Second date with Анна
Sep. 27th, 2010 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garoteI woke up feeling jittery, after not enough sleep. Typical these days. I had about 15 minutes to leave the house on time to catch the work shuttle at MacArthur Bart. Wash face, throw on clothes, grab backpack, grab bike.
When I rolled up, the bus had just stopped, and was hissing air out of its suspension to lower the doors to the curb. I yanked open a luggage compartment on the outside and shoved the bike in sideways, then beeped my badge at the swinging door and sat down in the nearest chair, breathing hard. A minute later the bus lurched forward. It made three awkward right turns, then roared onto the freeway and almost instantly slowed down to a creep as the traffic engulfed it. It would be stop-and-go for the next 90 minutes at least. There was nothing to do on the bus but open the laptop and try to work.
For most of the ride I felt motion sickness. The air conditioning constantly cycled car exhaust through the cabin, which made it worse. I could read email and review code but I couldn't write any. Every half-hour or so I had to stare out the window intently at the stationary buildings and breathe very carefully, to avoid vomiting my empty stomach onto the fold-down table.
In Cupertino I wrestled the bike out from the belly of the shuttle and walked it to my van, which I'd left parked in the employee lot. It was a convenient place to store the bike, plus spare clothes, plus I could take a nap inside if I really needed to. My other option was to leave it parked in Oakland, and every day up there was a chance it would be molested in half a dozen ways. I threw the bike in the back and walked to my office.
I had one meeting. Most of the day was spent poking a collection of servers that were housed in the lab, editing scripts in-place so I could immediately run them in the testing environment. These weren't the sort of thing I could test directly on my machine. At some point I walked to the cafeteria and bought two huge breakfast sandwiches and inhaled them, then brought a salad and some cookies and fruit back to my desk. Those disappeared except for a plum, which I was determined to save. I still felt hungry, and jittery, but I knew from experience those would never fully subside, no matter how much I ate. My stomach could be stretched full and I'd still feel like I needed to eat something. And I would still not gain weight.
In the late afternoon I walked to the van and drove it to get gas. Filling a 30 gallon tank always takes forever, so I occupied myself by cleaning out the console between the front seats, which was filthy. I found some ancient gum and tried to chew it. Yuck! I ate the plum from work instead. Then I began the long haul back to Oakland. I didn't like keeping the van there but I needed it to run some errands.
I parked on the street and trudged into the house, then immediately resumed poking the work servers. I was behind on my edits. I kept that up for another hour, then the urge to nap overwhelmed me and I crashed on the bed.
An hour later I was jolted awake by the ding of a message on my phone. It was Кэрол. We said hello, then a couple messages later we swerved into flirting and sex talk. Sex was always just under the surface of my thoughts these days, and the way I was attracted to Кэрол, it was impossible to avoid. We went back and forth for a while, teasing each other with words, but she had to start a meeting soon and needed time to cool off, and besides, I had a date tonight.
I showered, shaved, put on a fresh shirt, and reduced my pockets to the essentials: 25 bucks in cash, my phone, my keys, and a paper Bart card. From the house I walked to MacArthur Bart and rode it to Berkeley. It was evening, and the air was crisp. My metabolism was burning and I didn't need a sweater, only a long-sleeved shirt. As I stepped off the escalator I passed by a woman at the foot of the stairs singing a-capella in a plaintive voice. At street-level I was almost lost in a crowd. Plenty of people here, even on a Monday night. In a few minutes I was supposed to meet Анна.
I spotted her walking towards me. She broke into a smile, then hugged me when she drew close. No apparent jitters this time. The restaurant had already been chosen: A vegan Chinese restaurant with an intriguing menu. We set off together, walking close, holding hands.
This was a "second date" sort of conversation. More long stories, less performance anxiety. We dug into our family history and our formative years. She told me about her sisters, and her grandma’s house, and playing childhood games. I told a few stories about the mayhem my friends and I got up to as teenagers, and sketched out my relationship with my sisters and nephews.
