July 2024

July was kind of the time last year when the stripper I was dating at the time — henceforth referred to as Caitlyn, because that is her name — and I fell out of touch. I say ‘fell out of touch’ in lieu of more aggressive labels because it feels more accurate that way. I don’t recall one single ultimate blowup between us; there wasn’t anything I necessarily did, and there wasn’t anything she necessarily did; it was more like we ran out of time.

I revisit this now, in July 2024, in part to tell the story, and in another way to show respect. Because while there were several elements coming from both directions — hers and mine — that were toxic and unacceptable and never going to work, I can say now, a year or so removed from all of it, that nothing I have said (or written) about her since has been personal. There is a difference between having issues with people and the way they operate, and disliking them or hating them for it. The truth is: I liked the girl. I really did.

It was probably around April or May, 2023, that we had this talk one night, at the strip club, and I don’t even know why specifically I was there or why she happened to be sitting next to me. But there she was.

This particular gentleman’s establishment was/is pretty dry as far as Real Talent was/is concerned. Some of the girls were attractive, but I tend to be a real prude at places like that where it’s like the expectation to hit on the women and grab some titties and ass, or sexually assault them in some way; I’m pretty sure I decided when I was like 25 (and lived right around the corner) that I was going to do everything opposite of what is generally commonplace. In other words, I wouldn’t even touch anyone. I was there — and I say this genuinely and unironically — for the conversation. The overwhelming majority of the time I would sit at the bar and watch muted reruns of SportsCenter on ESPN and intermittently chop it up with the bartender(s). I’d hang out in the restroom with the attendant, a black dude probably about ten years my senior named Jay, and we would talk about sports, sometimes for like 30 minutes at a time.

I saw these girls as Workers, and don’t find what they do as all that different from what I do as a dealer. We both (strippers and I) use everything at our disposal to extract money from our patrons. If that means our looks, we’ll use our looks. If it means our wits, we’ll use our wits. So it was always like an experiment for me — as is seemingly everything else — to find a dancer who could cut through the bullshit and deliver using actual, real-life, real-world game, in a manner of speaking, and not resort to the typical/basic What’s Your Name or What’s Your Sign icebreaker bullshit.

My aversion to taking advantage of my surroundings with the girls — getting away with touching and grabbing, etc. — stems from having some vague understanding of the fucked up dynamics involved with being an attractive woman. Like, I’m aware of how much of a chore it can be just to go to the store, or walk down the street, or go to work doing some mundane job, without being hit on or cat-called or honked at, etc.

And it kind of sucks, for me, personally, because I know I have blown several opportunities with women throughout the years for being too passive and not making the first move, shooting shots of my own, out of fear of being looked at similarly. As just another guy. After the fact I have even been reprimanded by some of these females, who said they were blatantly displaying to me The Signals, or whatever, and all the while I figured I was doing the somewhat-gentlemanly thing. By doing nothing.

The point is, even at a place like a strip club I still operate with the same real-life mentality. Most would argue that they — the dancers, that is — chose this line of work, and that they made the choice to wear what they wear to advertise their assets for public consumption. That they essentially know what they signed themselves up for. I get that. But as I said earlier: They (the dancers) do the same thing I do (as a dealer). They are there to make money. And when someone like me goes to work, I am locked in to a table for 30 minutes at a time. I am forced to stand there. I can’t control who comes up to my game to waste my time in conversation. So a lot of my empathy for the dancers, even if I am being too generous with my point of view, comes from a sympathetic place, of knowing that they, too, are ‘locked in,’ in a sense.

And Caitlyn was, back to the point of delivering using actual, real-life, real-world game, that girl. The one who even in an abnormal strip-club environment and the social contract a place like that entails, produced and acted as a human being. I hadn’t been at this particular gentleman’s establishment in several months at that point, but that night Caitlyn came up to see me and remembered my name. Eric, as it were.

She kind of cheated because the last time I saw her we exchanged phone numbers, but it was one of those things where neither of us really like ‘talked’ to each other. It was just a courtesy (the phone number exchange) because the first time we met she asked me when my birthday was and I told her if she guessed my astrology sign correctly I would give her a hundred dollars. So when she did (on her first try) we both laughed and I gave her a crisp $100 bill and she probably gave me her number because she’s into that stuff (the horoscope shit) and thought it was written in the stars that she saw my eyes were green, or whatever, and said I seemed like a Pisces. It was good business on her end, in other words, to keep a connection with someone like me who throws around hundred dollar bills all willy-nilly.

The topic of the night — in April or May — was depression, since I guess we were both going through it at that time. And I don’t know why but we really, like, bonded over it. I was at a crossroads with my life and doing the thing where I was Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places, I guess, but it meant something that she, Caitlyn, was there. And so it was her idea, that night, that the two of us should go on a hike the following week, during my own personal weekend, so that’s what we did.

