Playtime

I did contact the music dude in the end: once to say hello and then, a week later, I realised I'd been thinking about him quite a lot and was still feeling bad about the situation. This is silly, I thought, I should get in touch. After only two and a bit dates, I actually missed him. I spent what seemed like flipping ages composing a text suggesting we meet up again... I read it over and over, thinking, even if he declines, he's a polite and sensitive guy and I knew his reply would at least be warm. I hit send and smiled, it would be so good just to see him again...

...and it was answered with a deafening silence.

A day later I got the asking price offered on our flat and suddenly our lives spun about madly. I had not expected it to shift quite so quickly: I had been casually looking at places to rent for 6-12 months, nearer to the school we want H to go to, thinking it would take a while for the flat, which is loved but little, to sell. Since I accepted the offer, I've been rushing about looking at properties to buy ...and the prices are crazy. There's one place I like a lot and fits the criteria of being close to the school, is a good investment and has a big (for London, anyhow) garden. But the dude selling it won't take my offers, insisting on his somewhat high bottom line. It needs at least a lick of paint to make it habitable and I just can't bring myself to meet his minimum. Plus, if I'm honest, I can't actually afford to. I will improve the offer again but it's still less than he wants. He's had it on the market for over a month and with three agencies. He's reduced his asking price once already. In the five years he's had the property, he hasn't added anything to its value and is set to make just under a hundred grand on it, if he sold to me. Here's hoping...

An Italian man from the date site, with whom I had chatted a lot, flew into London. We had curious frothy cocktails and delicious cerviche. I took him later to a bar where I thought we could sit and smoke, but they've recently changed ownership, and we have to climb outside and on to the roof to do so ... and the views of the rooftops of London were amazing. The sun was just slipping out of the sky which was a rich pink with swathes of reddening blue and the evening was becoming mellow and sweet.

His conversation was hilarious, unintentionally so. I was listening to him talk about his work as a psychiatrist. His hands were tucked together under the table between his thighs, and he was ever so slightly rocking, presumably as the night air was becoming chilly.  You need the mind, he was saying, in a relationship more than you need the beast. What do you think of the beast? he asked, gesticulating towards his groin. Wha? He then opened his arms out wide, palms of his hands to the sky and leaned back a bit.... Dear Christ alive,  I refused to look down and tried in vain to stifle a massive laugh. You know, I said, entirely unable to stop laughing actually out loud, I really wouldn't call whatever it is you're referring to as 'the beast', and if I were you, I'd put it away, it might upset the bar staff. 

He hadn't, of course, actually got his beast out at all, but his reference was to sexual desire, and no amount of explanations of how we really don't refer to sexual desire as the beast in English would stop him doing so. A French, then English waiter were quizzed. Predictably, the English one agreed with me, the French one with him.  Let's ask these girls, he said. There was no way on earth I was going to let a drunk Italian dude referring to the beast loose on a sweet bunch of giggling English women... I got up to explain our conversation to them before they ran away screaming, but they fled to the roof to smoke. He seemed rather more interested in following them so, as it was 11 o'clock and I had to get a cab, pay the babysitter etc, I said I had to leave.  But you haven't given me a ten minute warning, he said, angrily. Ok, I said, not for the first time thinking how becoming a mother has made it so much easier to understand certain men, this is your ten minute warning, I'll go and pay. You cannot pay, he started, and followed me to the bar.  He insisted. I haven't had a man pay for me on a date in years. Thanks, I smiled, that's kind.

We start to leave, but he suddenly rushed to the loo, just wait, he says.  It's now 11:15. Ok, I say. Tick flipping tock. It's now 11:35 and I'm still outside the bathrooms waiting. Great. He flies out. Sorry, he says, I have lost my credit card, I think it's on the roof. He dashes off again. The credit card he's just paid with and stuffed back in his wallet? I spy him chatting to the girls. I ask the waiter to let him know I've gone to buy cigarettes, and leave.

He hadn't materialised by the time I got back to the door of the bar, so I started to hail a cab. Just then he bursts out of the bar, why are you going, what did I do wrong, he kept saying. I kissed him goodbye. Thanks for a lovely evening, you did nothing wrong, I just have to go.

Later: but what did I do wrong, he said in about five texts...I start to write one back, but stopped, then wrote thanks for a lovely evening...