"Having nephews is great," I said. "Way fewer diaper changes, but you still get to take them on adventures. I think it's my job to sort of round them out, maybe even corrupt them a little. But I figure that will really start to happen when they're teenagers, and really learning about the world. The oldest one is only 10 right now. The youngest ones can barely differentiate between reality and their own imaginations."
Анна was intrigued by that. "I think a lot about that difference in my work," she said. "People debate endlessly about what makes good art. Usually they go in circles, and then sort of give up and say it's all subjective. But I think good art always does one thing: It makes people want to erase the border between the reality they already know, and their imagination. Makes them want to do it. Or even forces them to do it."
"Sounds confrontational."
"Oh not always. I mean, well, perhaps it always is confrontational in some way. But I think that word is too aggressive. It implies fear, or anger. That's not what I'm getting at."
"Hmm. Okay, not confrontational. Compelling."
"That's more like it. They're compelled by this thing, to be in a world different from the one they're certain of."
I told her about the time when I was a kid, and I encountered a burned-out redwood stump in the forest behind my house. The rest of the tree was gone, but the massive stump remained, forming a C-shaped room, with walls of charcoal. Someone had covered the ground inside with sand, and placed an old rotary-dial telephone against the inner wall of the stump, resting on the sand. A few feet above the phone, nailed to the crumbling black inner wall of the stump, was a simple wooden cross.
Анна paused, visualizing it, then said, "Someone was trying to telephone God?"
"Exactly. I think it was somebody's tiny, private 'talk to God' room in the forest."
"I wonder... Did an adult build it? Or a child?"
"Great freakin' question," I said, leaning in. "When I first saw it, I remember for just a moment, I suddenly absolutely believed in the Christian god. Otherwise, why would this be here?"
Анна nodded. "So did you pick up the phone and talk to God?"
"I picked up the phone and heard nothing. So I dug around in the sand and found that the phone cord only went for about two feet, then ended where someone had cut it. I didn't bother saying anything at that point."
"Wow, that's... That could almost be a sort of personality test."
I laughed. "Right! No wire? No God!"
We digested that for a while. I described the woods some more, and that led to an inventory of our cats and other pets, and the other households we'd lived in as adults. Анна asked about my time in Santa Cruz, which led to a description of my relationship with Шеррила. She listened intently.
I paused, then said, "I get the impression you're really curious about my romantic history, so I want you to know: You can ask any question you want. I won't shy away from it."
"Thanks for saying so," she said.
We finished the meal, then walked outside together. The night was still young, so we walked around, like we had on the first date.
"So, tell me about your first real romantic relationship," she said. "The first one that wasn't just dating."
I figured that was Кэролин, from when I was at UCSC. I sketched the outline of something that was tender, and full of exploration, but also confusion. I talked about how she was always unsure how much she was attracted to women, and how much that mattered.
"I think one of the biggest reasons that relationship got as intimate as it did," I said, "was that Кэролин always asked direct questions. She never worried about being too invasive. The way she saw it, if a person was uncomfortable answering a question, they'd just say so, and no harm done."
"Hah! So that's where you got that habit."
I laughed. "Well, I don't ask awkward questions of everyone. Just people I like." I turned to her and grinned.
She grinned back.
We wandered onto the Berkeley campus. I lamented that my feet were hurting a bit, and asked her to suggest a place to sit down. She found some stone steps in front of a quiet-looking building. I suggested the grass next to the steps.
We sat down next to each other, facing the same way, not quite touching. The conversation turned from relationships to music. I played some ambient music on my phone and she gave her interpretations of each track. Very blatantly, I scooted closer and closer, until we were touching at the shoulder.
Then I said, "So, I'd like to ask for some clarification."
"Yes?"
"What's your comfort level with physicality? I mean, I don't want to just get handsy and hope for the best. I'd rather talk about it. What are you feeling like doing?"
She sat quietly for a moment, then said, "I think... I would like to try a little physical contact." Then she placed her hand over mine, holding it as it rested on the grass.
