Woman on the Verge of Paradise and Why I Choose Celibacy Again

 

Sign reads: May you find Paradise to be all that its name implies.

Thanks for joining me on the verge of Paradise, as a new chapter of my life unfolds. This series can be found in the Paradise button to the left. While I alter some details to protect the guilty, I strive for accuracy in terms of content. This post follows from the last. I hope you enjoy.
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I’m embarrassed to say I broke my celibacy* I know, I know. Here I’d made all this progress, honing in on 150 reasons for continuing a celibate existence these past 19 years or months or so. A strong, intelligent, independent woman I am. Yet, in a moment of shameful weakness, I gave my celibacy to the cockatiel boasting, trapeze swinging, hot wax fingering Señor Salsa.

We were supposed to go for dinner that night. Instead, after we left the dance club, he said he just wanted to unwind -with me, at his place. Last I checked, unwinding involved some wine, a foot or back massage, and/or a moment or two of romance before the games began. Am I right, or did romance die with chivalry? I wasn’t even offered tap water in a Styrofoam cup. Instead, as soon as I got to his place, he went straight to fondling …the remote. We watched TV on the couch in his living room, kind of.  When his hands started to wander away from the remote, I had a word with him:

“I really didn’t like all the teasing about my height.”

“I’m sorry, I told you, you remind me of my sister.”
“Yeah and, well, a woman doesn’t want to hear that she reminds a man of his sister.”
He laughed and asked, “Who should I have said you remind me of?”

I was about to suggest my uncanny resemblance to Jennifer Aniston (It was really dark in his living room at the time) when he broke me down:

“You are very sexy. You make me think crazy thoughts.”

That’s when the breakage began. It continued for about 90 minutes. It was fun for the first five minutes and for another thirty seconds mid-way through. But he placed appendages in strange positions causing me to say a meager “ouch” several times. I wasn’t even tempted to go for broke. It wasn’t a breakage like in a Jewish wedding when the groom shatters the glass and the crowds cheer “Mazel Tov!” There wasn’t sex either. And I left well before he wanted me to.

A few days later he sent an email: “Hey girl how are you?” I’m not sure what baffled me more, his grammar or lingo. Either way, I responded that I was fine but didn’t want to take things further.  In turn, he said he understood and has been perfectly cordial and friendly with me since. The fact that things are finally feeling normal between us, after all the abnormalities, feels unusually abnormal to me. 

At any rate, I’m still a bit ashamed. I’m also still smiling.

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*I'm embarrassed to say, this whole time, I had the wrong definition of "celibacy" in mind. Either I'm incredibly naive, and/or the definition has changed over the years. We'll go with the former. Maybe Mom wanted me to think celibacy involved avoiding kissing. That's what I grew up believing it meant. Only recently (I'm revisiting this post years later), I learned that celibacy refers to abstaining only from intercourse. Thus, like me, a person can be celibate for years on end but still have a good time. According to the conventional definition, then, I'm still celibate, and it's my usual status. Woohoo!