I just got home from a meeting with Mr. Close Encounters, or, now that this blog is mostly private, Scott.
The details are these: On new year's eve/new year's day I was feeling magnanimous and overcome with goodwill toward humankind. I sent out an e-mail (a few, actually) to several people. And in a flash of something...
spunk, spark, wonder, or
audacity I made the choice to include Scott. My e-mail didn't require a response (though some people did, and that was nice), so I understood when I sent it that he might not reply. I think I was only able to include him in the distribution list because I didn't have my hopes pinned on getting anything back. che sera, sera.
A few days passed and he wrote a small note in response--a note that wished me well, said he hoped to see me sometime soon. My heart caught a little (because how can your heart not catch a little when a man you've kissed writes to you after several months? even if there is no more desire, your heart does some little acknowledgment lurch that says 'yes. i remember him.') and I tossed off a quick reply to his reply, but I left the "hope to see you soon" untouched because I thought it was probably just one of those things people say when they don't quite know how to properly close a sentiment.
I didn't think I had any intention of following up, again. Anyway, I realized that our (his and my) aborted attempt to meet for coffee last summer continued to gnaw at me. There was always such a sense of destiny about my meeting him that I couldn't take the categorically unsatisfying ending of,well, never seeing him again.
In a similar headspace to the one I was in on NYE, I tossed off a quick e-mail subjected "seeing me soon," and told him i'd like to finally have that coffee, catch him up on the latest. I sent the e-mail wanting a reply this time, but also knowing that I would be okay if I didn't get one. I've learned that sometimes people don't write back, and it's not personal, and they don't not want to write you back, but life interferes, or whatever. Anyway, again, I was only able to write to him because I knew I could and would be fine even if an overture went unreturned.
No one knew about any of this because I didn't want something that I did spontaneously, from a place of
no grasping, to become huge with expectations (my own) or to be surrounded by weirdness. My friends know this guy is famous for rescheduling or canceling. Unless we actually met, I knew there wouldn't be a point. Also, I didn't want to turn this action into one more quest for validation. I'm a grown woman. I should be able to write a man if I want to without having a caucus about it.
I saw his reply this morning. The long and short of it is that we got together at the Starbucks in our neighborhood after work (I did stop home first to put on a more flattering outfit because if you think for one minute that I didn't want him to notice that I've lost 30 pounds, then you are wrong).
Black turtleneck, my best pair of jeans, and newsboy cap gave me the air of casual sophistication I needed to see him again--this person who neither rejected me nor truly wanted me. I was nervous, but not. I wondered if he'd tell me that he has a girlfriend (and for as much as I understood going in that this "reunion" would not be about us resuming our dating exercises, I did not want to get that piece of news), or if he would still be attracted to me, or even care (it's been a long time), or what.
And I both wanted him to no longer be attracted to me and for him to be desperately attracted to me because his attraction to me, 30 pounds ago, was a tremendous gift, and part of the point of my meeting him, I'm sure. I think it's why I had the courage to lose the weight I lost after he was gone, to improve my lifestyle, to just keep going.
He noticed.
We had a good, solid conversation. I told him about applying to UBalt's writing program, asked him about his writing, what he's doing for work now that he's given up teaching (he works a zamboni at an ice rink and is living his own personal dream of writerly freedom). We ripped on Hawthorne (just not a fan), I learned that he tried his hand at classes at the University of Houston for a year (the program I thought about pursuing as a doctoral student)--all the dribs and drabs. He's as fluid as ever. Looking at him tonight, with perspective, from a metaphorical distance was both clarifying and puzzling. I know I was guarded. He knows I was guarded. And I hate that that prevented me from really entering the moment. I did not want to be swallowed whole. I knew that if I'd been like I was that first night, almost a year ago now, that it would have been better. But being that open only works if you can do it and not get lost in what openness makes you want. Being open makes me yearn. This was not a night for yearning.
I was sending the "we are not, under any circumstances, going back to my apartment" vibe, because I wanted to have an exchange with him that was just about the purity of the conversation, a moment that allowed me to walk away, dignified, not begging. Distant. Engaged, but not available. I don't know if it worked.
At not quite 8 (13 mintues till), I said I should get going. Because I felt that our conversation, our time was at the crucial joint where you have to decide to prolong it, do something else, go somewhere else, or simply let things become awkward.
There was a point at which we discussed watches (I had looked at mine to orient myself) and he mentioned some sum of money that he thought a good watch might cost and I said "you'd pay that much for a watch?" He said "yeah, I mean, for a good one, if that's what I wanted." and I said "Good for you. There's nothing wrong with having nice things." He and I both examined his bare wrist. He exposited. "I'm not willing to settle. If I can't have what I want, I won't have anything at all." And I thought, self-absorbedly, perhaps "which is why you didn't settle for me."
This was about having some power in a situation where I'd been powerless before. I was swept up in this person for two months and all of our meetings had been on his terms. I wanted something for myself. I wanted to be the first to scoot my chair away from the table and say I'd better be getting on home now.
It was also about proving to myself that he really existed. Because there have been days when I wasn't sure and he had seemed to vanish so entirely.
Because of my new leanness, I felt the leanness of him more keenly. He was taut and harnessed before, but I experienced him differently, briefly, in light of my body's changes. A quick kiss on the cheek and a "we should do this periodically" (from him) later, and I was back out in the cold.
He didn't pay for my coffee. He didn't walk me home. Both things I agreed I would avoid having him do, anyway, because I knew I couldn't maintain any ground if I conceded my independence on those points. But they didn't come up. It was like all the first dates I went on before him, where I went in knowing that the guy had no chance. I wasn't open to those people.
Maybe I didn't prove anything. I mean, if he retains no interest whatever, If he went home thinking "well, that was diverting. now on to something else. i think i'll read a bit before I go to sleep," then I'm going on about being strong, and level ground, and all this, and it's really just all blown out of proportion.
Did I get want I wanted? Yes and no. Did I see him again, now, because I can finally see him without it being too much? I think so.
when i was a girl scout i used to, at the beginning of each weekly meeting, intone a set of pledges that comprised The Girl Scout Law. We promised to try to be honest, to be fair, and to use resources wisely (among other noble ideals). As with any number of rote edicts one recites over a number of years, it comes floating up to the surface on numerous occasions--seemingly out of left-field.