I turned to face her, and began to pet one of her arms, slowly. We leaned closer, touching foreheads. Our breathing overlapped and we felt the heat from it. Very slowly, we brought out lips together for a first kiss. It was awkward, but not unpleasantly so. I could tell that she was intently observing every small movement, replaying and adapting it, like she was learning the steps of a new dance.
We kissed a few times, then leaned back to have a little discussion. She was shaking again.
"Huh!" she said. "I’ve never kissed someone with a beard before.”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s like.. Having granola with your ice cream.”
I laughed very hard, turning my head away so I didn't deafen her.
"Shall we keep going?" I said.
"Yes."
Things got heavier. I breathed out slowly in her ear, then bit her very softly on the neck. She hissed in breath, and reported that she liked that a lot. I let my hands roam a little, but not anywhere dangerous. She was more forward, and shoved one of her hands up my shirt. While she did that, she leaned over so far she nearly fell in my lap. I laughed, then scooped her up so she was sitting sideways on my crossed legs.
We kissed for a while longer in that position, then slowly cooled things down. I had a feeling she would want to check in before we went further.
"I uh, I think I can only go so far on this night," she said.
"I'm a-okay with that," I said, and giggled. "This was farther than I was anticipating anyway!"
"Same here..."
She lifted herself off me, and we both stood up, and started a rambling walk down to the Bart station, grinning like idiots the whole way. At a couple of street crossings we kissed again.
“Wow,” she said. “Just ... Wow.”
I laughed.
“Don’t laugh!” she said, “This is all still new to me, let me have my moment!”
"Sorry. I'm not laughing at you. It was just ... adorable. And yes, we're both having a moment."
A promise to meet again, soon, then one more kiss at the Bart station, and she boarded her train. I waited for a different line.
Back at the house I felt wired. Matt was awake, so I prodded him to go on a late-night food run. We hopped in his car and took surface streets up to Au Coquelet Cafe, yodeling fake lyrics to the bluegrass music he had blaring out the windows. We ate onion rings and salad at the restaurant and talked about our dating lives and philosophy. I had problems, but still, it was a wonderful time to be alive.
When I rolled up, the bus had just stopped, and was hissing air out of its suspension to lower the doors to the curb. I yanked open a luggage compartment on the outside and shoved the bike in sideways, then beeped my badge at the swinging door and sat down in the nearest chair, breathing hard. A minute later the bus lurched forward. It made three awkward right turns, then roared onto the freeway and almost instantly slowed down to a creep as the traffic engulfed it. It would be stop-and-go for the next 90 minutes at least. There was nothing to do on the bus but open the laptop and try to work.
For most of the ride I felt motion sickness. The air conditioning constantly cycled car exhaust through the cabin, which made it worse. I could read email and review code but I couldn't write any. Every half-hour or so I had to stare out the window intently at the stationary buildings and breathe very carefully, to avoid vomiting my empty stomach onto the fold-down table.
In Cupertino I wrestled the bike out from the belly of the shuttle and walked it to my van, which I'd left parked in the employee lot. It was a convenient place to store the bike, plus spare clothes, plus I could take a nap inside if I really needed to. My other option was to leave it parked in Oakland, and every day up there was a chance it would be molested in half a dozen ways. I threw the bike in the back and walked to my office.
I had one meeting. Most of the day was spent poking a collection of servers that were housed in the lab, editing scripts in-place so I could immediately run them in the testing environment. These weren't the sort of thing I could test directly on my machine. At some point I walked to the cafeteria and bought two huge breakfast sandwiches and inhaled them, then brought a salad and some cookies and fruit back to my desk. Those disappeared except for a plum, which I was determined to save. I still felt hungry, and jittery, but I knew from experience those would never fully subside, no matter how much I ate. My stomach could be stretched full and I'd still feel like I needed to eat something. And I would still not gain weight.
