First date with Эриска

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The first actual date I arranged on okCupid was with Эриска.  She sent me an unprompted message inviting me on a bike ride when she got back from a trip to New York. I never did ask why she clicked on my profile, but I assumed it was the photo of me on a bicycle.  I looked at her photos and instantly liked her. Small and strong, with pale skin, blond hair cropped short, and intense gray eyes, she seemed like a more athletic and butch version of Кэролин. We had fun chatting over the website console, covering light topics like travel and our careers. In a few days I got some SMS messages from her while I was on the bus home from work, saying she wanted to hang out that night. I proposed that we ride in San Jose Bike Party, and she agreed.

She arrived at the house early, and we wrestled her expensive bike from the trunk of her Subaru and put it together. She was even smaller in person than I'd expected, but every bit as good looking. I started to get a little bit of a "dirty old man" feeling, because she was ten years younger than me: 24 to my 34. What could her intentions be? I didn't want to ask because I didn't want the answer to seem so important, so I just rolled along.

Her cycling outfit was partly spandex, and gripped her legs and ass in a way that magnetized my eyeballs. Her bike was built for speed, and I sensed she was used to riding in a more competitive mode, but when we were moving in the huge Bike Party crowds she waited patiently for me to climb the hills on my recumbent, which I appreciated. The ride was more about us than the event. We kept a chatty conversation going, but it was surface-level stuff. More travel experiences and funny stories. I was having trouble with my own expectations: We had just met a few days ago and we needed to be friends, or at least friendly, before we even considered anything romantic, but all my friendships had started organically, almost always with people who shared the same wacky sense of humor. On the other hand all my romantic relationships had started because of an immediate sense of comfortable emotional intimacy. I wasn't finding either with Эриска so far, though I wanted to.

As we rode I got more of her story. She was born in South Dakota, and emancipated herself from her parents at the age of 16. I didn't ask for details on why. Since then she'd finished college with an engineering degree and done some traveling in South America, and repaired her relationship with her parents. It was good she hadn't deferred the reconciliation, because her father had recently died, at a relatively young age from a life-long battle with alcoholism.

She was new to this area and just scored a high-paying job, but didn't know if California was her style yet. For the first three months she rode her bike nine miles across the South Bay to her workplace, which she explained was why she looked more in-shape than her profile photos. I hadn't noticed a difference. As I listened to her and watched her face I read a strong current of masculinity. "I'll be surprised if she isn't at least bisexual, and mostly gay," I thought. "Is she just here to make a new friend? Maybe I should just ask her. On the other hand, we just met. Maybe she's trying to decide for herself."

A few times when we were merging with the crowds, she helped to remount the conversation by reminding me where I left off. I appreciated that. When we rode over a rough patch in the street she exclaimed, "ribbed for her pleasure!" That got a laugh from me.

I threw out a dozen flirtatious signals, but she let them fall into the cracks of the conversation.  We seemed to be steering towards friendship, and of course I felt conflicted because physically she was a knockout. As she maneuvered the bike with her strong, compact body, I widened my gaze and took in the people around her. She was getting a continuous stream of hungry looks from the men and women who pedaled close, which she ignored with a long-practiced ease. She was everyone's type, all the time.

She was used to being wary and frustrated by men, but I caught her broadcasting a genuine expression of warmth towards me, clearly in spite of herself - in spite of her own expectations - for a few moments when we stopped in silence and looked at each other. The shell around her was strong, but she did let it drift open during small moments.

By the end of the evening I had a working theory for what she was like. It was clear she had a large part of her emotional self closed off, and to be consistently close to her I would need to spend time teasing her open, across a dozen encounters. This effort would be entirely separate from any physical intimacy we might have: If she found me attractive, she would say so in short order, and we would fuck, but an actual emotional connection would be way harder. And it was optional for her. If I were a younger person with more patience, and actually single, I might fall for her and try to start something, but I'd been down that path a few times already and wasn't willing to walk it again. Better to share whatever warmth she might voluntarily broadcast and expect nothing more.

Eventually we peeled away from the crowd and rode back to my house, then disassembled her bike into her car. She had to get home and sleep, since she had to work early on Saturday, or so she said. The idea that she needed to have an excuse to avoid coming inside sailed past me: I had no intention of inviting her in on a first date. We hugged, and she tucked her head in towards my chest instead of out. She said we should hang out again, but the friend vibe was strong and we didn't make any immediate plans. It was hard to predict the future with her.

Over the next few weeks she came over to the house a few times, apparently to hang out with me and our other dinner guests. The first time she was friendly but didn't pay any special attention to me. The second time we went on a walk around the city together at night, wandering around City Hall and the nearby park. She had a physically competitive streak and we took turns seeing how long we could balance and hop across the rocks. The conversations were more natural, and we covered more of our intimate past. At long last, she told me that she actually was in a long-standing, long-distance relationship with another woman, who was still living back East. This relationship was so venerated that she used the term "wife", even though they didn't speak very often and had been living apart for quite some time. I didn't judge, but I was definitely curious at how it worked. It also helped explain why she felt comfortable walking into a potential polyamorous arrangement with me and Шеррила.

It was interesting comparing her to Шеррила. The fact that I was looking for a romantic companion to fit into an existing relationship was never far from my mind, and the question of what I wanted in someone I was dating could only be answered by comparing it to what I already had with Шеррила. In some cases, I wanted the same thing from a new person: Intimacy was top of that list, and a shared sense of humor. In other cases I was feeling more energized by differences. Эриска could be very sarcastic, and had the mind of an engineer more than an artist. She was bold with strangers and would slap you on the back like a fellow man. Emotional intimacy was hard for her, but it was fun to try. At the end of our long walk I told her I wanted to smooch her but wasn't sure where her boundaries were. She thought for a bit and said "I don't know either. I'm not sure if this is the path I want to walk right now. I hope you're okay with me not knowing." I said that was fine, and suggested cooking dinner at her house at some point. To my surprise she accepted.

The next day Шеррила and I had a long discussion about Эриска and how we wanted to play things. I made an exhaustive list of "rules" about our polyamorous dynamic, covering a bunch more scenarios that we hadn't considered months ago, and we combed them over, comparing it with one she'd written a while back. What if I spent a bunch of time dating someone, getting emotionally invested, and they decided it was friends-only? It was nice to have friends, but could I honestly make that transition? I didn't think I could. I decided I would pay less attention to Эриска, and if she couldn't make up her mind after the next date I would end things.

It was difficult territory to negotiate, because it involved an acknowledgement that we were both looking for something clearly beyond friendship with this polyamory exploration: We wanted sex with other people. To some unknowable but probably huge degree, sex was the point of it. Not just talking, not just buddies to go to events and throw dinner parties. Those other things didn't need a fraction of the negotiation and care we had to marshal. Could Эриска mesh with us long-term?