I can feel Bear was slightly surprised I didn’t want to have sex. Didn’t want to use us coming together again – despite the fact that he’s living with his girlfriend now – to have sex this calendar year.  
To make 1995 a bit less rotten, a bit less lonely, by ticking off that I had intercourse so at least it wasn’t a total failure.    
But I just couldn’t.        
For multiple reasons really.

First of all, because by now I’ve made my peace with being single again. It’s okay to have a shitty year if the man you’ve been with for five years breaks up with you. Even when it was only a loose tie in terms of commitment.      
It’s okay to mourn that.
I have no desire to mark this year as any different than what it was, by making up for it in November or December.       

And I told Bear that much, that I was okay with becoming a lover, you could even call it I was okay with becoming “the other woman”, but not this year.             
I told him that much.    

What I did not tell him was that December in particular, as the month we would reboot our affair, had been a very mixed bag right from the start in 1989.    

We had been on a date, not even a proper date it was coffee in a cafe. I had told him I was looking for a lover because I had been single since spring and had been unsuccessful creating a sex life for myself.       
I was still a virgin.         
I needed someone skilled and patient. Skilled sexually and patient with my Aids phobia. Although I loved oral sex, I frequently panicked afterwards, and could almost black out for days.
It was like the entire world would disappear behind a fog of loneliness and despair. I needed someone who was not going to freak out by that. Not in a way of calling me stupid, but also not in a way of frantically looking for reassurance that we had been “safe” and that everything was alright.      

I needed someone who understood sex and in particular safe sex, was multifaceted. Someone who could resist dumbing it down.          
Bear had proven to be that partner.        
But in December 1989, things had not looked good.

Despite our first date being very business-like, and two dates where we kissed and cuddled a lot;          
He had dropped out of communication second half of December or around Christmas.        
I don’t know why.

Maybe he had a girlfriend he had not told me about. Someone who wanted his attention. Or maybe he was having second thoughts, now that he had a better understanding that I was indeed not the merry go lucky girl so many people thought I was.  
That there was darkness and doubt, and so much fear within me.

The fact that we had not had sex yet, did take the sharpest edges off his withdrawal. But I don’t think I ever forgave him. There was always distrust, that whenever his normal life called him, I would not be included in that.             
I remember my holidays being very lonely that year, and certainly didn’t have that glow anymore of having found him, and of negotiations and our first kissing dates having been so great.         
I feared I had lost him. 
In January he contacted me, and we picked it up where we had left off.
Neither one spoke of December.

But when late November and early December, we were kissing and cuddling again, I had no desire to take it any further than I had six years ago.        
I’ll just wait until January.