Thankfully, the previous evening was spent at the theatre with a beautiful man I met on another date site years and years ago, but never actually met at the time, was actually lovely, and as I caught the bus home, I silently thanked him hugely just for being wonderful company.

Bittersweet

...And then one email from the datesite came through that seemed to be from a friendly soul, who was creative and somewhere near my age and interesting.  Musical, intelligent, good-looking, and a considered but warm email and actual invitation, so much better when you can get straight to meeting, and the point of the site, seeing if we like each other in real life.  I was quite excited.  I got a vibe even from his profile and mails.  I had to rearrange at the last minute due to work and MA work, but then we finally met.

Strangely I was initially underwhelmed, which in hindsight was a protective dismissal I put into my head to ensure I didn't get over excited and make a fool of myself.  We talked, I was impressed.  We talked more, and I warmed to him, the sweet amount of interest he paid me, the amount of common interests, the love of music, the talk of food, the craziness of internet dating and relationships as a whole.  We drank, I was becoming charmed and giddy.  Yes!  We talked loads more and he came back to mine.  We were still talking, and drinking and I realised I really liked him.  Eventually we crashed out.

In the morning, the fuzziness and the jittery hungover angst and fear I usually feel were nowhere.  We got up, showered, went to the pub and spent the next few hours coalescing and relaxing.   A few slow pints of Guinness, a late lunch, more stories and secrets were shared.  Kisses and tiny hopes.  It was sunny outside for the first time in months.  I felt this was symbolic.  I felt this was something promising, something different, something exciting, maybe even special.  Shoot of new life in a late spring.

Texts and arrangements to meet again came later;  we were mutually keen it seemed.  But I had even more work piling up and I started to panic a bit.  He sent me music.  He sent sweet texts.  I had to decline his so tempting offers to come over and cook, to come over just to say hi, to do something midweek, but I didn't want to decline them, I wanted to shout loudly to the world that I had had an amazing first date and it felt good.  And I wanted to see him again, a lot.

But April is the cruellest month.

We finally met again, the excitement and tension nearly spilling over throughout the week.  I felt a bit stressed and mutually pressured.  I wanted to kick back from the long week of working.  I almost didn't want a 'date' where you can't properly relax for all the right reasons.  And yet again, it started so well:  We sat talking and drinking and kissing in the pub again.  It was so easy being with him, and felt so warm and right.

We went back to his.  We didn't eat, hardly stopped talking and at some key moment, in hindsight entirely due to the lack of food and amounts of booze, I started crying.  He was kind and understandably somewhat alarmed.  We talked more and I am sure I tried to explain why I was crying, but it seemed too deep and confusing to know where to really start...  and then he told me that I had cried last week too, which totally freaked me out.  I mean, it's like not knowing you've been bleeding, how can you not know this?  How can you not remember this? Even alcohol doesn't cloud the memory of feeling so bad, and with someone you like, although not because of him, that you will cry?

In the morning, I was tetchy and weirded out, hungover, hungry but unable to eat.  It was the first time in five years that I had stayed over at a date's house and I felt vulnerable and strange.  It was date 2 only.  No time at all really.  Especially to be crying or having such weirdness descend.  I rejected him a bit.  Then apologised.  Half-remembered conversations of the night before came back to me.  But it got worse.  Talking to him in the morning to make some sort of sense of what had occurred, he told me not only had it happened the previous week, but that it had affected him enough to have wanted to leave that first night, albeit benevolently, in case it was him, he said, that was affecting me so much.

In my hungover state I could do nothing more than smoke and drink tea and try to talk about anything else.  I had to occupy my brain, the room and him with anything else but the weirdness, in the hope my subconscious would somehow flash up to me what the hell had been the matter.  But if I couldn't remember even crying with a complete stranger now, an educated guess would imply that it was something I hadn't realised was still there, was still affecting me, and something I buried deep to die many years ago.  And it clearly hadn't worked.

He walked me to the station:  I was late to pick up H and I was in an ever increasing state of anxiety and freeforming panic.  It still felt warm and affectionate between us, but it was cloaked with this looping hangover.  I felt embarrassed and ashamed yet unable to apologise properly, because I wasn't sure how bad things had got.  Or how bad I had got.  Or how bad that meant things were now between us.  We hugged goodbye but I sort of wandered off and we made no mention of any further contact.  I was on the train before I realised that was weird too.

