My Dinner with Q

I promised I'd fill you in on last Friday with Q, the all-important second date. I'd told Q that I didn't want to have another dinner-and-conversation...Let's go to a performance of something, anything, rather than one of those awkward, what-shall-we-say-now dinners. He agreed, and proposed that we put off choosing where we'd go until the Friday Weekend section of The NY Times came out. But when Friday came I was completely fried from a long week of heat and caring for children (as opposed to the previous week, when I was fried from a long week of heat and working on my book). Plus in practice it didn't seem so easy to find a performance to go to at the last minute. So I suggested by email that we chuck that idea and go for a walk along the river. But then he was completely exhausted from playing tennis in the extreme heat, so in the end...we met for dinner, quite late. Sigh.

He's a good conversationalist...not (yet) amusing, but mature and informed. Topics: politics and places we have been to in Europe or would like to go. Good enough, in other words. Did the trick. Afterward he walked me to my building, and I could see The Kiss was coming when he slipped his hand around my waist and pulled in. The Kiss came and went. I said I couldn't invite him up right then because...I just couldn't. Finally I muttered something about being around next weekend and he left. Is the man physically attracted to me? Yes, he is, which is nice. But we already knew that, because he'd made it very clear: remember "and you're distinctly sexually attractive" after the very first date? Which I thought was a bit too explicit of him? He's ready to go, all guns cocked, so to speak.

That's fine. The problem isn't Q, but me and my kiss hang-up. This is not peculiar to Q: it's true that his tongue felt something like a baby slug gently sliding its way into my mouth, but I'm pretty sure that's not very different from the feelings I've had after kissing most men for the first time -- and that includes those I have lived to kiss later on. (Though Q was very tentative, many other first kissers really go for it, so it's less like a slug and more like a baby otter taking a dive in the pool.) Maybe the Kiss Hangup is a symbol in my dreaded unconscious for my ambivalence (fear, doubt, resentment/longing, hope, desire) about being physically intimate with a man I don't actually love. Yet this used to bother me not at all some time ago, so it isn't as easy to frame so simply: fear of intimacy! fear of commitment! Uh huh..and no. Who doesn't have those when it comes to someone you're not sure you really like?

My advisory board tells me in no uncertain terms that I've got to stop this nonsense immediately: get over it. Now. Think of it as fun, or better yet, don't think of it at all. Why are you dwelling on commitment when you barely know this person? Just enjoy that slug in your mouth!

What the hell AM I afraid of, after all? I've had a couple of un-freaking-believably painful rejections and abandonments, so you'd think it would be fear of that, but I'm quite sure that's not it. Unfortunately, I'm all too likely to dive in nose-first (like the otter) where I'm strongly attracted, emotionally speaking, whether or not the signs are there that this romantic feeling is mutual. Instead, I believe it has something to do with a morbid fear of getting stuck with expectations that I don't want to fulfill. After the kiss comes going upstairs, and then comes bed. Pretty soon it's a routine...dinner (again), then we go to your place or mine. I had a 6 week relationship like that about 8 or so years ago; he'd call with nothing to say (or at least worth hearing) and murmur that he "just wanted to hear the sound of my voice." But I would have been fine not hearing the sound of his voice. That's exactly what I mean by stuck. He was flabbergasted when I broke it off, had not suspected that I was bored out of my mind.

Well, one or two other fishies have swum in with the tide, though I've abandoned the Match site altogether and the subscription is over in a few days. I may or may not talk to these new ones. And Q has not called me since the Friday dinner/kiss, so I may not get the chance to see if the kissing improves.

The beat goes on. For now.