I picked her up from her townhouse in Loma Linda CA and she really knew how to keep it spicy, always. She was wearing a sports bra/top and some incredibly accentuating booty shorts and a cute little hat, and as I opened the passenger door for her and she got in my car I had that brief realization where I kind of took a deep breath and thought damn, she’s really here, this is actually happening, and she looked so good, and so in my brain I couldn’t help but think how random it all was. I am with a stripper right now. And we’re really doing this.

She liked to talk. That’s what I remember most about that hike/day. She’d rattle off like five or ten minutes worth of content, and then I would say my piece, and generally it was a friendly conversation. We went up the hill, and then we came back down. When that was over we went to Citrus Plaza in Redlands CA and ate a sushi place.

I know I told her at the time, but it was the first instance in I don’t even know how long that I didn’t have that feeling in my stomach — where I was comfortable enough that my body allowed me to eat. I know it probably doesn’t count for much unless you know what I’m talking about, but to me it was a Big Deal. I don’t know and can’t remember what I was even eating — because sushi — but I do recall the wonderful sensation of being capable of eating. That’s all I cared about.

When I drove her back to her townhouse we were on the verge of sundown. I parked my car and kind of expected us to say our goodbyes, to acknowledge the day we had spent together, etc., but then she invited me up to hang out with her some more, and since I didn’t have a good enough excuse, and was honestly in no rush to head back home, I agreed. So up we went.

I did have reservations, though, because Caitlyn was in a relationship. She taught me what it meant to be polyamorous. She had a boyfriend, but being Poly meant she could see other people — secondaries, as she called them — and even though I didn’t know it on that specific day, it’s what I inevitably turned into. A secondary, er, the secondary. I thought this was pretty much the best of both worlds, for me, personally, because I could reap all the benefits of spending time with a beautiful woman while simultaneously assuming none of the risks of actually being in a relationship.

We smoked cigarettes and weed together on her back patio, a wide open space with no covering that featured a cushioned couch and a small table atop several wooden planks. We watched the sun go down and heard the nearby train passing by (which it did, all the time). She laid on her back and sprawled her legs out on top of my thighs and we really just had the best time talking, about nothing in particular, as she seemed to have no cares in the world while I, being the Thinker, continually wondered at exactly which point her boyfriend would come home and I’d have to confront him and collect all my belongings. Aside from that Caitlyn and I were extremely comfortable together, right from the start.

Darkness came and the two of us went inside and she put on a show called Nathan For You, which was pretty goddamn fucking hilarious. We laughed nonstop while lying down on her bed. And she was so happy that this particular show (that I had never heard of) was agreeable to my sense of humor, because, according to her, a lot of people she recommended it to didn’t seem to like it. And that was us, that night. We hiked, and we ate, and we went home to talk and laugh.

I couldn’t help myself, because I never can, so at a certain point I had to lean over and kiss her. So I did that. And after I removed her glasses, and she started touching me, and I started touching her, I took off her shorts, and then her shirt, and she took off my shorts, and my shirt, and without any warning time sort of jumped on me and I found her legs wrapped around my head and I was going down on her. I could think of nothing beyond making her cum. Because I wasn’t even supposed to be there, right then. Since I was, I simply wanted to hear her sounds: her moans, her whimpers, her perfect way of reminding me of my name, etc., and feel her body.

And it was magic, honestly. I’ll never forget taking that initial plunge and looking her in the eyes and seeing her look directly back in mine, and it was like we both knew exactly what the other needed. It was quiet and cute and violent and romantic all at the same time. And we both felt it. I think we took like a five-minute break to go outside and smoke a cigarette and then we went back inside and did it all over again.

I left that night feeling like a champion, a sensation that was heightened by the initial awkwardness (that befalls two lovers before their first time) and the fact that I honestly didn’t have any expectations for the day/evening. I think the most likely outcome, had the simulation been ran a million times, would have been some form of a hike and some food and me being too afraid to make a move, and thus she wouldn’t have seen or known or experienced what I was all about, and then maybe we would have seen each other again and maybe we wouldn’t have, but she was only 23 years old and the world of relationships tend to move much faster for people of her age, and it’s entirely possible that she would have sought and/or found somebody else to occupy her time.

