Climbing the Pitch

Even at the risk of taking all the fun out of it, I can’t help wondering what flirting is all about.  I likened it to sex, but is it in reality a sort of pre-foreplay?  It’s a toe in someone else’s water, isn’t it?  Or is it an invitation to a club into which only a coded rapport gains one entry?  And what is membership?  See, I wonder just how serious flirting can be.  Certainly, it can be more serious for one person than the other; that is, it can mean two entirely different things to each of the participants; and if there is a disparity wide enough, someone’s feelings could get hurt.  But, no, a flirt is a flirt, right?  You can’t get a flirt on alone.  (In that way, it’s definitely not like sex.)  Even the unacknowledged flirt is valuable insomuch as it eliminates a relationship candidate.  I suppose that’s what I’m doing when I flirt:  gauging compatibility.  Is that what it was for that flirter I told you about?  No, that was pure tease, a test of the ol’ feminine wiles.  If I’d been a serious candidate for romance to her, she would not have mentioned a husband.  So I got notched; at least she must have considered me attractive–unless she’d set her sights low when she picked on me.  (That can’t be true!)  I don’t flirt with every woman who approaches me at the circ desk, though I try with most of them; but that’s only because most women are attractive to me in some way.  I allowed the flirter her fun despite the tease because I had fun, too.  I had not invested much, and isn’t that the beauty of flirting?  There is never much invested, but the payoff is always in the black, ranging from flattery to romance.  And no one gets hurt.  Flirting is a kind of speed-dating:  No rapport?  Next!  A flirt can’t go too far but always far enough–far enough to know the sparks just aren’t there; far enough to have a good time; far enough to hit it off.

What happens after hitting it off?  This is where expectations can diverge.  Who’s seeing romance and who’s seeing a little diversion?  If it seems as if I’m looking at this a bit too deeply, to the extent, indeed, of sucking the fun from flirting, well, part of that is me trying to find a reason to not enjoy myself at it and part just plain curiosity.  I can’t much control either entity.  Serious or fun, flirting is still a game, but a fascinating one.  I want to know how and why people play at it.  After all, if I want to play this game I had better be able to hold my own.  This is a league I do not want to be booted out of.  Maybe I want more than my partner in repartee, but flirting is not the stage at which such things are revealed.  So, then, flirting is less pre-foreplay than pre-first-date, right?  That wasn’t how my flirter saw it, but maybe that’s how Ms. C saw it a few days later.  She had a different style altogether–subtler, with the body language all in her eyes and head, and no pointed innuendo.  In fact, there was nothing so much in what she said that defined her attitude as flirtatious as there was in the quality of the rapport between us.  I’m not even sure where the flirtation began.  Maybe it was in my own raised eyebrows when she approached, for she was gorgeous–see-green eyes set in caramel skin and dark hair piled hurriedly on her head–carelessly beautiful.  I was in her power, struggling to hold my composure and her interest.  Certainly, she knew that.  Though she didn’t mention a husband (and my eyes were unable to stray from hers in search of a ring), perhaps she was, still, playing the same game as Ms. H, the previous flirter, insomuch as she was enjoying her power over me.  Ah, so be it.  My flirtation skills are not yet such that I can hold and wield much power in these exchanges.  I wonder:  Is it the balance of this power that seals a mutual attraction?  If I were to hold my own better, not yield control so easily, would I be more desirable?  Huh.  I guess I’ll just have to improve my game to find out.  Ms. H. has a book on hold.  I can only hope that she holds off getting it till Wednesday or Thursday evening, and that I’m on the desk when she does.

I have allayed my initial fear.  Not only have I not analyzed the fun clean out of flirting, I have actually found new levels of appreciation for it.  Desperation has become eagerness:  Put me in coach!  I’m ready to play!  It’s a game worth playing, and worth studying to get better at.  I don’t know what “winning” at it means, and I don’t want to know just yet, but maybe by the time I’ve learned to swing the balance of power closer to center I’ll understand what prizes are awaiting me.  Do I then try to pull that balance toward me?  Ah, so much to learn.

To Take Desperation Down There and Drop It In a Bum’s Cup

It was more than two weeks before I finally played the CD I’d bought at Plan-9 when I was last in Carytown.  I didn’t want to be reminded of the failure and disappointment and the limbo of transition I was lost in.  It’s called Write About Love, by Belle and Sebastian.  It only took me a day, though, to respond to the sticker on the wrapper:  “Write 300 words about love in any form.”  It was a contest solicitation, but the thought of a “song and a visit from Stuart Murdoch” was not my inspiration.  Being asked to write about love was enough. It was the kind of inspiration that got me started on A Bright, Ironic Hell after at least two years of not writing about anything.  This what I wrote:

Love is all I write about, because I don’t know what it is, and I want it so badly.  I think I have been in love.  I’m not sure.  It was a new feeling, and it was a good feeling, and it was torture.  It might as well have been love.  She didn’t love me, though she liked me once–just not enough.  Now, she doesn’t like me and won’t even let me talk to her.  So I write about her.  She doesn’t like that, either.  It doesn’t matter what I write–whether I’m angry that she rejected me or worshipping her qualities–she doesn’t like it, and has asked me to stop–a few times–and I have stopped, because I would do anything for her.  But I have always started again, because, I guess, there was always that one thing I couldn’t do for her as long as she inspired me.  And, though, if she told the truth and said she hated me, I would find inspiration still in the fascination for her that won’t die.

