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garoteI got up, took a shower, and began the oh-so-important work of lounging around the house catching up on correspondence. Eventually I collected myself and put a few things in the saddlebags of my upright bike, and went riding over to Coffee With A Beat to wait for Авра to arrive. The wait was short. She wasn't the type to play "fashionably late".
I looked up and saw someone of medium build, wearing tight stretchy jeans and a cozy tan sweater. She sat down at my table, and it only took a glance for me to find her very physically appealing. The elaborate contour of her eyes, her easy grin - just a little bit shy - and her jumbled curls of dark brown hair, all formed a face that drew my eyes like a magnet. I almost looked around to try and count how many other men in the room were coincidentally facing her way, checking her out ... but I couldn't turn my head.
I shared some of my chocolate cookie with her and she filled a water glass to match mine. It only took a few standard opening questions for the conversation to start cruising easily, and I found out a lot in a short time. It was almost an info dump.
She's Canadian. She works with local counties to develop clean air initiatives. One she's currently excited about is a bicycle rental and sharing facility, with pods scattered all over the bay. For many years she studied photojournalism, which led to an internship, but she found that the job required far too much dedication than she was willing to commit, so she backed off and made photography a hobby instead. As a child she'd lived for a few years in a small village in Mexico, and returned there for a while as a teenager. The relatively simple and sincere living appealed to her, but not enough to make it her life.
She spent a few years in Santa Cruz, and went to Cabrillo College for a while. We compared notes on that. I gave her a high-level description of my "build engineer" job, and she seemed to follow it with no trouble. Suddenly I realized that neither of us had actually ordered drinks, or real food. I paused the conversation to suggest it, and she said she wasn't hungry but proposed we go bicycling while we talk, to do two fun things at once. Works for me!
We rode a few laps around Lake Merritt, going slow so we could hover close enough to talk without shouting. Her movements were very deferential -- she always wanted me to take the lead, and was keenly aware of my movements and location. I learned later on that she was a dancer, and an extremely good one, and her skill at reading a body instantly made sense. We got well into a discussion about digital cameras, and I talked up a storm about lenses and autofocus and stabilization, and she offered her own perspective. I was wary of "mansplaining" to someone who'd been a photojournalist.
At the end of the second lap, I invited her back to my house to show her my camera, and she accepted without hesitation. I was pleased that she trusted me enough to do that, since this was a first date.
When we arrived at my house I saw Matt sitting in his car. I waved, and he shut off the engine and got out to say hello. I introduced him and Авра. He was genial, but in a hurry. He took off and I brought Авра into the house, and had her haul her bike inside as well to avoid theft. We messed around with the camera, taking a few photos in the sunlight of the hallway. I got a picture of her in low light, then cranked up the exposure in Aperture. Looking at it later I would feel weirdly transfixed by her face. The eyes were intense.
She said she had to go, to the Halloween party she’d been scheduled for. I gave her an awkward hug at the steps, not sure how much physical contact she wanted, and she said, “Oh come on we can hug more closely than that,” then immediately turned red with embarrassment, and have me a big wrap-around hug that felt very good. I felt a bit dazed, but managed to wave as she took off on her bike.
I’d been unable to read her signals very well, and I assumed the date was some kind of near-miss. Like, maybe I'd been good company, but I wasn't really lighting things up for her. I thought for a while, then sent her the following note through the dating site:
"Hi! It was nice meeting you, and it was a fun conversation. Sorry the parting was a bit awkward - I'm not good at reading signals, and I wanted to make sure I didn't overstep my bounds, even though I found you extremely attractive!"
I hung around the house a bit more, feeling antsy. I had to kill a few hours, then head into the city for another date, this time with Кэти. This would be our third. It was already clear that we liked each other enough to try getting physical, and Кэти had been winding me up over text messages for most of the week.
Eventually I showered and got my gear together for the ride over to the tea house in San Francisco. As I was pedaling the folding bike up to the turnstiles of the MacArthur Bart, my mind pleasantly preoccupied with thoughts of kissing Кэти, I saw two people pushing bikes through the exit gate ahead of me, about 40 yards away. A man about my height, and a short woman, bundled up thickly. Both wearing helmets decorated for Halloween. The woman's helmet had a huge spider taped on top of it.