Instead, as a result of what did occur on that Monday or Tuesday, neither of us could like ignore what happened. You can call it Energy or Vibes if you want. Others would call it Chemistry. I imagine I’d call it something much simpler, in the realm of: she made me happy, and I made her happy. It’s not often you experience something so palpable, and mutual, so quickly. The next time I saw her, the following week, I think we both acknowledged that we didn’t expect the other to be there. She thought I seemed the type to hit and run. Maybe those are the vibes I give. As for me, I don’t know. I still viewed her more as a stripper than a real person (respectfully), and just assumed this was something strippers did. And who was I — particularly in the reduced feeling of self-worth state I was in — to assume I was anything extra-ordinary?

It did not take long for the two of us to become more or less inseparable, at least insofar as our lives and schedules would allow. Her boyfriend lived in Pomona CA (some 45 minutes away from Loma Linda), so it was regular for me to spend the night at her townhouse in Loma Linda CA (roughly 20 minutes from where I lived in Riverside CA) on every night that he wasn’t there, or when she wasn’t working at the club. As our relationship developed, and evolved, I’d sometimes come over and meet her after work, too, to spend the night. And she’d tell me all about her experience there, at work, I mean, which was sometimes (for me) uncomfortable but always educational, her telling me about the gangs, and the girls the gangs were pimping, and the politics of not stepping on anyone’s toes, so to speak, during bottle service and VIP events, etc. I cared about Caitlyn, but I was also far enough removed from it, her situation being in a relationship, that I didn’t have to be upset about the finer details (that she seemingly always shared).

She had a stripper pole in her living room, and there were multiple occasions when I’d go over during the afternoon and happen upon a group of girls — three, four of them — and they’d be in their outfits (wearing basically nothing), and I’d walk through the front door, and they’d say Hi Eric, or whatever, and tell me that Caitlyn Is Upstairs, and I’d act as normal as fucking possible and just head up to her room.

Because that was my life last year. Pretending like everything was normal even though it wasn’t. I had several instances where I had to check myself, and realize that I was dating a 23 year-old, who was a stripper, and every now and again I would stumble in on these girls hanging out in the living room, scantily clad, practicing their moves, or show up on a Friday or Saturday night to a place filled with young drunk guys and girls, doing the types of things that early 20-something year-olds do, drinking, smoking, etc., and I’d show up in a hoodie and sweatpants and an overnight bag because I had to wake up in the morning to head off to work. It was probably the closest thing to dad vibes I’ve ever given — where the kids would drag me to do a shot or two with them at 3:00 or 4:00 A.M. PST even though I was always just trying to go to bed, or where I’d be outside counseling one of the young men who was trying to sleep with one of Caitlyn’s roommates, etc. — because I was like a decade older than everyone.

But while I was there, Caitlyn and I did the husband and wifey thing whenever possible. On my weekends we would wake up and she’d make coffee and the two of us would drink it together outside, usually over a couple cigarettes while the sun beat down on us, and then we would go back inside and clean up her room and I would take out the trash and we would make sure everything was right where it needed to be before venturing off in the early afternoon to handle whatever the day’s business was. Sometimes it would be nothing beyond going for a hike. Other times we would head out to Citrus Plaza and get lunch and go shopping. We traveled to Los Angeles to go to The Last Bookstore, and a few times we went out to Pasadena for an open mic night — a couple of which I performed at. Caitlyn was always very supportive.

I don’t imagine either of us envisioned what we inevitably became, together, and I’d bet that with how quickly the rise between us came to be actually ended up working against us, over time. Like we lacked that sort of buildup that most sustaining relationships require. The feeling-out process, as it’s sometimes called, never really existed. Caitlyn and I basically went from strangers to sleeping together and spending entire days/weekends with each other in a matter of, like, a month. And she became virtually the only exception — in my own life experience — regarding a woman who slept with me early on, who I didn’t almost immediately lose interest in.

We can obviously debate exactly why that is. She would tell you it’s because she is outrageously smoking hot, and I’d probably say it has less to do with the way she looked and more with how she made me feel.

Because of course she was enticing to me, from a physical standpoint. She stood about 5’2″ or so, but somehow possessed these incredibly long legs that served as like anchors to her exceptionally firm, and tight, and perfect butt. Her whole figure was excellent. And I’m not really into boobs, but they were there. They got the job done. And she liked nothing more than me being on top of her with my tongue making little circles around one of her nipples while my fingers traced the outline of her other one. I could send her straight to heaven just by going to town on her chest while she looked down at me, and me back at her, while I executed the business that was necessary in those moments.

She knew how to get me going, too. Obviously as a borderline sex worker she had me at a clear disadvantage and knew all the tricks to play, like the one they (strippers) seemingly all utilize by pressing one of their knees into the man’s crotch to spread out their legs, whether to straddle on top or turn around and grind, but she had a type of sexual appetite where she did not have to do much to get the wheels in motion. You never really know how far removed you are from your teenage stamina until you run into someone that makes every situation exciting.