Was I in love with her?  Am I still?  Is it even love if it is rejected?  Is it just a seed without soil?  Her name is Julie, and she’s beautiful except when she looks at me, when her eyes darken and her face hardens, and I could cry because she feels that way about me.  I only wanted to love her.  That was my crime, and that face is my punishment, though hell is not being able to stop seeing it before me–and having to write about it.

Still, it was two weeks later, just after I’d published the previous post that I listened to the album, and now it cozily inhabits my head.  Friday had arrived and all the chatter I’d felt so excluded from had left with the half of the crew that didn’t work that weekend.  I am always more comfortable with the smaller crew, and the size of the group has much to do with that–the smaller the better for me–but the people in that group are individuals I’m comfortable with, people I can talk to and listen to.  That they’re all women plays no small part, either.  I feel the rooster in the hen house in some ways, but the brother among sisters, mostly.  Mike and Maddox have in turn shared this weekend with me, and I felt them to be interlopers.  Jennifer traded a weeekend with Bethany recently, and it simply seemed there was a hole in Bethany’s place.

This crew–Megan, Becky, Bethany, Angie, Sujatha, and Judy–gets a much more relaxed Dion than they’ve probably ever known.  Though I harbor bitterness still over the not-so-distant past, I feel no reason to air it at work; without its source and target, it has no (or little) context there:  She’s gone, I’m out of the box.  I can breathe deeply and not dread an emotional menace around every corner.  On my best days–and they are coming more consecutively all the time–I feel like a dancer–loose-limbed, swivelling from the hips and shoulders; turning on a toe; reaching from the waist standing on one leg, back and other leg parallel to the floor, eyes straight ahead–nearly every move a “step.”  I feel closer to real.  Amongst this group, I feel much more accepted; and individual but still connected to the group.  I’d like to think that I ask for less and give a little more now that the person I used to ask so much from with such futility is gone.  Before she left what I wanted out of this crew (and everyone else) was some acknowledgement that they understood me, that I wasn’t alone.  My paranoia needed to know that not everyone was on her side.  Then the peace lily came, and she left.

The desperation stayed, of course; it’s mine, a part of me for the time being.  I can diminish its role as motivator, but it has to tag along to work with me.  It wants me out on the circ desk, to see and talk to people (by which I mean women).  I’m anxious to get out there, too, but when I do, I leave desperation in the workroom.  On most days, with a full crew in force, any of us is lucky to get more than an hour out there in a day.  Monday and Tuesday, day shifts for me, are busts:  Any women I see on those days are most likely to be either young mothers or retirees.  Give me my hours in the evening on Wednesday and Thursday, when the working women come in.  Fridays and Saturdays, with the half-crew, I might get on the desk three times, and as busy as those days are, my opportunities for contact can reach tantalizing proportions.  I have no “line,” just a smile, a greeting, and lots of eye contact.  If her eyebrows go up, the pitch of my voice goes down and its edges melt away.  That’s my invitation to a flirt, but sometimes the invite comes from the other side of the counter.  I never turn those down, though not leading the dance can momentarily tangle my feet before the flattery rights me.  With Megan as witness at the terminal next to me, one woman virtually turned a fine payment into a come-on, leaning across the counter to within inches of my face to joke huskily about being “bad” just before casually dropping the husband bomb.  I felt teased but didn’t let on, didn’t even pull awayto regain my personal space from what could’ve been a kiss if we’d both puckered up, we were so close.  If this had been a game, I’d have conceded her the victory but not without letting her know with a one-sided smile of a wink that I was merely extending her a gentlemanly courtesy and that next time I’d be a bit more competitive now that I had her measured.  I asked Megan what she though of this woman dropping the husband bomb in the middle of a flirt.  What was the point?  Megan theorized that the woman wanted to prove to herself that she still “had it.”  If that were true, then she went away satisfied.  I felt the same way:  It had been nearly as good as good sex–a mutual challenge willingly met to pleasure in each other’s pleasure.

I’m not sure what I’ve been getting at here, except, maybe, that I don’t have to just write about love, that I can talk about it, too, at work, where there is no longer someone with whom I’m in love and who resented and feared it.  What I have now (for the most part, and the rest doesn’t matter) is a peace lily and people who understand that I am a passionate man and am not ashamed of it; can confide with it and joke about; and is who he is not because of one person, but despite her.  Every day is less of her and more of me, and much more fun–and I’m getting paid for it.  What’s the rush to Carytown?

