Seize the day

There was a woman in my bed.

This is not an everyday thing. I had been single again for nearly 16 months, sleeping alone and frankly that solitude, once a cruel necessity, had become a nagging annoyance.

It’s been a fucking long time since there was a woman in my bed. Well, there was my mother when she came to visit me a few months ago. But this was not the same.

The woman in my bed was a woman I’ve had sex with before.

Now, if I learned anything from the movie “Dead Poet’s Society” it’s the Latin phrase carpe diem, which – if you haven’t studied Latin, or seen the movie, or spent time with a snooty hedonist – means seize the day.

Was this it? Was this the time?

As S headed toward the bedroom, I hung back on the couch under the auspices of watching the CNN coverage of Hurricane Rita, which was at that hour making landfall on the Texas/Louisiana coast.

Should I join her?

No words had been spoken about it. No implicit invitation. But I knew that I would not be turned away. Carpe-fuckin’-diem buddy boy!

Not that that was necessarily any indication there would be sex. My guest and I had found ourselves in the same bed several times before and the last several occasions were mostly, if not completely, innocent.

The last time was in Palm Springs several summers ago. S was traveling on business in Southern California and detoured to Palm Springs for a couple of days – and nights.

And it was hot as fuck. Too hot for covers or pajamas even. So S stripped naked. And since I normally slept naked when I was not sharing my bed, I thought “this could be much more fun than being naked in bed alone.” So I shucked my shorts and demurely slid under the covers. It was too damn hot to cuddle or even touch when we went to bed, but by the time morning arrived it was much cooler and I cuddled up to her naked back, wondering if she could detect my obvious arousal.

She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t seize the arousal. And I didn’t carpe diem either. And all too soon she was heading back to L.A. for a return flight to Oregon.

And life went on.

I don’t know how you describe a relationship like that. Do friends share a bed? Do people in platonic relationships share their nudity? And why didn’t we become lovers again, even if only for a brief moment or two.

S and I have each wanted to pursue a relationship with each other at different times, but to no avail. We are victims of our own bad timing. When we met, I was living with a woman in a doomed relationship. S undoubtedly played a part in me realizing that merely existing with someone in a relationship was not living. By the time I ended the relationship and my former girlfriend moved out and moved on, I had been offered and accepted a job in California.

S and I had a brief, passionate fling before I abandoned her and my home state for the Golden State. Several months later S and I met up for a passionate holiday weekend in Las Vegas. But I fell in love with the California desert, and she loved the Oregon Coast and we couldn’t figure out how to melt the miles. We were still pursuing our individual, and separate, professional and personal dreams and our desire for each other just didn't fit in those plans.

I stopped to see her a couple times on return trips to Oregon and she made a couple of trips to California for business, but the sexual part of our relationship was over.

So, how did she end up in my bed last weekend?

Since my return to Oregon there have beed a few e-mails, a few phone calls. And I had a pair of tickets to a concert and needed – wanted – a date. So I asked S. She lives several hours away from Salem, so she drove up here Friday. We had dinner then went to the show in Portland before returning to Salem. Of course she could and would stay. It was far too late to even think about letting her head back. And I am not about to make a guest sleep on an air mattress or the couch.

So, she was in my bed. Waiting.

And I fell asleep on the couch.

S came out about 7 a.m. to see where I was and why the TV was still on. We chatted for a bit. But it was far too early in the morning and we had been up far to late for either of us to be ready to start the day yet. S said she was going back to bed. I turned off the TV and the lights. And I followed her.

She was already under the covers when I climbed into the empty side of the bed, wearing my new “lounge wear” pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. When my arm came to rest against the curve of S’s back, it was readily apparent that her shirt was missing.

Talk about having a hard time drifting off to sleep. It’s amazing how a nearly nude woman lying by your side can be such a distraction to the mind.

I eventually did doze off, but somewhere in the haze of the half-dreaming state, I felt S shifting beside me. And she took my arm and wrapped in around her. My arm draped over the warm flesh of her bare midriff.

When I awoke later, we had shifted positions somehow, her head resting in the crook of my shoulder, my arm draped over her shoulder and wrapped lightly around her back. It seemed the most natural thing in the world.

I woke up around 10 a.m. S was still sleeping. I quietly made my exit and returned to the living room, letting her sleep. She emerged a while later, her formerly bare skin now covered. We shared a comforter on the couch for a while before heeding those primal urges – for a hot shower and for food.

I’m sure men and women probably have different views on what happened or didn’t happen. In my head and heart, nothing happened. It was all innocent. Perhaps more intimate that most friendships, but nothing I felt ashamed of doing.

But there is one person, the person I tell everything to, who I hadn’t shared these details with – until last night. And that woman is the reason that nothing happened. She’s the reason I did not seize the day.

I made her a promise.

D and I have known each other a long time, and I’ve turned my back on our friendship, our long-distance relationship, a couple of times to pursue other relationships in the last seven years. But I made a promise to her and to myself. Actually, we promised each other that we would finally seize the day and find a way – check that, create a way – to get together.

We’ve waited this long, I can wait a little longer.

S and I have had our chances. And I am glad she is still a friend. I sense that she may be willing to try again. I supposed I entertained that notion too not long ago. But the requisite spark is not there.

But for those few hours it felt good to share time and space with someone. It felt good to share my bed, to offer a shoulder to sleep on. It felt right and normal and nice.

It wasn’t the right someone. It wasn’t the right day.

Dating
Relationships
Single life