Which is probably the best part about spending any meaningful time with somebody: learning and knowing and understanding what makes them tick, what gets them off. Having those days where everything is good, so to say, and you don’t have to worry about it or try as hard. Then having other days, which maybe aren’t so good, for them, or for you, and so you go the extra mile to ensure they are as taken care of as much as they absolutely can be. The best part about Caitlyn and I is that most times we wouldn’t have to say anything. What is understood does not need to be said.

And we had our quiet times, as well. The nights when she would bust out her karaoke microphone and we’d bang out some songs together in her room. The nights when she wouldn’t be feeling particularly well and we’d take walks together around her apartment complex, holding hands. Where we would end up at a local restaurant just for the hell of it and people watch and have our drinks and eat our food. Where we’d watch movies together. Moments that nobody ever has to know about that turn into the things most memorable in many ways.

She made me feel this paternal, loving kind of instinct, where I just wanted to take care of her. I wanted her to feel protected, and happy, and content. I sacrificed for her my cold-seeming heart and ostensibly hard exterior and tried to see what it was like to be soft, and cute. For her. We started watching the Twilight saga because she wanted me to see it; we watched Surf’s Up for the same reason; if she was in the mood for crepes, we’d drive to Downtown Redlands CA and get some crepes. I don’t think she knew — because she’d never experienced — what it looked like to be with a good man. I wanted to show her.

So I don’t really know what went wrong, per se. You don’t have to be a fucking rocket scientist to understand that in short order her preference was to spend more time with me than her own actual boyfriend, whom Caitlyn complained about regularly. Almost as a rule, every time she was stuck with him for a couple days at the house he shared with some roommates in Pomona CA she would unleash on me an entire laundry list of things that quote gave her the ick. And I didn’t really have anything against the guy, personally. I met him once or twice and he seemed like a complete Zero, but then again I find that the majority of guys are just that (zeroes) so he wasn’t anything like different, to me, in that regard.

And I was just fulfilling what I assumed my obligations (for lack of a better way of phrasing it) happened to be, as the Secondary Guy. I always paid for everything (obviously); I always drove and I always did whatever it was she asked of me, in terms of picking her up from work or stopping to get her food if she was hungry, etc. We speculated on several occasions what the world would look like if we were officially boyfriend/girlfriend, where she could finally remove herself from the unhappy and unhealthy relationship she was in, but I never did the thing that she said every other Secondary did that she ever had, where I tried to insert myself into the picture and actively make an attempt to break her up with her boyfriend.

I was actually very steadfast about my perspective. I told her I don’t do that polyamory thing. I’m either with it or I’m not. And I think she liked that about me, that I wasn’t one to cut any deals about any kind of future involving an open relationship. As cool as it sounds, in theory, and as much as it is probably what every relationship is going to look like in twenty years, or fifty, or a hundred, it’s just not my style. I am either a single white male or I am committed to somebody — all the way.

In fact, that’s probably why Caitlyn remained within my grasp for as long as she did. Because I guess every other Secondary she had tried to press the issue with her and not only get her to break up with her boyfriend, but make it to where she wasn’t even polyamorous anymore. Per my true contrarian nature, I didn’t even bring up the idea of us being in a relationship, or get into the hypothetical realm, until she started catching feelings and bringing it up to me.

Not like I didn’t consider it, or enjoy talking with her about how well-rounded and cute our future kids would be. It was just one of those things, you know? I was standing on the edge of not wanting to influence anyone’s life while simultaneously, sometimes, being in the mood to roll the dice with her. What trumped everything, for me, after taking a couple steps back, and peering into my own crystal ball, was just how conditional my love was.

What I mean is, I could have probably handled her occupation. Intellectually and emotionally. I never really gave a fuck about the stigma of dating/being with a stripper. But I clearly would have, eventually, anyway, pressed her about getting into a different line of work. I was pretty optimistic (per her seemingly genuine level of interest) about getting Caitlyn to go to dealer school, because she was smart and pretty and, as a brilliant woman once told me (that one of her professors told her) — she went to Vanderbilt, so she was actually really fucking smart — ‘if you are pretty and smart, the world is yours.’ If not that, her parents really wanted her to be a nurse (because they’re Filipino as fuck), so we could have figured that out, too.

Not to mention that I wouldn’t involve myself in a poly relationship. And this kind of like checklist I had wasn’t in any way fair to her. Caitlyn, I mean. I never mentioned any of it, explicitly, but throughout hundreds of hours worth of conversation I think she always knew where I was coming from, because I was honest. That’s why I operate without regrets most of the time. I make plain where I stand.

