Happy Hollowdays Pt. 03

She got a wry grin, "Actually famished. Emotional breakdowns must burn a lot of calories." Now her grin was less sure and somewhat off center. I was in trouble because I thought it looked like the cutest thing ever. I appreciated her vulnerable honesty with me.

"You may have just defined the next great weight loss craze."

She laughed then asked, "What's to eat?"

"We have things here but let me see if anything is open."

"A restaurant, on Christmas Eve?"

"Sure, there should be a few things still open. There are lots of folks like us."

She nodded happily. My glib line would have made us sad not so long ago. "Why don't you look up the possibilities and I'll be right back."

"Where are you going?" I was genuinely confused.

"To use more of your ex's, er, my new makeup. If we are going out, I want to look better for you."

"By dressing up for other people?" I couldn't hide the disappointment in my voice. I had a thing about putting more energy into other people now, another wound from my ex.

Swiss Miss stopped and turned making sure I knew she was serious. She bit her lip. "Tim, I am doing it for you. Please don't think I'm not. Who we date is a reflection on us." She looked at me shyly, "I will have a fantastic reflection from you. I need to up my game for your benefit." She became troubled and more serious, "I want you proud to be seen with me and want others to think the best of you by seeing the company you keep!" She looked down. "I'm not the prettiest girl out there, but I have my tricks."

She paused in thought, "Tim, another part of this is directly for you; I want you to enjoy what you look at. I want to be pretty for you, but also for what you have shared with me tonight, I want to be my best for you. I don't know if I'm anywhere near as attractive as your ex. Just knowing you for a couple hours I already think she was positively nuts to..." she wanted to choose her words carefully, "lose you. Suppose we do run into people you know. By now they know the two of you aren't together. They know that she is moving ahead with life. As they haven't seen you, they may presume you aren't in as positive a place. And that could redefine her mistake, making the breakup perceived as there being a winner and a loser instead of two people losing what mattered most. But, if they see you with a pretty girl, even one not as pretty as your ex, but trying to be as pretty as she can for you, well it can shift that perception thing again. If you are having fun and women are a practically throwing themselves at you, then it shifts who the loser may be."

"Stop selling yourself short, Swiss Miss. Don't do that around me again." It wasn't a snarl, nor was it said against her, but my words were emphatic.

My actual anger -- in her defense -- made her eyes alight! Her voice was unconsciously an octave lower, "Damn! Now I'm going to do an even better job!" She stood there for a while clutching her purse staring at me. Her eyes almost began to glow. She bit her lip again before turning suddenly and walking back into her makeup room.

Swiss Miss and I were hitting it off. We went to dinner. The choices were limited, though I was surprised by how many we had on Christmas Eve. We were a cute younger couple and they had put us in the restaurant's streetside window. During dinner we noticed our hands were close together on the table. I told her we should do it just to help the restaurant out, as I put my fingers a top hers. It was a simple gesture and electric for two lonely people.

Afterwards we walked the small downtown area, then we walked the massive town park. And being Christmas Eve there was some magic as we talked, walking arm in arm.

For the longest time all I had were echoes of a past that was never coming back. I had seen nothing but frowns, I had heard nothing but apologies, always followed by a description of what the speaker was about to do to me, which they acknowledged was neither good nor fair, but they were still going to do it. And the person that did me worst, didn't even bother to say a thing. No, I don't count their Christmas card either. I will give all the credit for the card to my ex's new fiancé, my former best friend. Hell, they should have sent me an apology card for telling me they would be sending me a Christmas card as a couple.

The Swiss Miss and I took things two levels deeper on our walk through the park. I don't know what you are thinking, but we held hands at first and then walked arm in arm for the amble back. I finally put my arm around her pulling her in close for the final blocks. It seemed on the way to dinner we had been sharing our misery, which feels great compared to being alone with it. But something was different on the way back. We were sharing something more. And it sure wasn't miserable.

