Something So Familiar

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Viviane of The Sex Carnival asking whether she should add my blog to her list of the dearly departed sex bloggers. "No!" I practically screamed at my Gmail.

Her point, and that of several of you, dear readers, was well taken: it's been way long since I spent quality time, just me and my keyboard, pinging out the stuff that feeds your imaginations and dammit, makes me smile to read it over again. I could tell you that things have been busy at work (they have), or that I went to St. Moritz over the holidays (I did not, but I could tell you that), but the truth is that I've been very lazy and more than a little bit conflicted.

Lazy because, well, it's easier to stay in the habit of not writing than it is to forge a whole (almost) new one of writing more regularly.

Conflicted because I had this dream.

It was a couple of months ago, after a business trip with The CEO where we spent 42 hours together, about four of them sleeping. We went shopping, ordered room service in our swanky hotel, walked on busy streets in broad daylight and ducked into a bistro for lunch. That was the trip where he referred to himself in the third person as my boyfriend and it caught me off guard.

So, in the relevant part of my dream he and I are in his car and we go to pick up his two sons. I move to the back seat and start having a conversation with one of them. Then the CEO stops and runs into a shop to pick up something. Basically, I am tagging along for errand-running. The boys have some kind of practice, and he's dropping me off at my house. He pulls up, gives me a quick kiss, and as I am opening the door and stepping my foot onto the pavement I say, "'Kay, byeloveyou."

I know. I KNOW.

And as soon as she said it, the dream me clamped her hand over her mouth and omigodded.

Then of course, I woke up. Then of course, I freaked out. Am I seriously in love with The CEO? I mean, it would be alright to be in love with him if A) he wasn't married, and B) didn't pay me. That's WHY you look for a girl friday--or wednesday, as is often the case--to avoid emotional entanglements. And here I was getting emotionally involved.

Alright, so now I'm emotionally involved.

I told my friend who used to escort what happened, and I tried to think about what it really was that made me say such horrible things in my subconscious. It was, after all, a dream, and not necessarily meant to be understood literally. I decided that I'd explain it to myself as a natural progression of things; as in, I'm increasingly comfortable in his presence, and isn't that what people who are comfortable with each other do? Isn't that what people with a certain familiarity say to one another?

It's what I say to my friends when we hang up the phone or say goodbye on a street corner. Quick cheek kiss, hug, "loveyoubye!"

For about a week I was conscious of how many times The CEO and I spoke. I made myself let his calls go to voice mail and returned them later. I focused on my job and my friends and not on how much I would miss seeing him when he took his family to Australia over Christmas.

I didn't tell him about the dream. And apart from those ten days last month, we've seen each other for sex and familiarity every week, once a week. Sometimes twice.