Stories of Addiction #1: CD, the Older Woman

This is supposed to be a blog less about general sex than addiction to such. So it occurs to me that I've barely plumbed the topic of the addiction itself, and the things I find myself doing (and later regretting) as a result. So here, I present you the first in a series of addiction stories. This one, I call...

The Story of the Older Woman

It was my freshman year of college, around St. Pat's or so as I recall (it was shortly after my 19th birthday). This was early 1987, and the Internet as it is currently regarded didn't exist. (To be fair, the Internet itself existed, but it was mainly the realm of researchers, academics, and dedicated high-tech companies.) As a student in a software engineering program, I had access to it. But at the time, the real "on-line activity" was to be found on local Bulletin-Board Systems, or BBSes. You dialed in, one person at a time (unless the operator had multiple phone lines dedicated to their board), at a whopping 1200 baud (300 baud if you couldn't afford a shiny new 1200b modem). For reference, if you don't have DSL, you probably dial-in to your ISP at 56.6Kbaud, or 56,600 baud. A factor of 47 or so in speed. Anyway, back in them olden days, we did things at a more leisurely pace. But though we may have been slower, we were still using computers largely for the same purposes then as today: hooking up.

I had been dumped around New Year's Eve by a girl who would come out as lesbian a few months later. I didn't understand at the time that I had nothing to do with her orientation, that it wasn't anything I'd done wrong I was still stinging from that. So, a week or two prior to the start of this story, I had met and gone on a date with someone from one of the BBS's I hung out on. Call her W, I don't remember her last name. We went out once, kissed a little, and made plans to go to a party in a week or so. It's been long-enough that I'm not clear on dates anymore-- it was probably closer to the end of March than to St. Pat's. Anyway, it was a costume party, and she decided she wasn't interested after all. So I decided to go alone. I knew a lot of the people from online, and one or two I'd met in person at earlier parties. Well, it turns out that when W said she wasn't interested in going to the party, what she meant was that she wasn't interested in going to the party with me. She did turn up a few hours into the event, with some guy on her arm. Introduced me to him rather nervously. I asked if there was something I should know, and she assured me that they were just friends, and that she'd changed her mind at the last minute. I actually bought that line, too, until I turned a wrong corner heading for the bathroom and caught them making out. I was crushed.

Several of the people there were set on lifting my spirits. Poor girl-- she was new to the BBS scene, and I'd been in it for a while at that point. She got the rep of a heartless bitch and never did get accepted fully into any local BBS communities. Meanwhile, I had women offering to call up friends of theirs that they were sure could "take my mind off her", nudge-nudge wink-wink. I said no, that it didn't make sense to have something vacant and meaningless just because I was upset. (Addiction is always more subtle early on-- but even I didn't believe that B.S. as I said it. I just thought it sounded better than "bring on the sluts!", and I didn't want to lose respect with these people.) W and her date made a pretty hasty exit as one person after another made their distaste clear. It wasn't that she had chosen someone else, it was that she'd lied to someone and then rubbed their face in it at the party. BBS faux-paus.

During the later part of the evening, I started talking to someone new, someone I'd not met in person before and only barely exchanged messages with online. She wasn't too bad-looking, but way short for my tastes, about 5'1" or so (I was 6'1" when I graduated high school, and 6'4" when I finally stopped growing shortly before I graduated college). And she was older. 15 years old, to be exact. But I actually wasn't even thinking that way about her at first. Just enjoying the conversation, and thinking less and less about W. After the party ended, she walked with me to my car, and sat with me a while as we continued talking. Talking led to kissing, and kissing led to exploring her quite ample chest. This was a Friday night, and we agreed to get together again the next night. I was confused as I went back home that night-- what did a 34-year-old want from me? I knew she was divorced, with a young son that she shared custody of (and who was with his father that weekend). Of course, I didn't sleep much that night, and I was distracted all through the day Saturday.

I followed the directions to her house (house! All my friends lived in the dorms, or at best apartments with 2-3 roommates), and got there to find that she'd cooked dinner. Another WOW! moment-- maybe dating older women wasn't such a bad idea after all? We ate, we watched TV, we talked more. And of course, we starting kissing and petting. This time it went a lot further. During conversation she'd mentioned that she's a Catholic. And like all the jokes and stereotypes about Catholic girls, she's quick to make with the head. This is cool by me. Between the first girl who wrote so explicitly about her oral fixation, and some of the girls since, I've developed a real appreciation for getting head. She doesn't swallow, though. Worse, she gags as she rushes to the bathroom to spit and rinse out her mouth. Not exactly a confidence-building experience.

