Ten years later, I’m in a different city, and deeply, thoroughly smitten with someone who is basically THE last word in wonderful…and yet…today, hatefully lugging a different 2000 lb. bag of dirty clothes down the sidewalk to a different laundromat, I couldn’t help but try to remember…was he ugly? Maybe we could have worked something out.

The counselor asked about the breakup first. The woman I’d been dating, I explained, had pulled some nonconsensual behavior in the bedroom, like she had done stuff that I had specifically said I did not want to do, told me how much she wanted to do it while physically restraining me, and pressured me to do other things on my No list. I was having trouble sleeping, and was dealing with related PTSD issues.

This counselor is transgendered. Based partially on her appearance, but mostly on what she said next, I’m guessing that she is probably at the beginning of living outwardly female.

“I’m very pro-woman,” she began.

Well, that’s good, I thought to myself, considering that you are one.

She continued, “Sometimes we just expect women to be better. We expect more of them.”

Now, a brief look at the rest of my dating history might indicate that I was disabused of that fantasy a looooooong time ago – and let’s not even get into my relationship with my mother. I remembered how completely stoked I was when I first came out, high on the heady power of Doing It With Girls and the pure, clear desire to smash the patriarchy. Women were SO GREAT! …Until some of them were jerks just like everyone else sometimes. Right. I wondered what had happened to all my Hole and 7 Year Bitch tapes and recalled how weird it was to see all the baby dykes at the 2006 Team Dresch reunion show jumping up and down knowing all the words. When I tuned back in, I found myself half bitter and jaded, half envious of her optimism and certainty that ladies were the last word in awesome. Though I could tell that she wasn’t going to be helpful with the breakup/sexual trauma issues, I hoped she might have some insight into my lack-of-job problems.

I was feeling the full brunt of the recession, I told her: I was sending out resumes daily and not even getting calls back on my copy editing resume – something I’ve been doing professionally for over 15 years. I said that I had signed up with five different employment agencies and called them regularly, combed 10 job boards every weekday, had contacted just about everyone I knew who might need my skills, and that the best luck I’d had was a one-day-a-week gig at a seedy real estate office pulling mystery items out of plastic garbage bags and “filing” them for $10/hour. I felt trapped and scared I was going to end up living in a box under the freeway – and not even a nice freeway.

“Have you heard of Viktor Frankl?” she asked.

The name rang a faint bell; she told me that he was a Jewish psychologist, a contemporary of Freud’s who had ended up in a concentration camp. He’d survived to write a book describing his time there – some days, she said, he spent just moving rocks from one pile to another. The next day he’d moved them back. And yet, he managed to have good days, happy feelings, even in what was one of the worst situations a human being could endure.

I took stock of her small nose and non-Jewish last name, wondering where this could be going.

She paused. Leaned forward. Folded her hands. Then told me, so genuinely and kindly:

“Welcome to Auschwitz.”

In the moment following, while my mind was IMPLODING BECAUSE THAT HAPPENED, she noted that our session was over, and asked when I’d like to come back. Numb, I mumbled something about calling the office to set up an appointment later (lies); she mused, “I saw one client who said she’d do that and she never came back, and I never found out why.”

Amazingly, since following that client’s lead, I’ve been much happier. The nightmares stopped, I found a job, and started dating someone with healthy sexual boundaries. I haven’t been back for counseling since.

On marriage: “You have to start out balls-to-the-wall, because it only goes downhill.”

“Hey–”

Here it comes, I thought.

“Hey, ladies, you got five dollars?”

We stood there frozen in confusion, my hand up her shirt.

And before either of us could say, “…What?” he noticed what we were doing, apologized for bothering us – “Sorry, sorry,” and ran along his merry way.

Thank you, tiny shorts hobo man, for doing your part to maintain a pleasant evening.

Did I mention he sent this at 6:45am on a Monday?

Insult to injury: While we were involved, this fellow never bothered to try to make me come, even after I’d given him the manual (so to speak) on How To Make What The Pork’s Personal Areas Happy. Several times! He’d just kind of sigh, “Someday…I’ll figure it out…” YOU DON’T HAVE TO “FIGURE IT OUT” IF I JUST TOLD YOU, DUDE.

