I got an e-mail at work saying that there was a sudden and specific need for swing-dance leads under the age of thirty for this movie shoot in northwest Portland. I figured I couldn’t get there, but feeling like showing my support for my fellow swing dancers, I called up the main guy, Larry, to find out if they had all the guys they needed. This is just after getting off of maybe one of the busiest days at work ever (we processed over 900 pieces of mail, which easily broke our earlier record of 700, all in about an hour). Larry says they still want me to show up and they’ll see if I can get in. I tell him my car is all the way across town, so I’ll essentially cross Portland twice before I could be there, and when I drive back it will be at rush hour peak, so I assume it would take me two hours. Larry said nevermind, thanks for trying. So I just started going home. Larry calls back. He wants me to try and get out there. I jumped in my car around 5:15, crossed Portland on I-84 with astonishing speed and agility. I’m barely slowed as I merge onto I-5, then suddenl across the Willamette River on the I-405 bridge, down US 30 (the same road that runs through my hometown in Wyoming) and out to some community center a sturdy eight or ten miles from downtown. I actually knew I was at the right place because of all the production equipment I saw outside. I got to an open door, talked to a few different people, and eventually was tugged beside a coat-rack wardrobe where a woman said I would have to shave (I’ve had a “beard” since Thanksgiving). I said that was fine. Then it turned out there wasn’t a razor to be found. And the costume people realized it would take too long to get me ready for the shoot. So I leaned in to the wardrobe lady and asked if I would be in the way to stick around and watch. I don’t think she understood the question, but she said yes, so I took one look back and headed out the door. In the car and all the way across town again. And it was barely an hour after I got off the train.
I ate alone at a little Mediterranean restaurant by the river, and it was pretty disappointing. I really like Lebanese/Med. food, but all I got was two ground-lamb steaks looking like fried fish atop rice with some sliced tomatoe and onion tossed on my plate in what seemed to be an accident. I ate my one piece of flatbread too fast, with some vegetable soup. I rationed my Pepsi, drinking my first literal can of pop in at least a few months if not longer than that. I forgot what it was like popping the top of the can. I’ve just never eaten at a good restaurant that brings you a can of pop and a glass with ice.
This all is to describe the strange night I was already having before she called. Not the she that strikes to the depths of my heart still, but Jessica, the girl that I took out on a date that I never really asked her out on, and she held my hand and then told me it was a bad idea. That Jessica. She called me and said she wanted to go to a coffee shop. I thought that sounded good because I thought we were going to go to a coffee shop, like normal people do. I was not dissappointed, for a while. After enjoying the ambiance of the coffee shop (great music, like the Crows Mrs. Potter’s Lulliby), and some pretty normal conversation that was untroubling, I did something stupid. I made the mistake of trying to… clarify my general demeanor towards anything that resembled an “us”, by simply stating that I was glad she had let her life settle down and called me at her leisure so we could hang out. She took this as a cue that I needed another DTR, one so involved that we couldn’t do it sitting in my car in the driveway, in fact, she decided to get dinner in the strange gap between leaving the coffee shop and her “a-ha!” of an opening for relationship talk. So it was 9, I was sitting in her room watching her eat Wendy’s, wondering what had just happened. She kept acting like she wanted me to lead the conversation, but since I had nothing I really wanted to say, that was difficult for me to do. So, being a foward girl, she said she wanted to apologize for what happened on our last outing. I said it was no problem. Confusing, but not troubling. I was secretly hoping that would be it, but she continued. She went in very random directions, usually coming to the end of her conversational rope with a pause for me to fill something important in, which I really couldn’t do. My most common phrases, that seemed not to make her happy, were “I like to let things happen naturally” and “I really don’t know what will happen.” All we could really agree on was that we wanted to know each other better. Jessica believes men and women can’t have friendships wouldn’t creating confusion, without having a breaking point of dating or giving up. I don’t share this notion. She also wants some very specific things to happen in order that she might be sure where she, or a we, or whatever, is/are going. She said she was glad I gave her room after our last time out. I didn’t mention that I had deleted her from my phone just a few days ago only because I never expected to hear from her again. I really didn’t much think of her, except to remind myself not to let a girl hold my hand if I really didn’t want her to, or thought it unwise in general. And then we were talking about being intentional and taking active steps to be around each other, she was talking about hanging out in groups and alone, meeting my friends, me hanging out with hers…. I just felt like months of a normal relationship were being systematically laid on the cheap, open carpet in front of me. It didn’t help that I was coming down with a head cold and I was tired. We talked (I use that phrase liberally) for an hour. I was falling asleep in the end. And then she dropped the final thing in my lap - no touching. Well, at least, no hand holding (I think that was her fault more than mine), no anything really. Now I’ll admit that I know it’s not good to have my mentality, but mine is the exact opposite. If we wanted to avoid all the relationship bullshit that we spent an hour wading through, and just wanted to make out at random, that would have been fine with me. I’m 24, male, and not ready to deal with a relationship that is everything but physical… I would ask for the sake of what? Here is the perfect example of a relationship divorced from its natural physical connection. Anyway, I left her with a hug (don’t know if I was supposed to do that since it seemed to be, in her eyes, dirty or leading to dirty), and walked to my car so tired and confused and wishing I had kept my mouth shut. And somehow, after noticing she didn’t like me seeming passive about things, I said I would be more active about spending time with her. Now I’m scared that we’ll just spend time talking about a relationship. Is that what women really want? Endless talking about the reality of imagined relationships? Seriously. Live. Enjoy the other person. Compliment them. Love them. By all means, don’t waste your life talking about the the complex connections that exist between the two of you. People say that physical contact creates a false sense of intimacy. I think that’s wrong. Physical contact is not false intimacy. It’s just intimacy if it is that, but never false. The rest of the relationship can be false, but that cannot be on its own. If there is false intimacy, like a ghost of intimacy or fake or something bad… whatever, if there is such a thing, I think it lies in just talking… so I’ll say it this way: I believe that if there was a straw-man propped up between myself and the last girlfriend, it was there not because we were physical with each other, but because we talked so much, with such breadth and depth, and that created something that could have been weak and flimsy, but that was it. Anyway, I’m soap-boxing now, so whatever. Now I’ve just rambled. I need to get clean and ready for bed. My nose is leaking snot, my throat is ichy and torn by random coughing, and I still need to check some airfares and iron a shirt.