Our downfall, Caitlyn’s and mine, was not One Big Thing and it was not Death By A Thousand Paper Cuts. It was body blow after body blow after body blow, and the more time we spent together the more frequently I would have to absorb them. I think intellectually it never made any sense from my end, carrying on, but whenever it came to Caitlyn I was of the mind to do a complete 180-degree heel turn, as I had just gotten out of a situation where I shut down my entire world for one woman, and the equal and opposite reaction I thought seemed best, at the time, was to go against the instincts I felt that had very recently betrayed me. Essentially, the middle ground in my world ceased to exist.

This, I find, is the only way I’ve ever restored any kind of order in my life. Overcorrecting by doing something different before overcorrecting the overcorrection. Caitlyn was the overcorrection that required overcorrecting.

I’d even argue that she was confronted with a position that was particularly complex given that she was in a relationship with a guy she did not like, let alone love, who paid her bills and provided her with the Daddy treatment she always wanted, while simultaneously having very strong feelings for me, personally, even though I wasn’t in a position to drop everything and commit to her.

As a consequence of these varying factors, by the time she realized that she liked me, or dare I say Loved me, circa last July or so, she became a much different person towards me. She began to sweat the times I wasn’t able to see her, or when I would be off hanging out with other people. I lost track of my car in a parking garage in Los Angeles CA and we spent like a half-hour tracking it down and she laid into me something fierce and stormed off in and around the very seedy streets of Vermont and Broadway. I fucked up parallel parking my car with her one night and had to turn around and she flipped her shit and yelled at me for How Could You Be A Grown Man And Not Know How To Parallel Park. I would sometimes be sarcastic and joke with her, acting as the essence of who I am, always, and we would end up arguing for an hour about how insensitive and belittling I am towards her even though, as I would tell her, ad nauseam, ‘it was just a joke.’

In other words, she started to hate me for the things that made her originally like me. This was a very confusing reality for me to deal with because, just as I said earlier, about her being in a polyamorous relationship, where I assumed none of the risks and reaped all the benefits, with time it felt, ironically, as if the opposite were true. That I was assuming all of the turmoil of being in a relationship, that I was paying for the sins of her actual boyfriend, without the benefit of being able to throw my hands up and say Yo, You Aren’t My Girlfriend.

And she would say some incredibly hateful things to me, things no one has ever said and that I wouldn’t dream of saying to anyone — even people I dislike(d) with a passion. I knew she didn’t like mean them, the terrible things she would say, and more often than not she would offer the non-apology kind of apology, where she would say I said those things because I was upset, and so on, which is probably why I let it slide whenever those incidents did arise. By her logic, of course, she had free reign to say anything if she was upset. And in her eyes it didn’t count. Because she was upset.

Her main criticisms were that I wasn’t living in my own place, and that I was still living with and supporting my mom and brothers. She’d find various ways of laying into me about those two topics, specifically, which always felt like a pretty bizarre line of attack from her end given that I was honest and upfront about those things from literally the very first time we hung out. It isn’t like I was lying about my situation to her.

But I figure she really didn’t have a ton of material to shit on me about, which is why she resorted to the obvious — the lowest-hanging possible fruit. A lot like how a child would burst into fits or erupt when another kid took their toy away from them, that’s how Caitlyn would sometimes act at the slightest inconvenience. The further along her and I got, the more closely every day became to a coin-flip regarding her emotional outbursts: half the time she would be fine, the other half she would Find A Reason.

Her 50-50 nature did not jive well with my consistently laissez-faire attitude, because my mind is so often geared towards problem-solving, and so when all the negativity and personal blame got thrown around — let’s call it fifty per-cent of the time — my immediate instinct was always to break matters down to their simplest form. Where are we now, and where are we going? You are having an issue with me, so how do we solve this issue? I understand you are feeling a certain way, but whatever it is you are upset about was not my intention, so how can we resolve this? Etcetera.

In spite of her age, she was just so young, if that makes sense. When she was going through her hate-filled diatribes, and her uniquely aggressive spirals downward, she had no use for my grownup-speak and logic as a reasonable catalyst to get to the root of our issues. She had this fire inside of her that burned so strongly, and it was like until she got all of it out there was no stopping it. Never in my life have I feared a woman, a type of fear where I wondered about my own safety, and what she, Caitlyn, was capable of. But there were a few nights when I wondered.

She called me one afternoon, on one of my weekend days, last July or August. She was crying in an uncontrollable and hysterical manner while she drove on the freeway heading towards nowhere in particular having just gone through a fight with her boyfriend where things were thrown around the house and he threatened to call the police on her. I don’t know how the fuck other people live. I’m just a normal guy who had normal, loving parents, and violence and yelling and things being thrown were not something I knew about. I mean I know they happen, elsewhere, with other people, but not with the type of people I ever surround(ed) myself with. Of course I cared about her and wanted to help, so I was there for her.

