A Sad History of Love

My name is Lester and many years ago something very unlikely happened. It has to with one of the
online dating messaging boards in which not much is actually on the line. Recently I starting trying to
meet girls on this platform. I’ve always considered this unmanly. I mean, men have evolved to risk their
lives for a chance to copulate. That’s what my biology professor said. Be that as that may, I had to stop
using the approach of trying to talk to girls in real life. I have been cited by my University for sexual
misconduct (only a warning). Also I was kicked out of my Parliamentarian’s club. Well maybe not actually
kicked out, but everyone knows a weird thing that I said because it was mentioned in the university
newspaper, and now I’m too embarrassed to go back.
Walking home alone from the college cafeteria one night and contemplating these unpleasant incidents
from my recent past, which I forego retelling here because I do not wish to relive them, I started to think
that maybe taking risks isn’t such an important thing after all. I walked home and started browsing
through applications to download on my computer. One of them caught my eye. The name I don’t
exactly remember, but I think I might have been called Mediocre Eros. I suppose it’s fitting. There I say,
you don’t want to put yourself on the line, how much of a reward should you expect in life? And
anyway, I was really just looking for a bit of romance. Who cares how “hot” she is?
I sat down at my computer which had enough megabytes of RAM to run the program and I loaded up
the site. There were hundreds of color photos of women. Right there on the screen. You had tall, skinny,
blonde, Asian. And you were allowed to just send any of them an email. It was as simple as that! No risk
involved. No waiting until your co-workers walked away. No walking around the block 20 times and
looking through the same window to see if she’s finally alone and you can actually approach her on
some natural sounding pretense. I was astounded! I mean shit, even the subways are starting to bust
people for trying to do pick-ups. Not that I ever did anything bad. Just listen.
Now I’m no queer, but ultimately the first date I ended up going up on was with both a guy and a girl at
the same time. Let me explain how this happened. About the first two weeks I didn’t really know what
to say, and I was sending stupid messages not really getting a response. No, nothing rude. C’mon let’s
cool it with the accusations here. The second week I was mostly getting one shot responses, but then
they started ignoring me. Finally, I stumbled upon her. She was white, brunette, overweight, and 5 foot
2 inches. She was a little younger. I flipped through her 10 or so photographs. On the very last one,
another man was in the picture with her and embracing her affectionately.
I forgot to mention that in these online dating pograms, you’re supposed to fill out a profile with your
hobbies, likes, dislikes and other such nonsense. Of course I didn’t bother reading hers, I just went
ahead and clicked on the button to send her an electronic email. What to say? Something polite but not
too boring. Funny but not provocative. Short but not too long. I started imagining myself as a romantic
French man. “Oui oui madmae, je vou lay couchay… Eiffel tower?” I must have sent her an email saying
something quite as absurd as that. And what do you suppose happened? Why we immediately hit it off.
There I say.
That night, we must have sent each other 10s of text messages. She liked my stupid sense of humor. She
told me she was relieved to finally talk to a guy that didn’t send her “dick picks.” After she said this, I
went into my phone and deleted a photograph that I had recently taken. Good thing she said that! You
see, dating is not that hard so long as you pay attention to subtle social cues. You just have to be really
assertive and avoid situations where other people can listen to your conversation.
The second day is when the conversation took an unexpected turn. I figured that enough time had
passed with idle yammering that I could ask her out. She was pleased, and told me that she and her
partner had been looking for a playmate for some time. Since I had skipped reading her profile, this was
the first I heard this would be a threesome situation. “Menage a troi?” I said. “I think I can.. menage.”
It’s easy to recover from an unexpected shock in a conversation. You don’t have to respond in real time!
It’s like shooting fish in the barrel. That’s what they could call a dating site, instead of plenty of fish. But
what am I going to do when I have to talk to her in real life?
She began explaining to me that her boyfriend would like to meet me. If he liked me, we could see
where things could go from there. I was pretty apprehensive about meeting him. It felt like they were
setting up some kind of job interview. I’ve never been good in job interviews. I agreed to meet the man,
Arthur Verlaine at the Café Roux on the corner of 7 th and Spring, surely some pretentious kind of place.
But I was intrigued. Not that I was entirely comfortable with this. A man sharing his girl? I couldn’t
imagine doing such a thing. I was still holding on to my own proud jealous feelings. My innocence wasn’t
completely gone in those years.