In less than a second I was certain that the woman was Моника.
She bent her head to adjust the light on her helmet, and as I drew closer, she lowered her arm, then raised it again, holding it in mid-air across her face, obscuring my view as I rolled past. I figured she'd recognized me, and was trying to prevent me from recognizing her.
I arrived at the turnstiles and stopped, wondering what I wanted to do. Had it really been her? Maybe I was wrong. I decided to turn around and get a closer look, but by then they had ridden to their bikes to the crosswalk and were moving across the street. I saw the woman from the back, and it did look exactly like Моника, except that if it was her, she had gained back all the weight she lost two months ago. I didn’t get a good look at the man, though I assumed that it was Джейсон. He was the right shape. As they rode off into the distance I saw her turn her head up to him and say something, as though they were in the middle of a conversation. I wondered if she was telling him who she'd seen.
Seeing Моника again like that, suddenly, and having her not only ignore me but try and hide from me, got me irrationally upset. As I rode under the Bay, wedged into the seat of the Bart train, my heart hammered and my mind seethed with a poisonous mixture of fury and desire. She didn't want to be seen! Had she told him about me at all? Had they gotten to the point where she could have a conversation about it? Or was I compartmentalized away, just like I had been trying to compartmentalize her away from these people I was meeting, now including Кэти? The trauma of what we'd been through together had been packed away for months, like a trunk in a closet, and I'd been slowly forgetting it was there. Suddenly the trunk had snapped open, baring long teeth, and latched onto my arm.
I was early, which was a blessing. I sat brooding in the tea house for a long time, regathering my exploded wits, kicking the trunk back into the closet and holding the door. Just as I was stepping back into the present, Кэти stepped into the tea house and walked brightly over to the table. To my relief, I forgot all about Моника.
We talked rapid-fire and touched each other on the arm and held hands, and edged closer and closer over the small table. Tea and dinner were consumed and we enjoyed both but I couldn't remember anything about them afterward. With Кэти it was words, words. An exciting current of ideas, questions, and analysis, with an assertive streak that didn't move into teasing but was right on the edge.
Eventually I suggested going back to her house after dinner. She acted vaguely scandalized, and gave me a great deal of sarcastic pushback, as though she didn’t really want it, as though - gasp! - it would be improper, as though it had been all my idea ... even though in our text messages yesterday she had literally dared me to make out with her. “I double-dog dare you!” I wasn't quite sure what to make of this. If she was just playing, she sure was putting a lot of effort into the bit. Eventually she worked her way around to agreeing and we proceeded out to the street, past her car, and on towards her apartment on foot.
It was a very San Francisco walk. We went up a very steep street, then up some narrow steps with wrought-iron fencing, then through a tall door, then up two flights of carpeted steps just as narrow as the ones outside, then finally through a door into a microscopic three-bedroom one-bath apartment. She took me straight to her room and we sat down on the floor -- which was old polished redwood and would be amazing in most places, but in San Francisco was just another floor. She complained too loudly about what a mess the room was, which I assumed was according to social custom, since everything looked clean and organized to me.
The only furniture present aside from the essential bed and end-tables were two tall bookshelves. With her permission I adjusted the lighting and hooked my iPod to the stereo, and she busted out a tile game that she wanted us to play together, and we went through a round of it, chatting the whole time.
The subject roamed around in geeky games. “Have you ever played Settlers Of Catan?” she asked.
I was secretly irritated because this was the game Моника played with Джейсон in their early dating history, that she'd crooned was "very charming". What's up with this game? This was probably the fourth time I'd had it pitched at me, by other people in their 30's, since moving close to San Francisco this year. I was still wrapping my head around how much higher the expectation was here that adults have disposable time and income, due to not having kids.
“No,” I said, “but I’d like to learn it.”
