So. As you know I sold my rusty vintage car, and last weekend I sold half my furniture and numerous smaller items. My TV, my DVD player, and my scanner/printer are gone. Items I was thrilled to acquire, like my baker’s rack, which created much-needed and attractive counter space in my small kitchen, are history, as are an extra set of dishes, my Cuisinart, and most of my cookbooks.
**
I almost didn’t participate in the yard sale. Two women on my floor let me know they were going to do it — one has just moved out — but I wasn’t sure I was ready to take that leap, to act as-if. As if I were really leaving, that is. Besides which, the forecast was for rain all day. I got a bunch of items ready and priced the night before, but in the morning I was reluctant to get out of bed. At eight-thirty I shuffled to the window and opened the curtain, expecting to see clouds and drizzle, but the sky was an uninterrupted blue. Throwing on some old clothes, I started carting things down the three flights of stairs. My housemates were already set up on the lawn, their secondhand wares spread out on blankets. I enlisted one to help me with my heavier items.
While I was still bringing armfuls of miscellanea downstairs, Meg Ferris showed up.
Margaret Ferris is a writing coach and blogger my age who leads writing tours in France and Italy, and who just came back into town after living in Portugal for a year with her sexy younger Portuguese boyfriend. In other words: my heroine.
Now here she was on my lawn, asking about my baker’s rack and my printer.
When I reminded her of who I was — citing emails we’d exchanged recently, in which I asked her for advice — she remembered, and said she’d been thinking about me. “I think I might have an idea for you,” she said. She had sent me her 29-step process to “taking a creative leap,” one she had gone through herself on her own recent journey, and she thought it might be interesting to have me be the first outside guinea pig, following her steps myself and publicly blogging about them.
I felt a thrill go through me. It was as if she had appeared out of nowhere and said, “I was thinking about how we could have you do precisely the sort of thing you want to be doing.” (She calls these kinds of happy synchronicities “juju,” when our intentions and actions seem to magically draw in serendipitous people and opportunities.) Meg said she had a full plate at the moment, getting situated in her new apartment, but we exchanged phone numbers before she carted off my former belongings.
Later that morning, a former work acquaintance came walking by. I started chatting with him about my European aspirations, and he mentioned that he had been intent upon going to Ireland last year. Amazed, I told him that that was actually my first choice of destinations. “I have a great book I could give you!” he exclaimed. This excited me even further. It was like getting two green lights in a row from the Forces of the Universe — not something, as you know, that I’ve experienced much, so I’ve been skeptical about trendy personal development concepts like the Law of Attraction.
**
I haven’t had any follow-up contact since then, although my former co-worker promised to drop off that book. I don’t want to be guilty of pestering Meg, especially since she asked for a little time…so, nervous and impatient as I am, I haven’t been in touch with her for a week. At least at the moment, I’m earning some income, so I’m not in quite as anxious a situation as I was last time around.
But this strange new employment opportunity has turned out to be the unexpected occasion for some additional lessons in (non)attachment.
**
For those of you who weren’t following my last comment thread, that progressive telephone fundraising employer did hire me on, after a probationary period in which I did well enough to merit over two dollars more per hour than the base wage. Amazingly, even though I tend to watch the clock, I don’t hate calling donors like I thought I would, because enough of the people turn out to be friendly, intelligent, and chatty once I get past the initial self-identification and the script’s bottom line. I also enjoy scoring substantial donations for good causes and watching my percentages rise. Plus the people who run the place are smart, ethical, and well-informed. So there’s one prejudice shattered.
Another was shattered when I started developing a crush on a younger coworker who isn’t at all what I consider my “type” other than coloring-wise (a brunette with dark eyes). Unlike the aforementioned Dexter, he’s by no means a “brain,” and physically he resembles a thin version of Kevin Smith in his Silent Bob incarnation (right down to the backward baseball cap). But he seemed — at least initially — somehow fascinated by me, asking me lots of questions about myself and gazing furtively at some of my better attributes (which flattered this horny old broad’s ego). So shortly thereafter I started matching his attentions, and what appeared to be mutual electricity crackled in the air between us like kindling. When he disappeared for the better part of a week I found myself suffering from disproportionately severe withdrawal symptoms.
