First Dates

It was warmer than I'd expected last night. Spent the evening distracted from my surprising nervousness by episodes of bad teen drama and fortified by a strong drink, my hands stopped shaking long enough to perfectly straighten my hair. Dressed slowly. Choose everything carefully, meticulous to keep me from thinking about the night. Playing Saturday over in my head. I exhaled and locked the door behind me.

Down the road and I could see him through the window, head bent, reading. His presence surprised me, despite my best efforts I was two minutes late at most. He had told me that he was always late and I smiled. Stood, an awkward hug, and left to get me a drink. I sat down and steadied myself.

The night went well, relatively smooth, and while not the best first date I've ever had, it was a far cry from the worst. A few lulls in conversation, as one could expect between relative strangers who spent almost twelve hours in bed together on the weekend. This seems the story of my life... flashback to some time last week, coming out of the library and running into my erstwhile one-night-shared-stand, awkwardly talking to him because we both felt we should talk, even though we had nothing to say to each other and nothing shared really except my moment of self-destruction and a certain someone. Anyways. The point is that I thought it was all going well, until he muttered what every potential lover/girlfriend/insert-relationship-term-here hates to hear: "I need to talk to you."

So back to my house where we sat in separate chairs and talked. He opened badly, "I don't want a relationship." Flashback to January, sitting on separate chairs with McGill and hearing the same phrase. The voice in my head piped up through my mouth, "so do you mean 'I don't want a relationship' or 'I don't want a relationship with you." His answer wasn't clarifying the situation, 2nd mistake, and I chose not to pursue it. See how it went. So we chatted out the details, which boiled down to his discomfort and conflicting desires: to be 'good' in every sense - sorry sweetie, after Saturday, that one's off the table. And you didn't want to pretend it never happened. I told him as long as he was honest. Honestly, he'd had a good time and wanted to see me again before he left town, but probably couldn't stay at mine. I cut the bullshit (hats off to Krista) and leveled with him. I understood completely, but wouldn't mind if he stayed for a little while. He said he really wanted to... the voice in my head reminded me, what man turns this down? But we didn't, and it was my responsible reminding at that.

So we'll see. I have a feeling that I'm feeling I shouldn't get my hopes up, but perhaps that's just my inner cynic finally kicking in (nods to DPG, perhaps I can guard myself after all, it just took years of emotional beatings). I have hopes. He's sweet and quite funny, and noticed the way I held my beer like a child... which in and of itself is a reason to see him again.

On a side note, had a totally bizarre dream that involved the apocalypse, my brother, and stealing walkie talkies from stores before the shit really hit the fan (shit in the context of the end of the world being roaming gangs of toughs out to steal our canned goods)... also something about hiding from someone and driving off into the night. I had an overactive subconscious.