“Goody!” she said, smiling. I looked up at the cabinet behind her, and saw the box, resting near the ceiling on top of some other games. How funny, that this woman would be playing a silly board game with me as a pretext to a makeout session, and it was only one step removed from the same tactic Джейсон used with Моника. Well, if he can seduce her with concerts and “cool salsa dance moves”, then board games are certainly allowed. Hey, wouldn’t it be a riot if he learned those “cool salsa moves” from Авра? And therefore, I just went on a date with his instructor? If my life was a TV show, that's exactly what I'd find out in the next episode. Ugh.
Eventually the game ended and Кэти sat on the bed for me to administer her promised ‘reward’ for winning: A dozen kisses. She laid back and I was very slow and teasing with her at first, then dove forward with the third kiss, and she responded eagerly. As soon as that kiss started, her demeanor changed. The veneer of flighty harmlessness that she kept as an outer layer suddenly evaporated, and she became much more directly aggressive, verbally suggestive, and sensual. I welcomed the change, and we kissed for only a minute more, then she suddenly stopped, drew back her head to see my whole face, and said:
“Huh! You have a dark side to you!”
I almost said, "Well no shit," but I wasn't completely sure how to interpret her. She seemed impressed, so I guessed it was a good thing. Our conversation shifted dramatically, and I found myself enjoying her intimate company much more. The aggression of her curiosity morphed into something more coiled and deliberate, as though her body was now making the bold statements instead of her mind. For a while we talked about dating history and she confessed that with most men, most other people in fact, she could never have conversations like the one we were currently having. I wasn't sure how to assimilate that. This was just me on a regular Sunday night, after some kissing. Didn't all people loosen up a bit after some kissing?
She began to talk in detail about her dating history -- a subject that had previously been avoided between us, lest it spoil our own dating. She described an incident where she’d been cheated on, and how it can shatter a person’s reality. She talked about rejecting polyamory in long-term relationships to avoid confusion, and her reasoning seemed to parallel mine.
We talked, then we would pause and make out for a while. She moved against me in a way that was increasingly confident and assertive, and I enjoyed this new version of her, and reflected it back with my own aggression. At one point I leaned her upright so she was straddling me, and locked one arm around her waist, with the other arm thrown back behind me to prop myself up, and in that position I noticed that she was so short I could actually kiss her on the lips without craning my neck up. When or if we got naked, this position would be a favorite.
I unspooled some of my own dating history - the less traumatic stuff from later in the year - and pointed out how I seem to be in a hurry to have sex with people I date, and risk getting attached to the first person who takes me to bed, even if it seems like a bad idea. "It's a problem I'm trying to work on," I said. "I’m a slut."
"Oh phsaw," she said, and laughed. "I think your definition of slut might be a little off. I mean, the way I see it, there's nothing that bad about having sex after a few dates, as long as you're being safe about it. I think if you weren't a nice guy, that would be a problem. But you're a ... you're a slut but you're nice. You're a nice slut."
"A nice slut!" I said, testing the idea.
"A slutty, nice, very nice, kinda slutty, nice, but definitely a bit slutty nice slut," she said, laughing. I joined in.
After a long time, she told me she needed to drive me home so she could study for her exam, and I agreed. We packed things up and I hauled my folding bike down the stairs. “Those jeans look really good on you,” she said, from behind me. “Thank you!” I said, smiling, and thought: "Wow! A girl just complemented me on my ass!"
We walked briskly to her car, chatting all the way, then she drove me to my front door in Oakland and helped me unload my bike, just like on our last date. She stood up on the curb, and I stood in the gutter, bringing our faces on level, and we kissed, slowly, sensually. We had moved to another level in our connection. It was a damn good kiss. I wished her goodnight.
When I walked in the door I checked my messages and found a message from Авра:
"Nice to meet you too! That's okay. I found you very attractive as well... Shall we hang out again? There's an exhibit at the Museum Of Modern Art that I really want to go see: Henri Carteir-bresson, he's a photojournalist. I studied him in school and love his work. Check it out and let me know if you're interested. If not, we can do something else."