After having been in a place of freedom from attachment for once, finally able to think clearly about my future, I was a little annoyed to be thrown back into the uproar I’ve been in for most of my life, but I decided to simply observe it — neither encouraging it or pushing it away. I tried just sitting with the butterflies and the all-too-familiar impatience and craving.
It was a new exercise for me. Usually I invent a delicious story to fit the more pleasurable feelings, project hopefully into the future, and lose myself in obsessive fantasies. Interestingly, the intensity of the feelings subsided after a couple of days, and I resigned myself to the probability that Rick had quit or been let go.
**
What a sped-up version of my old story! Girl meets boy, girl likes boy, girl loses boy, girl moves on. The whole process in just one week. I had to laugh. Maybe I am making progress. I tend to cling like polyester in Arizona.
**
He did return, eventually, but when (with that predictable rush of fight-or-flight hormones) I tried to resume the flirtation, I felt a change and a distance in his energy. The spell had been broken. Perhaps it’s my personal Heisenberg/Schrodinger observer effect in action — that the moment I focus on a man, his behavior instantly changes — but I didn’t habitually spiral into the usual self-questioning and overanalysis and brainstorming about how to get the magic back.
I made the firm choice, too, to refuse to feel ashamed of myself. Normally the little kid in me immediately believes — the way little kids do — that a rejection is somehow due to my inherent rejectability, and that I’ve been humiliated for showing (so baldly) my unreciprocated feelings.
Screw that. If I’m open, it’s to my credit, especially given what I say my values are.
**
Which reminds me…I mentioned, the other week, a much-loved teacher who impressed upon my adolescent brain the integral importance of authenticity in all things. He indisputably changed my life, with his mini-lectures on Zen and his Thomas Merton handouts and his in-class readings of Pablo Neruda. This past week, I received word that he had died (from I know not what) at the relatively young age of 61. I read a beautiful tribute written in a local paper by one of his recent students, and wept. I loved that man like a father.
If the woo-woos are right about each of us having a cheering section of personal spiritual guides and disembodied advisors, I sure hope he’ll be on my team.
I’d like to think, at least, that he’d be proud of me.
**
If I’ve learned anything from this latest tempest in a teacup, it’s how much our inventions can cause us to suffer (or not). Asking the perennial question, What The Hell Is This? was truly invaluable in this case. I became a total stranger’s creature in a matter of hours. So what was all that about?
As it so happens, I’ve lately been reading the literate and intimate autobiographical work The World is a Waiting Lover: Desire and the Quest for the Beloved by Trebbe Johnson. I think the title appealed to me because on some level I already knew that the voice I had been hearing — in the guise of Damien’s incomparable tenor — was the voice of the Beloved calling me back to my own truth, away from my “small-b” beloved. This has got to die. This has got to stop. This has got to lie down with someone else on top. He knew what I needed to do before I was ready to even acknowledge it, and the anguish in his lovely representative’s voice didn’t gloss over how much it would hurt.
It’s definitely more of a classicist-Platonist-Jungian-spiritual concept than a existentialist-Romantic-materialist-literalist one (and I’ve been on both sides of that fence): the idea that what we’re longing for and seeking is really much bigger than the one human person. Even six months ago, I would not have found this book all that useful or apropos. Today, I’m practically on the same page. Although I still refuse to conclude whether the Other is really a mirror or a parent or a portal or a body double for the Divine — all of which have been postulated by various psychologies, mythologies, philosophies, and religions, and are dutifully reported by Ms. Johnson. I’m partial to Rumi, myself, who experienced unsayable ecstasies through the medium of Shams Al-Tabriz, but who liked to leave things mysterious.
Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,
if this is the time.
Do it gently with a touch of a hand, or a look.
Every morning I wait at dawn. That’s when
it’s happened before. Or do it suddenly
like an execution. How else
can I get ready for death?
