How it Went

I just got back from kayaking and my shoulders are so sore I can hardly move. There’s going to be some Advil in my future when the beer wears off. I went to Dogfish Head for lunch considering how many times I’d passed it and never gone in, and had a lovely pairing of grilled mahi-mahi tacos and fresh peach, summery ale. I’m very seasonal about my beer, lest anyone think that I am only a “bitch beer” kind of chick. Let’s save the stouts for snow, shall we?

I was so embarrassed that I was late this morning. I actually got there early, but I didn’t know you needed $3.00 to get into the park and who carries cash anymore? So I had to go and get some, and then the signage within the park was so poor that I must have driven five miles before I actually found the boathouse. The good news is that I took to kayaking like a fish to water. Never overturned my boat, mostly because I looked up tips on the internet before I left the house. Apparently, the stroke is “toes to butt.” I had a great time, and my date paid for everything… I thought we were going to lunch afterward, so I was going to return the favor by treating her… She said she had some chores to finish, which I do not know if it is code for “I have to finish my chores,” or perhaps, “I’m just not that into you.” Either way, I had a great time, and I’m not worried. She’ll text back or she won’t (I sent her a text message saying that I had a great time and it was so sweet of her to invite me). I was looking forward to lunch, though, because there’s only so much talking you can do on a boat (motherfucker).

My insecurity says that she took one look at me and decided I looked like a ten-year-old. My ego says that I’m awesome, and just because she didn’t see it, that’s not my problem.

Yeah, let’s go with that.

Yesterday’s date was much more fun and lasted a lot longer, because neither one of us could stop talking. But it wasn’t really a date, because I’m not the type person that wants to jump into anything quickly.  I told her that friendship was what I had to offer, and she told me that might be  hard, which was a great ego boost and nothing else. I need to enforce boundaries with everyone I go out with, because I’m Just. Not. Ready. Not ready to give up any part of myself to someone else, because the pieces that have left me over the past year or so haven’t scabbed over. The bleeding has stopped, and there is a Band-Aid (brand name, not Dollar Tree crap) over them, but the cuts still feel fresh enough that letting myself invest in someone else is not quite an option.

With the woman yesterday, there were clearly some compatible wounds, which set off my weird-spirometer in a hurry, because that is my past and not my future. I have also made the promise to myself that Agape and Eros should not cross, and it may take me a while to break those walls as well. Because, of course, now that my boundaries in place, they are quite iron-clad. I never want there to be another Argo, period.

It’s going to take a lot to get my boundaries down, even when I am ready. I thought I had trust issues before, and now I have them even worse, because I don’t want to cause harm to anyone and I don’t want anyone to cause harm to me. But the thing is, Agape and Eros are supposed to cross in the right relationship, just presumably not with a a straight girl. But it doesn’t matter right now. Those boundaries cannot cross too soon. With Dana, it took 3 and a half years, because the relationship before her was classic Agape and Eros crossing even when we both knew they shouldn’t and we did it, anyway. It put my heart into a blender.and it gave me plenty of time to think about what I wanted the next relationship to look like. Turns out, I want to marry my best friend…. If the two people I’ve already got domestic partnerships with will real ease me from them. It’s getting time to file on my own, because now I don’t believe that Dana will take care of it as she said she would, and I know that Kat just wants me to claim abandonment because she married a man three months after we broke up and I haven’t heard from her since. I’m not even sure that her current husband knows about me, but it wouldn’t be hard to find out if you knew both of our last names.

I never should have taken the legal advice just to let it go, but hindsight is always 20/20. There’s no way that national gay marriage could have been predicted in 2002.

And that’s what I was thinking as I was driving home from kayaking. This dating thing is so much harder with two domestic partnerships now hanging themselves over my head like rain clouds, fluffy and full. In a sense, I already have two wives. What it God’s name do I want with a girlfriend?

Mostly just the first and last call of the day.