More Than a Kewpie Doll at Stake

She wore a short denim skirt and white panties.  The skirt I noticed when she walked through the library security gates, the panties when she knelt to find her hold on the shelf–a bright triangle between shiny tanned knees.  She stood empty-handed.  I followed her legs to her face, reaching it as she turned to me at the circ desk.  I locked onto her eyes, smiled, and silently invited her to come talk to me.  Her smile accepted.  Her hold was not where she had looked for it because it was waiting at the window for her to driveup for it.  I recognized her name when I scanned her card and knew that she picked up all her holds there, though I’d never actually seen her at the window.  I got it for her.  The title was something like When Food Is Love.  As our engagement was mutual, at parting I gave her the test:  How long would she maintain eye contact as she left?  She dropped her eyes to her book and slid it off the counter to her other hand, and as she turned to the entrance her near eye swivelled to me and smiled.  If the same light hit my eyes, I suppose I returned the same.  I’m sure I felt the same.  I watched her out the security gates then turned back to her name, still on the monitor before me, and clicked on it.  Fifty-four years old!  You’re kidding me!  I was pegging her for five years my junior not three years my senior.  She suddenly became even more attractive.

Such an encounter as that is now my goal for my hour on the circ desk.  Accepting that that won’t always happen doesn’t tempt me to lower my standards but to practice as intensely as possible.  And that I don’t practice on every woman but the ones I find most attractive shaves my opportunities to the bone.  (I’m a picky guy.)  But I’ve stumbled onto something–speed dating at its quickest and least embarrassing.  Simply, it’s first-eye-contact.  In that moment is the most significant moment of the relationship–in fact, the moment that decides the possibility of that relationship even happening.  And if that moment tells me it’s not happening, where’s the rejection?  Brilliant!  It starts with self-accepting the initial attraction and then conveying it.  I saw this woman (whose name I will withhold for compromising her vanity) before she knelt in front of the holds shelf, but she did not look my way until she didn’t find her book.  I was already attracted to her; now I had to let her know by looking in her eyes.  That she returned my smile with her own did not necessarily mean she was attracted to me–I could have just been a friendly face willing to help her–but it did mean she was willing to accept my friendliness.  That’s all I can ask, isn’t it?  It’s easy to discreetly test the waters from that point, as we are now open to each other, relative to being strangers.  After the initial positive connection I do not fear tripping over my tongue or saying something inane or innappropriate and have little trouble maintaining eye contact; plus, I will do anything she asks and offer to do yet more.  But how can I be sure I’ll see her again?  I can’t be sure I’ll be on the desk the next time she comes in, or on the window when she picks up there.  That’s why I have to intensify my practice.

Matt invited me over for lunch Memorial Day.  Being a bachelor (or just being me), I accepted the free meal.  “Oh,” he added, “Chris invited us over for a cookout later.  Do you think you’d wanna come?”  “Yes!  To tell you the truth, I would hope to see Jackie there.”  I told him about seeing her at the yoga studio.  (He doesn’t read my blog.)  “I really could use the classes,” I told him, “but I haven’t done anything about it because it still feels like a pretense to see Jackie.”  Well, guess what?  It must have been.  My hopes were already in the way when we got to the cookout, so my tongue was tightly knotted.  When someone asked, “Jackie?  Where’s Brian?  Is he working?”  i knew my game was over, but I was as relieved as I was disappointed–and I no longer felt the nine-mile trip to the yoga studio was worth my Wednesday morning.  At least I hadn’t committed myself to the hope and inflated it beyond proportion.  I could easily have done that in the months since I’d seen her, but unlike the months it took me to ask Julie out, I wasn’t reminded of my hopes by seeing her every workday.  If I’d been paying attention when we first saw each other at the cookout, I’d have already seen in Jackie’s eyes that our interests were not correlative.  My day wasn’t ruined; it’s knee wasn’t so much as skinned; it didn’t so much as cut itself shaving.  There was no lament or woeful wail, but a shrug and “Oh, well.”

I play on.  I keep looking, keep looking into eyes, looking for…what?  A connection, then a deeper connection.  It’s there, somewhere, in someone’s eyes.  It’s not a game–I shouldn’t call it that–and it isn’t play or sport.  I might know what I’m after, but getting it doesn’t get me the broken tape and the top step on the tri-level dais.  No medal will be hung around my neck, but a millstone might be lifted from it.  This is serious work and might amount to a life’s-work in the end, but…but the thought is too complex for me to express adequately, and, despite my normal analytical bent, I get the feeling that I should accept it being so, that even an understanding, much less an explanation of what I’m doing is not only unnecessary but detrimental:  Codifying what I do is what makes this a sport, a game for its own sake.  I want to see beautiful women; I wnat to meet them and talk to them.  I want to fall in love; I want to love myself.  That I feel good doing what I’m doing only means I believe I’m doing the right thing.  Whatever comes of that must be what I deserve, and the only way to accept what I deserve is to know I’m doing right:  There’s my circle.  I have to trust it not to be a snake eating itself.

Pedalling to Distraction and Back

There was a moment Friday, alone in the workroom on a third straight Julie-less day, that I thought, Maybe her way is the only way to do this.  It seemed, all of a sudden, that my asking for resolution from her is like asking for justice for blowing the cover off A Bright, Ironic Hell:  No one wants it but me.  Even my believing that it would be the right and best thing for everyone doesn’t make it so.  Who has any stake in resolution or justice but me? and are they victories worth winning?  What damage have I done, not letting go?  But I’m getting myself down.  Pretty soon I’ll have to be asking justice of myself.

