It was a nice late summer evening.  It was a perfect romantic
evening where the stars were shining above and I was taking a leisurely stroll
hand in hand with a guy that I liked.  And we just talked as we made our way
home.

He wouldn’t tell me
what other stuff was on his virginity list, but he did explain why he called it
a virginity list.  He said that if anything is worth doing once before you die,
it should be amazing enough to want to do more than once.  Plus, he said that
you should have a list that you can mark off stuff with with some of the most
important people in your life.  He said that it makes it more special than just
doing something because you want to.  His list is stuff that he would like to
do with other people.

So I took his kissing
in the rain virginity.  Although it was really his kissing in the shower
virginity, I told him that I would officially pop his cherry the next time that
it rained.  He seemed to like that idea, so I must have been pretty good in
conveying that I was starting to have feelings for him.  I can’t tell for sure.

When we got home, there
was the question as to who should get in the shower first.  He was going to be
a gentleman and let me go first.  I was going to be my typically slutty self
and suggested that we should shower together again, except without clothes this
time.

And he was nice about
turning me down.  He made sure that he was rejecting the idea and not actually
rejecting me.  He did it in such a way that I didn’t feel like a slut, which I
have been having problems with lately.

I’m going to have to
remember that Jack just came out of a very long relationship.  Having sex with
a girl that he isn’t actually dating probably isn’t high on his list of
priorities right now.  Plus I have to be careful not to come off too strong in
my feelings for him.

Anyway, we showered
separately.  Afterwards, we just hung out on the sofa watching TV.  We did more
talking than anything else.  My guilty conscience got the better of me, and I
asked him if he thought I was a slut.

The wisdom of asking a
guy that you are interested in if he thinks you’re a slut is probably not a
good thing.  I just wanted to get it out there for us to discuss.  And in one
of the more stupid things I have ever done with a guy, I ended up discussing
almost my entire sexual history with him.

It was easy to do. 
Jack just held me, listened to me, and didn’t judge me.  I just wish I knew
what he was thinking or feeling.  It is making being in love with him hard for
me.  I don’t want to ruin this, but I don’t exactly know how to have a
relationship with a guy that isn’t ready for a relationship yet.

By

Jack Webber

T
here are times in your
life when the various sectors of your life come together to teach you important
life lessons.  This happened to me the other day at work as I was taking sexual
harassment training.  With a large portion of the sexual harassment taking
place against women, the courts have decided to have a “reasonable woman
standard” where a reasonable woman would determine whether something would be
harassment or not.

Not to be offensive,
but I have never found women to be very reasonable.  This past weekend, I went
to a party that I didn’t really want to go to.  I knew that I would be running
into an ex-girlfriend that is currently dating my ex-best friend. 

My date for the evening
was a girl that knew everybody was going to be watching us as a couple, even
though we aren’t a real couple.  Everybody knew that we weren’t a real couple,
and yet we still went to the party with the intent of putting on the greatest
show on the earth.

A reasonable woman
would have known that this would have turned out badly, which it did if you
consider locking yourself in the bathroom and crying a bad thing.  I think most
reasonable women would define that as a disaster of the original plan of going
to a party to make your ex jealous.

Of course, the
reasonable man standard is not much better.  I agreed to go to this predestined
debacle with the full knowledge that it was going to be horrific.  The
difference between the reasonable man and the reasonable woman is that the
reasonable man will agree to something that he knows he shouldn’t do because a
woman wants him to do it.

My reasons for going
were that she wanted me to go, and I wanted to make her happy.  Despite my
objections and fears of impending doom, a reasonable man decided to just go
with it.  This was not done so that later I could say, “I told you so.”  My
being right never entered into the equation.  Somehow spending time with her
and doing something with her that she wanted to do were my deciding factors. 
These are thoughts that any person would find reasonable.

The jury is still out
on her reasons for wanting to go.  Her argument was that we should get out of
the house.  Considering that we have spent most of our time together after the
breakup of our previous relationship inside, going out to a party would be
reasonable.

It would also be
reasonable that she would want me to go to a party where I would get to see
some of my male friends.  I haven’t seen them since this whole breakup thing
happened.  I have been rather isolated with my... girl that I’m spending my
nights with and not having a real relationship with.

Okay.  The jury just
came back from deliberations.  They have decided that she was a reasonable
woman.  This verdict was based on the facts that the man was found to be
reasonable in agreeing to go to the party when he did so out of respect for and
a desire to make the woman happy.  Since both parties were thinking about
somebody other than themselves, they are both deemed to be reasonable.

This, however, does not
fully explain the woman in question’s behavior the remainder of the night.  It
is reasonable that she would become upset when my ex-girlfriend implied that
she was a slut.  It is reasonable that she would lock herself in the bathroom
at the party.  Just like it is reasonable that I would pretend to be having sex
with her in the bathroom.  (There are times in your life where you find
yourself in unusual situations and you have to improvise on what normal
behavior would constitute.  Faking sex in the shower to cover up for another
person’s crying due to being insulted is reasonable in this context.)

