"It's a test. These guys are tests for you." Yeah, that's what I was thinking she'd said. And she continued on in earnest curiosity, "Why do you even respond to them?"
"Should I just ignore them? That's rude. There's no reason to be rude. Besides, it just blows me away." So I start to tell my sister the story of who this guy is who is messaging me tonight.
I haven't heard from him literally since high school. He's still good friends with another high school friend of ours whom I had been chatting with, more than I really wanted to, up until recently. That guy (I'll call him HikerGuy) I had already set straight, a month or so ago. I had told him, point blank, that "texting from sun up until late at night was something lovers do, which we are not." He slowly but gradually cooled off after that. But this guy who was messaging me tonight? He was apparently a little miffed at spaceman and I having announced our relationship publicly on Facebook to all our friends and family. I do not make this shit up, this is what he said to me:
"Weren't you just talking to HikerGuy? Damn...I missed the deadline again with you! Ugh!"
I am sure that HikerGuy left any assumptions his friends had about he and I very open ended and probably never used the word "platonic" in any of those conversations. When the guy from last night asked me again about HikerGuy my reply was simply,
"Um we were talking about Hiking. And he's an awesome guy. But there was nothing you could consider not platonic. And I was not committed then.I told HikerGuy when I made [my own] decision. Only fair"
And yet you would not believe the detail in which he went into expressing his thoughts about me. Basically, he reminisced in detail about how I looked in high school. Having taken me to a dance, he had pictures he said he has kept and admired all this time. Seriously, can a girl be flattered any more than that from a high school friend? I am 41 years old now, fergodssakes. I am just like any other 41 year old with sagging unmentionables and bulging curves. How is it wrong, I think to myself, to allow myself to listen to a guy say such things to me? That's not acting on it. It's a one-time conversation. In fact, I woke up this morning to another "hello" from him and that one DID get ignored. He's also obviously way into looks and I'm not. I was polite the other night, but that's enough warning. In fact, that night he asked me for my phone number and I refused. I am not playing the field anymore. That's key.
There is one person whom I was having a wonderful time hanging out with, also platonically... and he hasn't said so, but I know him... He's probably hurt, and that's partly my karma. We had plans to hang out last night (which the universe was apparently conspiring to have cancelled because I came down sick yesterday afternoon), but he politely cancelled our plans (before I came down sick) and that actually brought me selfish relief. Normally I would be more inquisitive of his feelings, try to foster understanding. But this time, I let him go. I simply asked him to please not be a stranger. He didn't contest what that implied - that I knew he was hurting and why. He just said, "Thanks". His possible pain bothers me. Steven has been in my life longer than spaceman has (just not with the same connection). We have worked long and hard at being just friends. I sincerely thought we had achieved it years ago.
It's not a one-way street, these admirers. Spaceman has his own, and rightfully so. He, too, has lost an ex-turned-friendship over our announcement. We spoke about it at some length, if not what words transpired, but about his relationship with her. He asked me, and I am paraphrasing here because it was days ago and if you only knew the needle in a haystack effort trying to dig up that one line would be... he asked, "this doesn't bother you... talking about her with you?" Of course it doesn't... I want to know everything he's willing to share with me, at all times, with any subject. He affords me so much more than that. For instance, this writing here... he has granted me permission to write without asking further permission about anything we discuss or anything about him. How trusting is that? How open is that? And after 10 years of conversing with him (he gave me permission back then as well as again recently when I re-asked him), I know he can handle anything I throw at him.
Except infidelity. I never assume anyone can handle that. He never said he couldn't handle it; it's implied in our commitment with one another. It's not even possible; it's not how I operate. It's not who I am. I have had a married man surprisingly kiss and seduce me while I was young and single (a fling I quickly ended), but that was a one time thing I swore I'd never do again and is the extent to which I have ever been a "cheater". I am however, oftentimes a flirt. This has gotten me into some sticky situations before, and I have many stories, too many stories... all of which I will, in time, spill to spaceman. He knows I have a wild side. He's seen it. We laugh often over it, too. :)
Every time a memory of some crazy thing I've done crosses my mind when we are chatting, my immediate reaction inside myself is to savor it but crush it into the secret corners of my past... and then I realize, like the million other little realizations that course through me when we are together, that he would want to know the whole me. By not sharing, I am deceiving him into a false sense of who I really am. So, I tell him. I tell him the whole of it. The fun, the stupid, the dangerous, the insecure, the immature, the slutty even. I am not afraid to be my whole self with him. And the fact that he receives everything about me with such grace and hunger for more... well, I am on this fisherman's hook, blissfully caught up into his net. I don't ever want to be with anyone else. When I tell him who I really am by recounting who I have been, it shows him the range and capacity I have within me and that is yummy to him. He tells me so in a million different ways and, in turn, demonstrates to me in unfathomable tenderness or shocking, sexual command, he loves me, he wants me, he will pour his everything out with me as well.
And so, these "tests"... *I roll my eyes*... they have NOTHING on spaceman. It may have been that, around Halloween, we were not yet committed, but something changed that weekend... and although I was still chatting with others, I kept it platonic and was watching to see what spaceman would or would not do. I wanted him more than I was saying at the time and he leapt, more than once to catch up, and now we are on fire.
From spaceman to merridian:
In to me see, intimacy.
ReplyDeleteyes! *swoon*
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