The whole damned mess. And Alex too.

January 2009 is going to be a bit of a ride, and this post is going to be really long. Possibly a two-parter, so I suggest you go get a drink or a snack or something to get you through. If you have to pee, go now. I'll wait.

Now normally I would use this time to go over some of my New Year's resolutions, but I see no point to this. My resolutions for this year appear suspiciously similar to resolutions from last year. And the year before. Let's not judge.

This January though, I'll share a little bit about an event that's coming up that most people would find very exciting, whereas I'm already shopping for anti-anxiety medication just to get me through the next several months.

It all has to do with Alex. Well, a lot of it is Alex. Alex started as nothing special at all, about this time last year. January 2008 I was at work, procrastinating, much like now, and half-heartedly checking for responses to my brilliant, clever and enticing Plenty of Fish dating profile. I had none.

I was about to log-off and do something productive when I got an instant message from a guy named Alex, living in Redneckville somewhere in the Okanagan. He was shorter than me, but had an amazing smile.

Might as well write back, and I was feeling cheeky. I wrote back that he was shorter than me, lived in Redneckville somewhere in the Okanagan and why should I bother? Last January I was in no mood. Much like this January, but five pounds lighter. Alex asked me what could I possibly have to lose? Not much, and so we 'talked' for the afternoon.

Actually, we talked for the next eight months. On the phone, online, webcam, Facebook, flirting and goofing around. I would think to myself how funny/cute/interesting/awesome this guy is - too bad he's shorter than me and lives in Redneckville somewhere in the Okanagan.

Early on we agreed to tell each other everything. There would be no secrets, because there wouldn't be any point. We had nothing to lose, so if either of us were dating or just sleeping with somebody the other one would know about it - in detail.

We would feel comfortable telling each other every little thing. As you may assume, it was mostly Alex doing the dating and or sleeping around what with me being one of the Untouchables of the dating scene.

In between flirting with each other and more than often talking downright dirty with one another, we talked through Alex building his house, switching careers, the death of his grandmother, countless girls coming and going, my relationship problems, dating stories, my debating whether to go back to school and on through the summer.

Mostly we flirted though, and that's all it ever was until Alex started making some serious plans to come visit me. This was a problem -- because I had a secret.

Until then, Alex had been the perfect outlet for me. Entertaining as hell, ridiculously attractive and located in another city. I could never think of having anything more with him because of geography...and Alex being a total man-whore.

Don't get me wrong - I say this with respect. In fact, I say this with awe. Somewhere in this world, Hugh Hefner has awoken in his bed, surrounded by 20 year-old identical blond triplets, shaken his fist at his mirrored ceiling and raged because he knew that somehow, Alex was topping him in a big way.

Alex sleeps with many women. It's what he does. Some people watch TV, listen to music to unwind - Alex has sex. With whomever. Whenever. I know this, because he tells me.

It's not as if he's movie star handsome (I think he's gorgeous but friends who've seen his picture on Facebook think he's "OK...I guess") and although nothing surprises me anymore, I'm pretty certain there isn't any activity in his life that would inspire groupies, and yet - Alex gets more poon-tang than a rock-star and pro-athlete combined.

He's charming, and he loves women. He makes his living through commission sales, so you have to know he has a bit of a gift with people in general. Women on the other hand, are a special interest.

I should have seen what was coming when I started feeling a twinge when he'd talk about some girl he was dating. Any girl he slept with (the stripper, some girl at a stag party, his step-mother's niece, a nutritionist, some clients, and on, and on...) didn't rattle me at all.

It was only when he said the words, "this girl I'm dating," that something in my chest would spasm. Just a teensy tiny bit - nothing that couldn't be ignored at all, and that's just what I did.

I ignored it.

Well. Not entirely. Alex would occasionally complain about whatever girl he was dating, and seek some support. As a friend, I provided support...and sometimes advice.

(It's not my fault that there were obvious problems with these girls he'd talk about, so I can hardly be blamed for making him see that these girls were not right for him at all and he really shouldn't take the relationship any further, because he deserved much better.)

(OK - fine. I knew exactly what I was doing, but to be fair I didn't suggest anything he wasn't thinking about already. If things were perfect, he wouldn't have been complaining to me and I wouldn't have had a viable point to make.)

(In my defense, I always told him how to let them down nicely. I even told him he shouldn't do it over the phone in one instance and that it was cruel to tell one girl it was because she was like a corpse in bed so really, I was helping these girls.)

(Oh shut-up. They would have broken up anyway. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

So like I said, this went on for a long time, and even though I felt a tiny little spasm somewhere in the chestal region when it seemed he was getting serious with one of his many, many women - it was nothing to be alarmed about. It was under control.

Until he started making noises about coming to visit that is. It actually wasn't as though I was concerned he wouldn't find me attractive or that we wouldn't get along in person - I knew that he would, and that we would.

The problem was what he would be expecting of me once we were alone, and the one thing we never talked about, because I had no reason to ever tell him.

