[Danielle is gone. I have a week alone before I return to
“real life” in North Carolina. Let it be known…I am scared.]
After dropping Danielle off at the airport and spending a couple
more dateless days in Boston (due to the asshole who stood me up), I headed up
to Maine for one of my closest friend’s wedding. The wedding location was a quaint
farm in a small town one hour north of Portland…and one hour south of the man
who I had my first post-major-relationship fling with last year.
I should have known better than to call him again. But in
this blog’s typical fashion of over-sharing, I was lonely, sex-deprived, and
still had lingering feelings for him--even after a mildly disastrous weekend in his
cabin last November.
I can’t let go of him for many reasons. He is everything my mother
would approve of: read as Jewish and Ivy-League educated. But, more than that, on
paper, he is everything (or most things) I would approve of, too… He is an
intelligent, red-bearded, highly proficient musician, and a cabinet-maker with
an eye for detail. He understands my intense professional baseball
and football-fandom, and rides a motorcycle for God’s sake.
So forgetting everything I’ve learned on this trip, mainly
“things cannot work out when the guy is not into you,” I texted him (yes,
texting is clearly the only way I have communicated with him all year, barring
the occasional banter over Words with Friends), and awkwardly asked him if I
could come visit again. These text-interactions normally go something like
this:
Hillary: Hey, so hi. How r u? I am coming to Maine for a
wedding next week.
Him: That’s cool
(I impatiently wait 5 hours, because that’s what I’m
supposed to do, right?)
Hillary: So, would you like to have dinner when I’m up there?
Him: Sure
(Waiting again, struggling with what I can say next)
Hillary: And…can I crash with you?
(This text is then followed by me coming up with some crazy
logistical excuse about why I would drive an extra THREE hours to see him, and
definitely cannot find another place to stay nearby. I nervously await his
response.)
Him: If you want.
“If you want.” I have to stay with this phrase for a bit,
because it’s something I struggle with (and I know I shouldn’t.)
Did I really want to stay with him? I honestly don’t know.
Did I want it to turn out like last November, where my expectations for the
weekend were so high that I ended up crying in his bathroom when the littlest
things went differently than I had fantasized? Um, clearly not. Did I still harbor irrational feelings for him that I
couldn’t shake? I think so. Had I already told him this via a way-too-forward
email last year, and gotten a week-later response that he didn’t feel the same
way? Yes and yes. Do I like being an asshole to myself? Apparently, yes.
When I read his answer, “If you want,” all I could think
was: I don’t know if I want to stay over. What I WANT is for YOU to want me to
stay over and say so.
Sigh. I am too old for these games. I hate games. And let’s
be honest, I suck at playing them. (See 2nd Boston post, if you’ve
forgotten this about me.)
But here’s the thing. You know what I hate more than playing
games?
Failure.
The last time I saw him was pretty much a failure. And I wanted a
do-over. And with his luke-warm, passive text response, I saw the small
possibility to do just that.
So I drove 2 hours out of my way and arrived at his
beautiful cabin in the woods of rural Maine. At first it seemed like he might
be interested in a do-over as well, as he immediately took me on my second
motorcycle ride of the year (at least this time, it was WAY warmer than in
November...) As I felt the wind blow my hair and I wrapped my arms tighter around his waist, I felt optimistic. I felt free. I felt like myself.
After a 20-minute ride around “town”, the rain started, and we
returned to his house. We feasted on boiled lobster and sautéed vegetables from
his garden—another do-over from last November.
I opened up a little about my dating adventure, and asked
him if this could count as my Maine date. He laughed and said that a motorcycle
ride and home-cooked lobster was maybe as date-like as it got. I agreed and
stupidly began to have visions of a future of nightly lobster, and motorcycle
rides down the coast, and collaborative music-making and…wait. Stop. Just STOP.
He is fantastic in many ways, but he’s also just not into me. Or, if he is, he
doesn’t show it. I mean, to my discredit (?), I must seem desperate. For God’s
sake, I am on a dating tour throughout
the country, and I drove an extra three hours to see him. I spent the night
trying to make him laugh and sporadically touching his arm. I actively wanted
to know about his life, so I asked a lot
of questions and genuinely cared about the answers.
But I AM NOT DESPERATE. (That is in capital letters, so I
make sure I read it again myself.)
I want to be with someone (whether for one night, or for
eternity) that actively wants to be with me and shows me that.
So, when it came to that awkward moment in the late evening,
when he told me I could sleep wherever I
wanted, his room or the guest room, I knew in my heart that I had to choose
the guest room.
Take-away? I cannot keep pining after men who don’t want me…even
if they are Jewish lumberjacks who play a mean harmonica.
With this decision made, I climbed into the guest bed and
fell into a deep, resigned, proud sleep.
He didn’t wake me up to say goodbye before he left for work in
the morning.