Back home I fixed us more hot chocolate. Anni or Anna, depending on which alias you want to credit, spilled her guts about not being sure her boyfriend was the right guy. She had even prayed about it. She didn't understand what was happening to her. No other guys were showing interest. As she put it, she had been effectively "culled from the herd" by her boyfriend. She said her beau could be the consummate gentleman. He seemed great at times, almost a social superman, adept at every interaction. He was capable of sweeping a girl off her feet, but afterwards he didn't offer much to keep her. She was a good girl and tried to please him, but she was a good girl virgin, and didn't want to please him too much, at least not until she was married.

She was no prude. She admitted touching and groping, back and forth oral, though he had stopped doing that for her eventually. And they certainly used their hands a lot - to keep them from being the devil's playthings. She was quite amusing with her ability to twist a sentence, a talent I appreciated.

It seemed her boyfriend fixated on the penetrative sex they weren't having. As she said, focusing on the one thing missing was lamentably all too human. She said she couldn't fault him there, after all she was the one who had put the spotlight on it with her declared moratorium. She even mused he might have been fine with the oral if she hadn't put the spotlight on waiting for copulative sex until marriage. At one point in her story, Swiss Miss got up pacing. "It wasn't like I didn't want him! It wasn't like I didn't want the sex. I was dying there, too! It's just I had made a commitment. Damn it, we could have talked about it. I thought we were both fine with it until he was raging over it one night.

"And that's where the major fractures started. I tried to explain it wasn't an absolute deal breaker for me. I thought if we were already committed then it would be great to wait as a sign of commitment to ourselves and what we love and respect. Believe me, I understood the argument that you had better make sure you were compatible sexually before marriage. I-I thought we had done enough, and with enough passion, that we had proven that.

"And damn it Tim, denying myself that full-on experience eventually blew my mind, it's like the sexual tension would build up and we'd be hot and heavy, and I was having a great time, but somewhere in there, ka-freaking-pow, I would detonate! Denying myself led to fireworks for me. Apparently, what he saw as a continued diet of appetizers with no entre wasn't as good for him.

"I tried to tell him that night that I would acquiesce, but he already had too much steam coming out his ears to hear a word I said. We didn't do anything that night. In fact, he stormed out. That was a sucker punch to my gut. I was dazed. I didn't understand what happened. If he had told me waiting was a deal breaker, I wouldn't have had the will to insist on it. I would have given in and loved it. The part that keeps twisting my gut is that I didn't mean to give him an ultimatum! That's never what I intended. I thought waiting was a beautiful gesture we could make. I didn't mean to deny him! I thought we were doing it together.

"Tim, I'm being honest here, please don't think ill of me. If when I had brought up the notion of staying a technical virgin until our wedding night, he had told me it was the stupidest idea he had ever heard of, and proven it to me by bending me over and having me right there and then, not only would I not have fought him, I would have sung like part of an angelic choir.

"I didn't realize how upset he was, he had held it all in. Now that it was coming to the fore, I didn't understand he was an emotional volcano ready to blow. I started saying we should go ahead and set the date for the wedding. I thought making the timing finite would help, I hadn't told him I was dragging my feet setting a date. I didn't understand I needed to bed him then if I wanted to keep him. If I had understood, I would have, I'm sure. I was pretty infatuated with him. Yes, I was having doubts about love and long term. But you know how priorities change. It's also pretty human to sudden give in when presented with the prospect of loss.

"But he didn't see setting the date as bringing his ultimate conquest of me closer or making it more real. He saw it as a further denial. Now he was the one who hemmed and hawed and seemed upset. It turned out he was not interested in buying the cow before he had pasteurized the milk. He had changed and not in a good way. He could be cold, distant, and I feared worse. It turns out my fears were justified.

"My competition was a pretty girl, tall with breasts, bolt-ons, but good tools. Her hips were round, her chest was round, her face was round. In some ways she looked like a new age fertility goddess.

"Compare that with me," she said. I dared not actually answer that clarion call. I waited for her to continue. Fortunately, she roiled right into it.

