#36 AN INDECENT PROPOSAL: THE US ARMY SERGEANT WHO WENT DOWN ON ME – OUR SECRET AGREEMENT

A lovely, sweetheart of man I didn’t pursue (thanks to my checklist)

I've recently spent a month working from Florida so I could visit my mama for her 60th birthday and even though we were all doing our day jobs during the week (we being Mum, my stepfather, and baby sis), it was nice to spend time with my American family.

Baby sis (Hannah), my stepfather (Lamar), my mama (Lisa), and me!

You can read a little bit about it here in my present-day snippet with a post to come on what I got up to in the month – and my glorious reunion with my husband.

PRESENT DAY SNIPPET: TRAVELLING FROM MANCHESTER TO ATLANTA TO TALLAHASSEE

I was able to spend time with my baby sis, Hannah, which was lovely. We had cheeky McDonald's lunches (which she brought to me during her lunch break from her bank job). We had girly chats, milkshakes, Chick-fil-A, room clearouts, decorating, walks, and laughter. 

I call Hannah “baby sis” because this is our age difference; let’s just say I’m approaching forty and she is only twenty! I loved that gorgeous nightmare of a baby. (She didn’t like sleeping.)

She has recently started dating a new boyfriend and her approach to dating is much healthier than mine was at her age (and always has been).

She's also a whole lot less shallow. She met her boyfriend (and the previous two) on her video game (or computer game?). She has the whole setup with a high-def mic like a radio station positioned in front of her mouth (presumably) for shit-talking, the double screens, the over-ear DJ-style headphones, the overpriced gaming desktop with upgraded graphics card and RAM where the case is clear so you can see the mechanisms, the colourful interior lights, and her anime figs. 

But what impressed me most was that she said she got to know her boyfriend as a person via the game chat. She said he had a username like “whitussy” which the “ussy” part is some kind of gamer inside joke and her bot/avatar/thingy strutted past him and said (on her mic), “Damn, let me get some of that whitussy” and it made him laugh and they started talking. 

Personality and compatibility are what have always been most important to her. I suppose when you’re doing a shared activity like gaming, then you already know that person shares at least some of your interests. Hers happen to be gaming, Japan, other cultures, and anime.

Hannah told me she got to fall for her boyfriend’s personality outside of looks, height, status, etc. I thought that was so sweet. Thankfully, she met her boyfriend IRL and she fancies him looks-wise as well and he's a sweetheart to her. He’s a nurse in the Air Force reserves, her age, and comes from a nice family – but she also says he’s the guy version of her. To Hannah, above anything else, personality is key, the essence of a person.

This account continually cracks me up.

By contrast, when I fell for people as people (i.e. their personality, their intelligence, their conversation, their kindness), I kept them at a distance and chased and slept with the people I just thought were hot (sometimes disposable). Later, I may have sprinkled “status” into the mix but I wasn’t too concerned about that in my uni years. I wasn’t looking to settle down and the concepts of “marriage” and especially “children” were not conditions I wanted to be roped into any time soon because even if I didn’t have the language for domestic labour and the “second shift” exactly, I knew that division of labour existed in marriages and that women were often unhappy with the wrong partner.

All this is to say that I encountered many nice men (like ATC, Captain Cambridge, Theo, Charles, Landon, etc) who may have been good men to date seriously but I never did. I also had some casual encounters where I never technically “slept” with the person and “army sergeant” was such a person.

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With the US Army Sergeant, I met him when he was a soldier dealing with new recruits and I was working with the University of Michigan on a psychological study – as in I was paid to help facilitate the study and had no experience with the findings. But the study followed Army recruits from day one to presumably the end of their Army career to find out why young soldiers have a disproportionate rate of death by suicide. It's a sad fact of the military.

It was a job that my sweet, beautiful, lovely teacher friend Annie got me (Annie also introduced me to my Chinese friend Anna, who was Annie’s friend first). Annie taught with me at the technical college, she tutored on the side, and she also did the Army study job; it paid decently so she kindly got me involved, too, as my adjunct salary was not cutting it. Annie now lives in Germany and works as a US Department of Defense teacher (usually handsomely paid) and she teaches French and English. She spent her childhood growing up in a missionary family on the Ivory Coast and then she ended up teaching in Puerto Rico and now Germany (I really do need to visit). I’m not sure how she ended up in Columbus but one of her sisters was an Army officer stationed at Fort Benning so, perhaps, that’s why.

