The Date Two Years in the Making that Hasn't Happened

"D" and I met half a lifetime ago in Jerusalem, during a high school study abroad program.  He was hot and I was not, and he had a girlfriend the entire time.  We reconnected through Facebook, then two years ago we met up twice for dinner when his rotation in physician assistant school took him from Arizona to Seattle.

He was still hot, and this time around he was single.  We also had a ton in common: outdoorsy, medical workers, JEWISH.  Both evenings that we saw each other I had a good time.  There was no clear romantic chemistry, but we weren't dating and there didn't need to be.  We were old friends with similar interests catching up with each other.

I haven't seen him since our second dinner in February of 2013, but about a week after we said goodbye and hugged in the parking lot of a Thai restaurant, when he was back in graduate school in Arizona, the texts started.

"You're more attractive than I remember in high school...  Why didn't we sleep together when I was in Seattle?"

I was stunned.  He'd given no indication during our two meals that he had any interest in sleeping with me but here he was, describing through detailed text messages the way he wanted to touch me, how he would enter my body, where he would ejaculate.  He asked me if I'd let him cum inside my ass without a condom on and I said yes because hey- it's just phone sex!- and condomless anal phone sex is the safest sex you could have.

That was two years ago and for some reason- likely a combination of both of us being kind of lonely and kind of crazy- the conversation picks up and continues every few months.  We both work in medicine so he will send a text in the middle of a Tuesday like this:

"Do you treat herpes zoster with steroids?"

"Herpes zoster," for readers outside of healthcare, is the medical term for shingles, and "No," I tell him, "I don't."

We text back and forth for a few minutes about when I use oral steroids in practice, and then he says:

"Come visit me.  I want to hang out with you and lick your nipples and have fun and eat good food."

If you ever wondered what your healthcare provider is doing at work when not seeing patients, you now have your answer.

"D" lives in Colorado now and has begged me to visit him there several times, but I've been holding back.  Why, you may ask, is The Queen of Bad Decisions practicing restraint?  The answer is simple, and it's that flying to Boulder to have first-time sex with a man who I've never kissed might make for a really awkward long weekend and would cost about $400 for a plane ticket. 

"But what are you waiting for?  We're both Jews, smart, into the same things..."

"Yes, but we live in different states."  Occasionally I am quite logical.

"So you are not really open to me or us?"

This is where I get confused because WE HAVE NEVER HAD A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP.  How did two platonic dinners and a couple years of intermittent sexting turn into a serious conversation about "us"?  Is it possible, I wondered, that he is even crazier than Crazy Chinatown Man?  If so, it's a level of crazy that I don't think I can handle.

"I am open to anything," I responded, which sums up my philosophy about life and relationships.  "But right now I'm preoccupied with someone else.  There are no guarantees with him, but I can't take time to visit Colorado now and I don't want to visit with the pressure to have a sexual relationship."

"There is no pressure," he texted back, immediately followed by "Can we have phone sex tonight with pics?"

I was annoyed and stated what I felt was obvious.  "When you ask me to send pics, I feel pressure to have a sexual relationship."  Duh.

He backtracked. "Yes sweet lady.  You should know that I am fond of you and respect you in many ways.  I would love to chat more.  FYI."

So if things don't work out with Crazy Chinatown Man, Crazy Colorado Man is my backup plan.  At least he's Jewish. 

Macvae

Macvae and I met three months ago when I was wasted, dancing with my 24 year old coworkers at Tia Lou's- the trashiest club in Belltown.  I was on my way out when he introduced himself and asked me if I did drugs.

"Ecstasy and shrooms," I lied, having done neither in my life.  I lied some more and told him I was 24 years old.

"Really?  You look younger."

Was he lying too? 

He invited me back to his place in Renton to do acid, and I agreed to go, having absolutely no intention of going back to his place in Renton to do acid.  We exchanged numbers and I said I would be right back after I got food outside.

I left Tia Lou's and never returned, drunk enough to meander to The Hurricane** by myself at 2 am and inhale a stack of pancakes, but still with enough intact judgment to ignore his repeated phone calls and messages.

Today I deleted Macvae's number from my phone. 

Moral of this story?