(6:45am!!!!)

…

A girl pal once told me about her guy friend – whom she’s never thought of as anything but platonic – texting her after she’d dropped him off one night: She should turn around and come over, because he wanted to have fun with her right then. All casual-like.

Had she given him any vibes? I asked. No. Nothing. Her personal areas have always been stone cold dead for him, so there’s no way she could have been sending out even subconscious “proposition me” messages.

…

A few years ago I was actually ON a date with another girl, driving through Griffith Park while the Greek was setting up for a show. Somehow we ended up trapped in a maze of orange cones (okay, I know how, it’s because I wasn’t paying attention, I was driving along going hmmmm…cones…wonder who’s playing tonight…) and this not unattractive male stranger moved a cone so I could maneuver my distracted self and my lady out. I thanked him; he responded: “So how about your phone number?”

…

I’ve heard some people (thus far, only men) say they see dating as a numbers game. Like if it takes 10 Nos to get to that Yes, then they want to get all the No-ing out of the way as quickly as possible in order to attain that beautiful, coveted Yes.

In that vein, here are some equations for everyone out there playing this way:

0 orgasms + 0 post-breakup conversation = 0 booty calls

0 context + 0 politeness = 0 digits

This is pretty basic math; if you’re interested in digging deeper I’d recommend courses in risk analysis and actuarial science.

Or if you’re more the literary type, skip all those numbers and make your dating advisor King Lear:

“Nothing will come from nothing.”

LITERALLY.

She laughed.

“Seriously, he shouldn’t, he’s the third person I’ve slept with in the last six months. Granted, one of them was I was seeing monogamously, and the other one I’ve dated on and off for almost 10 years and I just had my annual and I’m totally healthy for now but STILL! Six months! I could be disease-riddled from head to toe!”

She laughed again: “You have to start advertising yourself as a bigger whore then, because the second guys perceive that, they bag that shit.”

As I absorbed her advice, I thoroughly regretted not having bought the thrift shop teeshirt I’d seen just hours prior – black, emblazoned in hot pink I’VE GOT THE NIPPLES, WHO’S GOT THE BUTTER? I sighed and hiked my knee-length skirt a little higher to compensate.

A recent date – first generation American, raised by Israelis – pulled some business I did not appreciate, and I let him have it – probably more forcefully than I would have normally, except he’d already pulled it on a prior hookup, and once attempted to get rubbed on without a condom, twice shy and all that. Well, twice not shy: Like I said, forceful. Loud. GETTING MY POINT ACROSS IN ALL CAPS, WHY WOULD YOU TRY TO DO THAT AGAIN WHEN I TOLD YOU I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO DO THAT LAST TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PS, nothing fuels the flames faster than someone soothingly telling me to “relax.” I GUARANTEE YOU TELLING ME TO “RELAX” IS NOT GOING TO MAKE ME RELAX LO B’SEDER UNATTENDED SUITCASE!!!!!!!!!!!FIRE!!!!!!!!!!

Once he started responding to all my “WHY!!!!!”s – which did in fact make me relax – he admitted that his usual boudoir MO involved a grab-and-go, get-it-while-you-can technique. That, I observed, is hallmark of a man who usually sleeps with girls uncomfortable discussing their sexual needs. He nodded. He told me about girls who never said yes until they said no, or who never said no but never said yes either, or who sometimes said no meaning yes and yes meaning no. I told him that I am comfortable talking about sex whether it’s yes or no – I had been saying yes and no all along, right? Right, he confirmed – and I told him: I will never make you wonder. And he promised me: I will never try that again. We talked for a long time after that about men and women and sex and love and boats and cats, my legs tucked next to his, his palm warm against my ankle.

Later that evening I made reference to our argument. Completely serious, he asked, “What argument?”

“You know. When I was screaming up in your face.”

“You were screaming?”

Was he joking?

…He wasn’t.

And in that moment I realized: The all-caps Sabra experience provides first-rate training for encounters with super angry women. To someone else, I might have been dismissed as a raging, hot-faced poisonous she-devil of a c-word; to him, I merely had something to say.

I had to respect that. I slipped him a little diasporic tongue in celebration of conflict.