"So i was thinking" he wrote "you have been working really long hours lately, and maybe it would be good for you to get out of town. Here is a list of places we could stay in Denmark." I looked at the horse steroid statistics and saw that i had billed 196 hours that month. I was all out of horse pills.
I was also run into the ground and we had been seeing each for a while but not a lot. Impromptu worked best, or when something else was cancelled. I hated doing it to him. I felt like a douche. He made himself available and worked around my impractical schedule in the thick of AGM season. He moved things around for me. He did cute little things like sending me detailed lists of his availability each week and spamming me with invitations to work functions 2 months away. He had been out of the dating game a while. 10 years to be precise. When I learnt this on our first date, and the fact that he had been single a whole month, I burst out laughing and put him in the Friend Category.
A weekend away would be one of the many beautiful things he did. It was also Seal The Deal time he had decided.
I forwarded the Denmark email. "So if i go away with the chap for the weekend, does it mean I have to put out?" I asked my friend.
"Yes" he said. "But it means he has to also. He is probably way more nervous than you. Just do it as soon as you get there and get it out of the way."
"But then we will just be in bed all weekend. And I actually want to see this place. I suggested it. That's why we're going in the first place"
"Haha! Therein lies your conundrum. Youre screwed either way."
"Are you currently giving yourself a mental high-five right now that this is not you?"
"I wasn't till you mentioned it but yes, yes I am. Were you forwarding this sh*t when we were going out?"
You picked me up, looking handsome, cute and fresh. You had been so shy and polite to date, but still a boy, still testing boundaries and seeing where we could go. There had been a few nights that ended with tousled hair and looking around for clothes on the floor, but we had not gone there. We had felt each other, breathed each other, smelt each other, you had untied and unzipped my dresses, i had felt your hot skin. But we had not gone there.
You drove and we talked. I learnt all sorts of things about you that I did not know. You told me more about your friends. You told me more about the relationship you had just left. You spoke with little emotion and I wondered how you had swallowed and accepted it and a life where you had to be responsible for all of it, all the time. I felt protective of you and wanted you to know how magic and beautiful you were. You had not spoken much about it before, despite my direct and prying questions. I chatted to you about autonomy and Foucault and Goffman and mangled metaphors and Hybrid and solopsism and the fairies in the garden. We arrived and you said "Wow. We just had a 4 hour conversation. I cant believe you actually managed to speak for 4 hours."
"Did I do it wrong?" I asked.
"No" you said with your grey blue eyes, messy sandy hair, insouciant and gentle smile playing at your mouth.
We had picked up provisions in the town and went about assembling a tasting plate. The house abutted a large river we figured out. You grabbed a blanket and a couple of glasses.
We went through the thin clearing of brambles to the edge of the river and spread the blanket in a cleared space. I poured two glasses of wine and you notionally ate a piece of cheese. I lifted my glass in a sunset toast and you took it out of my hand and put it to the side. You kissed me on the mouth hard and searching, months, days, weeks, moments, stretching back into the world before I knew you, grasping at time. The Responsibilities, the seriousness, the consertative impetus. And now you were a boy by a river, undressing a new girl on a picnic blanket. I felt you mouth and your breath all over my face and neck, you pulled my clothes off and I yours, your hands went everywhere. It felt good and i held you there, stroked my fingers lightly up and down your back when it was over.
You would tell me later that you had been nervous. That it had been years with the same woman, sort of, and that had come to an end. That I was a flurry of stories and anecdotes, "I once knew this guy" stories and you didn't know how to take it all. You didn't know what was going on, what I was used to, what I wanted or expected. You were scared that you had forgotten it all. You recounted the times we had come close and I had untangled you and sent you home thirsty and frustrated, wondering "what is going on? Is there someone else?" I had thought you were going home thinking "what a great night."
"You had all these stories" you said to me, down the track. "Secret Agent Dude. French Guy with Big Ears. The Really Good looking Sociopath."
"Yes, but they're just funny stories about the past" I said. "Surely you have noticed they're not complimentary. The Hobbit. Hot Dumb FIFO. Writes Like a Dyslexic. And I didn’t sleep with those people. ." I wasn’t happy with how that sentence came out." If I had contemporaneous lovers I wouldn't be telling you stories about them. Obviously!"
"No not obviously!" you replied. I hadn't realised.
You said you were nervous. I'd like to think we both hid it well. . Intense but playful, like the first nice day at the end of winter. Consuming something that had been brewing for months with tantalising little glimmers and tastes. We slept in a single bed all weekend, of all the beds in the house and spent the days traipsing and playing. A world away from anyone either of us knew. You didn’t murder me and dump my body in the woodlands as I had suggested you might. I didn’t make you go berry picking as you had feared.