I sometimes make excellent decisions.

** This amazing, 24 hour diner opened in 1994 and closed on the first day of 2015, after Amazon purchased the land it was on to expand their headquarters.  I miss The Hurricane.

Rain

This week was hard- like, really, really hard for me.  Freelance Journalist from Bushwick wanted to see me again, and I couldn't decide what to do.  I didn't want to see him again, but I didn't NOT want to see him again, which I took as a sign that I should give it another shot.  I'd had a good time, and if I hadn't met him immediately after having a better time with Crazy Chinatown Man, I might have been more excited.

I reminded myself that, logically speaking, it is a bad idea to hang hopes and dreams for a future family on a man with a proven track record of impulsivity who lives in a different state, and I begrudgingly consented to a second date after Freelance Journalist tried several times.  He asked Friday night ("I'm with friends"), Saturday day ("I have so many errands to run, and I need to do my taxes") then again Sunday evening, which I agreed to if we could meet after 7:30 so I could go to my 6 pm yoga class.  This plan stuck until he was running late and wanted to meet half and hour later, and I saw my opportunity to cancel.  "I have to go to bed at 9:30.  Would another night be better for you?"   "Yes," he said, and I was so relieved.

Again, it's not that I didn't want to see him.  I just wanted to do other things more- like sleeping and errands and working out and MY TAXES.  Jesus.

Then I had to send a second rejection text to the man who I'd sent a first rejection text to two months ago and continued to spend the night with casually for a month.  Incidentally also a stoner transplanted from Bushwick, he had been asking to see me for several weeks and I kept cancelling plans.  My feelings for him were similar.  I had a nice time with him and I didn't have any strong objection to hanging out and having sex, but I'd rather sleep and run errands and work out and do my taxes.  I told him that "I'm juggling a lot right now and am thinking I should take a break from physical intimacy for the time being."  He seemed disappointed but understanding and courteous.  "Maybe in the future," I said.  "I just need to work through some stuff and don't want to string you along while I do that."  It was a true statement.

Which brought me to this weekend, spent almost entirely by myself sleeping and running errands and working out and doing taxes, with the hum of the heater and pitter-patter of Seattle rain outside my window.  It was a lonely weekend made lonelier by declining the company of two men who both would have gladly curled up with me in my bed and listened to the rain, but my mind was elsewhere, and I just couldn't.



 

75. 75. 75.

I was sitting by myself at The Hopvine, drinking an IPA and reading The Stranger, when the man to my left struck up a conversation:

"What are you reading?"

I could tell he didn't care about what I was reading. 

I could also tell he wasn't from Seattle.  He was clean-shaven with round frame glasses and a corduroy jacket, and HE TALKED TO A WOMAN AT A BAR.  I guessed he was a recent transplant via another hipster enclave.

"I just came to Seattle last week.  I was living in New York."

"Which part?"

"Bushwick."

I'm soooo good.

We chatted for ten minutes, and he asked me what my plans for the weekend were.  Hiking, I explained to him.  Always hiking.

"Do you want to go to the Olympic Peninsula instead?  I really want to go to Cape Flattery."

I was torn.  I didn't want to go to the Olympic Peninsula, but driving a total of nine hours on a first date with a guy I'd known for ten minutes sounded like a damn good blog story, so I committed.  He walked me home, pulled me close, and tried to kiss me.  I- not being fond of making out with drunk men who I've just met- turned my head so his lips met my cheek.  Because I'm not awkward.

The next day he changed his mind, citing the distance as the problem.  "Do you have hiking shoes?" I asked, with the North Cascades on my mind.

He texted back, "I don't need hiking boots.  I like to go barefoot."

I rolled my eyes into my flip phone.  "It's muddy and cold."  I was not about to hike 10 miles with a barefoot Brooklyn hipster who, I suspected, had never hiked barefoot in his life.

In the end I went hiking by myself and we agreed to meet up later in the week yet truthfully, the guy was hanging on by a small thread.  I was not impressed with his barefoot hiking aspirations (nor by his attempt to make out with me after knowing me for ten minutes), but he had several things going for him.

1)  He asked me out in person. 