Up until now, this has all been set-up. Exposition so that you understand how I actually got involved with this person on fairly simple, straightforward premises. From this point forward, addiction began to dictate my actions.

I was a little put-off by the thought that I had nearly made her violently ill with the awesome power of my spunk. I was also a little leery of the fact that she was, at the time, dead-set against intercourse. It made the relationship (what there was of one) seem awfully one-sided, and that made me suspicious. But hey, I was getting head with no reciprocation asked (she was one in a series of women who almost had me convinced that women didn't like getting oral sex) or even allowed. But there were problems: she was clingy. She had been shafted in her divorce, and she was bitter. She needed someone to vent to, and she'd worn out her welcome with her contemporaries. When we were together, I often listened to the same stories (almost verbatim) time and time again, as the price I paid for the head. And it wasn't that great, either. She had only had one other lover, her husband. When I tried to guide her, she thought I was being critical. After a month or two, I met someone my own age (at a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show, of all places) and stopped seeing CD. Well, more or less.

While I was with that girl (caller JB), I generally didn't put up with CD. If she called, I was polite and listened as much as I could, but I wouldn't stay on the phone longer than I had to. And I didn't call her. Things with JB eventually ended, though. She and I had a very active sex life, and I was not ready to go back to just my hand. So I called CD. And got invited over. I started seeing her ever couple of weeks or so. We even (finally) had intercourse, though I had to tell her I loved her, first. And magically, I found that I could easily say this thing to her that wasn't true, if only it meant having sex. She wasn't any better of a lover than she was at head, but it was better than nothing. Or, at least, that's how my addict-brain thought.

For years, she was a go-to gal for me. The phrase "fuck-buddy" hadn't been coined in popular culture, yet. But that's what she was. Only, I don't think she fully knew or understood that. I think that, on some level, she had real affection for me. Which, when you think that she's pushing 40 and I'm only just old-enough to drink, isn't too cool. If our genders were reversed, it would have been a very different thing, with scorn and disapproving looks from her peers. But I kept going back. And why? Because I was young, horny, and I didn't know how to tell the difference between healthy sex and desperate sex.

I graduated in 1990, and stayed on for a semester or so toying with the idea of grad school. Then I moved to Denver, CO. All this time, I occassionally got so desperate for physical affection that I'd call her. If she called me, I rarely went. Unless she happened to catch me in that mood before I broke down and called her. But mostly, I wouldn't take the bait from her, only let her take the bait from me. Even in Colorado, I was inclined to see her when I went back home to visit family.

Finally, around 1995 or 1996, I made it clear that it was never going to happen between us again. I was back in my hometown, and we had lunch. She was playing coy, acting as if she only wanted to chat and have lunch, but she kept dropping innuendoes into the conversation. And I deflected them. A few years later, she called me in Colorado to mention she might be in town for a conference. I told her I wouldn't be able to see her. A year or so after I moved to California, she called me with the same tale about a conference in San Jose, I lied and said I was seeing someone. She protested that she wasn't looking for sex, just to visit and catch up with each other. I told her that it wasn't a good idea, either way. She's never called back.

This was one of the first cases of my breaking the cycle of addiction. But don't think I'm a strong person for it. It just got to the point where the cost of the encounter (listening to the same problems over and over, along with the new ones about her now-teenaged son), just wasn't worth the mediocre sex and/or head. I didn't break it off out of concern for my mental and/or emotional health. I broke it off because she bored the fuck out of me.

It is almost 100% certain that there were more than a few occassions when I wasn't very kind or considerate towards her. Times when I was possible outright callous towards her feelings and needs. It wasn't really on purpose, I just didn't know any better, and like any addict I would do just about anything to get my "fix". It doesn't excuse me, not by a longshot. But she had responsibility, too. She was the one who latched onto a kid, barely out of high school. I think it's safe to say that in this case, no one was the good guy, and no one really won.

Dausa