Made Out In Front of a Romcom, and Other Perfect Things: Part Two

Definitely watch Nobody Wants This, it's so cute!!!

 I never wrote about my second date with The Southern Charmer, way back in 2022, because it spooked me all to heck. There was a thing that happened sometimes post-quarantine where a date would just get here and get immediately so relaxed that they were like human lofi, so calm and self-contained as to be unreachable. 

The Southern Charmer had tried a new kind of gummy and it had just zapped him entirely! Now that I've spent a few Friday nights in a woozy D8 haze listen-dozing to the 99% Invisible breakdown of The Power Broker, I understand a little better, but that night, it was startling!

I lay with him chastely as he rode it out, scared and ashamed of how actually helpless this person in my bed was! Once he was alert enough, he went home. I thought he had taken an Uber, but it turned out that he drove.

So the next day, once I knew he was alright, I let him go with a few (I hope) gentle texts. His tuned-outness really freaked me out, and I felt ashamed and worried that I'd let him drive home in that state.

Since then, I've remembered him as beautiful and sweet and just not in the right place for me. Good job me, I guess? The eyes-on-the-prize recognition that he wasn't the one for me, amazing! Stars all around.

But a thing he said to me in his hazy time really stuck in my mind, probably unfairly. "This is all too much" he said, and he could have just meant *gestures widely* but it hit my heart as meaning that I was too much. I worried about that, not being too much physically but just being too intense or whatever to really be in relationships. I still worry about that all the time.

I wrote some blog posts about being part Kaiju, a regular refrain. "Too much" stuck with me like a splinter.

But when The Southern Charmer popped up again this year around my birthday, I had a different perspective--I'm a stoner now too! It was so appealing to bond over the 15-25 milligrams of peace I've been enjoying every night, and a nice fantasy to think about sharing that feeling with somebody pretty and kind.

And here we were! Making out on the couch without one single care in the world. My body, heart, mind, and soul were all aligned and ungrasping (except literally I mean), all together an open gate. I felt one wholehearted emotion and that was...welcome!

I felt so far outside the everyday concerns of dating, like all the baggage of these last thirteen years just clocked out for al little bit. I was innocent and free. I felt filled up with trust and happiness and ***friendship***. The Southern Charmer made me feel so safe and seen and embraced. It was a profound relief to rest in him. In us.

The kissing on the couch lasted so beautifully long. Kissing like nothing bad had ever happened to us. Kissing like we had all the time in the world, and we did.

Guy With the Big Telescope Returns, Part One

Are sequels a bad habit? Maybe! But I haven’t regretted one yet! When I rematched with GWBT (He’d added Feeld to his searchings.) I got a good feeling.

On the first date (https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2023/06/new-guys-old-triggers-real-dating-break.html) way back in May when the voice of heartbreak was louder than it is now, I decided we weren’t a match for one reason: He shushed me! In Emotionally Neutral Diner! Which, maybe, isn’t so emotionally neutral! It seemed like it would be a mistake to kiss someone who’d shushed me, so I didn’t.

But in the half-block between the diner and my car, we held hands. Here in September, I remembered vividly and with my whole body how good the handholding had been. And I remembered how he’d tried to send me home with lunch just in case my brunch French toast hadn’t been filling enough. I remembered the telescope I had yet to peer through. I wondered if he still had a tape deck in his car.

The pictures on his Feeld page were almost all on the beach and I felt a little pang for having missed my chance for summer beach drives with him.

My body wanted to see him again, to see what his kiss would be like, to let myself relax into him, somehow I knew I could. He offered to help me with my puzzle, still the endless, too-big-for-the-table 2000-piece one, and I thought that was very brave and kind.

He brought dinner, so much dinner. He asked if I wanted Jamaican food and I said sure, I’ll eat a meat pie. Instead, he brought heavy platters, oxtail and jerk chicken and fried plantains and rice. I’m so bad at flavors, but I tried everything.

He was hesitant to share his music collection with me on a second date, too eclectic, he kept saying. But he lost a bet (I knew I wouldn’t like plantains) and I got to hear it! His music just…lives in his phone?! No Spotify or anything. It turned out the be the perfect puzzling soundtrack: Classic techno gay bar tracks. Opera. Metallica. A pop song selection maybe more unhinged than my own.

About the puzzle, he kept wondering aloud: “There must be some kind of a system we could use to make this easier…”

I guess maybe sorting the colors into boxes is kind of a system?

I liked feeling his leg against mine under the puzzle table. I was suddenly entirely wet, way more turned on than one might expect to be under such wholesome circumstances, and with such a soundtrack!

When he found a piece that fit, or maybe the fourth or fifth time he found one, I said, dorkily, “Now you get rewarded with a smooch.”

It was a good one. Well worth the wait.