On a rare Sunday without the kids, I thought I’d try to think as little of Julie as I could , not work myself up into the usual frenzied dread of the next day.  I headed to Carytown after lunch with a Zone Perfect bar and a navel orange.  Of all the places I wanted to go, only Plan 9 was open.  I bought six cd’s–Stranglers, Simple Minds, Sparks(2), Spoon, and Elvis Costello.  Three hours in Carytown, still bustling despite most of the shops closed, and I hadn’t spoken to anyone besides a guy asking for spare change.  Lonely and disappointed, I headed further east, to a headshop, Katra Gala, that Judy told me her son had some glass pieces in.  I thought I’d get Colin something as I hadn’t for her birthday just passed.  We were alone, the clerk and I, and finally I had someone to talk to, if not of anything consequential–the proliferation of such shops in Richmond, the legal euphemization of “reefer” into “tobacco,” “bong” into “water pipe,” etc.  I wasn’t attracted to her, though she was cute in a way and very friendly.  I probably had twenty years on her, what I consider to be an unbridgeable cultural gap for the purposes of romance.  It was enough for me, though, to have made her laugh.  I love to make a woman laugh.  (I got one genuine laugh out of Julie, long ago, pre-blogs, when someone mentioned the coming time change, and I said, “Finally, my clocks will be right!”  But I’m supposed to be forgetting about Julie.)  After about twenty minutes, and not having bought anything, I got a fillup of my water bottle from her and left for points yet further from home.  I ate my orange in my alma mater’s Shaeffer Court.  VCU has changed in seventeen years, but I probably blend in better now than then, with the long hair and bike.  I made no connections with my fellow students back then, being too old but not too old enough, I guess, and looking every bit the married man part.  In the time I ate my orange I made no connections, either.  Then, a few more miles east, maybe twelve miles from home, to James’ doorstep on Tobacco Row.  He lives in a secured building so I had to call his cell.  I had to leave a message:  “Hey, I’m outside your door.  I guess I’ll hang around a bit doing…I don’t know what.  Hope to talk to you soon.”

In Shockoe, nine blocks closer to home, at the end of 13th Street, I sat at the foot of a former monument, its plaque pried off, its statue cut from the steel beam that now protruded, jagged and rusted, from a crudely cemented pyramid of large, smooth stones, and ate my nutrition bar.  My phone rang as I finished.  James was on the canal on one of his writing walks.  He didn’t know his phone had rung until he opened his backpack to stuff in his notebook and it alerted him to my message.  I invited him up.  He was only a block away.

James had been writing poetry, a new medium for him, he confessed, but one he felt to be the best to express his latest Kristen inspiration.  Kristen is a waitress at Bottom’s Up, a pizza restaurant and watering hole, and James is in love with her.  He told her so, too, drunkenly, at a Super Bowl gathering at the eatery.  Guess what?  She didn’t run screaming to management to have him shut up!  (What? me bitter?)  He’s had that luck twice since he left the library, and though neither girl felt the same way toward him, they were (and are, in Kristen’s case) still friendly with him.  Kristen actually appreciates his company.  Simply the extrovert’s advantage, methinks, though James is quite bashful around women to whom he’s attracted.  However, his bashful is probably equivalent to my brashful.  (His cute would be my creepy.)  But Kristen is a lesbian, something James knew long before his declaration.  Hope for romance is suppressed by rationale and his concentration at making a friend of her, which he seems to have pretty well in hand.

James and I sat under the budding oak at the base of this monument to political correctness for a couple hours.  Of course, Julie came up but I diverted the conversation to the state of the libary–our attrition, the continued militaristic culling of our not-even three-year-old collection, and the bookstorification of the public library due to its unfounded fear of competition–until both the sun and my blood sugar fell to warning levels, and I had to go.  Knowing I couldn’t get home for The Simpsons, I got Chinese takeout in Carytown and ate on the sidewalk.

I’m never in a hurry to get home from the city, where on my bike I’m an actual vehicle and people are not only allowed to walk but are given places to walk on and to.  Would you be eager to come back to a place where you are considered an obstruction–even by police–if you aren’t driving? where cars honk at you every day (yes, every day) and people yell at you, “Get the fuck off the road!” and “Pedal on, you faggotty ass sonofabitch!”?  It was nine-fifteen when I got home.  I didn’t read or write or watch tv, or even listen to any of my new music, but soaked in a warm bath and went to bed.

The Sunday outing worked to a small but significant degree, though I could not, in my deepest dread have imagined a worse Monday than the last.  It was a Monday better than most.  Our first encounter was sudden and gave neither of us time to throw up but the most meager guard.  I even almost said, “Good morning,” but it just wouldn’t come out.  Instead, we settled for brief, honest eye contact and shy, tight-lipped smiles.  Thomas made her blush later that day–I could see it sixty feet away–and I was jealous and sad, wishing I could do that again, but the next hour, when I was on the desk and Julie was again shelving dvd’s in front of me, I again stared at her as she worked, but, this time, could not work up a passion:   She was there, and little more, though, still, I could not stop staring.

At the store that evening I seemed to be attracting looks and smiles, and at checkout was transfixed for a moment in the clerk’s hazel eyes as she handed me my bags.  If only I knew how this state was induced, I’d climb into that bottle and close it up behind me.  Is it a glimpse of who I really am? of what I could be for someone else? a preview of my reclaimed life?  Sometimes I can almost visualize–literally see–the distance between Julie and my own life.  I can almost take a deep, calming breath and say, “I can do this,” and choose to have my life back, to let Julie go.  Spring is well and truly here, and I don’t want to miss it as I did the last two.

