Good Sex and Bad News

I spent my entire night yesterday doing prewriting for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where your task is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November) and listening to Outkast. It felt good, like I am actually spending my time doing something I should be doing. I doubt that whatever I create will be very good, but I don't write because I think I'm really great at it, I do it because I feel that I have to. Writing has become what I do instead of going to therapy. It is another thing I do that I'm maybe not the best at, but feels great. I am not the best singer or dancer, but I do both of those things all the time. I am not the absolute best cook in the world, but I love it so much that to me, it doesn't matter. In any event, I was texting Liam while I was working on some kind of outline for this (probably) piece of shit micro-novel I am planning, just asking him for little reassurances because he is so good at giving them. I only recently started asking his opinion on what I should do about Mike. Liam was sort of a co-conspirator in getting us to hang out with each other, so I felt it was only fitting that he be my sounding board for a little while. It was obvious to me that Mike had done the same in the beginning. Now, that doesn't matter, but I needed Liam to tell me that I had not been stupid for being hopeful for so many weeks.
-Please do me a favor and tell me I'm not an idiot.
-Yur an idiot!
-You are a shit but you do make me laugh.
-Juz kidding. You are not an idiot. A pain in the ass but not an idiot.
-Oh I own being a pain in the ass. It's kind of what I'm known for.
-You wear it well youngblood
-I think i may just need to accept that men are my blind spot. i am a smart cookie in every other avenue, just not that one.
-There's no smart or dumb, just experiences. Literally almost every relationship ever isn't going to work out. 1% are well-intentioned time killers.
-well yeah that is a fair assessment. i know where i went wrong with gino. this stuff with mike just seems like an exercise in piss-poor timing. and he wasn't telling me everything that was going on. i just wish i had known or i would have chilled the fuck out.
-so you're an independent woman of the 90s. go get your groove back, Stella.
This made me feel less like the walking punchline I was worried this Mike stuff had made me into. Knock-Knock. Who's there? A desperate, lonely woman! Oh, good, let me fuck you stupid for two weeks and then make you look foolish. I am not a teenager and I know that having sex with someone doesn't mean you're in a relationship. I didn't want anything more than what we had going on: seeing each other a lot, but not every day, having great sex when we did see each other, and not talking about the future. I didn't care about the future. I still had one foot in the past. I was just happy to have someone tell me I  was like a cross between Kira the Gelfling and Kristen Wiig (best compliment I have ever received, by the way). I didn't want to be someone's girlfriend again, expected to owe my time to another man. I just wanted to know I might see him at some point soon, and that I would probably have at least two orgasms. I don't know if I even expected it to go anywhere, really. It could have gone on forever like that. I'm not angry that he had another girl, I'm just angry that he didn't tell me. That is what made me feel like an idiot. The thought of another girl's satisfaction over knowing that she was chosen over me makes me want to hide my head. I might as well sit in the corner with a dunce cap on. That is why I politely turned down his offer to introduce me to her. I can't do it yet.
Just the text messages from Liam themselves are reassurances of their own. I am worried that if I don't bother Liam all the time, he will disappear. Since everything came down to something so silly, I have no idea if I can even think of Mike as my friend anymore, or at least not for a while. I especially cannot imagine that I will be able to see him with a girl, or at least not until I become less resentful over not being able to have sex with him. It's not that I attached so much importance to it, it was the fact that it was good. It was much better than any other sex I had recently, if not ever, and not just in a newer-is-better way. Gino seemed almost repulsed by me at the end, or like he was pretending I was someone else while I was trying my damnedest to get him off. I think he went down on me only once this year, and only because I asked very politely, and it was the most begrudgingly given head I have ever gotten. He would say it was because his neck hurt or some other excuse, but I knew the real reason. He didn't care if I enjoyed myself or not. I understand that it is hard to still find someone desirable after spending seven years with them, especially after the other person has changed physically, but I didn't gain that much weight and he could have tried harder. It is easier to deal with not having sex with someone again when they didn't seem that into it and the sex was not the best. It is harder to deal with not having sex with someone anymore when every naughty thing they did to you made your knees turn to custard.
I launched myself really hard onto Mike because I had not had sex in four months, and hadn't had good sex in years, and I am a grown-ass woman. I just really needed it. When you have been in a relationship for as long as I was, sex becomes something you just have, all the time, and even if it's not the best it is always better than nothing. I also needed, pathetic as it is, to know that I could. I needed to know that I could have sex with a man who wasn't Gino, and how that would feel. I think I needed Mike to show me that there are better options out there for me, that there might even be someone who is generous and weird and kinky and whose only interest seems to be getting me to come. I needed someone to restore my faith in good sex, and if that is the only thing Mike did for me, it's still worth it.
I don't regret anything that happened with Mike. I got to spend two or three weeks having sex that was so good, it had to be fattening. If this was always going to be the outcome, with him electing to start seeing another girl again, I am glad I got it while the getting was good. I still wonder a little what his intent really was with me if he was only going to pick things up with her again, but that doesn't really matter, and knowing the truth might make it even worse. He might have been trying me on, testing me out, to compare me to her, and she might have just fit him a little better. Or maybe he really just wanted to have sex with me before things got serious with her because he knew that was coming around the bend. I can't blame him for wanting to have sex with me; it's a compliment. If I had ignored his crush, and told him I couldn't, I would be dealing with a whole lot of regret over not going for it. I would rather try, and fail, than never know. This ties in with why I don't look at my marriage as a failure anymore. I learned from it, at least, and I have enough good memories to last me forever. The bad stuff will hopefully seem less important after a while. I need both, though. The good and the bad are what has shaped me as a person. I have all of them, plus a whole new crop of recent memories to draw from when I start my (shitty) micro-novel.