It's a secret I haven't told many people at all, and I'm not sure why. It's not something one would sky-write about, but then I'm the same person who told the entire Internet that I fooled around with a guy who ended up stealing my vibrator so you'd think I couldn't feel shame.

I've written in the past about some health problems I've had and how difficult it has been to find a diagnosis or to find a doctor who cares. The truth is, I've known what's been wrong; I know what caused the problems but I just can't find anybody to help me.

In August of 2007 I went to a friend's birthday party and we went dancing. I had consumed a couple of beverages and was feeling good. I sat down next to a good-looking blond guy near the dance floor and that's the last thing I remember of that whole night and quite a bit of the next day.

Well - not entirely. I have flashes of memory and can piece together what happened. The rest I can only imagine when I really want to make myself feel sick.

Long horrible story short, or just beginning actually - when I came to the next day I had a fracture in my pelvis and enough trauma down there to make one doctor comment months later that I presented as somebody who had once given traumatic birth.

Physically, it's been so slow to heal that I wonder if it ever will. The injuries I ended up with triggered a chronic pain condition. According to one doctor's explanation, the physical trauma tripped a breaker in my nerve endings. The nerve endings that sense pain won't shut off, and nobody knows what to do.

Being a person who consistently leaves the oven on, the hair straightener plugged in and the space heater blasting on high with nobody home - I can understand the stance my nerve endings have chosen to take. However, it's been terribly inconvenient. Actually, it's just been terrible.

Taking care of the physical was obviously a priority. There was nothing else that could be done, and believe me I've thought about it. I don't know who that sorry motherfucker was, and I never will. There was however, one other small problem that had to be dealt with, and that was trying to stay sane.

I found myself being unnaturally terrified of contracting a sexually-transmitted disease. If I kissed a guy good-night after a date I would spend weeks afterward checking my mouth for sores. This isn't an exaggeration, so imagine the terror any time I went any further?

After having spent so long with something so terribly wrong with my nether regions and doctors taking so long to make any kind of diagnoses at all, I convinced myself I had all of them. Multiple diseases. That had to be what was wrong. I must have contracted every STD known to man and woman and then developed some hybrids.

It stands to reason. Doctors couldn't tell me how to help myself and so I kept on suffering without knowing why. My poor little brain jumped in with its own conclusions - horrible conclusions.

It took months just to find a doctor who discovered that I was actually cut open where you can't stick a band aid, and it was bad enough to keep opening on its own. No other doctor told me this when they looked at me, and the doctor who finally noticed was female.

This was really just one minor episode in my quest to get myself sorted. Along the way my pelvis had triggered my back to sprain and I couldn't even stand to touch myself in the shower so learning such a small thing after so long was par for the course, but just an example of the quality of medical care available if you're a woman with a problem.

When I asked this female doctor if other doctors should have seen it, she said that sometimes some doctors don't know how to see what they're seeing. Very profound, but not helpful to somebody who had developed a sexual phobia after months of pain and being told I was crazy.

So there I was. All this time I had been talking hot and heavy with Alex, making him think I would be Jenna Jameson on Ecstasy if only we could meet and I was too afraid and too injured to follow through and Alex was wanting to come visit me for a weekend.

Obviously, since this past summer my physical health has improved thanks to a pain medication this brilliant and wonderful female doctor was able to prescribe. The pain is still there, but it's manageable now. The phobia is still there, but manageable now too.

(Particularly if you're a hot firefighter who assumes I want to go slow just because I'm adjusting to the wife situation - that's not the reason at all, but it's working for everybody. Especially me. It's been wonderful to feel something other than pain down there, even though my shrink does not approve.)

(And I haven't even told my shrink about the wife part. She's rather conservative. Oh well. You have to know I'm feeling slightly better when I'm disobeying the advice of authority figures, particularly ones who think I should not have any kind of sex for at least two years. Obviously this shrink doesn't have a clue about the Bambi before this incident, or how hot this guy looks in his uniform. And out of it. Anyhoo...)

I had to tell Alex something. I had to tell him not to come visit, or stop talking with him completely or...something. My shrink did not approve of my contact with Alex either. She was fascinated by my interest in somebody whose promiscuity could have me afraid to touch his hand. I couldn't help her figure that one out, because all he'd been was somebody to flirt with and so she suggested how I could end it.

Alex and I had sworn no secrets, so I would stop keeping them. I was going to tell him the truth - every little thing. I was going to tell him about why he terrified me and all the reasons why he couldn't touch me. Why nobody could.

I was going to demand he get tested for STDs before we met and I wanted to see the paperwork. I might even want to meet with his doctor and order an MRI of the patient's genital region.

Alex was a womanizing, shallow charmer who wouldn't want anything to do with me because why would he want that trouble? He was looking for some fun, not some problems. I'd talk, he'd back away slowly and I'd resign myself to missing our fun conversations.

And that would be that...right?