She would pause every couple minutes and remove the phone from her face to let out a scream. She told me she wanted to kill herself, that she should just drive her car off a cliff. She didn’t know what to do, or where to go. She hated her boyfriend. She hated everything in that moment. And on the opposite end of the line I just told her to breathe in deeply, and breathe out, that everything was going to be okay, that she should drive to me, in Riverside CA, that we should go for a walk, that I could make everything better.

I stayed on the phone for about a half-hour until she pulled up in my driveway. I was outside on the bench, sitting down smoking on an American Spirit, not wanting to bring her in the house to involve any of my family members with whatever existential drama she was dealing with. And it was my weekend. I would have rather been doing other things. But she, Caitlyn, was cemented in my life at that point, and she didn’t have anywhere to go. I just wanted to do the right thing.

I gave her a hug and a kiss, upon her arrival, and we walked for about an hour under the evening summer sun around my neighborhood. I was mostly listening, because that’s what I do, and trying to be a calming influence. But I knew in some way, on that particular day, that I simply could not continue on in such a tumultuous situation with this woman. All of our cards, Caitlyn’s and mine, had already been played. I made it apparent that there was no way she should be in a relationship anymore with her boyfriend, that these types of days and nights would keep happening, and only get worse, etc.

Even that same night, after I helped weather her storm, so to speak, and Caitlyn and I made love in my room, for the very last time, I said some offhand remark (that I don’t remember and had absolutely no meaning whatsoever) and she went ballistic on me and began getting so loud that I had to remind her that my brothers were working in the morning and to Keep It Down. On the drive to Raising Canes some time later — because whenever she got started in on me it would take a half-hour, at minimum, before everything was under control again — she told me, again, how she just wanted to kill herself, or, if not, that she should check herself into a mental institute.

This is the part of the story where I say: With all of that said, I still miss the girl in some ways. Because I do think she has a good heart. I really do. Back then, only a year ago, which is of much greater significance in the life of a 23 year-old, the idea of one single year, I think Caitlyn’s biggest priority was to have a man who could provide for her at all costs. She sacrificed almost every element of her happiness and well-being to satisfy that drive, of getting ‘taken care of’ financially, while at the same time spending the moments she really cared about with me, giving me her best, for (I can only assume) those were some of the rare instances when she was at peace.

In an ironic twist of fate, it so happened that the man she was at peace with — yours truly — was the antithesis of her very own personal boyfriend. Not only was I older, and more mature. Not only did I refuse to egg her on, and try not to make matters worse during her lesser moments. Not only did I try to use my words, and actions, to prove to her that a better way was possible. I was the antithesis specifically because I was living with my mom and two brothers and viewed a potential, hypothetical relationship with her as a partnership.

Because as she told me, many times, she was with him to get taken care of, and he was with her because she was pretty and he couldn’t do better. That is how she saw her relationship. As someone who possesses enough self-awareness to know he (being me) is not anything special regarding physical looks, I still harbor this old-school type of traditional mentality on the one hand, and have enough of an ego on the other, to know I’m worth much, much more than how her boyfriend (of the time) viewed himself. Put another way, she was involved in a one-sided polyamorous relationship. She could do whatever she wanted, and he, being her boyfriend, didn’t have enough pull with the opposite sex to do whatever he wanted.

To be fair, while Caitlyn and I were together, in a manner of speaking, I know it was just the two of us. Or the three of us if you want to include her boyfriend. The only reason I feel confident in saying so is because the first time she and I had sex she gave me The Talk about how she doesn’t have any STD’s, so if she comes up with one she knew it would have been from my end. I didn’t have, and never have had, one of those, because I consider myself careful, but it was somewhat illuminating to have a stripper who was in an open relationship check me on something of that nature. It was an instant trust-builder.

After I/we cut off communications with one another, sometime in the late summer or early fall of 2023, Caitlyn and I didn’t speak for the longest time. She blocked me on her phone. Why, I don’t know. Every month or so she would pop in to send me a text calling me a narcissist, or other things of the like. And then I would respond with an ‘lol,’ or some facsimile from the same family tree, only to notice that the message was never delivered because she had already re-blocked me.

Then we spoke on the phone about a month ago, c. the end of May or beginning of June, 2024, and were on the phone for about an hour, randomly. She told me she had moved out from the place she was living at with her ex-boyfriend in Upland CA and that she moved to Orange County CA and had auditioned at a couple clubs in Las Vegas and she was really excited about it. Firmly supportive as I always am, I was happy for her. I told her I moved out to the desert and was living alone, and content, and for a sliver of time we kind of got back to our old ways. Laughing and having an overall nice conversation.

