Strongly Worded

More Tension

A gentle reader has recently suggested an alternative to Harvard Square's Grossest Bathroom Ever, and I'm very grateful. It's great to have a posh place to pee in every neighborhood (in downtown Boston it's the Parker House, or alternately the Ritz). Whenever I successfully get by the front desk in such a place, I feel good that I'm perceived as high-brow enough to be there, but then I also feel sad because I know that there is definitely not equal pee-ing opportunity, and that if I looked poor, or maybe even if I were black, I might not have such easy access.

But I digress. The same gentle reader remarked that I seem tense lately, which is an interesting observation because I think I am always tense, and have been pretty upfront about that. I also think that if I just wrote about how calm and great I feel, this blog would make for fairly dull reading, but in any case, I'm tense again this morning.

So: to recap. After my embarrassing moment on the subway platform, in which I chickened out in the kissing phase of my date with the Guy I Like, I felt ridiculous, and realized (as I "tensely" described) that my behavior (and specifically my direct question about sexuality) my have been off putting, so I wrote a cute little email reiterating how my weirdness and shyness had nothing to do with anything, etc. etc. He wrote back really quickly, this completely sweet and reassuring email, which ended with "I'm a very patient man, and if you're not comfortable, then I'm not." And also he wrote that he finds my shyness "endearing." Sigh. So everything felt fine, and I spent the day smiling to myself and imagining myself successfully kissing him in the near future.

Then at 10:42, he calls. This is a pleasant surprise. I love it when boys call me, especially when it's soon after we've seen one another. We talk for over an hour. OK, but here's the source of tension: mainly he talks. It happens that I love listening to him, and he's fascinating, and funny, and he uses words like acoutrement and ossified, which is so hot (I know some girls are turned on by brooding eyes or great asses--and I'm all into political conviction and vocabulary).

So of course, being me, I am sucked into the spiral of stress, meaning, what if he's not a good listener after all? What if he thinks my job/family/inner life is boring and pointless in comparison to his? How will this play out? WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

Of course, of course I know that I don't know what will happen, I can't know what will happen, because I've known this guy for less than two weeks. I also remember that my friend, who is in one of the most blissful relationships ever, noted at the beginning that her man did a lot of the talking. So it doesn't bode badly, necessarily.

But I'm me, and I'm tense, and so I'm going to worry about this for a while. Hope you can bear with me.

Posted by Dori at 8:34 AM