"My waist is extraordinary, but my breasts are on the smaller side, well-formed but often lost in the clothes I wear. My legs are long but thin. I think my legs are much better than Betty Boob job's."

She shook her head obviously angry at herself for holding a rigged beauty contest in her head -- again. Her vexation was the woman she had lost her man to. Her mind knew the other woman had already won. She couldn't be objective; her ex had declared the winner.

"In short, he likes a round bodacious girl better, one that even botoxes her lips. I had a fight on my hands. Remember that old chestnut about wanting something more as soon as you realize you may lose it? I started changing too. Not really changing because I was in turmoil about it, but I was shrugging off my standards. I was giving in. I was in a fight to keep my man. The fact is I had already lost. He wasn't about to bed another: he already was. I found out that he could go almost forever without missing penetrative sex with me, because he was already screwing the round mounds of rebound.

"I... finally relented. We made love," she said in a disappointed tone. "It was far worse than most of our make out sessions. He was in a hurry, and it hurt, and for all of that it was over too quickly. I would have continued to make out and play and we could have done it again, better. But he was embarrassed and left shortly afterwards. He didn't seem that interested in me afterwards. Finally, he just ended up spending all of his time with the more bodacious, yet well used, slightly older model, that he eventually made clear he had traded me in for."

She was silent for a while. "It's a little ironic. You never had your closing talk. I wish I never had mine. He said something, made some things clear that changed my self-perception. They still have a hook in me."

She let her eyes wander around the room for a while. When she spoke again, she was back to performing an autopsy on her failed engagement, "I let the time of uncertainty go too long. You see I had fully committed by letting him have me. I was all in by letting him all in. I couldn't resend it or walk away then. I had to wait it out each hour knowing with less and less doubt that I was exactly the type of girl I tried so hard not to be. One that had fallen in over my head and ended up pumped and dumped. Used by a guy who never really cared about more than a conquest. I really don't know to this day if he was ever serious about the engagement. When I think back, I see that we were really engaged to be engaged. I was pretty stupid. Yes, I was having my own doubts about our future, but I just wanted them clarified, not to find another man. Then he had me and it was all over, all that effort and worry, all the trying and denial. And I was worse for the wear.

"I was used. I was pre-owned. I had been driven off the lot and had depreciated. And I had thrown myself at him at the end. Yet I sit here relieved that I am not saddled with him, while horrified at what I did and what I've become. I am saddled with this lesser version of me.

"As far as finding a soul mate, I am so chagrined, confounded, and abashed; now I have no great gift to give him. If he's out there, if he's searching for me, how do I tell him I fell for standard trick number three? How do I tell him I didn't wait for him and gave away what should have been his? I can only bestow that honor once. Not only have I cheated any man that will love me, I-I gave that gift to someone unworthy. Someone who doesn't appreciate it. I-I feel like such a chump. And the man who will love me, he's going to look at me and see used merchandise and a gal who is probably not reliable because I cracked under the strain. And he won't have his due, because I can no longer give him that. He will deserve better. My soulmate has been cheated and needs to look to the next viable candidate."

I needed to break up the negative momentum. I asked a question with a purpose, "Did you do it thinking he was the one?" She had already answered, but she needed to listen to her own assessment.

"Yes of course or it wouldn't feel so bad. Yet at the same time I was initially the one with doubts. I knew something was wrong. So how could I ever fall for circumstances where I would almost beg that same man to have me? And, as religious as I am, if the guy is the one and God sent him, why I would want to wait until marriage to be with him? You see what I mean? If we are one, then join!" She was close to distraught, gesticulating wildly with her arms, like a goose running across a pond attempting flight.

The Swiss Miss poured it all out. She felt used and alone... and thankful. In the end she finally understood she didn't want to marry him. She had prayed to love him more and didn't. She had prayed for someone else to see if she felt the difference, and they were not sent. Yet she was in the relationship wholeheartedly, and they were to be married. She cared about him, probably loved him on some level. She didn't understand why this was happening.