Then a couple days later she sent me a really long fucking text message telling me she peeked into my blog, the one you are reading right now, on Future Bets, and her text was so long that I only read the first couple sentences before I got the gist of what she was saying. She must’ve stumbled upon a section or two that was about her, and in my clear and honest approach I didn’t hold anything back about my actions and feelings. On my blog, that is. I guess I struck a nerve with her, or something, and she did not like what I had to say about her.

She’d already blocked me (again) by the time I’d responded — by simply saying: It wasn’t personal — which is exactly what I meant.

In the same way that evolutionary biologists do not care whether you are super religious and believe the earth is 6,000 years old, or if you take the word of the smartest people in the world and believe that homo–sapiens have been around for 150,000 or 250,000 years; in the same way that climate scientists do not care if you believe it’s a myth that the planet is getting unsustainably warmer, or if you take the word of the smartest people in the world and believe by the year 2050 that we’ll be in pretty rough shape, as a species; in the same way that basic mathematics do not care if you believe 2 + 2 = 5, or if you believe 2 + 2 = 4:

I did not write the things that I wrote, on here, about her, as a means of attacking her. I was illustrating the objective facts. At worst, one could argue that I was saying my own truth, from my perspective, as a purely subjective matter. I imagine it could hurt to read certain things when they involve you, personally, but my entire exercise as a writer and human being is to be a trustworthy voice. You can hate it, or you can love it, but feelings do not change facts.

Which is why I opened this blog by saying I am showing respect here. I am far from perfect and probably could have better handled my situation with Caitlyn by not inserting, and involving, myself in her life. It wasn’t the time for either of us. She was in the middle of a toxic relationship with somebody she didn’t love, and I was on the very backend of a situation where I loved someone who, ironically enough, didn’t love me back. Caitlyn and I each struggled while we were dating to make our ways back to the middle, to some calm, and normalcy, and instead we each chose to spin the roulette wheel, and roll the dice, and take our seats on the rollercoaster, with another person of the topsy-turvy variety instead of somebody safe — which likely would have been much closer to What The Doctor Ordered for the two of us.

When we were at our best, I loved the girl. I even told her so a couple times. Overnight we went from nothing to something. We were instantly comfortable with one another. We fell asleep in each other’s arms. We laughed at the same bullshit that most people don’t find funny because they don’t understand it. We woke up together. We cleaned together. We showered together. She got me out of my comfort zone on numerous occasions and I didn’t care because as long as I was with her, everything was fine. We saw sunsets. We saw the sun go down. And we listened to the train.

It did not last long, but it was real. How we held hands. How we shouted songs at the top of our lungs on the freeway traveling to or from somewhere entirely unimportant. How she correctly identified that I was terrible at taking pictures so she wouldn’t even ask. How we picked up lunch before heading off to the park for a picnic. How we went on the swings and down the slides. How we talked about the past, and the present, and the future.

I can bitch about her sometimes unnecessary vitriol, and lament that she was not very forgiving towards me in many ways, but Caitlyn was also single-handedly responsible for bringing me out of my slump. As a pocket psychologist I would tell anybody if they were given an appetite, and the ability to sleep, then they have all of the important items already checked off. I never wanted for either when I was with her.

So it’s unfortunate that she got upset with me over a handful of paragraphs about her on my blog, words that weren’t as agreeable towards her as she might’ve liked. I imagine it’s like that scene from an episode of Smart Guy (a show from way back in the day) when Marcus told his friend that he wasn’t sorry for what he said, he was sorry for how he said it. Practically speaking: I don’t think Caitlyn got mad at me (again) for the very objective, irrefutable facts that I presented. I think she was upset that she in some way had to revisit them. And some things, insofar as her and I are concerned, can’t be shared in a favorable light for no other reason than there isn’t a favorable way to put them.

I, on the other hand, choose to look at it differently. On some real Thanks For The Memories Shit, I’m aware that Caitlyn’s presence in and around my orbit made me a much smarter and stronger and more empathetic person. Because the more you see, and experience, the more you understand. The better off you are moving forward.

And I would challenge anyone to offer a more magnanimous interpretation of everything that transpired between us. Playback, delete, & rewind, and let everybody see. Show me the person who would comb through our history and decide that I was in the wrong, that I didn’t try to be comforting, and do as much as I could, through all her personal, oftentimes ad hominem attacks against me, and come out the other side — I did — wanting nothing more than to continue getting along.

Writing is therapy. Usually it serves to remind me of my own shortcomings, and acts as a way for me to reflect on the abundance of things I could do, or be doing, better. It’s the purest version of who I am, these words, because on here I leave myself no room to hide.

