#10 A STARRY WALK TO REMEMBER WITH THE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER
Some flings are short-lived and leave behind magical memories
In university, I lived in a house on Slater Street, the coolest street ever, in the historical part of Valdosta, Georgia within very close walking distance to campus. There was our house, “the girls’ house,” painted yellow, tucked into some trees with a view of a red berry tree from the dining room and there was the “International Boys House” across the street. The International Boys threw the best parties.
My tiny Greek landlady was a character. We’ll call her Ms Georgiou. She was married but we always called her Ms instead of Mrs for whatever reason – and we hardly ever saw her husband but she was forever sending him out to “repair” things at their various properties around town. She always seemed stressed and frazzled, but underneath the ruffled exterior, she was a kindhearted person.
One of her stressors was for sure having me as a tenant (and fielding complaints from my housemates). She was also a shrewd businesswoman.
Every person in our house paid $350/month all-inclusive rent (i.e. water, electricity). It didn’t matter if anyone else in the house paid rent, we just had to cover our part, which is why I moved in there in the first place. Originally, I’d lived there with my cute Indian roommate, Padma, who never slept and spent all night talking to her long-distance boyfriend who was at Purdue (they’re still together) and another roommate from Turkmenistan (or somewhere but she said she was of Persian descent but she wasn’t Iranian) and she absolutely despised me, but I won’t get into that. I was a horrible roommate, to be fair.
Then, our model-like roommate who never ate (whose boyfriend I later slept with, cringe – I usually wasn’t such a horrible friend), Margaret, had replaced my Indian roommate. Margaret then moved across the street to be replaced by Brittany, who I already knew and was friends with from our English department classes. And the Turkmen housemate (with a Russian name) was replaced by our Russian housemate, Klara. Was I the problem?
On the end of our house was an apartment where Stephanie (later a fellow grad student and friend) lived with her husband, and I think they paid around $400/month. So, for this one creaking (but charming) house full of uni students, our landlady easily pulled in $1,450 per month. Stephanie’s musician husband pretty much always (kindly) took out the recycling and trash for us because we often forgot – I’m sure much to his dismay.
But that income was not quite enough for the enterprising Ms Georgiou because later she added an extra bedroom and three new bathrooms (including my own ensuite) and our very own non-creepy laundry room (I’ll share a former laundry room creepy shed situation story when I talk about sleeping with my Firefighter neighbour, but no we didn't have sex in it) so thus we had more housemates and she got to earn more.
There’s this hilarious story that Brittany wrote about “the Steves,” the incompetent duo who re-clad our house and built these rooms before some other builders took over and actually finished it. I wish I could find it!
Ms Georgiou also owned the “fancy” restaurant in town, a Mediterranean restaurant in a historical house with a wraparound porch with painted pink stucco and if you wanted to be really fancy with a date or special occasion, that’s where you’d go.
She owned several houses around town, including ours and the International Boys’ house across the street. Many of those boys also worked for her in her restaurant and helped pay the rent that way.
I didn’t learn until later that it’s not “usual practise” for your landlady to be so involved in your living situation – like when she’d talk to me about having “so many cars” parked outside the house at night (i.e. people I was sleeping with or friends with who would visit) or sometimes, we’d come home and there’d be a new lamp, a new rug, a new set of shelves, or new chairs just dumped in the house from wherever she got it or cast-offs from the restaurant.
If we didn’t like our new surprise offering, we’d try and flog it across the street or complain to her to put it back in the restaurant.
The International Boys were intertwined with the cool “Gorgeous Tennis Players” on campus. They were the people VSU had poached from whatever various world rankings to give them a scholarship (presumably) to study in the middle of nowhere Georgia. They hailed from places like Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and even one girl who later became a friend who came from Manchester (but she had grown up in France), and, of course, they were all beautiful, fit, thin, and tanned, but that’s just a side note. They lived in the apartments down the street where they’d throw the best Halloween party of the year around the courtyard’s massive swimming pool.
After I turned 21 and graduated from undergrad with my bachelor’s degree in literature, I’d broken things off with HSS. I’d been crushed by the second boy I’d had sex with who wrote a poem about how what we did was meaningless to him. I had a whole weird situation with the married professor I slept with (person number three). Then, I’d moved on to seeing my firefighter neighbour (number four) until I full-on ghosted him, which is kinda difficult when you’re neighbours (I also met him at the International Boys’ House, err thanks guys - before I slept with one of the International Boys myself – I guess I was busy). I’d had a one-night stand with another professor – this time a friend – (number five), and here I was exploring options.
