Sept 17:
I still haven’t told my mother about Jim. I’m awful, I know. She called me today and was telling me about this new diet and some story about how this woman she knew who was forty just got married, so there was STILL HOPE for me. “Are you still dating on the interweb?” she asked me. She always calls the internet something different.
“Not… really,” I replied honestly.
“Why not, Tessie?” At first she thought internet dating was definitely going to get my throat slashed. Now she’s convinced it’s my only hope to get married and I need to sign up for every internet dating site in existence. Sorry Ma, J-date is just for Jews.
“I, um, need a break.” It was the perfect time to tell her about Jim, but I couldn’t do it. She was willing to accept a guy who wasn’t Greek, but I didn’t think she’d accept Jim. Maybe Jim was wonderful and everyone acted like he was such a great catch, but the truth was that he was a quadriplegic and therefore not a great catch. I was scared my mother would freak out and try to make me break up with him. And I can’t conceal his disability with her, because if I told her how serious things are, she will definitely want to meet him ASAP.
“A break!” my mother yelled. “You’re thirty years old! You’re only getting older. Don’t you want to have children?”
I closed my eyes and tried to go to my happy place while my mother let loose on me. I was zoned out but somehow I caught the phrases “set you up” and “won’t take no for an answer.”
“What?” I said.
“You’re going to really like him,” my mother was saying. “His name is George and he’s the son of one of the women from church. He’s Greek.”
I don’t know what was wrong with George, but if he was letting his mother set him up, there was guaranteed to be something wrong with him.
“And he’s an accountant, like you!” my mother said.
There’s no point in telling my mother yet again than I’m an actuary, not an accountant and that there’s a difference between the two jobs. I know that Greek is her first language, so it’s hard for her to recognize subtle differences between some English words, but that doesn’t explain why it’s so hard for her to distinguish between the two job descriptions.
“Ma, can’t you leave me be?”
“So this is what you want,” my mother huffed. “To be single forever? An old maid?”
Eventually, I’m going to tell my mother about Jim. I swear it. I just can’t do it yet. Maybe in a month or two. Or never. We’ll just run off to Argentina and get married.
Sept 23:
10 things I love about Jim, in no particular order:
1. He is the funniest guy I’ve ever met.
2. He is singlehandedly supporting the local flower shop. I always say I don’t to sound low maintenance, but I secretly love flowers.
3. He doesn’t seem to be turned off or even care how much I weigh.
4. He is incredibly handsome, more so than any guy I’ve ever dated.
5. I know this is going to come as a surprise, but I love his hands. At first they freaked me out, but now I find them oddly sexy.
6. When my computer breaks, he always fixes it for me. He is a genius. (Although he has installed high power anti-virus software for me, because he says I am like a magnet for viruses.)
7. He gives the best cunnilingus of any man alive.
8. I love that he’s a nerd and all his friends are nerdy too.
9. He is an amazing kisser.
10. He loves me.
Sept 26:
Sandra and I still have our Friday evening sessions at the bar together. Jim said he didn’t want to get in the way of that (yet another thing I love about him). We went today to have our girl time, but it ended up all we talked about was Jim. I think that since Sandra is married, she now has to experience dating vicariously through me.
“Have you guys had sex yet?” Sandra asked me, after our first beers were finished.
“Sandra!”
“Oh, come on. Just tell me.”
“Okay, okay,” I relented. “No, we haven’t yet. Everything else, but not sex.”
“You want to?”
“Of course!” I hesitated. “But he can’t, you know, feel it. So it would just be for me and I don’t want to see overeager.”
“Yikes, he can’t feel it??”
“Keep your voice down!” I hissed. “And yeah, he can’t. I mean, he can’t feel most of his body.”
“Wow, that sucks.”
“Tell me about it.” Although if Jim wasn’t a quadriplegic, he’d be way out of my league.
Jim has gone down on me a bunch more times and each time was more amazing than the last. But I do think about having sex with him a lot. I want to feel him inside me.
We talked about it before. Jim said that he takes a pill to get hard and he doesn’t have a lot of control, but he could definitely do it. He said he’d just have to lie there and I’d have to do all the thrusting. He sounded really apologetic and said that he prefers to eat me out. I think he wants to have sex with me too, but he’s nervous that it won’t be good. Honestly, I don’t know how that’s possible, but I guess I understand his worries.
I think it’s going to happen really soon though. We can’t keep our hands off each other, so it’s just a matter of time.
Oct 5:
Ah so, sex with Jim…
I want to say it was totally romantic and spontaneous, but it just couldn’t be. Jim had to take a pill in order to get ready and then he had to empty his bladder. He explained all that to me in a conversation that was probably more awkward for me than it was for him. He said that he can’t tell when he had to pee, so he needed to insert a catheter every 5-6 hours. “I can’t even remember what it feels like to do the pee-pee dance,” Jim joked while I sort of blushed.
He was so matter-of-fact about the whole thing. I guess this is all sort of par for the course for him. He’s been a quadriplegic for fifteen years. But for me, it’s all new and a little awkward. I hoped someday we’d get to a point in our relationship where it wouldn’t be a big deal to me either.
Anyway, when Jim came out of the bathroom, he transferred into the bed and allowed me to undress him. I find Jim’s body hot, but I know it’s not what you’d call objectively hot. Like, he's not Playgirl magazine material. He basically has no muscles in his chest or legs. His abdomen bulges, which isn’t from fat because he’s actually fairly slim, but just from not having muscles to hold in his gut. And his legs definitely looked like what you’d stereotypically think the legs of a crippled person would look like: thin and atrophied.
Jim always seemed the picture of self-confidence, but I saw that waver a little when he was naked. He knew what he looked like. Then again, I still think I was more shy about being naked than he was. I don’t know if there’s anything I like about my body. The best thing I can say is that I have big boobs, although they’re no longer as bouncy as they used to be. Molly looked like she had a great body and I was pretty sure mine suffered by comparison.
“You’re so sexy,” Jim said, raising his arms up to touch me. “I love you. I want to make love to you.”
It wasn’t hard for Jim to get an erection, but it was more difficult to get it to be hard enough to penetrate me. When it was, I wasted no time in slipping on the condom and jumping on top of him. He laughed at my eagerness, but it was cute.
It’s been over a year since I’ve had sex. I forgot how amazing it felt just to have someone inside me. And the fact that it was someone I loved, who loved me, made it all the better. Jim wasn’t kidding when he said he couldn’t thrust. I had to do ALL the work. But he made up for it by touching and kissing me as I rode him. It took a while, but I eventually came. Not as hard as from oral sex, but just as satisfying.
As I collapsed next to Jim, I could see him studying my face. “Well?” he said.
“Good,” I said.
He smiled. “Good,” he said, although I think he really meant “thank god.”