when people dump (?) their anger on you

I had an interesting experience last night - I 'picked up' a guy (from the parking lot of my favorite restaurant! I think this one 'wins' (?) in the spontaneity/wackiness/unpredictable/what-the-hell category. Though, come to think of it, I've done wackier things. So never mind.)

[Argh - blogger ATE a huge chunk of the post right here, so I've done my best to re-create it, but it's turned out LOTS longer than the original.]

***
Walking out of the restaurant toward the parking lot, I see a smallish motor bike parked with lights on and engine running, but no rider.

I look around to see where the guy is, and in the light from the restaurant windows I see someone in motorcycle gear with a helmet under his arm coming down the sidewalk behind me.

I look back again when I get to my car, to see if the rider does in fact belong to the bike, and see him wandering in circles, looking lost and confused, limping, as if he’s been hurt. I stand there and watch for a minute, trying to figure out what’s going on, wondering if he needs help.

He finally heads for his bike as if to get on, so I get in my car and start to pull away.

As I'm driving past I look over one more time, and see him again stumbling around. So I swing my car back around and pull up next to him, to see if he’s ok.

“Did you wipe out?” I ask. “You look a little bit – I don’t know – dazed, or something.”

“I’m looking for my gloves,” he said, but he kept looking at me, with an expression I couldn’t fathom.

“Oh, I thought maybe you were hurt. I was just seeing if you were ok, if you needed any help.”

I don’t remember how the conversation went after that, but he asked me what I was doing, was I doing anything? When I didn’t have an immediate, firm answer, he asked, “Do you want to go do something?”

I thought about it for a minute, then said, “What did you have in mind?”

So we talked about it for a bit, I asked if he knew of anyplace to shoot pool or something. I actually thought I’d enjoy his company, but didn’t really want to spend any more money and wanted something to *do*, not just sitting around in some dreadful restaurant or coffee shop. (I always find it easier to get to know someone if there’s some kind of *activity* involved, to fend off the dreaded awkward silences.)

We couldn’t think of anything, and I was getting tired and wanted to go home, but found this guy interesting. So I said, “Well, I’d enjoy going for a walk during the daylight sometime, maybe you could give me your number and I could give you a call? Or maybe an email or something.”

So I fished out a pen and some paper and handed them to him, and he leaned the paper up against the car to write. I had my elbow out the window, and when I asked him if the pen was working (he kept shaking it as if the ink wasn’t flowing), he sort of moved his hand so that he was holding the end of my elbow along with propping up the paper.

It was weird, it seemed so natural, so casual, so un-thinking, I hardly even noticed he was touching me, at first. It was as if it slowly dawned on me – his hand was so warm, the same temperature as the air.

I had to actually LOOK to see if he had his hand on my arm, and saw what looked like a wedding ring on the ring finger of his left hand.

"What's this?" I asked, touching it. (I don't remember the details of that part of the conversation, but I asked if he was using it to fend off women, and he said *he'd* heard it actually *attracted* women. I said, “That’s twisted,” and told him I thought it was disrespectful and dishonest, and I thought he should put it on a different finger. He said, “Well, this is the only finger it fits on.” I said, “It’s easy enough to have it re-sized.” [Later, maybe during the walk? I noticed he’d moved it, and said, “Hey, you’ve changed fingers.” He said, “Yeah, you said you didn’t like it, so I moved it.” Hm.])

He crossed something out, wrote some more, then finally handed me the paper, which I didn’t look at because he was already talking to me again.

“Are you sure you don’t want to do something tonight?” he asked again. “I’d totally be up for a walk.” (‘Totally’ was one thing that bugged me, and gave away his relative youth – it didn’t bother me the first time he said it, but later in the evening, after he’d said it 3 or 4 times, it began to get on my nerves a little.)

He had me, then, because it was a perfect night – a gentle breeze, lots of white, fluffy clouds against a blue sky. I’d really wanted to go for a walk earlier, but had been looking forward to finally getting the dreamed-of salmon dinner for so long that I left it too late, and was too hungry to walk before eating.

So I said, “Well, ok, but I want to get my car home.” I didn’t explain why. I suggested,
“Why don’t you follow me home, then I can stop worrying about the car, and we can go for a walk from there – there’s a nice path not too far from my house.”

***
So he followed me home (without further ado, as they say :-). He parked his bike right behind my car, it was such a – I don’t know. I think this is the feeling women describe when there’s someone they’re attracted to who is – in command? of himself, but without being domineering? Maybe it’s just been a while since I’ve been approached so directly by someone to whom I was so strongly attracted, but it was very powerful, whatever it was.

I hesitated about letting him in the house, since it’s been such a mess for so long (though I’ve actually cleaned out the living room, and am sleeping, again, finally, in the bedroom [albeit on the floor – baby steps :-)

Looking at him taking his helmet off, I realized he probably wouldn't want to leave it outside, so I asked him if he wanted to leave it in the house. I don’t remember what he said, but everything seemed so natural – he just followed me right in as if he’d been here a thousand times before, and proceeded to peel off his motorcycle gear and pile it on the floor. I told him I was going to use the loo before we went, so I buried my wallet under something (when he had his back turned – partly habit, partly ‘trust in Allah, but tie up your camel’) and went back to use the bathroom, closing the doors behind me, but only part way.