She thought an answer had been sent: the pangs at the prospect of losing him were a sign that he was to be her man and she should devote herself to him. She gave herself to him without even her requirement that they be married. She explained once again that she was no prude, but she wanted to give that gift to her husband, and that was her motivation. If she was surer, or more in love with the guy, she would have done it much earlier. She was beside herself things had turned out this way, that he had made off with the reward of faith she planned her entire life to give to the man who would give her his life as her own.

She became even more depressed, though she was relieved at his absence. No men came, none were sent. She finally entered her name at the escort service as she felt she was a used, faithless, woman. Except she never entered any active dates she was available. She met Jill at a briefing. They struck up a conversation. Jill showed a great deal of interest in her. They playfully came up with the phrase "anal specialist" together. They understood each other. She felt Jill had it worse. Jill had betrayed her beloved. Swiss Miss had come to feel she would never meet her soulmate, and that she had so botched matters that she couldn't have him if she did. But Jill had lost her husband, a man she adored. It was easier when your forever man is only a faceless mist. It was easier when you didn't hurt them.

Swiss Miss quickly explained again that I was her first "customer", it was important that to her that I understand that there had been none before me. I think the concept was that while she may have been used, she was not yet soiled. I thought she had been used by a faithless man; except I meant used in a different way. I did not see her as she saw herself: used merchandise. I wanted to crack a joke that she would not truly be soiled until she had been with me, it was not the time. Then she laughed ruefully thinking on her new career as a high-class prostitute, "I'm falling down on the job of going down."

I laughed a hearty laugh, referring to the hours we had spent together, telling her this amount of foreplay was going to kill her profit margin. She understood I was making sport of our ridiculous situation. She knew that I truly understood. I could scarcely speak the words for laughing asking her if she put out on the first date, or if she had to go to work for that. Which made her laugh out loud in a lovely tone.

I took her by the lower arms and pulled her in close, not a hug but a position from which emphasis would be added to my words. "Miss," I spoke in a serious tone. "Perhaps you don't have the thin membrane that says, "this site sanitized for first time use."" She laughed at that as she still cried tears from her emotional tale. She froze though as she realized how earnest I was. "But you still have a gift, a treasure beyond estimation or compare."

She gazed at me yearning to know what.

I answered, "You."

Her mouth fell open again, she flushed, she seemed suddenly in a fever, she was desperate to hear more. I had plenty to say.

"Miss, any man so blessed, to have your love will not see the lack of some small thing. If he questions it at all, it will not be as a scar, nick, or ding, but rather a confirmation that you love and give of yourself completely. And he will thank his lucky stars he was not as foolish as the man who did not see what he had. If he has your love, he will think himself a Croesus with a treasure he never thought he could earn."

She looked at me trembling. I pulled back sightly as she emitted a soft sound of agony. She trembled worse, about to dissolve into some unloved liquid without form or grace, until she saw I had withdrawn only far enough to open my arms for her to insert herself. Her sound was part groan and part sigh as she wrapped herself around my chest. As my protecting arms encircled her, I told her she was indeed a good and proper woman. She was appreciated and most of all she was safe. She could allow herself to vulnerable enough to let it all out while in my care.

Swiss Miss clung to me piteously allowing a lifetime of anticipation that had met with defeat and despair, to flow out. She fell asleep once more, in my arms there on the couch. I stroked her hair as she slept and continued to tell her she was good, and she was safe.

I felt we had turned some corner. Though I was still thinking too much as it dawned on me that recently all my life's chapters ended in tears. I wondered it if was a case of "c'est la guerre" or "que sera sera". I was tempted to chortle but stayed strong against that evil temptation. I needed a hobby... or a girl. There was a thought I hadn't had in almost six months. The best I had done in that time was make a gal feel comfortable enough to fall asleep on me - twice in one night. That did make me chuckle. I had done well by the girl in my arms who I didn't even know the name of. She slept in my arms. Both felt great. And although she was asleep, I wasn't alone for Christmas Eve.