re: regrets

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a young friend. He’s a smart guy, whip-smart, sharp as a scalpel, altogether too clever, dark and skinny-hott, topped with unruly hair and lots of highly creative facial hair. He’s so young that I can look at him and appreciate his impressive assets without feeling particularly invested in them, or him. Looking at him is more like looking at a different species than it is looking at my own, yet I recognize this boy’s unquestionable hottness.

The boy in question had recently been to a Cat Power show. He was incandescent with the discovery that as he’d stood and undoubtedly swayed significantly in the front row, Cat had been into him. He described meaningful eye contact with the singer. He told how, at the end of the show, when he’d reached out his hand for that show-trophy of a song list, she’d giving him the international one-finger sign for wait a moment, then had gone to retrieve a list from one of her backing musicians and placed it into his hand, as she punctuated the experience with yet more meaningful eye contact.

So, I asked the boy, did you try to hook up with her?

“No way,” he said, “she’s like 36! She’s twice my age!” he said, aghast at the contretemps.

I sat and smiled. Ah, it’s better to regret the people you have done than the people you haven’t, I may or may not have said at the time. I like to think I did say it, but it may be merely esprit d’escalier, or something like it. If I didn’t say it then, I’m saying it now, and I’ve certainly said it a few times in the past couple of weeks, making it all real enough for me.

Since I’ve decided that I did in fact tell the boy that I experience more regret for the almost than regret for the actual, I’ve spent some time deciding whether or not it’s in fact true, and not just a really good, if racily modern, aphorism. I’ve come to the solid conclusion that these are words I’ll stand by, and not only because they sound like something Oscar Wilde or Truman Capote might have said. I’ve decided that I’ll stand by them because in my considerable experience, they weather veracity’s mettle.

I’ve fucked a lot of men, and I’ve fucked a handful of women. Of all of them, all of that multi-hued, heaving, steamy mass of humanity who have known me in a biblical way, if occasionally in a Sapphic one, there are very few I remember with anything approaching regret. I suppose I regret losing my virginity as I did if only because I didn’t exactly forthrightly choose it. I would have preferred doing it for the first time not completely hammered on PBR and with a guy I really neither liked nor respected. In an ideal world, there would have been less beer and more amity.

I guess absolutely regret Todd, or Taaaaahhhhhhhhd, as my mind always calls him. I regret getting involved with him at all because he was a cruel, stupid man who did his utmost to make me feel badly about myself. I regret not merely fucking him; I regret staying with him for ten months. My pigheaded commitment to this man testifies loudly to my pitiable self esteem at the time. I knew he was an ass, and even though I had this voice that announced to me repeatedly Taaaaahhhhhd’s extreme assholery, I chose not to listen. La, la, la, I sang to the voice, hands clapped over my ears, as I sallied once more into the ass fray. I regret that whole ten-month period.

I kind of regret fucking that jazz pianist who didn’t like to kiss. I’ve never been intimate with a person who didn’t like to kiss before, and that was a singularly odd experience. I don’t know if I full-out regret it, however, because as weird as it was, I really haven’t experienced any deleterious effects from that short-lived silliness. Also in the category of semi-regret, I guess I kind of regret Armand, the guy who tried to make me feel badly about having particularly juicy genitals. There are a couple of other dudes I’d throw into the slumgullion of semi-regret, but as I slept with them at most once or twice, it hardly seems worth the effort.

And yet, real, panging regrets, while I have a few, they have not been too few to mention. There are, actually, three, or maybe five. They are, to a one, a person who gave me the opportunity to intimacy, and yet I did not avail myself of it. One is Vlad, the Would-Be Impaler. I fervently wish I’d responded to his attempts to seduce me. I could, even now, bang my head against an unyielding surface for not recognizing that when he was sucking my toes in the hot tub, Vlad was trying to bed me. I could bang my noggin twice as hard when I recollect that he tried again that time he massaged my fingers in the dance club. I don’t know what kind of somatic aphasia I was experiencing during those two evenings, but I don’t believe I’ll ever forgive myself for my complete lack of reaction. I might as well have been a girl in a coma for all my response. I really regret that.

