Sweet Valentine, Part Four: Between Two Dates

 

How would anyone understand things without Mary Oliver?

Like a lot of people with Relationship OCD and probably non-divergent daters as well, I struggle with the time between the first date and the second. The uncertainty is hard, yes, but my brain always wants to rehearse for the eventual ghosting or other kind of rejection. I have to be ready to say goodbye perfectly, because if I don't, I feel shame. To react anything less than magnanimously to rejection feels like a violation of consent, like I'm impinging on the person's bodily autonomy. As with many things, OCD makes fraught things fraughter, and I would like it to please pipe down.

I had no hesitation about asking him out for Valentine's morning though, it just felt right! Like, we're both cute and horny and full of spiritual love, why not do the traditional Valentine things? We deserve it!

But then. The plan-making process. The waiting-to-hear-back! I started to wonder if I'd sabotaged our chances by picking such a pressureful day. Maybe I did! Or maybe our chances are just what they are. 

As soon as the plan was made, the time was chosen, I felt like going all in. I felt like Aphrodite in my Valentine's Eve dress at school. I was g l o w i n g with hope, joy, and confidence. I even thanked Blue Ribbon Work Crush for being the greatest work crush of all time--going on three years! We had a little whirlwind of cute before going back to our normal high fives and safe little flirts.

I worried that Sweet Valentine would think I was cliche if he showed up and I was in red lingerie with a bouquet of multicolored roses and some chocolate cupcakes, but also, this is our one and only life, and it was Valentine's Day. It might have artificially raised the stakes, but I wouldn't trade that morning-to-afternoon for anything in this world. But if crashing into each other like waves made it so I wouldn't get to keep getting to know him, I'm sorry about it too.

It feels painful to think of writing about the sweetness and hotness and rightness of that day, not knowing what will become of him and me, not knowing where this break-to-reflect will take us. But I'll write it in good hot faith when I'm ready, I promise. 

Heart Emoji Guy: A New Way to Break Me, Part One

Weekend after last, I was a little sad about my job with Blue Ribbon Work Crush being over for the summer, but it was okay because this beautiful, kind, eager young man (29, his profile said) was sending me all the heart emojis. Definite good boy potential, it seemed. We planned a Saturday night movie night at my place.

I ask all my first dates to bring flowers, and Heart Emoji Guy showed up with RAINBOW ones. With glitter on them! And like the biggest bad of Sour Patch Kids you’ve ever seen. AND Junior Mints. And popcorn! I was microwave popcorn and I don’t have a microwave, but still!

Our date was starting at around the time the fireflies come out, so I asked if we could take a walk around my neighborhood. Twilight is one of the prettiest times around here, and there was a poetic slice of waxing half moon to keep us company. We held hands, lacing our fingers together in that way that always feels pleasantly teenage-crush. Dreamy-innocent in that way that David Lynch associates with goodness. (Sorry, I’m audio reading Room to Dream and rewatching all of Twin Peaks so I’ve got my second-favorite filmmaker’s aesthetics all tangled up with my own.)

When it came time to get cozy and pick something to watch, Heart Emoji Guy asked for standup comedy. I braced for him to choose Chappelle (The great date-ruiner of 2021) and free up the rest of my evening. But we landed on (Slightly less problematic? But my niece hates him?) John Mulaney. The new special is sad weirdly smug and funny and maybe not the best makeout material.

But I did hope to make out! I just had to do my disclosure first—HSV-1. I’ve often disclosed over text pre-date, I may go back to doing it that way. Or I may date exclusively on that dating app for people who have STI positives. Or I may hide under the weighted blanket and never date again.

But it really seemed like he took it in stride. He’s in the healthcare field, so I felt not-too-anxious telling him.

When it came time to aim my face toward his, his lips landed everywhere, anywhere, but on my lips. Ears, neck, cheeks, forehead. My heart sank to about the center of the earth.

I wasn’t having an outbreak, but I can still understand someone not wanting to kiss an HSV-positive person. Even if I couldn’t understand it, it would have to be okay! That’s how consent works!

I asked him, trying to keep tears out of my voice, “Do you not want to kiss me?” and he said he did. But his body said that he didn’t. Ears, cheeks, shoulders getting kissed would have been lovely if not for the WHAT IF I NEVER GET PROPERLY KISSED EVER AGAIN grief overtaking me.

It would have been helpful to feel less urgent, or not to think about sex without kissing as tragic. Heart Emoji Guy was so kind and sweet and eager, I wanted to please him. I wanted to open up my mind and, like, glow myself into Ma’am mode. I didn’t want to get swept into the tide of grief, I wanted to accept this gift I thought life was trying to give me.

So I invited him upstairs to try the ropes!

Blue Ribbon Work Crush, Part Three

Three words, “no april fools” and then nothing.

I’d known I had to ask about the “smokes often” of it all. My hope was that it didn’t mean cigarettes, juts weed. IT NEVER MEANS THIS! But he’s my ******work crush****** and so beautiful so I had to at least try. Should I never have matched? Maybe? But I’m glad I did because I like this silly story.

Maybe I was too businesslike or cutesie or boilerplate or presumptuous when I asked him the cigarette question. Or maybe he just smokes, or maybe no answer was my answer for any other reason in the universe! If this were a stranger, I’d have felt pretty neutral about deleting the convo after a few days. Instead, I kind of…strived.

Spring is the perfect excuse to look extra cute, show a little more leg at work than usual. I posted a kind of Feeld-y lingerie pic on my regular dating app profile, hoping that might move the needle. When I wrote the first draft of this paragraph I felt a little judgey towards myself about the picture, but there’s something so tender and sweet about wanting him to just see me. I hope he did see that red lace. I hope he took a screenshot and put it in his hidden folder. Oh and a bad little part of me hopes he shows that hypothetical screenshot to the other guys at work.

