Mr. Unavailable #111: Bridging the Chasm

See Could it Be?, It's Not Him, It's Me, The Recovery, We're Just Not That Into Each Other, The Continuation, The Curse is Broken, Unfortunately, The Make-Up Date, The Phone Call, The Negotiation, Dates 9 Through 12, Dates 13 Through 15 and The Public Sex Talk for the background on this one.

Pre-Date: After the way the previous date ended, I was feeling rather unsteady about things. I had sent him an email earlier in the week saying I wanted him to share the hosting duties and I wanted to stay at his place over the weekend. I'd never seen it--because he has a roommate and lives in Harlem. (Earlier in the relationship, this detail made my friends wonder if he were married. That and his aversion to calling me. Kevin's girlfriend, who only knew I'd never seen his place said, "That's weird that you've never seen his place--unless he lives in a dump in Harlem." Touche.)

There was another little nagging voice in the back of my head. #111 had a volunteer gig every Friday at a bookstore near my apartment, but he never stopped by or talked about meeting up afterward or invited me to come visit. For a long time I just thought he had strong boundaries, but I was beginning to wonder if those boundaries were so strong I was never going to get inside them.

Date #17 (Saturday, mid-August): We made plans to go to P.S. 1 and then a Greek restaurant in Queens that he knew about. When he came over, again, there was a massive chasm. I thought it was me. Was I just nervous? He was definitely distant. It made me feel like everything about me was wrong--my hair, my dress, everything. He didn't compliment me at all. Sitting on my sofa, he was incredibly distant. "He's going to break up with me," I thought. We left for the museum and things slowly got better. Slowly. Even in the museum, though, I felt it. I resisted the urge to ask him if something was wrong. We wandered the museum, but there was a definite lack of closeness. At the restaurant, too, I felt like I was on a first date, or something similarly anxiety-inducing.

After dinner, we stopped and got sweets and then went back to his place--where things finally got better. I was in his space. In his room, I looked at all the things on his walls. They were arranged in clusters, like a college kid in a dorm would decorate. Little notes, little news articles, random bits, a few posters. And all his furniture was crammed in there. His roommate was gone, so we tested his bed out. After, we donned a couple of t-shirts in case his roommate came back and laid in bed. It was the sweetest moment. He was lying across my legs just sort of playing with the bedspread and telling me about his family. It wasn’t what he was saying but the way he was saying it. He was so comfortable and at ease. There was something truly intimate there. "Hey, beautiful," he said. "Hey, handsome," I said. He laughed. "I guess we make a pretty good-looking couple," he said. "We do," I said.

The next morning, we rode the train downtown to go to Remedy Diner for breakfast. Maybe it was just me, but even on the subway, it seemed like he went away again a little bit. It's like he goes in and out, because at the diner, once we got talking, he was fine again. On our way out, I asked him what he was doing for Labor Day weekend and he said, "Nothing. What do you have in mind?" I told him that Heidi offered up her house in the Hamptons and all we'd have to do was rent a car. He said that sounded like fun.

Red Flags: All the on-again, off-again distance.

Diagnosis: I don't think it was just me flinching. I was just revealing it physically. I think he mentally flinched whenever he saw me, too. Maybe he was nervous, too, or unsure of himself, or scared of his feelings, or something.