Mae

It involved two things of note.

+One+

Really, this isn't my thing of note, but I was there, and I was incredibly proud. Greg's launch was a smashing success. There were probably about 35 or 40 grown-ups there, and if you've ever been in Collected Works, you know that 20 chairs put out is 20 people crammed in. The rest of us spilled out into the rest of the store, clustering mainly around the two arches into the back room.

It wasn't a traditional reading. Greg mostly talked about John Ward and his significance both 400 years ago and today, and interspersed it with a few selections from the book. I think it's a testament to the writing that if I closed my eyes I couldn't tell when he went back from reading to speaking. Other people must have agreed, because Collected Works sold all their copies.

Hooray!

And, from all reports, the cookies were delish.

+Two+

After I had gotten home, run to yoga, run back and hoovered some dinner, I hied myself off to Mae's.

She showed me the treasures she troved at the Great Glebe Garage Sale and the Stittsville Flea Market; we drank lavender tea; we sat on the back porch; we commiserated; we agreed that we were both fabulous; we agreed we would continue to be fabulous, sometimes in the same space, but not Together; we cursed bad timing; we agreed we were not yet dead. I talked for too long about tropical fish; I apologized. She said nonsense; poured more tea. And then it was time for bed.

We hugged goodbye, a little tighter than we'd hugged hello.

"Take care of yourself," she said.
"You too, sweetie," I replied, using an endearment I never did while we were dating.

Then a run up Nanny Goat Hill, in the dark, on the clangy metal stairs, under the smell of lilacs turning brown.

You may have noticed a certain silence here around a certain Marathon Date with a certain Smokin Hot Mae. We ate good food, we lounged in bed, we read papers, we napped, we engaged in some Hot Damn Pants Removal. We went to a barbeque, glaze-eyed and yawning from all the day’s hard work; left early. We walked home with our arms wrapped around each other, I dropped her off at her house and walked up the stairs to mine.

I was exhausted. In my brain and heart. But doing okay.

Until I went to bed. I picked up my book, thumbed to the right page, and started bawling. I turned the light off. I kept bawling. I curled up, wishing I could fall asleep and wake up and not feel like my organs, vital and vestigial, were hovering on precarious stilts over a large body of salty water.

++

It was a hard decision to make, but I emailed her the next day. Told her I freaked out, told her I couldn’t date anyone.

I know, I know. Email? Not classy. Not my best move. Though I like to think that I’m good enough with manners of the heart, that I am in the Advanced Class, and thus know when it is appropriate to break rules that have been put in place for a very good reason.

Mostly, it turned out okay because Mae is a nice person, and moreover, she was feeling the same way. Had felt, even. Her Sunday night was tired and melancholy too.

This is why dating sucks. Because you meet someone you like, and you go out with them. And that’s nice, so you do it again. And they’re a really good kisser. So you do it again. And then it turns out that they embody all those things you said you wanted. So you keep on doing it.

And then one day your heart folds in folds in folds in on itself, into a pinprick black hole and you’re hurting numb all over. And you just can’t do it again and it just totally fucking sucks.

You know what is a very nice thing?

I will tell you.

A very nice thing is to have emailed the person with whom you are currently involved in intermittent, but very fun, pants removal, and to have told them that your visit with your family was stressful and it was very difficult to leave your grandmother not knowing if you would see her again, and then to open up your door and find a bouquet of lilacs on the step.

I think these will be a very lovely addition to the Marathon Date.

Smokin Hot Mae and I have had one of the oddest starts to dating I think I've had. I asked her out for a coffee, which turned into a beer, which turned into two, which turned into a tipsy walk home through the snow. So I asked her on a date date. The soonest we could schedule it was two weeks after. It was a smashing good time, so we decided we'd like another. In 10 days. It ended in a torn skirt and was very much fun. We decided we should do that again, though perhaps leaving out the ripped seams. We only went 7 days, that time.

This weekend, we're going to make up for it. Our next date, 10 days after our last date, goes from 6:30 pm on Saturday to sometime in the evening on Sunday.

We're making up for lost time, seems like.

I can't quite say how I feel about these gaps. I find them frustrating, for sure. That's a lot of time in between the kisses of someone whose kisses you quite thoroughly enjoy. And email, I do love email, to which anyone who has any kind of a relationship with me can attest, but, well, it's just not as easy to get to know someone that way as it is in person.

But I am enjoying that I want to see her again, and that the longer the gap, the more frustrated I become. It'll simmer down for a while, but I'll get an email, or see a picture and think, fuck, how many days?

It's all I can handle, as well. I can feel my heart struggling to come back alive, a thick ka-chunk as a bout of adrenaline shoots through its twisted veins and arteries and it lands hard in the bottom of my ribcage. The slow stretch and snap of a romantic feeling winding through.

That sounds dour and hopeless, but I don't mean it that way. I find it encouraging. I'm surprised I even have these jolts of actual feeling for someone else.

Whatever organ let me believe in Fate and True Love and The One is dead, starved of oxygen at a key point, perhaps. Maybe it'll grow back. Maybe it won't.

I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Because if what I get out of it is a day of backgammon and the newspaper in bed with a hot girl who is solid and thoughtful, funny, smart, creative, community-minded, warm through her core and a fucking great kisser, the kind of girl who will leave lilacs on my doorstep and offer me tea and hugs at just the right time, then I think that organ may have been vestigial.