Despertar

but it feels good

New agreement: no more sex till serious commitment happens, whenever, ifever it happens.

Starting, um, now. No, now. Okay...now. This time, really: now.

*

It depresses me that my response can be so easily summarized as rejection. I just kept remembering the first time we talked on the phone, how you wrote about it, afterward, and how, unless you were exaggerating, you were absolutely enchanted even by the sound of my voice. I liked being compared to a mermaid, but mermaids aren't real. As soon as mermaids start wanting you to call more often, visit more often, they suddenly aren't mermaids anymore, they're witches. Nags. Girlfriends. You and I are both, separately, living proof of the way this works: the magic can't survive reality.

Justin thought I was a goddess, at first. Or, at least, he thought I was sexy, funny, sweet and interesting. Reportedly, he still does. On our first date, he dressed more nicely than he ever does, shaved his goatee and was incredibly polite. Shortly thereafter, I developed feelings, which scared him because he is commitment-shy and happy with his life the way it is, unbounded and spontaneous. I guess he thought I could be some sort of friend with benefits; we could fuck and it would be good but unemotional and I wouldn't mind him collecting numbers at clubs, and it would go on that way till one of us got tired of it, or till I found someone who was willing to "put in the work" of creating the relationship I've been idealizing since high school. He has adjusted remarkably well to the problem I created by developing feelings, and I think he feels things too, he just isn't sure how to reconcile that with how much he likes being free, in principle, at least. Now that I'm a real person, who wants or expects things from him, I imagine it's harder for him to remember that at some point I was an unattainable born-again virgin who called him fat once (by accident and after some drinking).

Eventually, that would have happened with you. You were nicer to me than anyone has ever been, though, and made me feel better about myself than anyone ever has, so I didn't want it to happen.

*

The New Hampshire caucus coverage made me cry last night.