In the late afternoon I walked to the van and drove it to get gas. Filling a 30 gallon tank always takes forever, so I occupied myself by cleaning out the console between the front seats, which was filthy. I found some ancient gum and tried to chew it. Yuck! I ate the plum from work instead. Then I began the long haul back to Oakland. I didn't like keeping the van there but I needed it to run some errands.
I parked on the street and trudged into the house, then immediately resumed poking the work servers. I was behind on my edits. I kept that up for another hour, then the urge to nap overwhelmed me and I crashed on the bed.
An hour later I was jolted awake by the ding of a message on my phone. It was Кэрол. We said hello, then a couple messages later we swerved into flirting and sex talk. Sex was always just under the surface of my thoughts these days, and the way I was attracted to Кэрол, it was impossible to avoid. We went back and forth for a while, teasing each other with words, but she had to start a meeting soon and needed time to cool off, and besides, I had a date tonight.
I showered, shaved, put on a fresh shirt, and reduced my pockets to the essentials: 25 bucks in cash, my phone, my keys, and a paper Bart card. From the house I walked to MacArthur Bart and rode it to Berkeley. It was evening, and the air was crisp. My metabolism was burning and I didn't need a sweater, only a long-sleeved shirt. As I stepped off the escalator I passed by a woman at the foot of the stairs singing a-capella in a plaintive voice. At street-level I was almost lost in a crowd. Plenty of people here, even on a Monday night. In a few minutes I was supposed to meet Анна.
I spotted her walking towards me. She broke into a smile, then hugged me when she drew close. No apparent jitters this time. The restaurant had already been chosen: A vegan Chinese restaurant with an intriguing menu. We set off together, walking close, holding hands.
This was a "second date" sort of conversation. More long stories, less performance anxiety. We dug into our family history and our formative years. She told me about her sisters, and her grandma’s house, and playing childhood games. I told a few stories about the mayhem my friends and I got up to as teenagers, and sketched out my relationship with my sisters and nephews.
"Having nephews is great," I said. "Way fewer diaper changes, but you still get to take them on adventures. I think it's my job to sort of round them out, maybe even corrupt them a little. But I figure that will really start to happen when they're teenagers, and really learning about the world. The oldest one is only 10 right now. The youngest ones can barely differentiate between reality and their own imaginations."
Анна was intrigued by that. "I think a lot about that difference in my work," she said. "People debate endlessly about what makes good art. Usually they go in circles, and then sort of give up and say it's all subjective. But I think good art always does one thing: It makes people want to erase the border between the reality they already know, and their imagination. Makes them want to do it. Or even forces them to do it."
"Sounds confrontational."
"Oh not always. I mean, well, perhaps it always is confrontational in some way. But I think that word is too aggressive. It implies fear, or anger. That's not what I'm getting at."
"Hmm. Okay, not confrontational. Compelling."
"That's more like it. They're compelled by this thing, to be in a world different from the one they're certain of."
I told her about the time when I was a kid, and I encountered a burned-out redwood stump in the forest behind my house. The rest of the tree was gone, but the massive stump remained, forming a C-shaped room, with walls of charcoal. Someone had covered the ground inside with sand, and placed an old rotary-dial telephone against the inner wall of the stump, resting on the sand. A few feet above the phone, nailed to the crumbling black inner wall of the stump, was a simple wooden cross.
Анна paused, visualizing it, then said, "Someone was trying to telephone God?"
"Exactly. I think it was somebody's tiny, private 'talk to God' room in the forest."
"I wonder... Did an adult build it? Or a child?"
"Great freakin' question," I said, leaning in. "When I first saw it, I remember for just a moment, I suddenly absolutely believed in the Christian god. Otherwise, why would this be here?"
Анна nodded. "So did you pick up the phone and talk to God?"
"I picked up the phone and heard nothing. So I dug around in the sand and found that the phone cord only went for about two feet, then ended where someone had cut it. I didn't bother saying anything at that point."
"Wow, that's... That could almost be a sort of personality test."
I laughed. "Right! No wire? No God!"
