Mouth Raping

"What did you think about that?" hipster wanna-be asked on our hiking date.

Here's a list of the things that question was not intended for:

1. The view, however lovely it was.
2. Thursday's night's episode of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.
3. How some graduate students/hipsters frown upon popular culture.
4. President Obama's presidential address. 
5. The current state of unemployment in the US.
6. The role celebrity gossip plays in society.
7. If female comedy is, indeed, shifting to become less of a gender cutesy thing and more of an honest thing.
8. For the love of God, any book I may have read in the past seventeen years. I mean any. 

I know what I think about any of those topics. In fact, I don't have any hesitation in answering truthfully about any of those topics (and quite a few others). 

However, since my life just needs to be awfully interesting and traumatic, this question was geared towards the kiss he had just planted with absolutely no warning on my lips. Inner voice A screamed, while inner voice B tried to soothe her with rationality, while I... Well, I just wasn't too present in my body --and not in a good way. To say that this was my kissing rock bottom would be an understatement. 

In all honesty, this was not the first time he'd planted one on me. The first kiss had happened a few nights prior to the hiking date. We'd had our "first" date at a coffee shop after I'd gotten out of a grueling day. I'd used magical thinking to somehow convince myself that kissing him was not the worst kiss of my life, it was second to last, and it was not as bad as it seemed because I was so tired. I managed to think that this was part of giving people chances. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps it'll get better with time. I thought wrong. Damn that magical thinking.

So there I was, sitting on a rock in the middle of a hiking trail, faced with the dilemma of answering a question I had no intention of answering. Ever. I mean, how do you reply to that sort of question after you used magical thinking to convince yourself to give him a chance and therefore got mouth raped in return? I mean, kudos to him for wanting a feedback on his technique, but was this an appropriate time for honest feedback? It wasn't like I could hide my answers in some anonymous suggestion box. This was reality. 

In this reality, I was hiking with him all by my lonesome (and my two inner voices, of course). The fact that I'd been joking with some of my friends as to what they should inform the authorities should I disappear and my deceased body would be mauled by mountain lions (I watch too much Bones, for sure), only being identified by my dental records did not help in my abilities to answer the aforementioned question.  

I could only scratch my head and muster an "Ummm..."

Then it dawned on me... On the way to hiking, while we were driving on the dirt road to get to the hiking grounds, I had jokingly texted one of my best friends:

How evil would it be for me to tell him that I'm emotionally unavailable?

I quickly decided that the text message joke needed to manifest itself into reality. Now, if you know anything about how lying works, you know that you need to provide evidence to back up your lie. I mean, who's going to buy an argument without evidence, right? As a composition instructor, it is my duty to abide by the same concepts I instill into my students.

The question wasn't that I needed evidence to back up my "emotionally unavailable" claim, it was what kind of evidence would convince my audience. Needless to say, time wasn't on my side. There was only so much I could stretch the "Ummm..." until it started sounding like a meditation mantra or something.

I had to think on my feet. I mean, ass. I was sitting down, after all. 

"Ummmmmmmmmmmmm..." 

I stretched it out as much as I could and then proceeded with what any good liar, or anyone who lives with a really good liar can tell you, knows. A lie has to be laced with some kind of truth to throw people off. I'm not proud of what I did, but I proceeded to verbally vomit the best half truth I could under the time constraints available, and also when you take into account the fact that I'd just been attacked by an unwanted mouth. 

"You know, I'm not ready for a relationship. I'm emotionally unavailable because I'm still in a weird place with my ex-fiancé. I think I'm still in love with him, and on top of that I have feelings for someone I really shouldn't have. I don't need any more complications, you know?"

I knew I was laying it thick, but I knew that guys didn't like girls with many complications, so I just, well, complicated the truth a little bit more than necessary.

I thought it'd worked. I thought I was free. Until he said that it was ok, he wasn't looking for a relationship.

Are you for freaking real? Wasn't he the one asking you what you were looking for in a relationship a week and a half after meeting you? Also, wasn't he the one that was asking you about your desire of having children the second he met you? He was playing it up like he was interviewing you for being his girlfriend. Not a part time one at that!, inner voice A --the same one who had been screaming bloody murder during the entire mouth raping-- demanded. 

Ok, let's stay calm. Don't make any sudden movements. This is survival. We don't want to end up in the mountain lion scenario, inner voice B replied.

