Secret Ninjas in Love

Some advice columnist recommended writing letters and never sending them. It sounds like an idea that is at the same time ingenious and horrendously optimistic. A never-ending one-sided dialogue runs in my head when I'm angry with someone I'm not talking to, shadowboxing with a series of insightful, finely-honed jabs that never leave marks. If I put that down on paper, though, I don't know if it'd make me feel better. Although I guess that's what this blog is, so ... hrm.

I'm seeing this new woman, and now I've got a problem. A penis problem. I'm into her, and I'm attracted to her, but my loyal member (the Brown Bomber) wasn't able to retain the structural rigidity necessary to seal the deal last time I got her naked.

Which is and isn't a problem. It happened before with my previous flame on my first time out, something I attribute 70% to nerves and the first time being seen naked by someone who didn't have a clipboard in hand. But nerves build on themselves, and I've had performance anxiety for most of the week since that incident. Which leads me to today, when I get another chance. This post, this unsent letter, exists to address the extra 30% that isn't just the yips keeps revolving in my mind.

What scares me the most right now is getting hurt. After getting broke up on for the first time by someone who, in a fit of first-love fervor, I believed unable to deviate from our shared reality, I found myself wanting to pull back from any potentially painful positions. But I've gotten kind of deep in it with this girl. My desire for her outpaces my fear of getting stabbed through the heart, although the race gets close sometimes. So the sex thing makes me fear that I'll get dumped on the spot if I fail to rise to the occasion. Which I know in my heart to be bullshit, as her feelings for me seem to be more than lust and I can make fairly persuasive oral arguments.

To go one level deeper, I love this new woman. I've already dropped the four-letter L-bomb. But I keep thinking about what I used to have. There's a comfort to the past, so long as you keep from thinking about all the bad parts. The in-jokes, the familiar-if-not-great sex, the sense of camaraderie. We're on our way to (and, hopefully, beyond) all that, but the proximity the ex's memories linger. I don't want to put the girlfriend or myself into a shit situation by staying in a liminal space, but I can't control my nostalgia.

Hrm. Do I send this letter or not?