We digested that for a while. I described the woods some more, and that led to an inventory of our cats and other pets, and the other households we'd lived in as adults. Анна asked about my time in Santa Cruz, which led to a description of my relationship with Шеррила. She listened intently.
I paused, then said, "I get the impression you're really curious about my romantic history, so I want you to know: You can ask any question you want. I won't shy away from it."
"Thanks for saying so," she said.
We finished the meal, then walked outside together. The night was still young, so we walked around, like we had on the first date.
"So, tell me about your first real romantic relationship," she said. "The first one that wasn't just dating."
I figured that was Кэролин, from when I was at UCSC. I sketched the outline of something that was tender, and full of exploration, but also confusion. I talked about how she was always unsure how much she was attracted to women, and how much that mattered.
"I think one of the biggest reasons that relationship got as intimate as it did," I said, "was that Кэролин always asked direct questions. She never worried about being too invasive. The way she saw it, if a person was uncomfortable answering a question, they'd just say so, and no harm done."
"Hah! So that's where you got that habit."
I laughed. "Well, I don't ask awkward questions of everyone. Just people I like." I turned to her and grinned.
She grinned back.
We wandered onto the Berkeley campus. I lamented that my feet were hurting a bit, and asked her to suggest a place to sit down. She found some stone steps in front of a quiet-looking building. I suggested the grass next to the steps.
We sat down next to each other, facing the same way, not quite touching. The conversation turned from relationships to music. I played some ambient music on my phone and she gave her interpretations of each track. Very blatantly, I scooted closer and closer, until we were touching at the shoulder.
Then I said, "So, I'd like to ask for some clarification."
"Yes?"
"What's your comfort level with physicality? I mean, I don't want to just get handsy and hope for the best. I'd rather talk about it. What are you feeling like doing?"
She sat quietly for a moment, then said, "I think... I would like to try a little physical contact." Then she placed her hand over mine, holding it as it rested on the grass.
I turned to face her, and began to pet one of her arms, slowly. We leaned closer, touching foreheads. Our breathing overlapped and we felt the heat from it. Very slowly, we brought out lips together for a first kiss. It was awkward, but not unpleasantly so. I could tell that she was intently observing every small movement, replaying and adapting it, like she was learning the steps of a new dance.
We kissed a few times, then leaned back to have a little discussion. She was shaking again.
"Huh!" she said. "I’ve never kissed someone with a beard before.”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s like.. Having granola with your ice cream.”
I laughed very hard, turning my head away so I didn't deafen her.
"Shall we keep going?" I said.
"Yes."
Things got heavier. I breathed out slowly in her ear, then bit her very softly on the neck. She hissed in breath, and reported that she liked that a lot. I let my hands roam a little, but not anywhere dangerous. She was more forward, and shoved one of her hands up my shirt. While she did that, she leaned over so far she nearly fell in my lap. I laughed, then scooped her up so she was sitting sideways on my crossed legs.
We kissed for a while longer in that position, then slowly cooled things down. I had a feeling she would want to check in before we went further.
"I uh, I think I can only go so far on this night," she said.
"I'm a-okay with that," I said, and giggled. "This was farther than I was anticipating anyway!"
"Same here..."
She lifted herself off me, and we both stood up, and started a rambling walk down to the Bart station, grinning like idiots the whole way. At a couple of street crossings we kissed again.
“Wow,” she said. “Just ... Wow.”
I laughed.
“Don’t laugh!” she said, “This is all still new to me, let me have my moment!”
"Sorry. I'm not laughing at you. It was just ... adorable. And yes, we're both having a moment."
A promise to meet again, soon, then one more kiss at the Bart station, and she boarded her train. I waited for a different line.
Back at the house I felt wired. Matt was awake, so I prodded him to go on a late-night food run. We hopped in his car and took surface streets up to Au Coquelet Cafe, yodeling fake lyrics to the bluegrass music he had blaring out the windows. We ate onion rings and salad at the restaurant and talked about our dating lives and philosophy. I had problems, but still, it was a wonderful time to be alive.
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Date: 2024-10-22 03:49 pm (UTC)