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“As much as I hate to admit it,” I told Seth, “I was very easily impressed in those days.”
How could I not be?
I’d come into adulthood with nothing.
And, granted, I was working hard. But I lived in a shitty apartment in a shitty area that I shared with three other girls. I couldn’t afford a car, so I knew bus routes by heart. I’d never eaten in a nice restaurant or had good wine. I thought the shoes I’d gotten at a lower-end department store were nice.
Then there was Simon.
With his thousand-dollar suits and his fancy black car with butt warmers in the seats.
In those early days, he’d wined and dined the hell out of me.
I didn’t see at the time that while he was doing so, he was extracting information out of me, filing it away, using all of it to decide if I would make the perfect victim or not.
I honestly don’t remember what Simon told me he did for a living when I’d asked. He’d probably thrown out some line about being in “finance,” and I’d been young and unworldly, so I just took that at face value, not asking follow-up questions because I simply had no idea what to ask.
He’d had an air of importance, though, that seemed to fit with the idea of a man who was in finance and did well for himself.
He wasn’t a really good-looking man.
I even knew it at the time.
When my roommates would ask me questions about him, I’d give them the facts. He was brown-haired, green-eyed. That sort of thing. Leaving out that he was kind of short, a little soft in the jaw and chin.
Just, you know, not conventionally hot.
But I didn’t care.
Because he’d been treating me like a princess.
“Love-bombing” was the term I would—much later—learn to associate with those early days.
Everything was about how beautiful I was, how smart I was, how mature I was for my age.
And for someone who didn’t have a lot of that growing up, it meant a lot. It meant more than an older, more mature woman would have let on. Someone who understood that basing their self-worth on external validation was dangerous.
If I ever did have questions, or moments of uncertainty, Simon was quick with a grand gesture to distract me, to make me think it was all in my head, or that I was being too critical.
Because, clearly, this was the best man around. One who thought I was beautiful and sexy and who gave me diamond earrings and took me to the nicest restaurants.
Were there sparks?
I mean, no.
I think that was what had me pulling back at times, and the distance that created was what had Simon buying me things, reeling me back in.
Because, you know, I was young and idealistic and I thought romance should have sparks.
The best I could describe with Simon was a lukewarm affection.
I didn’t get wrapped up in the kisses.
In fact, I have very vivid memories of him kissing me out front of my building one night, and all I could think of was going upstairs, taking off my makeup, and going to sleep.
I couldn’t really tell you why I’d let things progress when I knew the chemistry was off. I mean, who wanted to get naked and have hands on you when you didn’t feel any real reaction to them?
Hell, even the pizza boy who I’d let take my v-card in the backseat of his delivery car when I was sixteen had gotten me hot and bothered. Even back when I’d been deeply physically insecure and unsure about what to actually do while having sex.
But with Simon, well, let’s just say the man invested in lube because he figured there was ‘something wrong’ with me that I didn’t get turned on when we were together.
I mean, I also never told him that my clit was approximately an inch above where he thought it was.
You see, I just… went along with it.
It wasn’t coercion or abuse at the time.
I just… let things happen, even though I wasn’t feeling it. I even held on and faked little Os to stoke his pride.
I guess I liked what he represented more than I liked him. Safety, stability, a future.
Which would make me feel really shitty, looking back, if things hadn’t progressed the way they had.
Because no matter my flaws, no matter my motivations at the time, I didn’t deserve what came later.
“He got me pregnant about six months into dating,” I told Seth.
Which had been really weird to me at the time.
Because I’d been on the Pill.
I knew I wanted kids and a family and all those happily-ever-afters I’d been dreaming about for years. But I also knew that I wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
I wanted to do it “right.”
I wanted a ring, and a wedding, and a honeymoon, and then, after I set up house, I wanted a baby.