The day passed in a hungover, shaky and hot mess.  I played with H, drove to my parents, played some more with H, ate some food (at last), put H to bed and had the longest bath I think I have had in ages.

Eventually, more positive thoughts came through.  I really should make contact with him to see how he was.  But I didn't know what I felt about things, apart from they hadn't been good.  I didn't know if I was just feeling guilty for crying, making a mess of myself and of things, or if I really thought there had been something between us that I was now in danger of having lost.

We exchanged a few texts.  He was feeling rotten.  The damage, predictably, has been done.  Too much, too soon and nowhere to go to make it better.  The fantasy flowers that we'd made from the tiny shoots of real hope and promise, crushed and flattened by the idiocy that not eating and drinking too much with someone you don't really know will create.  And of course balling my eyes out about, I think, the fucking pain I still feel about being left, pregnant.  Which all the therapy and positivity and great men and wonderful friends, and gorgeous H just hasn't seemed to shift after six years.

Superficially, it felt like getting ill on a fantastic holiday you've been looking forward to for ages.  You create a great space to do something to make yourself happy, and can't enjoy it, in fact because you have made this space because you needed to feel happy, the illness, or unhappiness decides its the right time to leak out and make the most of the opportunity, making you more unhappy and in even more need for a holiday.

I feel disappointed and sad.  We blew it.  And if I thought it would be enough, despite and since knowing how he feels about it, and about me, I would suggest we meet up again, without so much alcohol, with food as an absolute non-negotiable.  To not rake over that night and to put it behind us, as everything else had felt so promising.

And perhaps I will, later, like weeks from now when I can stop berating myself for being so emotional, or us both for being irresponsible, rushing in like mad fools with no sense of reality or any hint that our age has educated us through some of the pitfalls that excitable attraction and the fear of being alone will conjure up...

... or not to drink so fucking much without food.

36 hours in

After 36 hours in, minus about half an hour this morning at breakfast, 20 mins at lunch and half an hour again at dinner time, the braces are not quite so firm and I'm getting a bit used to them.

However, two of the attachment things have now come off, so I have to return to my dentist to have them reattached, which is going to be fun trying to find the time to do that - especially if I have to do this before Saturday, just have no time at all...

Leaving aside the strange attachments that make me look like a vampire who has been gorging on chicken, there are already benefits - As I can't snack without a huge fuss of removing the trays and cleaning them and re-brushing my teeth, and flossing, and mouth washing, it has meant I am eating less and in only 36 hours I have lost a few pounds, can you believe that?  I am also only supposed to drink water while they're in, so I have been drinking loads of it, which is nothing but good for me.  And tea through a straw, which is just weird.

As there is such a rigmarole involved in removing them, cleaning them etc I have found myself taking way more care of myself, and my teeth, than ever before, and cleaning my teeth 4-6 times a day has already made my teeth a whole lot brighter and happier.

I think it's going to be difficult to smile for a while, because they look strange, but it is early days and I will just have to get used to them.

I have packed a washbag full of mouthwash, brushes, paste, floss and the case for the trays to take into work.

I have had them in for 33 hours and 50 minutes, out of the 300 hours I have to do before I graduate to the next set of trays which are slightly tighter.  So 266 more hours and ten more minutes.

I really shouldn't count down like that, it's counter-encouraging.

Two Thirty

I have new teeth!

Well, in 6-9 months I will.  This morning I missed, by 12 minutes and £60, a hygienist appointment.  An hour later, and much flossing and brushing beforehand, I re-arrived and had some apparently invisible braces fitted - they're like clear plastic trays but on certain teeth there are little tabs to hold them in place.

I began this process back in February, and have been paying a smarting £260 a month ever since.  I'm a mild bit embarrassed that I am paying so much for what is essentially a huge vanity;  my teeth are not hideous or dreadfully crooked, just imperfect.  Today was the day I had the actual braces fitted, after taking impressions, making moulds, viewing videos of how they will move the teeth into a straighter alignment and with the free tooth whitening service at the end, how bright they will be.  I say free but it's a £3k kind of free.

