It was great seeing Ken again. I was comfortable and enjoyed an effortless conversation. Ken is a handsome guy and I did enjoy having dinner tonight.
I was at ease right from the start and stuck to the plan of not getting too hot and heavy into anything right off the bat. Good plan. Good plan. We chatted about his classes (he's currently in nursing school), AT&T Wireless (the other evil empire), dating, family, etc.
Toward the end of dinner I decided to tell him a bit about the transformation of thought that I've been having the past few weeks. It's funny that we both agreed on how we have bitched and moaned about not having anyone in our lives and yet seem to frequently go out of our way to make sure it stays that way. I apologized for being a lousy friend over the years and said that I would like to spend more time with him. Very casually and somewhat off-handedly I mentioned that I've always enjoyed being with him and I'd like to spend more time together and see if we might find a dating spark there. He agreed and said that he had told other friends about me and had said to them that we always get along great and are at ease with one another, but never really knew why we hadn't progressed to a dating relationship.
There were a few things that happened tonight that I wasn't expecting though. First, after a few hours chatting and having dinner, I was ready to come home and didn't want to invite him home with me. I don't know whether he was expecting that or not, but I was satisfied with the time we spent together. Also, I've had a long week and I'm exhausted after a short night last night.
When we were looking for a time to meet, Ken had said that he was busy for the next two weekends. That had made me wonder if he might be dating someone or something, so I quizzed him about it AFTER I had told him that I'd like to see more of him. That wasn't accidental. Regardless of his "situation" I wanted to be open and tell him what I was thinking. I figured if he said he was seeing someone then I'd lose my nerve or it would just be weird to tell him. So, the story is that he's going to Rhode Island to meet a guy that he met online. He said they met in a chat room and have spoken on the phone numerous times. Believe it or not, this news didn't bother me even a tiny bit! No, seriously. Even to me this sounds like I might be overcompensating and just "saying" that it didn't bother me, but it really didn't.
So, what the hell does that mean? Again, I'm going to try and not over analyze this, but I was very surprised that I could hear Ken was flying off across the country to stay with an online acquaintance for a week and not be at least a bit disappointed. But I wasn't. Does it mean that there just isn't a real spark there between us and that's why we could travel together and spend time together and not have anything develop? Ken and I talked tonight about how we have both actively avoided getting into another relationship and how in both our cases we can point to our first real love relationships as the probable cause of our avoidance of another. Like him, I was deeply wounded by the failure of my first relationship. It sounds funny even to call it a relationship. If you stuck all the minutes that Alan and I ever physically spent in the same room together I doubt that it would total much more than 3 weeks or so. The longest contiguous stretch of time we were together was a seemingly endless weekend taking the train from SF to Seattle and back. God, that was a hellish trip.
Soon after we met Alan moved to CA while I still lived in Reno. I went to see him on the weekends for a few months, but we never really progressed beyond a weird infatuation with one another. And yet, I was insanely attracted to him and terribly, terribly attached. I've joked that I was like a baby duck just coming out of the shell. The first thing I saw was Alan and I imprinted on him. Although just a few months into our "relationship," less than 1 week before he was going to move back to Reno and move in with me, he sent me an email breaking up with me. I was beyond devastated. Why it surprised me, I don't know. There had scarcely been a second of Alan and my time together that hadn't been wracked by drama. From his tearfully telling me he didn't want to see me again after our first date, to him calling me from work just hours later asking me to fogive him and assuring me that he'd made a mistake, it was just the foreshadow of things to come... How did I not see that train wreck coming? And yet, following this experience I spent several years believing that his coming back to me was just around the corner. If I were just patient then he'd be back. I believed that until about the 3rd year of his live-in relationship with George (whom Alan is still with today, a 9+ year relationship).
Anyway, how I do digress. Since Alan, I have never "felt" what I felt with him. Since Alan I have never opened up and let a guy in like I did with him. Why? Is it because I've never met anyone else who made me feel that way? Is it because "feeling that way" isn't real and I shouldn't expect it? Is it because It was so difficult the first time that I'm too protective of myself to let anyone in again? To be quite honest, I have no idea. Not even a single clue.
Well now. That went in a weird direction. One funny thing happened tonight. Something that made me remember one of the most annoying things about Ken. The bill came for dinner, and although I had planned to buy since he is a starving student, he never made a flinch towards his wallet. This was a major irritation I had with him when we went to Vancouver for the weekend. I paid for EVERYTHING and he seldom even mentioned it. So, tonight I paid for dinner and his 2 drinks and not a single word about it. That really does irritate the hell out of me. He did redeem himself somewhat. A bit ago he sent an email thanking me for dinner and saying he thought he'd forgotten to thank me at the restaurant.
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