I'm pretty sure he meant well; I mean, obviously he liked me so why would he be an intentional dickhead idiot? Some people are just bad with words unless there's a pen in their hand. I could probably conjure up a few fair explanations for his bumbled display, but I was much more disappointed in my own actions, my own attempts. "Wow, time flies!" and he agreed. "I gotta get going. Thanks though - really - for your thoughtful attention." He smiled and leaned down and out for a hug, which I trepidatiously returned before running in the other direction. 16 blocks walking swiftly into the ocean breeze, I processed my regret and critical disgust. I tried to distract myself with firey indie rock songs from my ipod and the lyrics I had not yet learned, but it still wasn't enough to pull my attention away from the echoing clang of his effortless animadversions to my typed and printed words. "Who does he think he is?"
After a nurtured period of silence, he flipped over the final page and returned the stapled packet of 5 pages to its original placement on the restaurant table. I looked up from my reading poignantly as a way to disguise that I'd actually been watching him the whole time, his eyes darting from right to left, his left to right, as he noted my pathetic-isms and poor word choices in the margins. I raised one eyebrow in delicate inquiry. He said, "I like your necklace." Then my other eyebrow shot up, passing my forehead and gathered itself at my hairline. "Are you being sympathetic?"I sensed he wanted to chat for a while. I hadn't seen him since the infamous "didn't know this was a date" date, and the last time we spoke I made up the excuse that I wasn't interested in dating at all. (Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off.) He thought we had a spiritual connection that deserved to be explored... I thought he should stop pretending he was still in his 20s. So I nodded and grinned, then pulled out my professional looking trapper-keeper that bound all my whimsical bursts of prose, and I redirected his intentions back to the point: it's Wednesday night writing group. "Hmmm, I wonder if my voice is redundant. Can you help me mix it up?" and I extracted chapters "negative 1" and "1" from my shambled binder, letting the papers nonchalantly plop in the uncertain space between us. "This'll keep him quiet for a few."
Walking into Crepes On Cole with my earphones still in place, I spotted a familiar face and a girl sitting next to him. Always calm in crisis, I put on a relaxed smile and tugged my earphones out by the lower end of the chord which made the separate ends dance and swing in front of me as I approached the corner table. "Whew!" I thought as I tossed my bag onto an empty chair and started taking off my jacket, "It would have been awkward if no one else was here!" As a sat and extended my hand to shake that of a stranger's, Rebecca was her name, she urgently reciprocated the gesture then pulled her coat around her chest so the buttons could get snug in their holes and she'd be warm again. "Well I just wanted to stick around with Jim until someone else got here. I'm tired," she explained, "and my priority goes to that." And just like that, I was left face to face with tense familiarity, sans excuse or escape. "Be cool, be cool. Hey! So how was your weekend?"
And now I'm purging angst onto a blog that no one reads because apparently I "have a lot to say but have novice ideas on how to say it;" because I "have some powerful images that could be put in fewer words," and because after opening up to someone and fostering my vulnerability, all a fellow writer can say is, "I like your necklace."
I'll try giving this up starting tomorrow.
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