I remember the sergeant and would smile at him from time to time. He was tall, broad, a well-built, solid man (which I always found sexy) with muscles and he had a big smile. When I left that job – I don't recall if I just got tired of driving to Fort Benning or if the study ended – but somehow I left the job.

He found me again on OkCupid.

I'm not sure how we messaged as it's a miracle but I really didn't save every encounter so goodness knows why I saved the Viking’s messages when he left no lasting impression on me.

Sarge (as I’ll call him) was bald and maybe not what I'd usually go for but that was okay because I wasn't his usual type either. He said he was always nervous talking to women and at work he said he would sneak peeks at me because he had a thing for “beautiful dark-haired women” (his very sweet words) but he was truly into punk rock women who wore skimpy, tight clothing and “were damaged and had tattoos and played games” (also his words).

I was too clean-cut and prim with a stick up my arse and he swore like a sailor. He said: “Good girls weren’t into me with my bald head and foul mouth.” I wasn’t into that either. I had some notion I’d find my very own straight version of Oscar Wilde – some stylish man of words who was tall, handsome, and literary.

I was into Tom Welling, Ian Somerhalder (from his Smallville days), and Orlando Bloom and I think I’d hoped I’d find someone in the middle.

I don't remember how many times he came over to my apartment but he would come over, go down on me, maybe I'd give him a hand job, and that would be that. He was talented in that arena as advertised and promised – I remember that much.

At the time, I inexplicably said I didn't want to sleep with anyone new (not sure why I’d suddenly created these boundaries), but we had a transactional agreement to “relieve” each other and move on with our day.

He said he recalled seeing me get dressed, bent over in my panties (or knickers for the Brits, long before I traded sexy knickers for the “Bridget Jones” variety), and he came up behind me to grind against me – and how he had wanted to have sex, to take me from that position – but he didn’t want to “mess up” our agreement if I wasn’t up for it. I recall wanting to have sex with him so I am not sure why he never asked and we never did.

But what I remember most about him (besides the orgasms) was that he was unapologetically himself. I liked talking to him. I didn't always get to know my encounters. He was kind, funny, and sweet. He made me feel comfortable (a key factor I’d learn later). I liked how he didn't try to do things to impress me. He was a “take it or leave it” kind of person. He knew who he was – and I liked that about him. Those are admirable traits – and ones I wouldn’t learn until later. 

Once we met up at Jason’s Deli for lunch. He kept me company and we had a laugh. I'm not sure if he'd have ever been interested in dating me but I just didn’t give him the chance because I had this notion of the type of person I wanted to end up with, the look, the job, the behaviour, the whatever. And that often meant I missed out on some truly nice men.

But I think in my journey to meeting Michael, I learned many lessons along the way and this was one of them: find people who are kind and who are not afraid to be themselves, who let you also be you. The last point is a key factor.

With Michael, he has always loved me for the person I am – not the one he wanted me to be – and vice versa. He has allowed our love and personalities to change and grow. Humans aren’t stagnant beings. I am not the same person who met him seven and a half years ago and he doesn’t expect that of me. He encourages me to grow into the person I am and helps develop the person I want to be.

Find people who are kind and who are not afraid to be themselves, who let you…be you.

Thankfully, like all the people who dodged the bullet that was my trainwreck twenties, Sarge is happy, which is definitely what he deserved. He has a wife and child and his career is going well (I think he's due for retirement soon). 

I never have wanted to be with someone to make them feel lesser for not meeting my arbitrary standards. I've had it done to me and it's soul-crushing. 

If I've learned anything in dating, it's to accept and see someone for who they are. Like who they are. Pick your battles. Find fun, laughter, and kindness in all your interactions. Think the best of people, support them, encourage them, and tread carefully with their hearts and past traumas. None of us escapes life and dating unscathed and everyone deserves gentleness, understanding, and compassion. 

Next up, the guy with the fake eye who used me like a hotel.

Don’t forget to check out the other thirty-five posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter/blog in the first place – and the odd “present-day snippet” of what I’m up to lately.

Have you ever dismissed someone for reasons that aren't really to do with them? Let me know in the comments.