But it also allows me — sometimes, anyway — to realize that in some cases there is nothing else I can do. For I am not (and never have been) someone who is simply Happy To Be Here, who is willing to compromise what I feel to be worth, over anything, let alone a woman, and as a consequence there are occasions when I have to move on with my life.

So this is the topic I decided to write about for the month of July. I chose to write about the impact of another human being. In months past I tried to describe certain once-in-a-lifetime persons and the feelings and emotions that come with them. With Caitlyn, the impact I speak of arrives from a much more delicate place, one that is aware of just how random everything can be. That I decided one night to go to a strip club that I hadn’t been to in several months. That I found myself (as I do more often than I’d rather admit) alone. And that of all the people, and places, and things, that I could’ve been surrounded by on that particular night — in April or May — Caitlyn was the one who was There.

Nobody could have predicted where that specific conversation, that specific night, was going. I could very easily have been in the mood to drink away my sorrows and grab some titties and ass, and Caitlyn would have been fine with that, too. She could have been in the mood to keep it light and not go all the way in with me about the topic of depression, of which she, too, was going through, and could have played her tricks and if I wasn’t up for them, moved on to the next customer. I could have gone to Del Taco that night instead. She could have stayed in and not gone to work. Etc.

Here, again, we realize that these are the moments that in many ways make life worth living. Perhaps both of us, or neither of us, Caitlyn and I, wished for the reality that came thereafter, unannounced, knowing what we know now, but you, dearest readers, understand that that never was and never will be the way the universe operates. All those little, seemingly inconsequential decisions, and insignificant choices, bind together and add up and what comes from it are the reasons that these blogs ultimately get written. And there is nothing any of us can do about it.

The reason Caitlyn matters, and always will, is due to the fact that the highs were really fucking high. It isn’t every day that one gets to feel excited for something as basic as making a drive to see someone. It’s not a regular occurrence to just hang out (in a manner of speaking) and do nothing for hours on end, and not have to care about what else is going on in the world. It isn’t normal to have that type of connection with just anyone.

As the owner and operator of Future Bets, one must understand that when dating a 23 year-old, I was doing exactly that. I was making a bet on the future. On her future, and the potential role that I would assume within it. That in spite of all the bad times, all the red flags, and all the negatives that not only consumed us but, over time, swallowed us whole, those which Caitlyn and I inevitably capitulated to, I’m proud to have maintained a sort of steadiness throughout it all that isn’t becoming of me, and offered a degree of forgiveness towards her that I have never given to anyone, in hopes that she would pay off the bet. That she would grow up. That she would make the attempts to understand me in the same way I attempted to understand her.

And that’s okay. She will learn the lessons she needs to learn when it’s time for her to learn them. We all must advance in life by this trial of fire. What I tried to show her — and what I hope she does learn, whether from me or by some unforeseeable opportunity in the (near) future — is that not everything revolves around issuing blame elsewhere. That there are plenty of instances where communication breaks down and neither party is wrong. That there are plenty of other instances where both parties are, in fact, to blame. But that, regardless of if it’s both, or neither, insofar as blame goes, when you really care about somebody it doesn’t matter.

I won’t deny that I loved all the spice she provided my life. I enjoyed the excitement she gave me, and made me feel. I appreciated her physical beauty, her well-ahead-of-her-years intellect, the weighted ratio between her street smarts and book smarts, her laugh, her sense of humor, her intense and unwavering enthusiasm, the way she danced, the manner in which she got sexy when she wanted to, the way she could get really fucking cute, etc.

When it comes to us, Caitlyn and I, what comes to my mind is just being with her, sitting out on her little couch on the back patio of her old townhouse in Loma Linda CA, whether sweating beneath the morning or afternoon sun, watching the sun go down, or under total darkness. And I could listen to her tell me about her nights at the strip club. I could tell her about my days at the casino. We talked a lot about nothing, but we also talked a lot about the future. Where we would be. How she visit once I moved out to the desert. How we would find ways of seeing one another when she eventually broke up with her boyfriend and was living in Orange County.

I think it worked out exactly how it was supposed to. I did eventually move out to the desert, just as I said I would. And she did break up with her boyfriend and move to OC, just as she said she would. The only oversight we failed to acknowledge at the time, the minor detail that slipped through the cracks, is that we would no longer be a part of each other’s lives. So it goes.

Caitlyn was so far out of bounds compared to anybody I have ever known that I had no choice but to become smarter interpersonally, and more aware as a man dealing with a woman ten years younger than me (in case, you know, I need to use those skills again at some later date), of what I say, and what I do, and how I come across. She was a stripper. She was a firecracker. She was a big ball of energy. She was all the things that some mommas allegedly warn their sons about.

But she had my interest and attention. She had my affection. And she loved me, too.