All of those ideas and strategems and conclusions my brain wrought in A Bright, Ironic Hell have turned out to be true, according, now, to my heart.  Before Julie even knew about that blog, before I even admitted I was in love with her, I screamed for separation from her.  It’s been nearly two years since I started writing about this (though it seems like ten).  What would I have to say without her? What would I need to say?  Feeling her departure imminent, I have my last words to her ready.  I will not speak them to her or even write them here (now).  A card will go ’round, and I will write them there, for her and everyone else after me to read–one last embarrassment, one last public announcement that, this time, she can’t drag me out to a coffee shop to avoid.  Her leaving would be a good riddance for me, though, of course, I would miss her; but the void would be filled, I suspect, and hope, by deep calming breaths, a life of my own, a heart that beats more like a man’s instead of a hummingbird’s, and a heart I can give to someone who wants it.  I can do this.

Sofa, So Good

I have been spending a lot of time on that sofa with Julie.  Nigel treats me with sharp disdain, jealous, though he has no idea how much moreso I am of him.  He, at least, is not imaginary, nor is the lap he often fills.  But there I am, anyway, imaginary, pretending:  We’re watching tv, maybe Fawlty Towers or As Time Goes By, on dvd.  I’m leaning back where she had been.  Julie is between my legs, lying back, head on my chest.  I try but can’t reach her hair with my lips. When I think that I would rather be watching Me and Mrs. Jones with her, I realize how much I would miss her big, open laughter.  Besides, I have no say and don’t want any.  I will enjoy what she enjoys.  I have spent a lot of negative energy trying not to like what Julie likes, but there was never any truth to any of it.  My energy can be better spent, more positively expended, just sitting here and letting her share.

Julie turns off the tv, softly moans with contentment, and sinks further into me.  My deep breath heaves her, my long sigh brings her back to me.  She tells me why she likes British shows, but though I listen, my imagination can’t hear her explanation.  She is too real.  I can’t make her up.  She isn’t a fictional character on whom I can hang traits like ornaments, dress up to my standards, and carry about like a doll.  There is much I want her to be and want her to like, but I don’t know who she is or what she is like outside of work, and my imagination can’t fool me to my satisfaction.

I can imagine sitting on her floor as she pulls out box after box of a massive music collection and talks about her dj days in college, both of which I’m achingly envious of.  But I don’t want to hear about the music I know we both like–Trashcan Sinatras, XTC, Prefab Sprout, Squeeze–because the reality is that I can’t yet listen to them again.  I can easily imagine her liking The Smiths, NewOrder/Joy Division, and The Cure, but I want to hear her rave, too, about OMD, Heaven-17, The Jam, Simple Minds,  and Split Enz.  I want her to tell me she likes The Psychedelic Furs so I can tell her about seeing them in Glasgow in ’81.  I can’t hope that she’d like Elvis Costello before he married Diana Krall, but I imagined too vividly that she liked James until, on that black Tuesday last week, when after listening to Hey Ma at work, I nearly fell to pieces, prompting me to throw it on the donation pile the next day.  (Right now, “Under the Waterfall” runs through my head.)  Until there is an “us” of me and Julie, I don’t want to know she likes Belle and Sebastian; they are mine until she is, too.

There are, though, certain imaginings that reality can’t obviate, and they take us back to the sofa with my arm across Julie’s belly under her pajamas.  It slides up until her breasts rest upon it.  Under her chin my other hand glides down her throat, thumb and middle finger diverging at the bottom to trace her clavicle, my palm slowly flattening against the top of her chest….  That much of Julie I can imagine quite well without the “knowing”, and I’m grateful that she can be at least that real, since the reality of her is not available to me.

What Is This Position Called? and Can I Ever Hope to Get Out of It Again?

After all, maybe there’s Jackie.

The weekend after Christmas, Matt invited me over for dinner.  He also invited Chris, who I hadn’t seen since his party Memorial Day, when I’d hoped to see Jackie.  In the second grade, when I was still an outgoing kid, Jackie was my “girlfriend.”  On the side of my house one day after school, Jackie asked, “May I hold your hand?”  “Okay,” no big deal.  I didn’t see her over the summer.  When the school posted the new rolls on the classroom windows in August, I couldn’t find her name.  Until I moved into the city five years later, I didn’t know where she’d gone.  Once again, we shared a neighborhood, but in the ten years I lived there, I never saw her, never went to the same school.

Chris had a Super Bowl part in 2006 (2007?–the last year Jerome Bettis was with them).  When Jackie walked in we were introduced.  She said, “Didn’t you used to be Kevyn’s brother?”  “I still am,” I answered, not a little peeved at the second-hand recognition, but amused by its wording.

At dinner, Chris said to me, “Jackie was asking about you.  She was real sorry to miss my party, because she’d hoped to see you.”  “I had hoped to see her, too,” I said.  Wow.  Interest.  Mutual interest!