It was very late at night, but I responded immediately anyway, saying I was excited to meet her at the MOMA and wishing her a good night. I attached the photo I'd taken of her earlier in the day.
Then I fell over onto the bed and was out.
I looked up and saw someone of medium build, wearing tight stretchy jeans and a cozy tan sweater. She sat down at my table, and it only took a glance for me to find her very physically appealing. The elaborate contour of her eyes, her easy grin - just a little bit shy - and her jumbled curls of dark brown hair, all formed a face that drew my eyes like a magnet. I almost looked around to try and count how many other men in the room were coincidentally facing her way, checking her out ... but I couldn't turn my head.
I shared some of my chocolate cookie with her and she filled a water glass to match mine. It only took a few standard opening questions for the conversation to start cruising easily, and I found out a lot in a short time. It was almost an info dump.
She's Canadian. She works with local counties to develop clean air initiatives. One she's currently excited about is a bicycle rental and sharing facility, with pods scattered all over the bay. For many years she studied photojournalism, which led to an internship, but she found that the job required far too much dedication than she was willing to commit, so she backed off and made photography a hobby instead. As a child she'd lived for a few years in a small village in Mexico, and returned there for a while as a teenager. The relatively simple and sincere living appealed to her, but not enough to make it her life.
She spent a few years in Santa Cruz, and went to Cabrillo College for a while. We compared notes on that. I gave her a high-level description of my "build engineer" job, and she seemed to follow it with no trouble. Suddenly I realized that neither of us had actually ordered drinks, or real food. I paused the conversation to suggest it, and she said she wasn't hungry but proposed we go bicycling while we talk, to do two fun things at once. Works for me!
We rode a few laps around Lake Merritt, going slow so we could hover close enough to talk without shouting. Her movements were very deferential -- she always wanted me to take the lead, and was keenly aware of my movements and location. I learned later on that she was a dancer, and an extremely good one, and her skill at reading a body instantly made sense. We got well into a discussion about digital cameras, and I talked up a storm about lenses and autofocus and stabilization, and she offered her own perspective. I was wary of "mansplaining" to someone who'd been a photojournalist.
At the end of the second lap, I invited her back to my house to show her my camera, and she accepted without hesitation. I was pleased that she trusted me enough to do that, since this was a first date.
When we arrived at my house I saw Matt sitting in his car. I waved, and he shut off the engine and got out to say hello. I introduced him and Авра. He was genial, but in a hurry. He took off and I brought Авра into the house, and had her haul her bike inside as well to avoid theft. We messed around with the camera, taking a few photos in the sunlight of the hallway. I got a picture of her in low light, then cranked up the exposure in Aperture. Looking at it later I would feel weirdly transfixed by her face. The eyes were intense.
She said she had to go, to the Halloween party she’d been scheduled for. I gave her an awkward hug at the steps, not sure how much physical contact she wanted, and she said, “Oh come on we can hug more closely than that,” then immediately turned red with embarrassment, and have me a big wrap-around hug that felt very good. I felt a bit dazed, but managed to wave as she took off on her bike.
I’d been unable to read her signals very well, and I assumed the date was some kind of near-miss. Like, maybe I'd been good company, but I wasn't really lighting things up for her. I thought for a while, then sent her the following note through the dating site:
"Hi! It was nice meeting you, and it was a fun conversation. Sorry the parting was a bit awkward - I'm not good at reading signals, and I wanted to make sure I didn't overstep my bounds, even though I found you extremely attractive!"
I hung around the house a bit more, feeling antsy. I had to kill a few hours, then head into the city for another date, this time with Кэти. This would be our third. It was already clear that we liked each other enough to try getting physical, and Кэти had been winding me up over text messages for most of the week.
Eventually I showered and got my gear together for the ride over to the tea house in San Francisco. As I was pedaling the folding bike up to the turnstiles of the MacArthur Bart, my mind pleasantly preoccupied with thoughts of kissing Кэти, I saw two people pushing bikes through the exit gate ahead of me, about 40 yards away. A man about my height, and a short woman, bundled up thickly. Both wearing helmets decorated for Halloween. The woman's helmet had a huge spider taped on top of it.