2)  He was a journalist.  If I ignored the words "part-time," "freelance," and "finance" that prefaced his job title, it sounded interesting.

3)  He had a flip phone.

4)  Corduroys.  Motherfucking corduroys.  They get me every time.

We met to watch the sun set in Volunteer Park and sat on the hill above the reservoir.  "I think your eyes are the same color as the water," he commented. 

I looked right back into his eyes. His pupils were dilated, and he wasn't blinking. "What drugs are you on right now?" I wondered out loud.

"I've smoked weed every day for the last four years."

I'd had my money on hallucinogens.  Can't always be right.

The date continued, and I concluded I was having a nice time overall.  He was easy to talk to, as most stoners are, and I felt comfortable.  We discussed love and family and careers, detachment from objects and age and Buddhist philosophy, books, travel.  He lived in Buenos Aires for a year and could carry a conversation in Spanish.  There were a lot of things I really, really liked about him, PLUS there was attraction.  This was a date that would have had me legitimately excited at one point in my dating career, but there was a problem:

I spent most of the time wishing I was in Portland with Crazy Chinatown Man.  Wanting to be with someone else on a date is a Big. Red. Flag.

I drove him home and this time, when he tried to kiss me, I didn't turn my head.  We made out in my car,  and he inched his hand up my inner thigh.

"Whoa, you're wearing a seatbelt."  He paused then laughed.  "You should keep it on.  It's protecting you."

I made a mental note to not smoke marijuana every day for four years.

That makes 75.







 

Feelings (I have them!)

Before last weekend vanishes into the haze of memory and gets lost in dozens upon dozens of encounters with the male kind, let me state, for the record, that my favorite part of time with Crazy Chinatown Man was when we were both sober.

Throughout the night and into the late morning we held each other, alternating the roles of Big Spoon and Little Spoon until he ended up inside of me all over the apartment I'd rented.  On the bed, the couch, the kitchen chair, and up against the window, we had the kind of sex I crave- sex where I'm present in the moment, thinking about the person I'm with and not imagining he's someone else.  With him, unlike others, I felt comfortable making eye contact.

I liked him in public, too.  We did normal, boring things with our Saturday, like walk and eat and look in a bookstore.  Nothing about the activities stood out, but the day as a whole did.  He put his hand on the back of my neck and played with my curls, and I felt exactly the way I'm supposed to feel.  I wish I knew the secret to connection, why sometimes the stars align and without knowing someone that well, having no understanding of their life's traumas and joys that brought them to the present moment, you feel, when walking down the street, that their fingers belong in your hair, that putting their hand anywhere else in the world would be a complete violation of natural order.  I don't know what it was about this man, but the entire day was easy.

Our time together ended as it does with nearly all men I've cared about in life, with me crying outside a mode of transportation.  I've shed tears into men's shoulders in the Oakland airport, the Antigua, Guatemala bus station, Grand Central Terminal, the Atlanta JetBlue ticket counter, and the side of a dusty desert highway in the Columbia Gorge while waiting for a Craigslist rideshare pickup.  This time it was outside my car parked on a street in Portland, Oregon.  "You're not good with goodbyes, are you?" he said.  It was more of a statement than a question.  "No," I responded, thinking in my head that I might be better at them if I hadn't lost every meaningful relationship I've had with a man because we lived too far apart.

"I want you to know," he said, "that I'm not saying a lot because the way I deal with things is I just go off and process it on my own."  He paused and reiterated,  "I wanted you to know that."

I offered to give him a ride, but he said he preferred to "disappear into the ether," and he did.  I sat in my car for a few minutes collecting myself, feeling stupid and embarrassed for crying in front of a man I hardly know, then feeling really happy because I CRIED, which means I felt something, which is always nice.  I used to hate crying over men because it happened all the time, like a reflex.  Now, crying reassures me that I'm feeling what I should be, which is feeling anything at all.

We're either never going to see each other again, or we're going to have children together.  It's the closure I needed.

Bringing Back the Crazy

With every vintage store closure and new condo construction, it becomes clearer to me that the city that grew this feminist, vegetarian, tree-hugger has changed and isn't going back.  I face the question, "Even if I were in love and planning on starting a family, would I want to do this in Seattle?"  For the first time in my life, I feel like an outsider in my hometown.

