This past Saturday, everything changed.
After pining for the Happy Wanderer for almost a year and not getting anywhere, finally last Friday I had the wherewithal to end it. He has never introduced me to his friends, never invited me to a party, never spent the night. I know if I were not going away for the holidays he would not agree to be my New Year’s date. They say you must clear out the old in order to have room for the new. Surprisingly, it worked!
After a tearful Friday—one of angry emails and phone calls exchanged—I finally said goodbye to the HW. I am done with fauxlationships. I let him know that he needed to step it up; I was no longer content to be the non-girlfriend.
By coincidence, on Saturday a friend said he ran into a guy he has known for a long time and realized we’d be perfect together. Turns out the guy, Scout, lives just four blocks from my house, on York. A good sign! Scout and I email back and forth trying to find a way to meet before I head off to India for three weeks on Tuesday.
We found out we both had parties to go to that night on the West Side so I suggested we have a “Cab Date,” a term I coined on the fly. Twenty minutes and half the fare sounded reasonable. We met at the liquor store below my apartment, picking out wine to bring to our respective events and hopped in a taxi.
As I was telling the driver there’d be two stops, we both looked at each other and paused. “I should just really bring you to my party,” I said to him. “Yeah, you should,” he said, and just like that there was only one stop.
We rode, our shoulders and hands touching down the FDR, across to the West Side, growing more and more comfortable.
Once inside the party, we had the perfect rhythm. Mingle, come together, mingle. Hands would touch, glasses would clink, eyes would connect across the room perfectly timed with sly smiles.
“Could you come with me for a second?” he asked, mid-party. And I found myself locked in the bathroom with him, being kissed for the first time.
Hand in hand we left and headed to the house of the friend that introduced us. Another bottle of wine later we exited into the icy night, clutching onto each other, slipping and sliding, cheeks red more from excitement than cold or alcohol.
At 1:30 a.m.—with icy flakes falling on our heads—we stood in the middle of the street and kissed, almost slow dancing.
Finally we found a cab and huddled in. Just like that, with no negotiations, he came to my place to sleep.
We entered and the dog, after his momentary burst of excitement, licked the floor nonchalantly, not with the maniacal vigor he would have had if I had just dropped something edible there, but more out of boredom and haphazard habit. Sometimes little red pieces of fluff from the flokati got stuck to his snout, and I couldn’t help but smile.
The window is shut even though I long for the staleness to dissipate, because witching hour revelers outside the bar across York scream too loudly and too often. Instead, window shut, their sounds are more like the muffled cries of someone stuffed in the truck.
We ease into bed and pretend we are camping. I pull the extra comforter over us and ask him if he could protect me from bears. I feel comforted by his warmth, strong arms and the knowledge that we are almost over the Winter Solstice hump and will no longer be sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness of the season. With each new passing day, there are minutes added to daylight.
On the oasis of a bed strategically set up in front of the radiator, we lay talking. It seemed rather conspiratorial to lay in the middle of a nook and whisper while it was dark out, as we loll about on our stomachs with legs bent upward.
He tells me—well, he tells me things. Things that you do not need to know because I don’t want to bog you down with details. I’m sure you have enough details of your own.
As Bill Maher announces that he believes that religion is a neurological disorder, we turn off the TV, not so much to make it quiet but to stop the bluish flickers.
Instead we settle in to do the Night Dance. To sleep with another side-by-side as if choreographed. A perfectly timed sequence of synchronized moves. He would turn left, and I’d roll over. He’d put his arm under my head, and I’d turn it to lay in the crook of his neck.
All night, from sleeping soundly (our bodies on autopilot), to sleeping restlessly, murmurs with every move. Action, reaction, no music except our heavy breaths booming in rhythm. Our bodies intertwined expertly. When I come back from India, I hope he’ll still be here.
After pining for the Happy Wanderer for almost a year and not getting anywhere, finally last Friday I had the wherewithal to end it. He has never introduced me to his friends, never invited me to a party, never spent the night. I know if I were not going away for the holidays he would not agree to be my New Year’s date. They say you must clear out the old in order to have room for the new. Surprisingly, it worked!
After a tearful Friday—one of angry emails and phone calls exchanged—I finally said goodbye to the HW. I am done with fauxlationships. I let him know that he needed to step it up; I was no longer content to be the non-girlfriend.
By coincidence, on Saturday a friend said he ran into a guy he has known for a long time and realized we’d be perfect together. Turns out the guy, Scout, lives just four blocks from my house, on York. A good sign! Scout and I email back and forth trying to find a way to meet before I head off to India for three weeks on Tuesday.
We found out we both had parties to go to that night on the West Side so I suggested we have a “Cab Date,” a term I coined on the fly. Twenty minutes and half the fare sounded reasonable. We met at the liquor store below my apartment, picking out wine to bring to our respective events and hopped in a taxi.
As I was telling the driver there’d be two stops, we both looked at each other and paused. “I should just really bring you to my party,” I said to him. “Yeah, you should,” he said, and just like that there was only one stop.
We rode, our shoulders and hands touching down the FDR, across to the West Side, growing more and more comfortable.
Once inside the party, we had the perfect rhythm. Mingle, come together, mingle. Hands would touch, glasses would clink, eyes would connect across the room perfectly timed with sly smiles.
“Could you come with me for a second?” he asked, mid-party. And I found myself locked in the bathroom with him, being kissed for the first time.
Hand in hand we left and headed to the house of the friend that introduced us. Another bottle of wine later we exited into the icy night, clutching onto each other, slipping and sliding, cheeks red more from excitement than cold or alcohol.
At 1:30 a.m.—with icy flakes falling on our heads—we stood in the middle of the street and kissed, almost slow dancing.
Finally we found a cab and huddled in. Just like that, with no negotiations, he came to my place to sleep.
We entered and the dog, after his momentary burst of excitement, licked the floor nonchalantly, not with the maniacal vigor he would have had if I had just dropped something edible there, but more out of boredom and haphazard habit. Sometimes little red pieces of fluff from the flokati got stuck to his snout, and I couldn’t help but smile.
The window is shut even though I long for the staleness to dissipate, because witching hour revelers outside the bar across York scream too loudly and too often. Instead, window shut, their sounds are more like the muffled cries of someone stuffed in the truck.
We ease into bed and pretend we are camping. I pull the extra comforter over us and ask him if he could protect me from bears. I feel comforted by his warmth, strong arms and the knowledge that we are almost over the Winter Solstice hump and will no longer be sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness of the season. With each new passing day, there are minutes added to daylight.
On the oasis of a bed strategically set up in front of the radiator, we lay talking. It seemed rather conspiratorial to lay in the middle of a nook and whisper while it was dark out, as we loll about on our stomachs with legs bent upward.
He tells me—well, he tells me things. Things that you do not need to know because I don’t want to bog you down with details. I’m sure you have enough details of your own.
As Bill Maher announces that he believes that religion is a neurological disorder, we turn off the TV, not so much to make it quiet but to stop the bluish flickers.
Instead we settle in to do the Night Dance. To sleep with another side-by-side as if choreographed. A perfectly timed sequence of synchronized moves. He would turn left, and I’d roll over. He’d put his arm under my head, and I’d turn it to lay in the crook of his neck.
All night, from sleeping soundly (our bodies on autopilot), to sleeping restlessly, murmurs with every move. Action, reaction, no music except our heavy breaths booming in rhythm. Our bodies intertwined expertly. When I come back from India, I hope he’ll still be here.
