BAT GIRL
My search on the famous Internet dating site by this time was so specific and so narrow that very rarely did anyone fall into it. I'd identified that I needed the woman to be tall, slender, blonde, with light eyes. And my search was perhaps notable for what I didn't want - attitude, bitchiness, titan-of-industry types. The turmoil with Girl Zero and Girl 93 and 95 had been too much for me. I wanted a sweet, loving, adorable, blonde bombshell who would worship her guy.
Right, I thought, like that existed.
So I didn't think much when the Match search function showed her on my screen. Her photo was distant and blurry. I could see that she was slender, blonde, and had collar bones and cleavage. Collar bones meant she was truly thin. Cleavage almost never went hand in hand with collar bones.
I opened up her profile more out of curiosity than hope or lust or longing.
She immediately failed the linear regression slut correlation - the word warmth test. A woman who says words like "hot" and "passion" usually is a sexual woman while those who talk about "friends first" and "take it slow" reveal a lack of the earthiness I so desired.
Then her photos, aside from collarbones-cleavage, were all distant and indistinct, which meant one thing - the woman had to be uglier than homemade sin.
Then I got to picture number eight. Her face was straight from a makeup ad in a glamour magazine. She had exquisite facial bone structure, beautiful eyes, gorgeous blonde hair. She was a prize, a trophy girlfriend. She looked amazing.
And then it hit me. In the photo, she was snuggled up to another guy. A guy more handsome than I am. I sighed. How would I be able to compete with that, I thought. And how many other guys were seeing the same picture I was, and falling for this woman?
So I let go of any hopes of having her. But I decided, what the hell, I'd write her a sarcastic email about it.
"Honey," I wrote, "forehead-to-forehead with the love of your life is no way to attract a man!"
Amazingly, she responded to it.
Our correspondence accelerated when she said she didn't really know how to get to know someone on email, and I suggested that she use a questionnaire I'd come up with. It was mostly G-rated with outrageous sexual questions thrown in. I sent it to her more out of humor, but my heart raced to see her answers to every question, and her answers were thoughtful and open. The answers to the racier questions were just as forthcoming. She sent me more pictures, these closer and clearer, and it was clear that she was gorgeous.
She replied with her own questionnaire, and in it she asked me who my favorite superhero was. Batman, of course, I said. After all, he's dark, tortured, a good soul, but only a hair's breadth from being criminal himself. She liked the answer. As it turned out, Batman was one of her favorites too, but she liked Bat Girl better.
She got her name from a photo of her in a superhero's outfit. She'd dressed in an expensive and elaborate Bat Girl suit for Halloween, and she sent it to me. I was falling for this woman, and I'd never met her.
Throughout our early courtship, I would jokingly call her Bat Girl, but she preferred her real name - Melissa.
We also began to accelerate over my online journal. She'd read some of my entries, and at one point she confessed that my blog had kept her up all night, that she had masturbated over it three times.
She was so mine, I thought.
But then we fought. We had a silly argument about monogamy. She said she would never cheat on a boyfriend because that was just the way she was. I said that meant that her faithfulness was not a gift, that she was simply giving her monogamy away because "that's just how she was."
I have to say, I liked the way she fought. She didn't take any guff from the male, and she fought with passion (always a good sign) but she didn't let her emotions run away with her, and all through it I got the sense that she still really liked me. There was an emotional constancy to her.
At one point, as the pre-first-date battle raged, I actually dumped her. "Honey," I wrote in an email, "I have to let you go. I'm putting you back in the water. You can swim away now." Admittedly, I wasn't very nice to her, but for some reason the monogamy thing got under my skin. I didn't want any woman to "white-knuckle" it with me, and force themselves to be true to me. I wanted the woman to give me her faithfulness as a gift. Because she loved me, because I'd earned my wings that day.
But the next day, she wrote me the sweetest email. She seemed to see beyond what I'd written her. "But I don't want to swim away," she wrote.
Right there and then I made a date with her. All the crossed swords, sarcasm and brittle arguments ended in that one moment when I first saw her round the corner to walk toward me.
I can see it in slow motion now. The most beautiful, tall, thin, model gorgeous blonde ever born walked up to me, a tooth-paste commercial smile on her face. As she got closer, all five foot ten inches of her stood breathtakingly in front of me. Had I met her only two years before, I would not have been able to deal with her beauty, but I was different now. Now when I saw something, I went for it.
I said hello, and immediately leaned in to kiss her.
I lost the first round. She turned her cheek, but in the bar, as her elegant body sat cross legged in front of me, I couldn't help but stroke her thigh, smile at her, and tell her that I suspected she didn't like me.
I can only tell, I said, by how you kiss me.