Chris dropped me off home that evening.  I told him as I left the car, “Would you tell Jackie I asked after her.”  “Sure.  I’ll see her Saturday.”  So it’s been how long?  Four weeks?

Back in the summer, I overheard Julie tell Tammy she’d brought her a brochure from a yoga studio.  “Yeah,” she said.  “I sometimes ride my bike in Bryan Park, and then I go to this coffee shop I like on MacArthur….”  Stir Crazy.  She was talking about Stir Crazy, the scene of that humiliating non-date of ours.  How could she go back there, much less claim it as a favorite of her own?

Monday was a holiday, for Martin Luther King.  Though Stir Crazy is nine miles away, I was determined to get there, despite Caffespresso being within walking distance.  I’d already had my coffee and it was already three when I was ready to go, but I’d finished my errands–dishes, clothes, groceries–and had the rest of the day free and clear.  This yoga studio is at the opposite end of the short retail strip from Stir Crazy.  Jackie, a massage therapist, works there.  I hadn’t really come for the coffee.

I wasn’t sure I’d recognize Jackie–I couldn’t form her face from memory–but I knew who I was looking at when two women stopped in front of the coffee shop between my bike and me inside:  The long chestnut hair curling lazily at the ends, the sharp nose, the spark shooting from the eyes nearly buried in the wrinkles of an open-mouthed smile.  They didn’t come in but continued on.  I leisurely finished the americano I hadn’t needed and followed.

The two women were at the counter.  I acknowledged the one I didn’t know, bashful at the possibility of recognition.  (Much as I wanted it, I was afraid of giving away the game.)  I asked for information, and Jackie moved away, down the hall.  Helen gave me a brochure and explained the various classes.  The only one that fit my schedule was Jackie’s.  Helen asked me what brought me in, and, stumbling in my mind over the urge to confide my pretense, I finally mumbled, “I can’t say.”  Whether Helen sensed an ulterior motive or just chalked up my havering to a muddy mind, she did not press me but immediately offered me a tour.  In each room of the converted post office I looked first for Jackie.  When we found her and were introduced, Jackie’s eyes flashed.  “Burns?”  I didn’t correct her.  “Um-hmm.”  I made no pretense at the “surprise” of finding her here.  We hugged.  Helen left the rest of the tour to Jackie.  I reminded Jackie of the Super Bowl remark and she laughed at herself.  She gave me her card and we hugged at parting.

I know this sounds dangerously like pursuit, and I won’t deny that it is, but I actually have been seeking yoga instruction for quite awhile.  Of course, I might still be seeking if I hadn’t found Jackie at it, but she’s as good a reason as any to end that particular pursuit.  Don’t think that I’m going to push the love agenda, either.  I’m not in love with Jackie and will not pretend to be so.  I don’t know Jackie yet.  Maybe I can’t fall in love with her, but maybe I can enjoy a friendship.  The hope is there, of course, but I’ll give awareness precedence over expectation and appreciate what’s given me.  Maybe.  I hedge my bets on the future against the lessons of the past and the realities of the immediate.

Risking Life In Limbo

I followed through on my two vows.

I talked to Julie.  It was nearly as difficult as the time I asked her out, but I finally spit out, “Julie, how is your mom doing?”  “Not very well,” she answered, turning to me.  “She’s in hospice care.  All we can do is keep her comfortable.”  “How are you holding up?”  A patron interrupted before she answered.  I let it go, but when the patron left, Julie said, “I’m hanging in there.”  No more was said by either of us to the other while we were out on the desk.

I was right about how I would feel–relieved, a bit righteous, humble, hopeful.  I wanted this to be the end of things, the beginning of better things.  I had put the ball at her feet and wanted her to play.  Four days later, I still don’t know if anything has changed.  Until yesterday she still wouldn’t meet my gaze and when she finally did today it was with that defiant glare I’ve come to know all too well–chin tipped upward, jaw clenched square.  Yet yesterday she had opened and held a door for me and my cart of juvenile non-fiction.  I looked at her, thanked her.  She smile and replied, and I stared at her.  Still she smiled.  I’d missed that smile more than I realized.  I devoured it.  I missed the doorway and banged the frame.  But now?…

I wrote Melissa on Facebook two nights ago.  I have not heard back, and the worst assumptions grow in my mind:  My message didn’t go through; or she knows that Sandra doesn’t care for me and doesn’t know how to tell me.   I can’t imagine a best-case scenario, and it’s difficult to even consider the realistic, neutral possibilities.  The longer it takes to hear back from Melissa the less worthy I feel to be in a relationship.  I’m steeling myself for bad news.  But as I imagine, with apprehension, waking up with morning breath beside someone, I also think of those things I said I want–someone to talk to and be and do things with–and there’s that hope that the positives, if they become real, will melt the negatives.

I hope they would also melt my feelings for Julie.  Listening to Belle and Sebastian last week, I nearly convinced myself I was still in love with her.  I can’t quite trace the mental path that brought me so close to that conviction, but I think it began with the character May of my novel, who is modelled after Julie.  I’ve begun to feel very close to the character empathetically, and I think I began to wonder if I could feel that way without being in love with Julie.  Then came that defiant glare of hers yesterday, and I just became angry.  Whatever my feelings for Julie, I would expect a meaningful relationship with another woman to extinguish the most passionate of them and leave me with, at least, indifference.