So I look to the north and the south, specifically Alaska and Portland, as locations where I might feel more at peace.  I need mountains and independent coffee shops to sustain me- the rest is negotiable.

Which is why, this past weekend, I planned a trip to Portland to see if it's a city I could live in.   And coincidentally, who else should live in Oregon?  Crazy Chinatown Man. 

See blog posts September 14 through October 9 for those who don't remember how this charming, intermittently psychotic man broke through my tough exterior and caused my biggest nervous breakdown with dating in the previous four years.  It was such a meltdown that I worried about contacting him to let him know I'd be in his area for the weekend.  I wanted to see him, but reaching out put myself on the line.  Would he respond?  If he didn't (or did), would I be setting myself up for emotional turmoil?

When I sent a text to let him know I'd be in town, he seemed happy.  We made tentative plans to hang out, which he cancelled abruptly about an hour before I arrived in Portland.

"Sorry, had a huge blowout with my dad, packed shit up and roaming around figuring out whether to go to Eugene, LA, or wherever right now...  I probably can't hang given my current state of affairs.  Sorry."

The truth is, I'd kind of expected this.  Advanced planning is not his strong suit, and if there were a medal for impulsive decisions, he would win.  I had made plans to stay in Portland over a month prior regardless of whether or not I saw him, but I wasn't going down without a fight.

"I don't like that answer, try again?  I will be in Portland in 1 hour and have Xanax."

One hour passed.

"When you in town?"

If you are in Portland and you are hanging out with Crazy Chinatown Man, THE ONLY acceptable plan for the evening is to go to a strip club.  At 6:30 pm. With his best friend who wants to discuss feminist theory AND how he wants a submissive life-partner to participate in consensual bondage and servitude.  Did I ever think I would be on a date at a strip club with a man and his friend?  Nope, but did I ever think I would be single for four years?

From 6:30 pm until 1 am there were drinks, conversations with naked women named Eros and Bella, pole dances under red mood lighting, and many, many dollar bills thrown onto the stage.  We were feeling lovey- and not just because gorgeous breasts and buttocks were being thrown in our faces.  We both liked each other and clearly enjoyed the other's company.  I could have a great time with him, I thought, not only at a strip club but also in a shopping mall or grocery store.  The setting helped the mood, but it was our companionship that drove the energy.

We switched clubs and his friend took off, so we stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. 

"We should have a kid together," he said.

"I have an IUD, so that would be hard."

"I don't mean tonight but at some point.  I think it would be nice."

I smiled and thought it would be nice too, so we discussed it further. 

"If it's a girl I get to name it," I said.  "I've had my girl name picked out for years."

"Okay," he agreed, "but I get to name a boy."

"What name would you choose?"

"James." 

I had no strong objection.  So far, so good.

"I could live in Portland," I volunteered.  "Or Eugene.  There's a clinic in Eugene I'd like to work at."

His face lit up when I mentioned his hometown.  "I'd live in Eugene for you!"

This discussion was going so well!!! 

"You're just saying this because you're drunk," I worried.  "You're not going to think this tomorrow."

"No, I will want this tomorrow too.  You can ask me again when I'm sober and I'll say the same thing."

Crazy Chinatown Man is unemployed (again), technically homeless and moving in with his mom (again), addicted to painkillers but planning on quitting (again), and forty years old.  But he's also sweet and caring and tries really, really hard to be a decent person.  He wouldn't be the most organized father, but he would be a loving and devoted one.  And in the event that a legal partnership split up- as half of them do- I believe he would be a respectful co-parent.  Most importantly, he is FUN, and when I think about the reality of having a screaming child with an ear infection who keeps me up all night before I have to go into work and deal with other people's screaming children with ear infections,  I realize that I'm going to need a partner who will be cool with hiring a babysitter so we can get drunk and go to a strip club together.

So I'm pretty sure nothing could go wrong in this situation because how else should a child be brought into the world, if not starting with a discussion between a man and a woman outside a strip club at 1 am?  That, my friends, would be a very loved baby.

"What's your last name again?"