Fell in Like with The Drummer, Part Five: Still Holding Hands

(Still on the same hike, sorry everything takes 5,000 years for me to type through!)

 

“Your hand is tiny.” He said.

 

(Ha. Nothing about me is tiny, but he made me feel precious.)

 

“You’ve got REALLY nice hands,” I sighed, I’ll bet you could really hit somebody! In the good way, I mean!”

 

He deftly steered the conversation away from spanking and back onto all things pop culture. He said Howard Stern was one of his favorite podcasts and I tried not to give up on him just like that. Readers, can Howard Stern please just be a dealbreaker? I really hate to see the world in terms of dealbreakers, but how could the Drummer spend that much time with misogyny and contempt in his ears and still want anything to do with me? Which I guess he didn’t, eventually.

 

Anyway, aside from the Stern disappointment, which isn’t nothing, it was so, SO lovely talking to someone my age who was also (SWOON) an artist. Having the same reference points can make a guy feel like he’s the boyfriend for every stage of life, past and present. We were talking about how much we both love Rothko paintings and I said “Yeah, take that, Kurt Vonnegut” and he knew I was shorthanding to Bluebeard, kind of a Vonnegut deep cut if you ask me!

 

(I didn’t talk about that time Kurt Vonnegut was really awful to Jennifer Weiner, but I wanted to. Look it up, it’s vile.)

 

He shared the same uber-Nineties affinity for J.R. Bob Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius (I watched a documentary about them recently and it looked like the same soulless meme nihilism that got Trump elected. But also, Slacker is my favorite movie so who knows.) as the fiancée I had when I was twenty, with whom The Drummer shared a first name. “Yeah, that was me!” He laughed. I’m him!”

 

In some ways, talking with The Drummer made me feel like I had a place in the world, like I just fit. Almost to the car, we talked about how amazing Jane’s Addition are and it was the sensation of unlocking a puzzle box: Yes. This. Him.

 

When we got to my little red car and hugged goodbye, he took off his mask, I think to kiss me. I deftly hugged my face to his chest instead and joked about how he could save up some (many) makeout IOUs. With his mask back on, he looked a little bashful and said “I don’t really know how to end things,” but he was perfect and glowing when he brought his fingers to his masked lips and blew a kiss. So cute. So seemingly full of promise.