If I’m that ripe to be dissolved, Silent Bob can come along with just the right look or the right touch and melt me in the middle of a night shift between ACLU calls. And it will have very little to do with Silent Bob and everything to do with my ripeness.
But that’s where I didn’t run away with inventions this time. And I’m proud of this: that I didn’t gallop full speed ahead and write the whole thing into a romance (or porn) novel the way I usually do, and then become inconsolable when things didn’t proceed as scripted.
As it turns out, if you don’t indulge a habit, it can cease to be one. Who knew?
**
But I still don’t have a plan for following that soul-call I heard through my darling Irish brother. I was discouraged to find out that a “green card” permit for Ireland would require at least $1000 and a year wait. (I still check job listings every day for sponsoring employers and organizations, but if you don’t have IT or foreign language skills, there aren’t many.) Residency for non-EU members is as tough to achieve there as it is anywhere else in Europe. (An artist friend of mine, a terrific, anarchic soul of considerable talent, said in response to this “You should just go!!!”) I did manage to get pictures taken and send off my passport for renewal, as it’s due to expire in six months.
My life coach friend has former in-laws in Holland, and might be able to find me temporary accommodations in the Amsterdam area. I’m still waiting to hear back from my best friend from high school regarding her cousin in London and her college friend’s brother-in-law in Dublin. My friend Karl, whom I mentioned last time, just emailed that old friend of his who lives in Dublin, so no word there yet.
Last week I joined Couchsurfing.org, an organization I found out about through Meg’s blog that lets world travelers help each other out by (you guessed it) providing their couches, guest beds, or floors as an alternative to hotels and hostels. I also attended a Peace Corps orientation meeting on Wednesday, but they don’t go anywhere I want to be. I even checked out The World by Road, a documentary film crew on a 2-year world tour who were passing through on their way up to Alaska, but nothing about the last leg of their trip or the people involved particularly struck me. I’m interested in seeing Alaska and Canada sometime, just not right now.
My dream, after all, is to be in Europe. I’ve never been quite this clear about anything. What I did during that summer in Italy, living my adventure and writing about it the way I write here, felt like what I was meant to do. (Incidentally, would you guys like to read parts — or all — of that journey?) Ever since I rode the buoyant current of that experience, nothing else has felt right. Maybe I’m hopelessly “self-indulgent,” something of which Elizabeth Gilbert has been accused (and I fear she stole all the available thunder, too), but so help me God, this is what I want to do.
It would be great if Meg could help me find the means, because as you know, I lack funds. I’ve certainly worked hard these last twenty years, but like so many people have nothing in the bank to show for it. This is my largest obstacle. I’d be more than happy to write under the auspices of her Web site or blog if it meant getting financial assistance or sponsorship on my mad journey.
**
But then again, it may take something entirely mad. About ten days ago, I had the delight and privilege of going to hear the wonderful, internationally loved poet David Whyte talk about his latest book The Three Marriages at a local bookstore. Born in Yorkshire to an Irish mother, David speaks with gorgeous lyrical intonation on subjects like longing and vocation and what the soul really needs in a world based on logistics and expediency.
During the course of his talk, he told us the story of how Robert Louis Stevenson first met the love of his life, Fanny Osborne. A young man of slender means, Robert was out walking one night at dusk when he passed a large window, on the other side of which an elegant dinner party of about a dozen people was taking place. The window was slightly ajar. Peering inside, Robert saw a radiant woman sitting at the head of the table (who happened to be eleven years his senior, and married), and he was at once captivated and smitten.
“Now, perhaps, if he were like most of us,” said David, “he might go around to the front or the back door and make some inquiries about whose house this was, and so forth, or made a mental note to ask around in the following days, among people he might know in the area, regarding who that woman might be…generally going about things in the orthodox and polite way to which we are all accustomed.” But this is not what Robert did. Instead, he opened up that window and stepped right through, bursting in upon the party like a sudden apparition. Amazingly, rather than getting himself arrested, he made quite a hit at the party that night, and a strong impression upon the lady in question. Many years later (after Robert nearly died of consumption pursuing her across the American continent), they were married.