The next year when I was a graduate student and only twenty-two, I’d seen this super hot guy when stalking the Gorgeous Tennis Players' photos on the old FB, when FB stalking was like a second job/hobby. This was when FB was new and only open to university students – after they’d removed it from an only Ivy club.
They were somehow friends with him but I’d never ever seen him around. I’d see them at the bars. I’d see them at parties, but where was this handsome, tall, blue-eyed gorgeous hunk of a man? Why had I never seen him?
But fate was to intervene. One night I saw the International Boys were having a party across the street. How convenient! Or maybe I’d been invited. Who knows!
They were known for clearing out their living room, dining/kitchen, and utility room of furniture, setting up the living room with massive speakers and (very cleverly) duct-taping cardboard to the floor so no sign of the wooden floorboards was visible (easier cleanup, I guess) and for having massive handles of cheap vodka (Brits don’t even know the level of paint thinner this stuff was – it was like a litre for $10 in a plastic container, plastic) and Monster energy drinks as mixers (they’d bring it in by the caseload and have it stacked up in the kitchen). This was a lethal combo.
Also, I was such an alcohol freeloader. These house parties would get packed, sardine-level packed, but they were legendary, filled with all sorts of cool and beautiful people.
I was standing in the kitchen, solo cup in hand. I mostly tried to avoid dancing because as I’ll tell you when I tell you how I met Michael, I am terrible and totally non-sexy at dancing – but if I got drunk enough I’d dance but I couldn’t compete with the writhing bodies of the Gorgeous Tennis Players, sigh.
I saw a group of people enter the back door through the utility room and in walks that gorgeous man I’d stalked in the photos. His friend nudged him (I found out later the friend said something like “that girl is staring at you”) and I remember walking over in my semi-inebriated state and introducing myself by shaking his hand (shaking it? Is it a business meeting?) and then holding it for a stupidly awkwardly long time. I mean of course because I’d spent time stalking his photos, he’d automatically also know me.
He took it in his stride and let me hold onto his hand for far too long. I’m not sure if we spent any time talking but we heard rumours the house was going to get raided by the police so I grabbed his hand and told him to come home with me, very conveniently across the street.
We ran, yes, ran across the street to get to my house, even though he also only lived down the street, maybe one hundred yards. We were both over twenty-one so it was most definitely a ploy as we wouldn’t have been busted for “underage drinking.”
We started making out in the living room and then moved onto the bedroom. Why I wasn’t embarrassed by the state of my room I have no idea. Somehow I never ever was. Kristy, one of my dear (married) friends (whom, despite being my age, I considered like my college “parents”), told me once that my room looked like “a department store had thrown up in it.”
It wasn’t filthy in that there wasn’t crusted food or anything (I was civilised and ate at the dining table) but there was stuff everywhere, on every surface, on every bit of the floor, stacks of papers, stacks of books – although my bedroom was mostly dominated by my bookcases filled with books and precious trinkets.
We started kissing and removing clothes. I was wearing my American Eagle bikini bottoms because I was a swamp creature and only did my laundry every month (or two) and placed all my dirty stuff in massive bin bags so I could spend approximately twelve years washing everything all at once (sorry, roommates, because I’m sure you sometimes wanted to use the washer/dryer on my “laundry days”) or (more often) I’d drive down Florida to take some of my washing to my own personal launderette, AKA Mother (sorry, Mother). Instead of doing laundry when I was out of knickers, I’d find all the things I could wear first before I had to do laundry which is why I was wearing bikini bottoms that day.
Let’s give him props for consensual language, though, way before conversations of consent happened, he asked me, “Can I touch your pussy?” I didn't think oh that’s nice he asked. I thought “oh my god I hate that word.” I was shocked at someone using the dreaded P word. I mean I wouldn't hear that kind of language again until I slept with that Jewish Doctor or Captain Thor (I’ll write about them at some point).
Air Traffic Controller (ATC) as we will call him was the first kind of “stranger” I’d slept with besides my neighbour who was also a friend of friends. He knew people I knew but I hadn’t known him in any real way and I found him incredibly handsome.
He’d also be the first really tall man I’d sleep with (and that was always something that I found incredibly attractive if I could get it). I remember less about this first time except that he told me I was the only person he’d slept with that year (which I didn’t believe at the time because he was too handsome and he was my third person that year – but it was October) than about subsequent times (as he became my number one booty call), but I didn’t have any complaints.
We were sexually compatible and he was well, cough, blessed in the pants department. (No, no one is a Captain Cambridge except the man himself.)