I regret too not continuing to date Malik Yoba when I had the chance. My regret has nothing to do with his later celebrity (he’d only been cast in Cool Runnings when we dated; he had not yet made the film), and it has everything to do with the fact that once more I failed to recognize a man’s inherent sexy motherfuckerness, and that I chose a lame worm-boy over the tall and stalwartly virile Malik Yoba. I regret that decision. I can, as I’ve said before, be a complete doofus.

I regret not dating this gorgeous brunette who’d I’d met in a Lansdowne Street dance club on girls’ night in Boston in 1984. I gave her my phone number, but when she called, I was inexplicably rude to her; I really regret not giving her the proper time of day along with a heaping side dish of my pussy. Similarly, I regret just sitting in her car and not putting the mad moves on My Michelle that Wasn’t, another gorgeous brunette. I wish I’d enjoyed the physical and emotional experience of both of these women, and I kick myself with passion for foregoing them, even if it’s a metaphorical kicking.

There are a couple more people I regret not having done and known when I had the chance to do and know them, I’ll keep them to myself. I like to hold a couple secrets close to my bosom, if only so that I can take them out later to look at in wonder at my own lead-headedness.

Looking at this roster of hads and had-nots, I stand by my putative statement to the boy. It’s better to regret those you’ve fucked than those you have not. Or, as another wise person once said, It’s better to have loved and lost than to have done eleven loads of laundry. It might have been Salvador Dali, but what do I know? I never fucked him either. I kind of regret that.

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Comments

[Em]

Ouch, you passed up Malik Yoba? You poor dear. I feel your pain on the complete and utter doofusness front.

Kisses,
Em xoxo

[Rich]

I love your mind. I have reflected many times over my life choices; there are many decisions I regrect for the consequences I paid, none more difficult to bear than the road not travelled. You speak elloquently of the only regrets I lament.
I keep coming back to pretty dumb things because you are so insightful. ILY

[DesiCouples]

"I experience more regret for the almost than regret for the actual"

How true! There is one women in particular; it was so close, I caressed her and kissed her, she touched me but yet it didn't happen, and I regret not having touched her intimately and kissed her lips that are south of her naval! I remember her so much more distinctly then the women I have been with.

But then, when I am alone, of all the women I can think of, of all the women I have shared horizontal space with, I sometime think of her and get hot and bothered!

Its the "almost" part that keeps the eroticism alive and burning; there was no closure, the door remained ajar.. I am sure if we had indulged that evening, I probably would have forgotten about her.

[MJ]

OK, now we know the identity of your famous secret crush - it isn't Terry Teachout, it's Eliot Spitzer!

[BlueBoy]

The only girl I regret making love to is my best friends sister. Not because of her, but because he was such a good friend.

The love of my 18 year old life once asked and I refused for some inexplicable reason-- fear, guilt, or a sense of being not worthy. We have both moved on to long term marriages. I wonder if our spouses would be willing to accept that coupon. I assume there is is an expiration date and even if there wasn't I wouldn't risk my current life.

A college girlfriend once offered make-up sex with her and her roommate. I was still mad at her and refused.

I too wasted my virginity on a drunken hook-up. I suspect that it is a smaller loss for a boy, but I wish I had accepted the love of my life's offer.

[badinfluencegirl]

i heard it put like this: "it's not the things you do in life you regret, it's the things you don't do."

and by that light what you regret is not sleeping with todd but your lack of self respect... you know what i mean.

anyway yeah, i think you're right... but there are some men i didn't fuck that i'm delighted about so...

[rt]

Puts me in mind of Kristin Hersh's song, "Your Dirty Answer." She sings:

My fantasies are unlived histories
You know what it's like when mistakes go unmade

And I too understand the sentiment. Great writing, as always.