The point of David’s story being, as he told us, that sometimes you have to forego The Way Things Are Always Done and burst in through the window.
I laughed, and I cried. This is exactly what I feel I have to do, somehow. Break the rules. Do something crazy. Come crashing through the window by committing some original and unexpected act. And then the doors will start opening.
I just don’t know what the thing is. Will I have the courage to do it when and if I do?
**
Well, I practiced a little courage yesterday.
I saw Dexter Sunday afternoon, unexpectedly. He was working for someone else when I came into his cafe to write after finishing my weekend shift. Conversing with him over the espresso machine, I found that he still makes me flush hot in some pretty cool places. (And I know I’m not menopausal quite yet.) Such a bite-my-finger gorgeous boy…he has incredible bone structure, glossy golden skin, and enormous liquid eyes the color of seawater. Even the moles on his face are perfectly placed. Are the girls at his school blind, or just stupid?
Before leaving, I stopped by the counter again and asked in a casual joking tone if he needed to see my ticket to Amsterdam before he’d agree to have a beer with me. This made him laugh (and I think took him aback a little) but he was unhesitatingly open to meeting, possibly even this week. He asked me for my email address, in case we didn’t see each other there at the cafe. It was all very friendly and painless, and I walked away believing I’ll actually have a drink with Dexter very soon.
Beyond that, I’m not going to write a novel — porn or otherwise. I could be wrong, but I think he was actually pleased to be asked. For my part, I felt like a champ…or at least like a seasoned adult woman who knows what she’s doing.
**
And end note: this may strike you all as cheesy, but as long as WordPress provides me the means, I may as well do it. I’m going to add a PayPal ‘donate’ button so that readers can make a contribution toward the What The Hell Is This? European Dream Fund if they are so inclined. If some shameless blogger paid off her exorbitant debt through online begging, why should I feel bad about putting the option out there for people to give to something slightly more constructive?
Far be it from me to leave any stone unturned. Shoot, I’m even buying a lottery ticket every week.
Wow, “far be it from me to leave any stone unturned.” That sounds like a different A.B. from the one I met, er, eight posts ago or something (I don’t remember the amount of time so I’m roughly calculating it based on the number of posts I’ve read). A.B. 2.0 (or A.B.: Salvation or whatever badass nickname you prefer) sounds like an unstoppable juggernaut.
I was all set to be testy about another one of these left-handed compliments of yours, C (!), when I got my first donation of $50 from K. on the West Coast, who has been reading awhile but doesn’t comment. I laughed out loud at her message: “You don’t have to spend it on the European dream. You can buy a dozen gigantic lattes from Coffee Boy if you like… Cheers.” Who can stay in a bad mood when people like that send you money out of nowhere?
I will say this though: it’s one thing to have a new growth spurt acknowledged, and another to be told how great it is that you no longer even remotely resemble the (implicitly unsavory) personage you once were! I wish you would read a 2008 post like “The Albatross of Personal Importance” or “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Housefly,” which I still consider among my more lucid moments. Does being glad about where I am now mean I have to trash who I’ve been? Remember that just a few months ago everything that meant anything to me basically imploded and I was reeling for a long time. It feels like you said “Gee, you’re a lot better of a person than when I first met you, back after your mother died.”
Hi A.B. — It sounds like you heard me as saying that it wasn’t okay for you to feel sad or demoralized before. I can get why you would feel frustrated if my comment occurred to you that way. I actually didn’t find your prior personage unsavory — it did seem a little more pessimistic to me, but I don’t mean to condemn pessimism as “wrong” or trash-worthy. And, I admit that sometimes I do like to play a little rough with you, A.B., and I only want to do that if that’s fun for both of us.
You are a bad boy! Perhaps what we need is a safe word.
OK, so this is just too good to wait for another post.
I mean, damn, people, I’m already starting to live la vida Europa without even leaving town! And by ‘la vida’ I mean: that in-the-moment space of being ready for anything, for things to turn on a dime, for going with the flow without attaching to the outcome. I’ve not been anything like this for most of my life (blame my Capricorn sign) but it’s kinda FUN! Suddenly you find yourself walking down a sketchy street with a posse of guys from work you barely know, laughing and feeling totally fine, and even the old familiar places look almost new.
