Small Town moves to the City

I was out of work for about 8 weeks before the doctor would release me to go back.    The timeline here is a little hazy, now, but I moved to Sacramento during that school year.

I got an adorable townhouse in the middle of Midtown (I’ve never been clear on where midtown ends and downtown begins, but I was within walking distance of a lot of the cool stuff).

Sacramento was a lot to get used to.  My first night in my new apartment, I got a parking ticket for parking in the alley behind our building.  I learned that I had to go to a city office and get a parking sticker to park on the street in front of my building without getting a ticket.  There was zero parking in the alley.  There was a teeny tiny bit of parking in a parking lot that didn’t have enough spaces for the number of units in the lot, and parking there almost guaranteed a nasty note on the car.

By this time, Jackson was pretty clear that our “relationship” was over (the man had actually asked me if we could try for another baby.)  I was allowing him to continue to live with me because I still had a low tolerance for drama.  He got an apartment in a run-down building with paper thin walls.  He called me from his apartment the first night, crying hysterically that his OCD (did I forget to mention that he had OCD?) was making it impossible for him to be comfortable there and can he please come home.

Yes, I let him come back.  I needed for someone to take care of Magnum on Renaissance Faire weekends, anyway.

I had found a group at Faire that was beginning to feel like family, to me.  I’d also met a man through that disappointing guy I mentioned in a previous entry.  His name was Ben.  He was very handsome and very passionate of spirit.  He was tall and slim with shoulder length dark brown hair and blue eyes.  He usually played a gypsy at Ren Faire and he could do a wonderful “cheesy gypsy accent.”  He had a romantic spirit, he was an artist, he loved sailing, he loved music.  He taught me how to Polka. He and I had been writing letters to each other since before I’d gotten pregnant.  It wasn’t initially anything romantic, so I didn’t feel like I had to hide anything.  I just felt a connection.

He had lived out of the area for a long time, which is part of why I never seriously considered anything romantic with him.  Then I found out that he had moved to Sacramento.  He was living with some friends of his who lived a few blocks from my townhouse.

I began to spend a lot of time over there, having dinner, playing games, watching movies.  They’d often have parties.  They’d plan group outings, and I was always invited.  At Ren Faire, he’d always find his way over to my guild’s encampment.  Sometimes, I’d be invited into his.

One night, we’d stayed up late after everyone else had left or gone home.  I’m not sure what excuse we made up for why I needed to spend the night, but we crawled into his bed together and tried to go to sleep.  We laid in the quiet for a while, and then he kissed me.  We kissed for a while, and it was really nice.  But I had worked that day, and I was exhausted.  We drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms adn slept peacefully, until about 3 AM, when the phone rang and woke me up.  I heard Ben’s friend answer the phone.  Then I heard footsteps and our door opened.

“Is Jenna here?”

I said, “I’m here,” and sat up.

“I think it’s Jackson on the phone,” he said, handing me the handset.

“I took it and apologized profusely for waking them.”  Then I spoke to Jackson, “Hello?”

“Are you sleeping there?”  I heard that dramatic emotion in his voice.

“Yes, I am.” I told him.  “Don’t call here again, unless it’s an emergency.”

“I can’t believe you can be so cruel,” he whimpered.

I’d reached the limits of what I could tolerate.  “I hate you,” I told him.  “I’ll be home before noon.”

I helped Jackson find another apartment in a building for people on fixed incomes.  It was clean and cute and centrally located.  But residents were not allowed to have overnight guests, or alcohol in the building.  He tried all of the same techniques with me; but I had friends close by so I wasn’t as worried about his drama, anymore.  In a last act of desperation, he stole my favorite Teddy Bear and refused to give it back. I’d had it since I was 16, and had slept with it almost ever since.  I don’t remember exactly what made him give it back finally, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with something he’d left at my apartment.  He gave it back, and I tried to distance myself from him.

Ben and I had begun to spend more alone time together.  I’d begun to notice that he drank a lot.  And it seemed that when he drank, he wouldn’t stop until he was blasted.

If you’re familiar with Ren Faire, you know that those of us who are considered performers are very affectionate.  Kissing on the lips is not unusal, and it really doesn’t mean anything more than, “Hello, my friend.”  So I was accustomed to the many women who would wander over to where Ben and I would sit to hug him or kiss him.  It really didn’t bother me, because I had become accustomed to that environment.  It did, however, make it hard to have private conversations.

In one such attempt, Ben was sitting on a picnic table and I was leaning against him.  We were whispering… he said, “I want you so badly, but I can’t have sex with you.”

I blinked.  I wasn’t trying to push anything, so I didn’t really understand why he said that.  Before I could ask him what he meant, one of the women from his group, came up and leaned on his other shoulder.  He sat there with his arms around both of us, and if it hadn’t been for the question in the air, I would have found it quite pleasant.

He drank throughout that day, and the event was close enough to home, that we drove back to my townhouse for the night.  Faire is dirty, so I wanted a shower.  Ben got in with me.  I thought that was weird, given what he’d said earlier.  I showered as normal.  He began kissing me, then he embraced me while I washed my hair.  He kissed my chest, and kissed down my abdomen.  He had a clear destination, and the closer he got, the less aroused and the more confused I got.  Just before he began to use his tongue, I grabbed his hair and said, “What are you doing?”

He looked confused.  I said, “You said you wanted me, but you couldn’t have sex with me.  I consider this sex.  And I still don’t understand what that was all about anyway.”  I got out of the shower and began to dry myself.

He explained that he screws relationships up.  He really liked me and respected me and didn’t want to mess things up.  He told me that ever since he’d first heard the song “She’s So High,” by Tal Bachman, he thought it was about me.

I wasn’t in any hurry to rush things with him, so I kissed him and went to bed.  We had Faire gain, tomorrow.