What becomes troubling
behavior to understand is how the woman whose virtue came into question started
to give a detailed history of her previous sex partners.  Granted that a
reasonable man is not dating this woman, she would have no reason to withhold
this information from him.  Both parties know that they are using each other
for their own romantic rehabilitation.

In this instance, it
seems like the woman sees the man as a close friend.  Her sharing then would be
seen as a way of discussing what is really bothering her and why she does the
things that she does.

A reasonable man in
this case would see the woman as a person that longs for love and has looked
for it with the faith of a child.  She gave her previous lovers all of her
heart, and they refused to recognize just what they held in their hands. 
Throughout it all, she never gave up her faith in love and being loved.

She was a reasonable
woman.  She just never figured that men would never be able to see what she was
offering.

The tragedy of the
situation is that the reasonable man and the reasonable woman will continue to
be reasonable and do everything that is in the best interest of the other
person and then part ways, wishing each other the best of luck with their newly
mended hearts in a world where such hearts cannot exist long.

By

Jack Webber

W
hen going through romantic
rehabilitation, there is always a choice that one has to make.  Should you see
your ex that you are trying to get over, or do you avoid them?  The right
answer to this question depends on the situation and the person.  Seeing your
ex could lead you back into temptation and long for the so called “golden
days.”  On the other hand, seeing them might also prove that you have moved on
and feel nothing for them.

I have no idea how I am
actually doing in the rehabilitation process.  A self-audit is not high on my
list of priorities at this time.  To look at how I am coping with everything
would just draw attention to the very thing that I am trying to forget and move
on from.

When I saw her last
night, I didn’t feel the intense feelings of longing that I had even as recent
as last week.  She seemed more like a stranger that I knew extremely well. 
This made the confrontation awkward.  Knowing your enemy intimately makes you
go for the lowest of blows in order to achieve a decisive victory.

I should have wanted a
victory in the same sense that she did, but my few remaining feelings for her
kept me doing this.  I merely finished the confrontation.  I wasn’t interested
in a victor and a defeated the way that she was.

Knowing the “enemy” the
way that I do, I was a little taken aback by her behavior.  Considering that I
was the one that was cheated on, I don’t know why she would care who I spend
time with after the breakup.  But she is an extremely self-conscious woman, who
has never thought of herself as beautiful.  It didn’t matter that I would tell
her that I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world.  She never
once found herself to be even remotely attractive.

I know that her attacks
on my date were a defensive attack caused by her own insecurities.  It meant
that she thought that the woman that replaced her was superior in many ways. 
It also means that she is starting to doubt her decision to admit to the
affair.  She sees herself as a downgrade from the woman that she replaced.

If I were still madly
in love with her, I would have told her that she didn’t need to compare herself
to other women.  I would have told her that she was beautiful.  And I might
have cared that a beautiful woman didn’t have any measure of self-worth.

Instead I found this
woman that I knew so well to be horrifically ugly.  When she said, “My God,
Jack, you don’t just give a diamond ring to the first girl that will fuck you”,
I couldn’t help but to respond, “That girl has shown me more kindness than you
did in four years, and you have just shown that she has more style, grace, and
beauty than you could ever hope to have.”

And that seemed to be
the end of the confrontation.  I left to comfort a woman that was deeply hurt
by having her virtue challenged by a known cheater.  By comforting my date, I
found a beauty that I thought only my ex possessed.  This new beauty seems more
pure in its longing to be loved, desired, and appreciated for who she really
is.

Despite having a night
of discovering something that I once thought existed in my ex, I was still
haunted by my former love later that night.  She taunted me in my sleep and
made me question that I would ever find somebody to replace her.  She reminded
me of the great things that we once were.  She told me that she still cared for
me.  And when I confronted this ghost of my dreams about the fact that she was
the one that left me, she said, “What could I do, Jack?  You were killing me
and our relationship.  I had to leave.  If I cheated, it was because I needed
out and didn’t want to hurt you.”

And knowing her the way
that I do, I almost believed these words.  She would have told me these things
and placed the blame on me for her cheating on me.  And I couldn’t argue with
her.

Maybe I am to blame. 
Maybe I didn’t love her enough, or expressed my feelings for her.  Maybe I
didn’t make her feel that she was truly beautiful.  If I had done these things,
maybe she wouldn’t have fallen for a man that could make her feel the things I
never could in the four years that we were together.

Even though I know her
words were not real and that she is dealing with her own feelings of insecurity
after the breakup, I can’t but help to believe that she would tell me these
things if she wanted to cause me even more pain.  Her respect for our previous
relationship and what was once real has kept her from truly hurting me.

Instead, she will
strike out at the person I am currently with.  They are collateral damage.  She
doesn’t care if they get hurt.  I do.  I don’t want anybody else to feel what I
have felt the past couple of weeks.  I don’t want anybody else to become a
casualty of a failed relationship.  If I have to suffer for the sake of others
and deal with her ghost on a nightly basis, I am willing to do that.  Nobody
else will get hurt because of me.

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