I’m sitting here at two because I had to post an article after getting home at quarter of one after making out with Rick on my front steps after some after-work drinking! Was I stupid to prioritize getting a long overdue article up over getting a cute if somewhat drunk young stoner up? (And he surely is a stoner.) I’m 99 percent sure he wouldn’t have said no. Lordy, he’s twenty-eight! Is this my year for attracting the pups? Not that I’m complaining! Boy howdy, as my college boyfriend used to say. Give the old grey mare a round of applause. Seriously, if we had come back here right after playing pool (yes, I even played pool with him, it was quite a night) I wouldn’t have been able to control myself, because right then I was buzzed, stoked and ready. We just drew the evening out way too long, until I was too tired and kind of past horny. (I’m glad we did ALL of this, though, after I was past infatuated!!!)
But I feel like Captain Kirk. It’s like I’m venturing beyond the frontiers of all my past ways of doing things.
Were you stupid to prioritize work over play? Don’t ask me, I’m the hedonist, so you know what I’m going to say. (And in case you don’t: hell yes, *fucking* stupid. When you could’ve been stupid-fucking?!)
Actually, no, if that’s what you wanted, then it’s all good. I’m hoping though that when you gave Rick a taste of yourself that you hooked him for some action on the weekend. Sounds like you’ve laid the groundwork for it. And when the time comes: don’t worry about trying to control yourself. Long as you don’t leave any bruises on him, you’ll be fine. (And even if you do….)
My formal date with the Object Of My Obsessions was curiously dissimilar. I’d envisioned it as a sex date, but it didn’t go that way. Actually, I just made mental room for it, but didn’t do much to move it in that direction. In retrospect, it really didn’t matter–I just wanted to spend time with her, and maybe show that I wasn’t single-minded in my pursuit. Next time may be different, I don’t know–but there won’t be any roommate around to chaperone, either…and she knows that in advance.
And you played pool with him? Goddamn, for me, that’s right next to foreplay (sounds like you got some of that in, as well). Can’t wait to get the O.O.M.O. to a table, myself. (Vague rumors of her coming back for a visit in July, for her birthday. Possibly for mine, as well, which is five days before hers.)
It is SO good to hear that you’re having some fun, and feeling liberated. Yes, liberated. From what, I’m not exactly sure, but I can just imagine you all a-glow. Ain’t life grand that way?
I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself and expanding your horizons A.B. I just hope the guys in your life are okay with the kind of practices involving safe words that you’re apparently into.
R: It is TOTALLY moment-to-moment. I’m moving however the spirit moves, and, surprising myself, without the usual prejudices. If I had decided to put all my eggs in the Dexter basket, for instance, I would never have said yes to that whole crazy spontaneous evening with Rick, and if I had held onto an image of myself as woman-who-doesn’t-play-pool, I would have missed out on easily the best part of the whole evening. Man, you sure are right about that, though! I wanted to get down with him right there on the table! We should have just left the bar right there and then, because later I wasn’t half as hot and bothered. All the talking cooled me off, actually! He’s a good-hearted guy, one of those sort of aimless young stoners who smokes a tad much, but he’s not exactly a kindred spirit. I’d never mistake him for my soul mate. That episode before really WASN’T about him…
Today walking to work I realized the most perfect way to frame what’s going on here: the fact is, we PLAY WELL together. We’re like a couple of seven-year-olds laughing uproariously and running around the playground getting in trouble. Goofing off, playing games…perhaps playing tackle, or doctor. This is the PERFECT categorization…it doesn’t make too much or too little of the phenomenon, and it certainly shouldn’t scare anybody involved. Maybe as grownups we just need some childlike silliness sometimes. Maybe even sex can be silly, can just be a form of play, and not so serious.