(It’s fascinating to see how quickly and easily my boundaries are breached, by someone who has the ‘right’ approach, the right ‘key’. Is this good? Or, as Hamlet said, “Nothing is either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so?”)

When I was in the loo, I realized how easily I’d trusted him. I also realized that it was partly because I WANTED to have someone in my life who I trust so easily and implicitly. (When I came out, yes, I *did* check and see if the wallet was still there before heading out. I *didn’t* think [til just this very minute!] to see if there was any money missing. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t – I’ve used the wallet many times in the intervening few days.)

***
So we went on the walk. Uneventful, but pleasant – we had the place pretty much to ourselves, he was a nonstop chatterbox, which was GREAT. I LOVE talkative guys, especially ones who can cover a variety of subjects and leap around from one topic to another, like *me* :-) It was fun

We walked for about an hour, maybe 45 minutes, then came back to the house.

Inside, we stood a few feet apart, looking at each other.

“May I touch you?” he said.

“Well, it depends – as long as it’s nothing – too intense, I’m really only up for snuggling,” I said (or something similar, can’t remember exactly.)

As soon as I touched him, I realized I wanted to touch him more, and to curl up with him, but he had on some really strong cologne, so I said we’d have to sit on the floor, because I didn’t want the smell on my furniture.

So of course he immediately stripped off his outer layers, and asked if that was better. “A little,” I said. So then he pulled off his t-shirt, too, and said, “Man, you sure got *my* shirt off quick.”


By this time I was beginning to relax a bit, and was realizing that he was definitely younger than me – he was so confident, so sure of himself, I didn’t really notice the age gap. In fact, except for the obsession with getting *my* clothes off (which I have to admit, I mostly saw as a bit of a joke, though a couple of times he said things that I found irritating or offensive), I have to say that in many ways he seemed more mature than a lot of guys MY age. (It turned out that he was 33, or so he said. EVERYthing is now subject to vetting with this guy, as far as I’m concerned. As you’ll see later in the story.)

I’m running out of steam, here a bit – maybe I’ll just briefly sum up the next part.

We snuggled for a while, and he kept trying to get me to take my shirt off, which I eventually did, but was uncomfortable taking off my jog bra. I really just wanted to snuggle, which is what I told him. I wasn’t interested in the whole sex thing, and I explained that to him, a bit – both that I was needing a time of experiencing non-sexual touch with men, and that I was unwilling to have casual, non-reproductive sex with someone during my last five-minute window of fertility.

He laughed, and didn’t seem bothered. He was so INSANELY relaxed. He gave me a wonderful massage, and his hands and body were so WARM. I felt like I was curled up some kind of very loving, sensuous animal. Even his hair was like a pelt – thick and dark, cropped very short, but not prickly like a crew cut, more like – fur. Soft, I kept running my hands through it and smelling it. He smelled good (once he got rid of the cologne-soaked clothing.)

[Pasting back in to the original here.]

(Wondering, when it feels like every relationship is the *same* relationship, except that a different person steps in to pick up the 'role' after a while and carries on where the previous person left off. When it feels like this, perhaps it's a signal that an old [possibly undesirable?] pattern is being repeated, and maybe it's time to make a different choice - choose the *other* fork in the road, this time. Or, maybe this is one of the [many?] stepping stones along the way to crossing the river of family weirdness, and there's no other way to get there than through? 'Around', as in, 'going around,' appears not to be an option. Possibly it's all part of the learning process: Each step builds on the previous one, and requires the previous one in order to make sense and work. Like math - you can't (or most of us can't) leap to calculus without learning a whole lot of boring other stuff first.)

***
I also want to add that I feel more calm and relaxed than I have in a long time. Just being held, next to a warm body with warm, loving, gentle hands is an amazing thing. Food for the soul :-)

***
So I called the number he'd given me, and a woman answered, and I stammered that I was sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number.

The odd thing was, *she* seemed - unnerved? And stuttered and apologized, too.

Which got me thinking. Why did this little - *twit* - give me *somebody else's* number? What a weird thing to do! My mind started going off on all sorts of different ideas - maybe he was trying to get even with another woman and gave me *her* number, and *she* was the one who answered?

And then for some reason my mind linked this with his pushiness about sex (which I *still* think was - a decoy? An unconscious side-something-or-other?) Anyway, my mind leaped to thinking that he was ANGRY and the sex was a way to try to get even.

Which made me *really* want to talk to him, and give him all the ideas I've read about all this stuff and help him see what's going on.

Well, we'll see. First I have to *hear* from him again, which, after that experience, I'm not entirely sure I want to (but there's a part of me that wants to know what's going on - curiosity killed the whatsit, and all that.)

And then he'd have to be *open* to that kind of discussion (which I think he is, which is actually a big part of why I found him attractive.)

Rome wasn't built in a day, etc. Patience, dahling :-)

***
Added later: At some point he said to me, in response to some question I can't remember, "I just wanted to come home with you."

***
As I’m editing this for the THOUSANDTH time, and reading the part about the wedding ring, it dawns on me: Maybe he’s actually MARRIED. Argh. Stomach curls up, feel like a COMPLETE idiot.