I sucked it up, went about the hike trying to convince him of my complicated situation. I'm pretty sure I contradicted my story ten thousand times in doing so, but who's counting?

It's not working. It's not fucking working. Let me come out. Please. Let me. You know you want me to. I'm the asshole we all know you can become. Desperate times call for desperate measures, my friend, inner voice A pleaded.

I don't know about that. What do you think inner voice B? I asked.

Just let her out. I can't stand him any longer. I know I'm supposed to be the voice of reason, but let her out. She knows how to handle this shit, inner voice B replied.

I let her out and I became the asshole we (me, inner voice A, inner voice B and my friends) know I can surely be. 

There was no defeating his can-do attitude, as "aggravating" was as far as my asshole persona got as a qualifier after she came out to play.

Well, at least I tried. I also got us out of doing another trail. He seemed pretty insistent of that, inner voice A said consolingly as I buckled my seatbelt to make our way back.

I tried wincing and covering my ears for most of it. You were awful, in the best way possible. Now we're on our way back and that's what matters, inner voice B replied. 

Let's just pretend this never happened. How about that? I said to both my inner voices.

Deal, they said in unison as hipster wanna-be drove a bit too quickly for our liking on the dirt road.

Um, you guys, I started addressing both of my personas when it happened.

And by it, I mean the car swerved from the high speed on a dirt road, did a 145 degree turn, the front bumper of the car hit the dirt piled up for this same purpose on either side of the road, as the car teeter tottered until it almost flipped over. 

I don't know if it was that inner voice A and B were completely silent in this moment, or that we all came together as a calm unit as I steadied myself so I would't bounce around like I was the ball in the bad dates of pinball machines, but all I could hear in my head was a calm, yet tired voice intoning (in her best Daria impersonation, no less), Oh, shit. Not today. Not with him. I've got things to do.

It should come as no surprise, then, than when he asked if he could get another kiss as he dropped me off at my place, he was met with a resounding no that my inner voices A and B approved of (they're almost never on the same page), and I proceeded to slam the poor car's door --really, it wasn't the car's fault that its owner is a complete social moron-- and shielded myself in the comforts of my place, where mouth raping is a distant, if not unnecessary, memory. 

About Penis Persuasion and Magical Thinking

As many of my stories seem to start, I met a guy a few weeks ago. On paper, this hipster wanna-be seemed to be ok. We're not talking Prince Charming material here, but bearable. 

Some point after our meeting, I believed him to be of the penis persuasion. I know, I know, how dare I? Yet, when Facebook tells me that he's interested in Men, there's only so many conclusions I can come up with, you know?

I found myself feeling relaxed about the whole situation, though some times I just wanted him to STFU, because in my mind he was of the same persuasion I was -the penis one. 

That was until he asked me out. No rodeo, no bullshit. Though I found him highly annoying, I found this refreshing. So I accepted the following:

1. Facebook must be wrong about his penis persuading ways.
2. The date.
3. It couldn't hurt because how often do we give people chances? Not enough. 

That's when I got this nagging feeling there was something wrong with me. I didn't feel excited about the hiking date, even though it was something that I'd been looking forward to ever since I moved here for graduate school. 

In fact, I dreaded the experience for days on end.

It didn't matter that this guy seemed to be very into me and that he would be in contact with me every single day, not obscuring his motives. In my mind, that just made him more annoying and more repulsive.

Infinitively less repulsive to my mind was the other guy, hot-and-cold. He also didn't have the cuttings to be Prince Charming, but had somehow snuck into the place I thought no one was ever allowed again. Perhaps it was the intricacies of what we were and weren't, and the games that we both played with delayed words and prolonged absences that made it scintillating. The more the hipster wanna-be persisted, the more I wanted hot-and-cold to be the one initiating contact and being persistent. 

I started wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Here I was, single and willing to put up with the emotional toying of a man who should know better, all the while ignoring the advances of someone who was clearly interested. 

This line of thinking is a dangerous one. I should've known better because this line of thinking leads to my using my magical thinking.  Using such thinking, I convinced myself that hipster wanna-be deserved a chance, after all, even if I wanted to slap him every time he was unrealistically mellow and optimistic.

I should've stepped away from magical thinking, I should've known my mind is capable of convincing itself of things that it has no business convincing itself of.