She smiled back and leaned over, and I kissed her. Her warm, soft, wet mouth opened up to me and my life flashed before my eyes. It seemed to last an hour, but when I pulled away her eyes opened dreamily, and she looked at me as if she were a different woman. Where before she'd been pleased but amused, now she seemed in lust. Later, much later, she would tell me that she had fallen in love with me during that kiss. And later I would tell her that I loved her from the moment I saw her. She would always say to me, "but I love you more!" And I would reply, "maybe so, but I loved you first."
I took her from the Mediterra bar to the Blue Point Grill, forgetting how far the walk was for a woman in heels. Across from Hamilton Jewelers, I stopped her, my hand in hers. And I said to her, Melissa, I love you, and if we're together a year from today, will you marry me? She smiled at me as if she completely understood. It was September 2.
"Knowing you, you'll break up with me September 1, then make up with me September 3," she said.
I smiled. How well she understood me.
At dinner, I watched her eat scallops, that amazing woman whom I felt I'd known all my life.
I walked her back to my car, and we kissed inside. I opened her blouse, and a perfect, symmetrical, tan-line outlined D-cup breast came into my hand. I had to see the other one. I couldn't believe how perfect her breasts were. Are they real, I asked.
"No," she smiled. "They were a present I got for myself."
They're amazing, I said. Her waist was so small, her rear so perfect and round yet tiny, her skin so smooth and tanned, her mile-long legs so slender and long and lean. I don't think I've felt heat for a woman like this since Girl 6, Alayna, but I tried to contain myself. Though we were in the Saleen, and though I was 47 and Melissa was 39, we made out like teenagers. Three of my fingers found their way into her, and all of me found its way into that lovely, movie star mouth. But only for a brief moment, as we were in public. We'd just given each other a short taste of what was to come.
I kissed her good-bye and drove home, my head in the clouds. Later she would chide me for not having made love to her on the first date, and I returned fire that if I had, she would have thought less of me. She also complained in jest that I didn't call her until the next day, not even checking to see if she got home. I told her I just played that guy's game to get her to want to hear from me, and I told her the story of Rope Nurse Girl. But the real answer was that I already knew she wanted me, just as I wanted her.
We were a couple.
On our second date, two days later, we tried to meet for dinner, but all the restaurants were closed for Labor Day. We ended up with takeout at her house, but I barely noticed the food. In her bed, I first took her clothes off, and by candlelight feasted my eyes on that perfect body. It was like seeing a pin-up girl in person. She was long and lean and tanned, with perfect Playboy Bunny breasts. I wanted to lick her from her toes to her forehead, and I did. I made love to her all night. For most people, that is a mere expression, but I'd brought my toy bag, and I did everything with her that two people could do, and neither of us slept more than forty minutes. The next day, she was happily exhausted.
Our relationship began in earnest. It took some time to finish out "The Hundred," and Melissa was not happy about my continuing to date other women. Why would you do that, she complained. Because, I said, I'm a researcher and a scientist.
And with that, I leaned in and kissed her, and she kissed me back.
I looked up at the heavens, and I thanked the supreme being for Melissa.
*******************************
It ended with Bat Girl. It ended suddenly, and it left a hole in my life. I'd been so happy to have her as a girlfriend that I was constantly asked by everyone why it ended.
All this time later, and I still have no real answer.
And like the ending of Girl 6, Alayna, why it ended perhaps matters less than the reality that it did end.
For endless months I felt guilty about us being apart. Bat Girl was the one sent me by the Universe. I was supposed to be with her. We should have grown old together. I should have died in her arms.
I completed the dating of the Hundred while I was in the first month with Bat Girl. They had ended and she was the one I wanted. I continued on in a fantastic relationship. She was supposed to be the final chapter. She was going to allow me to say that The Hundred had helped me heal, and as evidence, I could point to Bat Girl and say that she was my reward for the journey.
Not many people would have done what I did. Dating a hundred women to get over the thing that started me down this path in the first place. Perhaps it was simply evidence that I didn’t trust the Universe enough to allow the supreme being to give me The Girl.
I didn’t trust enough. I should have closed my eyes and stayed in the warm, loving embrace of Bat Girl. But instead, I just assumed she would hurt me as much as all the others had, and that the more I fell in love with her, the more she’d cut me open.
So I dynamited my way out of the relationship and blamed her for my own mental storm.
Once I realized I had been the bad guy, I tried to get her back.
In the end, Bat Girl was wise enough not to forgive me.
I leftThe Hundred just as I started. Alone and broken. But with the knowledge that it had all been my fault.
Good-bye, Bat Girl, my love. I will remember you always and miss you forever. And I hope some day, deep in your heart, you will forgive me.
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