In less than a second I was certain that the woman was Моника.
She bent her head to adjust the light on her helmet, and as I drew closer, she lowered her arm, then raised it again, holding it in mid-air across her face, obscuring my view as I rolled past. I figured she'd recognized me, and was trying to prevent me from recognizing her.
I arrived at the turnstiles and stopped, wondering what I wanted to do. Had it really been her? Maybe I was wrong. I decided to turn around and get a closer look, but by then they had ridden to their bikes to the crosswalk and were moving across the street. I saw the woman from the back, and it did look exactly like Моника, except that if it was her, she had gained back all the weight she lost two months ago. I didn’t get a good look at the man, though I assumed that it was Джейсон. He was the right shape. As they rode off into the distance I saw her turn her head up to him and say something, as though they were in the middle of a conversation. I wondered if she was telling him who she'd seen.
Seeing Моника again like that, suddenly, and having her not only ignore me but try and hide from me, got me irrationally upset. As I rode under the Bay, wedged into the seat of the Bart train, my heart hammered and my mind seethed with a poisonous mixture of fury and desire. She didn't want to be seen! Had she told him about me at all? Had they gotten to the point where she could have a conversation about it? Or was I compartmentalized away, just like I had been trying to compartmentalize her away from these people I was meeting, now including Кэти? The trauma of what we'd been through together had been packed away for months, like a trunk in a closet, and I'd been slowly forgetting it was there. Suddenly the trunk had snapped open, baring long teeth, and latched onto my arm.
I was early, which was a blessing. I sat brooding in the tea house for a long time, regathering my exploded wits, kicking the trunk back into the closet and holding the door. Just as I was stepping back into the present, Кэти stepped into the tea house and walked brightly over to the table. To my relief, I forgot all about Моника.
We talked rapid-fire and touched each other on the arm and held hands, and edged closer and closer over the small table. Tea and dinner were consumed and we enjoyed both but I couldn't remember anything about them afterward. With Кэти it was words, words. An exciting current of ideas, questions, and analysis, with an assertive streak that didn't move into teasing but was right on the edge.
Eventually I suggested going back to her house after dinner. She acted vaguely scandalized, and gave me a great deal of sarcastic pushback, as though she didn’t really want it, as though - gasp! - it would be improper, as though it had been all my idea ... even though in our text messages yesterday she had literally dared me to make out with her. “I double-dog dare you!” I wasn't quite sure what to make of this. If she was just playing, she sure was putting a lot of effort into the bit. Eventually she worked her way around to agreeing and we proceeded out to the street, past her car, and on towards her apartment on foot.
It was a very San Francisco walk. We went up a very steep street, then up some narrow steps with wrought-iron fencing, then through a tall door, then up two flights of carpeted steps just as narrow as the ones outside, then finally through a door into a microscopic three-bedroom one-bath apartment. She took me straight to her room and we sat down on the floor -- which was old polished redwood and would be amazing in most places, but in San Francisco was just another floor. She complained too loudly about what a mess the room was, which I assumed was according to social custom, since everything looked clean and organized to me.
The only furniture present aside from the essential bed and end-tables were two tall bookshelves. With her permission I adjusted the lighting and hooked my iPod to the stereo, and she busted out a tile game that she wanted us to play together, and we went through a round of it, chatting the whole time.
The subject roamed around in geeky games. “Have you ever played Settlers Of Catan?” she asked.
I was secretly irritated because this was the game Моника played with Джейсон in their early dating history, that she'd crooned was "very charming". What's up with this game? This was probably the fourth time I'd had it pitched at me, by other people in their 30's, since moving close to San Francisco this year. I was still wrapping my head around how much higher the expectation was here that adults have disposable time and income, due to not having kids.
“No,” I said, “but I’d like to learn it.”