But before all that happened, the morning after, ATC started to get dressed, trying to find his lost clothes in the sea of all my detritus and he couldn't find one of his socks. We searched everywhere and the sock could not be located. We kissed and he walked home.
Later that day or maybe the next day, when I’d slept and showered and got dressed up again (of course, I tried to look my best to see him), I walked a little down the road and to Apartment 12B where he lived and knocked on the door. I wanted to tell him I’d found his sock (I had said sock in hand). But ATC did not answer the door.
ATC’s cousin, very confused, answered the door to this random girl he’d never seen holding a sock. I said I wanted to return said sock to ATC but he wasn’t home so I gave the sock to ATC’s cousin and he shut the door, looking bemused.
ATC was about five years older than me, when twenty-seven seemed more together somehow, and had studied to be a doctor of physical therapy in uni but then later decided to become an Air Traffic Controller.
One crisp autumnal night, we went on our only sort of date and it was also the only time we really talked. We walked around the streets on our side of town and we came across a field where we climbed the fence and lay down, holding hands on the dewy grass, looking at the stars. It was a magical memory. It was probably the only night we spent learning details about each other, hence why I have some details to tell you!
I was super into ATC. I guess I was super into his looks and sleeping with him because I knew practically nothing about him.
Once, he invited me over to his apartment to watch a movie. We didn't watch the movie. But eventually, he became more a mysterious broody Mr Darcy than open book. It was the first time I was obsessed with why someone wasn’t seeing me again, asking me out, answering all my texts.
The Manchester Tennis Player friend would say he was into me, say he asked after me, but his behaviour said the opposite – and it drove me mad with confusion and longing.
I re-entangled myself with HSS from time to time and then I’d sometimes see ATC at the bars. Sometimes I’d get a text at 3 am asking if I was up and wanted to come over. Often I said yes, sometimes I said no, probably playing games.
I remember going to his apartment once, showing up in a coat and underwear to the sliding glass doors that overlooked the complex’s swimming pool, where we proceeded to have amazing sex, some of which I was upside down for. Once, I gave him a hand job before I knew that you have to have a whole tissues, baby wipe, or washcloth situation to clean up the mess and it shot off practically to his wall and he muttered, “son of a bitch” or “stupid bitch” under his breath (which now I think is amusing) but then I thought he was mad at me for making him come (scratches head?).
Brittany referred to him as “tall, dark, and boring.” I’d regale her with tales of frustration. I didn’t know anything about him besides he was A) good in bed, B) handsome, C) mysterious. We practically never talked about anything ever. I’d assumed we had nothing in common, had different interests, or maybe I was distancing myself and just didn’t want to get to know him.
Not long after the International party where I’d met him, it was Halloween, the best party season of the year, and I spent ages crafting my costume with Brittany (sorry you still have the hot glue gun burn) where I made fairy wings and a cool golden twiggy crown.
Of course, everyone knows that Halloween is the season when women just dress up in super revealing clothing and call it “sexy” plus “noun” (sexy cat, sexy nurse, sexy witch) – but I wore a non-revealing red one-shoulder dress, my fairy wings, and my crown. I loved that costume.
I searched and searched for ATC around the pool at the apartment down the street and eventually found him, ladling lethal party punch into a Dixie cup. But that’s how our encounters would go. Sometimes we’d sleep together. Sometimes we’d run into each other at parties or the bars and I’d look longingly and confusingly over at him wondering why if people said he liked me, he never talked to me.
Eventually, the booty call offers got less and less and things faded out. He began dating the girl he’d eventually marry (a petite brunette with a row of big white teeth and immaculate haircuts). Of course, when I’d run into him at the bars, she was (understandably) icy to me.
Years later, when I actually did get to know him as we bonded over our divorces, he’d tell me he was really into me but he’d realised something about himself: that he usually only liked to sleep with women with whom he had a deep emotional connection and friendship with and because we figuratively never ever spoke to each other, presumably outside of bedroom related talking, he hadn’t fostered that connection.
He told me he’d thought I was beautiful – and he’d notice me across the room or whenever he’d see me at the bars – and that he had thought I had a great personality (omg blushing and that’s a relief because I thought I was often a selfish, toxic bitch or maybe that’s just what HSS made me think?). When his later wife and friend had come to him to be the shoulder to cry on after her breakup, gradually she’d wheedled her way into his heart. I didn’t stand a chance.
Besides, it was the start of my totally “hot mess” years. But a year before ATC, I slept with
I’d ever had sex with, who crushed my very fragile ego. More next time.
Don’t forget to check out the other nine posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter/blog in the first place.