The blue ribbon here is really for me, being so totally overflowing with fantasies and, at the same time, almost totally profesh! It’s almost like I have a sense of self-preservation.

The striving went on for a week or so, until one night when I had a beautifully hot hookup with a dreamboat who left a little too quick. That combination of satisfaction and melancholy opened me up enough to get a little bit honest with myself—Blue Ribbon Work Crush was the one I wanted, but he was probably a smoker and DEFINTITELY wasn’t a good texter-backer. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted.

I wrote him a note on our now-feeling-cursed dating app thread. I think it was a pretty good end-of-thread message. I apologized for my maybe-businesslikeness and was maybe a little too flowery about how great I think he is.

“Okay cool, I think you’re a nice person too.”

*dies a thousand deaths*

I’m not sure why it’s so devastating to be called a “nice person” but I hate it SO much. I cried, ended the thread, and realized it was only ever gonna be a flirtation. 

Probably, we're both just flirts! Some days I like thinking over every minute detail of what we say to each other, some days I feel mortified and ashamed if I pay him a little too much attention. Today, I’m tired of it and ready for something real.

But as I’m feeling the loss and muddle and awkwardness and BOREDOM, I also want to acknowledge the everyday gift of what has happened, the free-of-charge joy this not-quite-connection has brought. I liked the cute guy at work! He was attracted to me back! Huzzah! I’m proud to be walking away with a minimum of fraughtness. Learning and growing! I might be getting somewhere.

Blue Ribbon Work Crush, Part Two

I had (still have) no chill every time I pass BRWC in the hallway. I always feel compelled to sing out his name or give him a little present.

My department had a whole week of feasting right before Christmas break-- which was wonderful except alllllllll the diet talk that came along with it. If I could wave a wand and make food talk cease to be a small talk topic!!! Anyway, there was an amazing coconut custard pie and I brought him a piece, all wrapped up un foil with a fork and napkin on top. Gave it to one of his teammates to pass along, which in retrospect seems hurtful! Teammate deserved some pie too!

The next day, the last day before break, I looked all over the building trying to give him one of my fancy gingerbread cookies. After that dizzy afternoon, I kept resolving not to chase him! There’s a reminder on my Finch app that says “Do my best about cute people,” because “Don’t fawn all over ___________” seemed too high to aim.

The car got fixed up unfraughtly, and the gentle flirting kept being the icing on the gingerbread cookie of any given day. Sometimes, there was a moment—like when I told him to high five better next time. Like when he told me in a hopeful/bonding tone that his car has lots of stickers on it too.

There was one such moment the day before Easter vacation, a little bit of a blink-and-you’ll-miss it D/s glimmer between us that made me decide that, if the moment came, I was gonna ask him out before the end of the day. There have been several moments like that, that I didn’t end up taking, usually because he was standing around with a bunch of dudes, but sometimes just because I didn’t want to.

Two days later though, a thing happened—he “liked” me on one of the dating apps! OMGGGGGGGGG! Even though he had a “smokes often,” I matched him and said “Hey pal!” and then three big grin emojis.

Seriously, who does this happen to?! I know a “like” is the smallest move possible, but still! He made it! The person I was daydreaming about all this time! The cutest guy at work! Liked me back!

And then my unhelpful brain was like, are you sure? Look at what day it was when he matched: April Fools Day. Several scream emojis!

When he didn’t respond for a few days, I went ahead and asked. “Ohno is this match an April Fool?! If so I will have to schedule some time to be mortified!

(No one I obsessed about this to had ever heard of this as a kind of April Fools prank, so apparently I should have slightly more confidence.)

A few days later, came his three word, no punctuation reply:

“no april fools”

Blue Ribbon Work Crush, Part One

Does everybody walk into a new job and wonder who’s gonna be the Cute Person there? This time, I didn’t even have time to wonder. He was right there when I walked in on my first day last August. A different department from mine! Carrying heavy things! And so exactly my type: handsome in a lighthearted way, tall as me, dark-skinned, locs.

I found a way to say something to him that day and every day since, feeling completely ridiculous after every interaction. He flirted enough to spur my imagination, and firing up the fantasy machine about somebody at work felt scary and delicious.

(And reminded me of Mr. Makeout Music and Lady Work Crush, those cute harbingers of sobbing and job-quitting. I LOVE my current job, top two of all time, so caution is wise.)

Speaking of machines and warmth, after a few months of chitchat, I knew he was a car guy, so I asked him for advice when Valentine’s heater started making a weird whirring noise. And! He said! That it was just the blower motor and if I ordered one online, he would put it in for me! POSSIBLY THE CUTEST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME. Or anyone.

I asked my coworkers about it and the office leader said “Ms. ________, not everything is a Hallmark movie.”

She wasn’t entirely right, my life is always very romcom, but she had a point. The fraughtness of what if he doesn’t do it right? Or what if I ordered the wrong part? Or if I did order it and he never had time to put it in? And how were we supposed to get in tough about it—did I need to *gasp* ask for his number? I didn’t know my post-Christmas museum trip was gonna get Covid-ed out, Val needed to be ready.

I’m learning how to keep fraughtness to a minimum, so I think I made the right choice taking the car in to the new post-Cute Car Place Guy service station. I was grateful that Blue Ribbon Work Crush had explained to me what I needed!

But I wonder—if I’d let him do me that favor, would we have gotten to know each other better? Would we have been able to try each other out in a way that would have been more organic than what did end up happening? Was I too cautious, too closed off to chance and hope and fate? Probably not, but it’s a very cute “what if” to walk around with.