I came in off the jazz kissed streets of Los Angeles. Plenty of red cushioned seats. Plenty of dark corners.
Blanquists in conspiratorial discussion. Loner anarchists watching these discussions coldly from a
distance. Arthur was a curly haired main, tall and very nerdy. When first we met he bid me sit down
directly across from him. He was sitting on a studded velvet cushioned chair. The cross-legged man
looked directly at me, his butt far back on the seat, his back straight up, and his blue curly hair framing
his Caucasian head perfectly parallel to the wall as he sat with both palms on the arms of the chair.
Several paintings hung on the wall behind him, the size of small books. He sat with still, disciplined lips
as he watched me sit down, lips that seemed to shrink into his face.
“We’ve been living together for 4 years now. But it’s only last year that she started seeing other men
after she started reading books about polyamory. We believe that monogyny is a sexist institution that
keeps women from feeling comfortable with their own sexuality. I have to say, it hasn’t always been
easy, but I am a better person for it. It has been good for my soul. I am not as toxically masculine as I
used to be. But boy that first night. I remember the first day she told me she was going on a date with
another guy. I just felt so sick, I couldn’t eat anything. I was so worried about her, you know? I was just
concerned. Because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was texting her every hour. But she
assured me that everything was going fine. Finally, she gets home late that night. I asked her what
happened. She said that she had sex with the man. I immediately ran into the bathroom and started
vomiting. This was my first time being in an open relationship.”
I wanted to ask him if he had been seeing other women as well. But he just went on talking and I didn’t
interrupt. Eventually he got to the point and told me how it was going to go. I wasn’t going to copulate
with her on the first day. But would be able to see her nude. At least her backside. Maybe I’d get a peek
of her breasts. He would let me kiss her.
As I write this now in my years of jaded dissipation, I can barely even imagine what pangs of youthful
desire were striking me in my loins. But his words filled me with anticipation. Oh what I would do to
suffer so again.
“But the idea is you must follow my instructions exactly, and hers. Have you ever been a sub?”
“A substitute teacher?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. Are you willing to take direction?”
“I don’t really identify.”
“No matter.”
He picked up his telephone and pressed a few buttons. We spent a few minutes in silence as he looked
out the window and sipped his tea. A car pulled up in front of the café.
“Shall we?”
We got to the front door and Sophie greeted me warmly. She was slightly more overweight than she
appeared in her photo. My evening at the Verlaine’s began with a group meal, with plenty of wine. We
sat down and said grace together, holding hands, and then we ate and drank. I became slightly tipsy.
When we were finished we left the dining room and together entered a living room with a fireplace and
mattresses on the floor. Arthur dimmed the lights.
They undressed each other in front of the fire and Arthur started gently making love to her. It was
repulsive. They lay on the mattress together. Sophie on her stomach and Arthur laying on his side
towards me.
“Would you care to join us?”
He invited me to kiss her feet. She giggled. Then he told me to kiss her butt. I did that too. I kissed her
large butt cheek slow and sensuously, in an utterly ridiculous position. I was afraid she was going to fart. She was enjoying it
though.
My lips started to wander and found the small of her back. I gently stuck my tongue out and kissed it.
She seemed surprised and her spine locked into an arch. She cooed and laughed.
“Hey, what’s the big idea pal?”
Arthur pulled me up and pushed me away, his little wiener swinging.
“Arthur!” Sophie screamed.
“I told you, you were supposed to take direction. What are you kissing my girlfriend’s back for?”
“What’s the big deal.”
“We invited you to share an intimate moment and you do something without my consent and without
her consent. What are you a creeper or something?”
“I just thought girls like that.”
“What do you think she’s some kind of sex object for you?”
“No, what are you talking about?”
“That made her really uncomfortable.”
“I didn’t know. She seemed to be enjoying it.” I asked her. “Did that make you uncomfortable?”
Sophie joined in the outrage. “That was not appropriate.”
I replied, “She’s just saying that because of you. You people are like zombies.”
“I think you need to leave,” she said.
That night I just walked back to my college flat. I didn’t get a taxi. It took me about 2 hours to walk
home. I was back inside my room well after midnight, completely exhausted. Then I passed out. I
dreamt I was in a car wreck.