“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
C: LOL really, I’m not THAT kinky. Although at this point I suppose anything goes.
p.s. Excessive narcissism and vanity dictate that I crow about the fact that as we were walking to the bar and I said something about being ancient, he said “But we’re about the same age, right?” and I said “How old are you?” and he said “Twenty-eight,” and I said, “Sure…whatever!” and started snickering. For the rest of the night. He knows I’m older than he is, but I didn’t have the heart to break it to him.
I keep telling you–you’re NOT too old to be dallying with Stoner Rick. If you’re feeling ancient, the best cure for that, of course, is three orgasms in quick succession (not counting his, if at all). Keep some Durex with you at all times, just in case.
I’ve been saying for years that sex is an adult form of play. Think about it: there’s toys, role playing, costumes and dress-up, plenty of fantasy. And a lot of laughing joyously, if done properly. I think it satisfies whatever childlike need we have. “Go outside and play”–when did that become old hat? I certainly lament that no one will play with me, even for an afternoon.
I remember something in PLAYBOY a few years ago that I really liked. Reader submissions to complete the thought, “Sex is…” Two of them have really stayed with me. One was, “Sex is comparing notes.” That’s charming (armchair academic that I am). The other was “Sex is power…made playful.” I love that one even more. (I’d better, since the Object Of My Obsessions works as a dominatrix, among other things. No, not my kick, for the record, but you’re damn right I’m going to establish a safe word.)
So play with your power. Never forget, you have something he wants. And he has something that you want. The intersection of those two desires is….
Well, he’ll have to be AROUND for me to dally with him. We didn’t even exchange phone numbers, and I haven’t seen him since. Sure hope he got home OK! Otherwise I am, again surprisingly, not worried. There are no eggs in that basket. He is, after all, a major stoner, and they’re famously unreliable! Great for kicks but don’t entrust him with the mortgage. Not to cast any aspersions…he is whatever he is, and I don’t expect him to be otherwise. That’s the beauty of it all. I just hope he’s not being “the girl” and getting all worked up or fretting about the other night, or else assuming I’m making assumptions. If nothing else I wish I could reassure him about my intentions.
I bet if you really wanted to find a playmate (OOMO aside) you could post an NSA ad on Craigslist or the Stranger and draw in some freaky pagan gal. The ones I’ve known are open to all kinds of men/women and absolute libertines. Write something funny and disarming like “6 foot 200-lb mildly autistic Indian who scares small children seeking hedonistic geek girl who loves to receive.”
Taken Down A Notch: stopped by Dex’s cafe on my way back from downtown…boy am I glad I didn’t put any eggs in that basket. He acted as if our previous conversation had never happened…then I heard a couple of the employees including D talking quietly with another regular…I heard something about “cougars” and “41.” Another young man who works here part-time said “I’m all about the cougars,” and not too much later plopped himself down on the couch next to me to chat, god bless his heart. I felt a vague pervasive embarrassment, but nothing near the burning humiliation I’m used to feeling under similar circumstances.
Just feel a bit stupid for misreading things so utterly and talking a big talk about them here.
But I fear I’m wasting far too much energy on this boy stuff and losing momentum…didn’t I say I get derailed easily? What was that business about going to Europe again?
I’m sorry that happened A.B. And, when you talked about feeling embarrassed for misreading things, I got the sense that you made yourself responsible for knowing how he felt — in other words, that if you don’t read other people’s emotions correctly, you’re not okay. Does this land with you?
I also find myself irritated when people use the expression “cougars.” Although that may be simply because I really enjoy older women. But I digress.
‘“It’s a fight,” says Eileen, “at the foundation, in the arenas that are most important to me, my relationships with other people…how I read people and how I read where we are…”‘ (from Carol Gilligan) For women, what we pick up or don’t is considered almost a survival skill.
In retrospect “cougar” doesn’t seem like a word D would even use…I think it was the sarcastic regular who said it (who is himself older). It might even have been in reference to the high-heeled Cher-like woman who had just been at the counter. I thought she looked hot. I didn’t know why the number 41 would be coming up, though, so my ears pricked up and I started thinking that at least part of it was about me.
But I don’t understand why D wouldn’t let me then just sneak out (after I wrote the above) and instead called out to me and followed me to the end of the counter with some parting niceties as I tried to leave.