I am out of vows for now; until these two are reacted upon I don’t know what to do.  There are no contingencies.  I hope my life means more than waiting for women to talk to me.

Julie-Bitten, Twice Shy

I’m trying not to think of Sandra.

Big sister Kevyn took me to a party New Year’s Eve.  Eight people, she said.  I wouldn’t be able to hide (I said). She reeled off the names–nobody I knew.  On the way there I began to dread the event.  I felt out of place for awhile, but everyone was genuinely friendly, and I relaxed without having to tell myself to.  Everyone had known each other for some time, so points of reference in conversation were often implied and I found little footing.  Before I was drawn into talk I noticed there were only seven of us.  When Sandra showed up it was a while before she joined the group, possibly talking to Melissa in the kitchen.  She had not hailed greetings when she came in, so I assumed she was not the eighth but maybe Nadal and Melissa’s daughter, because at the first, brief, glimpse she appeared much younger than anyone else there, and I was the youngest.  When someone plunked down beside me on the narrow wicker loveseat, I did not expect to see a new face when I turned my head that way.

I really don’t (I think) want to think of Sandra.  We had a first-date kind of conversation–kids, jobs, etc.–and I felt a creeping suspicion that this was some kind of set-up.  I didn’t let that suspicion creep too deep.  I knew I couldn’t continue to have this conversation if I blew up the whole scene into a conspiracy.  It was tempting to jokingly bring attention to the suspicion, but I didn’t see a win in that effort.  But by the end of the evening it was too late.  Kevyn and I were the first to leave, and by then I felt as if I’d been adopted by a new family–hugs all around, until Sandra and I were face-to-face, and then it was muttered, polite farewells as we dug our toes into the schoolyard dirt and avoided eye contact.  On the way home I said to Kevyn, “Sandra’s a very attractive woman.”  Kevyn only said, “Yes, she is a beautiful woman.”  I ventured no further, either that night or the next day before Kevyn left for Staunton.

Melissa, our hostess, friended me on Facebook, and I thanked her, in turn, for the hospitality. I struggled to find a way to mention or ask about Sandra without seeming obvious, but I knew there was no way and so left off altogether.  It occurs to me now that if Sandra is on Facebook she’s on Melissa’s friends list, and I wish I’d remained clueless on that count.

I’m afraid of a lot of things right now.  They may all be one thing, but I can’t trace it to its roots, or even chase the branches to the trunk.  I don’t want to commit to what isn’t a sure thing.  I don’t want my desires whitewashing the realities, sending hope soaring without wings over a beautiful precipice and falling into love.  I’ve not quite fallen back behind rational ramparts–I know my emotions must be served–but I can’t help being cautious after Julie.  Though Sandra and I enjoyed a rapport that Julie and I never had, it was, still, just a conversation.  Perhaps that’s where love starts, but I’ll not presume that this is such a case.

I’m afraid of losing Julie, too, though in what way that I haven’t already, I’m not sure.  Dammit, she still fascinates me, but that might come down simply to the impossibility of ever satisfying my curiosity about her.  In Sandra’s light, Julie seems almost a child to me now, missing a certain maturity or wisdom that would prevent her from ever connecting with me beyond mutual points of interest.  That saddens me immensely.  I’ve tried many times to make eye contact with Julie this week, but she refuses.  I’ve already vowed to not let our next desk hour together be silent, regardless of the hopes of my heart.  I’m not eager to talk to her–there’s almost nothing to say–but this is a horrible way for two people to treat one another.  If she can’t rise above it, I have to.

Maybe I really would rather be thinking of Sandra regardless of where it takes me.  It can only be a better place.  What’s wrong with hope?  There’s always a better world ahead than behind, real or not.  And what does it hurt? except maybe my next encounter with Sandra, when I might not be able to get my teeth out of the way of my tongue.  So what–a chance I’ll take.  I’ll think of Sandra if my mind wanders there (and I will let it); I just won’t tell anyone about it.  That has not been hard to do with Stacey’s example before me.  No cry-wolf humiliation for me.  Thinking about Sandra won’t make me fall in love with her.  Knowing her might, but right now that’s a galaxy far, far away.

Hokey Focus

Stacey believes in magic.  She met a guy in the grocery store, an employee, and she said it was a connection made immediately upon the meeting of the eyes.  I asked her if there were any physical signals of this connection, but she couldn’t identify any.  I asked her, “What was the balance of interest?  Was it perfectly mutual or did one of you make an effort beyond the halfway point to attract the other?”  She couldn’t answer that accurately, either. I was being too clinical, looking for that formula.  “I didn’t go in there looking to make something happen.  I mean, I just threw on some jeans, a camisole and a sweater–just running-to-the-store-for-a-few-things outfit.”  But she admitted to being receptive, if not actively so.  “I was just open and friendly, as I always try to be–just trying to be a happy me.”  Stacey was being herself, and that made her both more receptive and  more attractive–a theory practicalized.