On the last night as we fell asleep tangled I said to you "give me something to dream on" and you kissed my nose. I was not in love with you that weekend and nor were you with me. But it wouldn't take long.
I was also run into the ground and we had been seeing each for a while but not a lot. Impromptu worked best, or when something else was cancelled. I hated doing it to him. I felt like a douche. He made himself available and worked around my impractical schedule in the thick of AGM season. He moved things around for me. He did cute little things like sending me detailed lists of his availability each week and spamming me with invitations to work functions 2 months away. He had been out of the dating game a while. 10 years to be precise. When I learnt this on our first date, and the fact that he had been single a whole month, I burst out laughing and put him in the Friend Category.
A weekend away would be one of the many beautiful things he did. It was also Seal The Deal time he had decided.
I forwarded the Denmark email. "So if i go away with the chap for the weekend, does it mean I have to put out?" I asked my friend.
"Yes" he said. "But it means he has to also. He is probably way more nervous than you. Just do it as soon as you get there and get it out of the way."
"But then we will just be in bed all weekend. And I actually want to see this place. I suggested it. That's why we're going in the first place"
"Haha! Therein lies your conundrum. Youre screwed either way."
"Are you currently giving yourself a mental high-five right now that this is not you?"
"I wasn't till you mentioned it but yes, yes I am. Were you forwarding this sh*t when we were going out?"
You picked me up, looking handsome, cute and fresh. You had been so shy and polite to date, but still a boy, still testing boundaries and seeing where we could go. There had been a few nights that ended with tousled hair and looking around for clothes on the floor, but we had not gone there. We had felt each other, breathed each other, smelt each other, you had untied and unzipped my dresses, i had felt your hot skin. But we had not gone there.
You drove and we talked. I learnt all sorts of things about you that I did not know. You told me more about your friends. You told me more about the relationship you had just left. You spoke with little emotion and I wondered how you had swallowed and accepted it and a life where you had to be responsible for all of it, all the time. I felt protective of you and wanted you to know how magic and beautiful you were. You had not spoken much about it before, despite my direct and prying questions. I chatted to you about autonomy and Foucault and Goffman and mangled metaphors and Hybrid and solopsism and the fairies in the garden. We arrived and you said "Wow. We just had a 4 hour conversation. I cant believe you actually managed to speak for 4 hours."
"Did I do it wrong?" I asked.
"No" you said with your grey blue eyes, messy sandy hair, insouciant and gentle smile playing at your mouth.
We had picked up provisions in the town and went about assembling a tasting plate. The house abutted a large river we figured out. You grabbed a blanket and a couple of glasses.
We went through the thin clearing of brambles to the edge of the river and spread the blanket in a cleared space. I poured two glasses of wine and you notionally ate a piece of cheese. I lifted my glass in a sunset toast and you took it out of my hand and put it to the side. You kissed me on the mouth hard and searching, months, days, weeks, moments, stretching back into the world before I knew you, grasping at time. The Responsibilities, the seriousness, the consertative impetus. And now you were a boy by a river, undressing a new girl on a picnic blanket. I felt you mouth and your breath all over my face and neck, you pulled my clothes off and I yours, your hands went everywhere. It felt good and i held you there, stroked my fingers lightly up and down your back when it was over.
You would tell me later that you had been nervous. That it had been years with the same woman, sort of, and that had come to an end. That I was a flurry of stories and anecdotes, "I once knew this guy" stories and you didn't know how to take it all. You didn't know what was going on, what I was used to, what I wanted or expected. You were scared that you had forgotten it all. You recounted the times we had come close and I had untangled you and sent you home thirsty and frustrated, wondering "what is going on? Is there someone else?" I had thought you were going home thinking "what a great night."
"You had all these stories" you said to me, down the track. "Secret Agent Dude. French Guy with Big Ears. The Really Good looking Sociopath."
"Yes, but they're just funny stories about the past" I said. "Surely you have noticed they're not complimentary. The Hobbit. Hot Dumb FIFO. Writes Like a Dyslexic. And I didn’t sleep with those people. ." I wasn’t happy with how that sentence came out." If I had contemporaneous lovers I wouldn't be telling you stories about them. Obviously!"
"No not obviously!" you replied. I hadn't realised.
You said you were nervous. I'd like to think we both hid it well. . Intense but playful, like the first nice day at the end of winter. Consuming something that had been brewing for months with tantalising little glimmers and tastes. We slept in a single bed all weekend, of all the beds in the house and spent the days traipsing and playing. A world away from anyone either of us knew. You didn’t murder me and dump my body in the woodlands as I had suggested you might. I didn’t make you go berry picking as you had feared.
On the last night as we fell asleep tangled I said to you "give me something to dream on" and you kissed my nose. I was not in love with you that weekend and nor were you with me. But it wouldn't take long.
