See The Imprinter, Business or Pleasure?, Spellbound, No Picnic in the Park, Squatter Love, Who Falls First?, Trouble and Purgatory for the background on this one.
It’s amazing how holding a man at bay only serves to bring him closer. After being grumpy and distant with #126, he called me the next night to ask if he could use my computer—and then maybe we could go get food, he said. My grumpiness had waned with a good night’s sleep and a reality check: he’s leaving, he’s not boyfriend material, it’s just supposed to be fun.
When he came over, he sat next to me on my sofa as I did a quick search for mattresses online. Then he said he wanted to get a bike, so I looked at Craigslist and sent a message to someone with a bike. After that, he wanted to buy a ticket for Burning Man. He pulled out his credit card and said he wasn’t good at online forms, so I started filling in his information. When we got to his address, he got confused and didn’t know which one to use.
“Where does your bill come?” I asked.
He couldn’t work out the right billing address—he was here…he used his card there…he was going to live in Arizona…where did his bill go? He tried his 2nd Street address in New York. Rejection.
“Oh, that’s right. I guess my bill still goes to New Mexico.”
Maybe my impression from James’ birthday—that he was an idiot-genius—wasn’t far off. Becoming a vet? No problem. Putting his address into an online form? Forget it.
After we bought his ticket, I put down my computer and said, “Are we done with our tasks?”
Sex with #126 is interesting. The last time, we never made it off the sofa; this time, my feet never touched the floor. It’s a big difference from a year ago when #111 never even carried me to the bed—we always got up and walked, and usually he went first.
This time, just like the last few times, there was potential for a happy ending, but it stayed at potential, so, once more, I feigned my way to the finish. Because our original plan was computer tasks and maybe food, we headed out and just started walking. Neither of us was really hungry, so we wandered in the direction of Thompkins Square Park. On the way, we were talking comfortably about our various aches and pains and I said, “Doesn’t it feel like we’ve met before?”
I’d been thinking it for a while, wondering if we had. Something was very comfortable about being with him. Even when he acted weird, it didn’t bother me. Maybe it was that way because I knew he was going away. I couldn’t think of a time when we’d met. Maybe it had been in a past life.
As soon as I posed the question to him, he stiffened.
“Oh, maybe we have,” he mumbled, increasing the distance between us by about an inch. Fortunately, if he felt a little cornered by my question, I didn’t care. I just chuckled to myself and changed the subject.
When we got to the park, a huge crowd was sitting in front of a screen watching "Raging Bull." We sat toward the back on the dirt and watched the last 20 minutes as the relationship between Robert DeNiro and Cathy Moriarty disintegrated. And then she announced she was leaving him.
#126 was next to me but we sat separately, with our own arms around our own knees. We didn’t touch. We didn’t lean in and whisper to each other. Maybe we had met before, but maybe it had been in another life—because, at least in this one, even though it felt like we were disintegrating, we’d never even integrated.
Signs of Hope: He called me just one day after my grumpy episode. Maybe grumpy is the way to go.
Red Flags: We were pre-disintegrated.
Also, and I hate to keep harping on it, but he can buy a $350 ticket for Burning Man, but he can’t buy me a $5 frozen yogurt?
Turning Point: None. It was just supposed to be sex, so all was back on track.
Diagnosis: For him: He’s staying the course.
For me: I veered off course momentarily, but, after tonight, I’m back on it.
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