But that’s Stacey–young, pretty, extroverted, female.  How much effort did this guy, Eric, have to make?  How many women have made Stacey’s kind of effort toward me?  Once, a few years ago, a woman left the desk after my helping her, and Gay Lynn came up and said to me, “She was so flirting with you.”  “She was?”  I doubt I’m any less clueless now.  Sure, the overt signals are easier to spot, but I’m sure I’m missing something in the conversation.  I don’t think I’ve tried flirting since Julie got back from vacation–concentrating very hard on ignoring her–so I haven’t had much positive eneregy or receptivity to put toward flirtation.

Eric has turned out to be married with children.  Stacey is very disappointed, though flattered that he seems “very into” her.  She is not as into him, but says she could easily be.  “There’s a fine line,” she says, “between a guy being into you and just being creepy.”  I suggested that that was probably relative to her receptivity.  (I definitely crossed onto the wrong side of that line with Julie, and  she was definitely not receptive.)  “Magic is the difference,” Stacey said.  “Nothing happens without it.”

Turn Blue

Outside the practically scripted structure of the library, the rules of my game of attraction change.  There is no search of interest in widening eyes or a head-dip.  There is only one rule, really, and that is to look good, and that’s all about the hair.  Shaving happens when I feel like it, clothes cover me, and I’m in good shape.  Hair is my vanity, and I’ll pay for the extra hot water it takes to wash and condition it now that it’s grown out, and for the detangler and oil.  If I feel I look good I feel good, and I’m the opposite of self-conscious.  I don’t swagger; I just feel good.  If there’s interest, I don’t notice.

Now that Julie’s back, outside the library is where I’d rather be.  With a weekend between us, it was easy writing that first paragraph .  Now I consider shaving the evening before the new week begins, and her face floats up before mine as the reason to shave.  So I won’t.  It didn’t stop me from washing my hair, though.  My rebellion in that arena is not having it cut.  I know no one at work likes it.  The next time someone says my hair looks good will be when I cut it short.  They can hold their collective breath.  I’ve spent enough time trying to impress the unimpressable.  It’s time I impressed myself–and anyone else who can appreciate me as I am.

Confounded Interest

Julie returns to work today, and I’m reminded of how ill-prepared I am to love, how pride is so thickly in the way of accepting what others have to give. I will go on, open to that spark of interest from women I don’t know and might not see again, all the while entirely closed to the woman whose interest I most want and will never have. I’d as soon she never came back, but the sweater hangs on the back of the chair at her empty desk like a jeer at all those lofty words her absence afforded me. Pride seems now to make a lie of all of them. This that I seek I seek selfishly, as something I demand as a natural right that has been unnaturally denied me. How much I talk of receiving love–what can I say about giving love that doesn’t embarass me with its naked ignorance? This “interest” I look for is not the innocuous fun I claim it to be. I’m looking for someone willing to love me. What thought is there of what I could give back? So a woman to whom I can’t speak, upon whom I can’t look returns to work. How well now can I expect to play my little game with the women I don’t know while I’m ashamed of the game I play with Julie?

Comfort Zones

Since I’m not “looking” for love, I’ll entertain myself seeking interest. I helped a woman with the copier yesterday that attracted me strongly. Her sharply drawn face was softened by large brown eyes in which I could sound no depth. After I’d helped her I retreated to the desk and just stared at her. It was the hair, I think–salt-and-pepper, falling from an asymetrical part in two long, thick waves to just above her shoulders. I’ve been a sucker for lyart hair since falling for Julie. As I was staring she glanced at me. Unabashed, I smiled faintly. There was no interest on her part-I could tell that immediately–but she had no guard up, as some women do when confronted with someone they are not attraced to that appears attracted to them. The woman at the copier was not extending an invitation any more than she was extending the ten-foot pole between us. She was confident she was safe–probably married or otherwise committed (I couldn’t get sight of her ring finger), or just very comfortable with herself.

At work is where I’m most comfortable seeking and pursuing attraction. It is my job to be seen and helpful. I know my professional role. I know the likely situations and how to deal with them. Patrons respect the assistance I provide. I’m appreciated. Outside of work, what is my role? Where is my respect? Who will ask me for help? Would I be able to help them? Even the most likely situations out there are too numerous to be prepared for. My comfort level dips precipitously: Show’s over–nothin’ to see here folks!

Leaving Well-Enough Annoyed

If there’s nothing I can do, what can I do?  Well, there’s me all over:  Well-Enough will always have my company.  For most of the time that I pursued Julie I knew, explicitly, that she was not interested in me.  For once, I’d come out of myself to pursue what I thought was a chapter of my destiny and could not have been more wrong.  Why not leave it to chance this time?  I could certainly use the breather.  Not that I don’t live on the edge of hope.  I encounter quite a few people at the library, and the odds throw several attractive women my way every day.  I look for the widening gaze upon first contact, the naked left ring finger as they pull their card from their from their wallet, and the birthdate on their account if the first two criteria are met.  If I can’t build up a flirt, I try to make meaningful eye contact or look for the head-dip/side-glance combination, or either of those along with the hair-tuck over the ear.  Let’s not say I’m looking for love so much as interest.  As long as I’m not looking for love I’m unburdened of the groundwork.  All I have to do is answer the phone when it rings and the door when it’s knocked–as long as I don’t each time expect or hope that love is the caller or visitor.  Ah, but I won’t hold that breath.