Well, like I said, there you have it, more wasted energy.
[Don't listen to me, I'm inebriate after coming back from downtown on Saturday night, hedonist that I am, following the family wedding I attended this afternoon.]
There’s no reason to feel bad. You may feel taken down a notch or what, but really this is OK. I haven’t heard the term “cougar”, so I don’t take the reference, though I’ll infer from context that it denotes an older woman looking for younger men. I wasn’t there, so what can I say? Well, since I’m not stopping myself….
If he said that, it’s a totally uncool thing to say, so fuck him (and you know the way I mean). What, suddenly he’s Mr In-Demand? Fine, then. Odds are, though, he’s going home to his penis sleeve and a bottle of baby oil–and why should that be otherwise, if that’s the way he’s going to behave? Go ahead, wish that upon him, if it makes you feel better. I’d say it’s appropriate. given the circumstances. Like I say, you aren’t too old to take an interest in him, there’s nothing to be guilty about here.
If he didn’t say that, and was just indulging a customer who may have spoken against you? Well, that would explain why he insisted on saying something nice to you before you left. He may have realized he was being insensitive, tried to over-compensate. I don’t know, but I could see it.
You don’t have to let him off the hook, though. If the whole experience left you feeling cold, then that’s totally valid. Maybe he picks up on that, maybe he won’t–but you don’t have to let that dictate your reaction. Your emotional reaction is very real.
Glad to hear that you’re taking it in stride, though. Rejection, on whatever scale, is always hard to take. Comes with the territory, of being out there and playing.
[OK, *one* more Red Hook....]
One last thing I want to mention: just because you had a bad time of it this time around, doesn’t necessarily mean that you misinterpreted what went on before. I’ll point to this last night out that you had: sometimes what happens in the moment is all-defining. Well, I say it’s *always* all-defining, we just normally don’t think of it that way. But your initial encounter with Dex and him telling you that chicks don’t go for philosophy majors life himself…that’s comparable to the experience you had with Stoner Rick at the pool table. That interaction was what it was, and the moment for that won’t necessarily repeat. You shouldn’t assume that any given encounter will define everything that is to come. Life, and other people, usually aren’t that simple.
things are still very busy here, only little time…
first, it’s a problem for me to donate non-anonymously, maybe you understand. I can offer to send cash to a PO box.
second, of course I want to read your travel notes from Italy!
third, great that you had a good time & sorry that something embarrassed you later. I’m not sure I understand 100% of it, that’s the language barrier, without very thorough reading it can be difficult. But from what I understand, I would say…take it easy…which is always easily said, I know…maybe you could see it as kind of a training, a preparation for the moment when it really will get “serious”? This time it only looked good for a while, another time it can be different. You could prepare to surf a bigger wave next time – this depends not only on you but also on the wave
R: I wish I’d just skipped the cafe yesterday, I was doing better than fine until then! What Rick does or doesn’t do has less of an effect on me somehow, I was taking that as it comes, but Dex…he’s more that type I can’t seem to get over, though maybe I should. I was simply more vulnerable to his judgment. (If you wanted to get all psychobabble on me, I guess you could say I’m still trying to win Daddy’s approval.)
B: Hey, hi. Thanks for responding to my question! And for wanting to send me money.
I was actually talking about two DIFFERENT guys, a super-young brainy one and a slightly older (than him) stoner guy, with whom I had that fun evening.
While I’m still here in this cow town, though, the last thing I want to do is find Mr. Right. I was just open to enjoying Mr. Right Now. (Unless of course the former wanted to follow me all over creation. Actually, “Stoner Rick” does want to travel overseas, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to take off together.)
All: I suppose part of me is relieved not to have to go through the whole buzzkiller business of explaining my physiology to some casual guy and what I have to do first and what he had better not do. Sometimes that’s enough to send guys away…a sleeve at least is uncomplicated.
Fun With Blog Stats: on a much lighter note, you guys wouldn’t believe how many hits I’ve gotten from Google — thanks to the title of my last post — by people searching for “what to put up ass” and “fun things to put up ass.”