Epilogue: The Drummer

 

Once I like someone, I kind of assume they are going to evaporate into think air immediately. I guess that’s not such a weird conclusion to jump to these days, given that I did have a beloved longtime friend suddenly drop dead of Covid a few weeks ago. The Drummer didn’t evaporate, exactly, and I’m not sure if I made him disappear.

 

The Wednesday after our woods date was January Sixth. The Drummer, just texting every few hours or so, was a powerful comfort. I liked to picture his Nineties self, beating up the insurrectionists outside a hardcore show. “Bunch of clowns.” He texted, and I heard it in his adorably gruff regional accent. Bunch of clowns indeed.

 

Something unspecified happened with his family that following weekend. I knew he was caring for his mom who suffered from dementia and a brother on the spectrum, I hoped they were both/all okay! I imagined The Drummer having to bail out some lousy insurrectionist cousin or uncle, even though I was the one with the fascist aunts. I wondered if he secretly WAS one of the lousy insurrectionists! If he’d just been trolling me by playing liberal—he HAD mentioned still watching South Park… Things were very stressful and paranoid that weekend. I couldn’t physically relax.. My body knows the they’re coming for you feeling and I couldn’t shake it even though I was home and safe.

 

Not the best frame of mind to be trying to make plans for a date, but we did try. We were going to watch Wonder Woman 84, once I ascertained that we were NOT watching it as one of our bad movies. I looked forward to seeing the outfits again, to mediating upon Gal Gadot’s shiny hair. But we had to change plans a couple of times, he kept having to postpone, and it was one chaos, one vulnerability too many for me.

 

I told him I like to know my schedule, that he should reach out when things cleared up a bit, when things were less maybe-ish. He was so sweet and apologetic about the changes, but I never heard from him again. I regretted being (VERY GENTLY) sassy about the schedule. I worried that I hadn’t been compassionate enough. I worried that I was going to be alone with my schedule forever.

 

I texted one more time, to say I hoped he was okay, that I was here any time for comfort or distraction. I unmatched us on Bumble but I left his number unblocked, just so I can tell myself I’m open, I’m not too rigid, I’m here for imperfection and tumult and unspecified family stuff. Am I? I don’t know. The guys I’ve chatted with since are so BORING compared to him, I miss him a lot. It’s hard to be hopeful and hard to keep going, but I will, I am.

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.

Fell in Like with The Drummer, Part Four: OMG Holding Hands!!!!!

 

 

The Saturday after New Years, we had our first in-person date. The Drummer was coming into town from the suburbs to meet me at my favorite gentle hiking spot in a nearby state park. I picked out a red lace dress to wear under my warm fuzzy black coat with black leggings and worn-out black Chuck-Taylor-like lowtop sneakers. (Those were DEFINTELY no match for the cold muddiness of the trails!)

 

It was weird to get ready for a date without lipstick, and my old safer-sex anxieties seemed minute compared to the fear that this so-called liberal might somehow show up without a mask like surprise! No science! I sent him a here’s what-I-look-like-with-half-a face pic and quickly got one back. We both prefer bandannas, very we’re-all-Antifa-now.

 

As I sat on a wooden fence rail waiting for him, I felt frozen with nervousness. Also, with cold, fretting about the fraught etiquette of maybe needing to blow my nose during the date without seeming like I was gonna breath-murder him. If I went in for a hug, would I seem wildly irresponsible? If I declined a kiss later, would he think I didn’t like him? I felt a little lost without my in-normal-times general sluttiness to rely on!

 

Because I am me, I already fully liked him before he came walking up the trail, but also, he was all the way cute. He was a little taller than me and not as fat, but very solidly built. I’m generally a little afraid of white dudes (I mean, have you seen America?) but his forty-something-ex-hardcore-kid-ness put me at ease, especially his vague and lovely tattoos. His dark green fedora, rather than making him look sketchy, made him look dapper and like he definitely cared about this date! (Scream emoji!)

 

He leaned in for a hug and I couldn’t help but say “You’re actual!”

 

We talked easily, especially for walking six feet apart! I snuck glances at his hands, big and warm-looking, open and relaxed at his side like an invitation, or at least not NOT an invitation! 

Fell in Like with The Drummer, Part Three: Hot Nap Pic

 

**********Incredibly sad synchronicity alert: Pagan Boy, who was next in line in my ersatz High Fidelity thread, my friend of 28 years and one of my most formative boyfriends, passed away of complications from Covid over the weekend. I found out while this draft was on the desk waiting to be typed. I say synchronicity because The Drummer woke up such a hankering for chatting through bad movies that I drafted Pagan Boy into the madness. Before he was gone, I got to mock Dear Christmas (my choice) and Five-Headed Shark (his) over messenger with him.

 

The Drummer has gently ghosted by now (Well I HOPE he ghosted and didn’t, you know, die.) but even aside from the copious cuteness he provided, I’m so, so grateful he led me to those good hours with Pagan Boy. I miss them both a bunch and I’m basically pining like Wonder Woman over here.***********

 

Back to December:

 

One of the side effects of being underemployed, traumatized by America, estranged from part of my family and also possibly being part bear is that I’ve really ramped up my nap-taking. With that comes a little bit of nap-guilt, especially while I was in touch with riskily not-underemployed The Drummer. Ask me about my NAPS FOR ALL platform.

 

Nap-guilt notwithstanding, I asked The Drummer one Friday afternoon if I should do something productive (I WAS, despite all of the above, nonetheless in full Virgo goalsetting/Tidying Up/budgeting mode) or take a nap.

 

“Nap! Nap! Nap!” he wrote back right away.

 

Inspired, I typed “Hot nap pic in the works”

 

I got into my longjohn-style, vaguely Christmas-themed pajamas, cocooned in the covers, then set about learning portrait mode. The blankets were pulled up over my head, you could only see a fraction of my face, but my vulnerably unglassesed eyes definitely said “Wish you were here.”

Possibly I also typed that.

 

It was a silly, cute, bundled-up picture, but as I noted his kiss emojis and headed toward snoozetown, I felt such a warm wave of joyful desire. It was as if I had just texted him all of the quadrants, naked outside in the sun. It felt new to be so easily and thoroughly turned on in such a time of scary touch-desert. It was an EXTREMELY good nap. Might have to stop writing and go take another.

…

 

Okay I’m back. That weekend, the weekend before Christmas, The Drummer and I had our second text-though-a-bad-movie date, this time with blue speech bubbles instead of Bumble yellow. I thought we had already agreed on Left Behind (Y’all! It’s so much like The Leftovers except really bad and boring and with disconcerting references to “globalism”!) but he seemed taken aback that I was actually willing to go there. This poor guy, he must’ve felt like dating me was a dare.

 

For all the fun and happiness and quipping, bad movies are REALLY LONG without eventually switching to making out. So when he asked me what my choice was for next time, I said a six-feet-apart walk in the woods. And so, after the holidays, that would be our plan.