“Goody!” she said, smiling. I looked up at the cabinet behind her, and saw the box, resting near the ceiling on top of some other games. How funny, that this woman would be playing a silly board game with me as a pretext to a makeout session, and it was only one step removed from the same tactic Джейсон used with Моника. Well, if he can seduce her with concerts and “cool salsa dance moves”, then board games are certainly allowed. Hey, wouldn’t it be a riot if he learned those “cool salsa moves” from Авра? And therefore, I just went on a date with his instructor? If my life was a TV show, that's exactly what I'd find out in the next episode. Ugh.
Eventually the game ended and Кэти sat on the bed for me to administer her promised ‘reward’ for winning: A dozen kisses. She laid back and I was very slow and teasing with her at first, then dove forward with the third kiss, and she responded eagerly. As soon as that kiss started, her demeanor changed. The veneer of flighty harmlessness that she kept as an outer layer suddenly evaporated, and she became much more directly aggressive, verbally suggestive, and sensual. I welcomed the change, and we kissed for only a minute more, then she suddenly stopped, drew back her head to see my whole face, and said:
“Huh! You have a dark side to you!”
I almost said, "Well no shit," but I wasn't completely sure how to interpret her. She seemed impressed, so I guessed it was a good thing. Our conversation shifted dramatically, and I found myself enjoying her intimate company much more. The aggression of her curiosity morphed into something more coiled and deliberate, as though her body was now making the bold statements instead of her mind. For a while we talked about dating history and she confessed that with most men, most other people in fact, she could never have conversations like the one we were currently having. I wasn't sure how to assimilate that. This was just me on a regular Sunday night, after some kissing. Didn't all people loosen up a bit after some kissing?
She began to talk in detail about her dating history -- a subject that had previously been avoided between us, lest it spoil our own dating. She described an incident where she’d been cheated on, and how it can shatter a person’s reality. She talked about rejecting polyamory in long-term relationships to avoid confusion, and her reasoning seemed to parallel mine.
We talked, then we would pause and make out for a while. She moved against me in a way that was increasingly confident and assertive, and I enjoyed this new version of her, and reflected it back with my own aggression. At one point I leaned her upright so she was straddling me, and locked one arm around her waist, with the other arm thrown back behind me to prop myself up, and in that position I noticed that she was so short I could actually kiss her on the lips without craning my neck up. When or if we got naked, this position would be a favorite.
I unspooled some of my own dating history - the less traumatic stuff from later in the year - and pointed out how I seem to be in a hurry to have sex with people I date, and risk getting attached to the first person who takes me to bed, even if it seems like a bad idea. "It's a problem I'm trying to work on," I said. "I’m a slut."
"Oh phsaw," she said, and laughed. "I think your definition of slut might be a little off. I mean, the way I see it, there's nothing that bad about having sex after a few dates, as long as you're being safe about it. I think if you weren't a nice guy, that would be a problem. But you're a ... you're a slut but you're nice. You're a nice slut."
"A nice slut!" I said, testing the idea.
"A slutty, nice, very nice, kinda slutty, nice, but definitely a bit slutty nice slut," she said, laughing. I joined in.
After a long time, she told me she needed to drive me home so she could study for her exam, and I agreed. We packed things up and I hauled my folding bike down the stairs. “Those jeans look really good on you,” she said, from behind me. “Thank you!” I said, smiling, and thought: "Wow! A girl just complemented me on my ass!"
We walked briskly to her car, chatting all the way, then she drove me to my front door in Oakland and helped me unload my bike, just like on our last date. She stood up on the curb, and I stood in the gutter, bringing our faces on level, and we kissed, slowly, sensually. We had moved to another level in our connection. It was a damn good kiss. I wished her goodnight.
When I walked in the door I checked my messages and found a message from Авра:
"Nice to meet you too! That's okay. I found you very attractive as well... Shall we hang out again? There's an exhibit at the Museum Of Modern Art that I really want to go see: Henri Carteir-bresson, he's a photojournalist. I studied him in school and love his work. Check it out and let me know if you're interested. If not, we can do something else."
It was very late at night, but I responded immediately anyway, saying I was excited to meet her at the MOMA and wishing her a good night. I attached the photo I'd taken of her earlier in the day.
Then I fell over onto the bed and was out.