When I looked in the mirror at the dentist's, who were running late by at least half an hour, which I didn't bill them for, I was horrified and ashamed I'd even bothered to try to fix my passable and pretty inoffensive teeth.  The tabs stick out miles and I think I look like I've got chicken stuck in my teeth.  The front 4 top and bottom do not have tabs, but the canines do and I look like a vampire.

Rather too late I've been googling reviews of the company that promote these invisible braces and they are encouragingly impressive;  gaps disappear, overcrowded mouths look perfect and straight, people seem happy and more confident.

But my first impression was awful.  When you have a classic metal brace, at least people see it and know what it is - what you can see with my teeth are strange pointy white things that don't look bad enough to register as alien in anyone's brain, but instead as 'somethings not right there'.

H told me it looked like I had dirty teeth, so that's fantastic.  And I have 6-9 months of it.  The good thing is you can take the trays off if you want, and have to when you eat.  I had them fitted at 1pm.  From then I went out with H to the park and the zoo and at 5:30pm I had to take them off, they were killing me and giving me a headache.  I cooked and ate with H and brushed and flossed and put them back on at 630pm where they've been ever since.  So that's roughly 8 and a half hours so far (it's 1030pm now) - I have to wear each tray (which you clean with toothpaste and water three times a day) for 300 hours before starting a new tray, which are slightly tighter in order to move the teeth to the desired position.  I have 5 trays to get through before Christmas.  Yippee.

I think I can pretty much give up on dating;  while I can remove the trays, the tab things look even worse without them, so it doesn't make much of an improvement.

And I have to drink tea through a straw, red wine's out, smoking isn't encouraged and for the first few days of every new tray, I've been recommended to only eat soft foods because the teeth become sensitive.

One of the tabs has already come off.  I'm not particularly happy about these braces.

"Sometimes talking is more intimate than doing it" - Michael Caine, Alfie

I have 3 particular close male friends who are single, who I don't see so often, perhaps once a month, perhaps less.  It used to be more.  And there used to be 4 of them.

Once upon a time, I was very close friends with one called D who become like a brother to me.  Following the demise of his long term relationship with another friend and then the death of his mother, we were always together, hanging out, drinking, putting the world to rights, more drinking, lots of idiotic dancing and loads of crying at seemingly everything, at the time.  We were pretty close and wrote songs together and went to gigs and music courses, he came to see me in Thailand and we went on spontaneous trips out of London, many times.  I stayed at his house for a few months when I returned from my travels with H and he was one of the first to see H and spend any time with him.

Various boyfriends of mine and girlfriends of his came and went and we were still close friends, talking awful amounts of shit on frequent occasions.  Then along came a girlfriend who was very jealous of our relationship, which D and I would discuss.  We decided that, as there was nothing to hide, and that only the quantity of the time we spent together need change, it didn't matter and every social event I arranged, she was always invited to, and if D and I ever went out alone, she was always invited along too.  She played in a band and I was more than supportive, helpful even and D and I thought that this jealous feeling would at least fade, if not disappear forever, mostly because it was groundless and if D and I had ever wanted to get together, we would have done so by now, our friendship having spanned a good 6 years by that point already.  We stopped seeing quite so much of each other, not consciously, but appropriately..  things faded into once every few weeks, to once in a few months...  and I was happy he had finally found someone he loved and who loved him.  Their relationship went from strength to strength and I was excited that soon they might get engaged after they moved in together, and that I would still be a part of their lives, albeit casually.

Somehow, this didn't happen.  At D's girlfriend's birthday drinks about a year ago, she and I talked intimately.  I thought we were bonding and, unguardedly, I spoke warmly about D and I, our mad friendship and about her with D, and how happy I was he had finally found someone who truly made him happy; I thought she was beginning to trust me, to get to know me and to exorcise any demons she might still have.  I was there with N, another male single mate of the previously mentioned group of 3 and I was just in the middle of telling him how I thought at last D's GF had accepted me when there was a tap on my shoulder;  it was about 10 minutes after the end of the intimate chat D's GF and I had had, which had gone on for about half an hour.  It was D.  He berated me, how dare you tell my GF about things we've done.... I looked bemused - what, I asked?  He mumbled a few things and left us speechless as to what on earth I could have said that would have got him into trouble.  Other mate N and I left, him a bit bored and me pissed off that my so-thought bonding conversation had actually gone the opposite way.  She must have run straight off to D to relay everything I'd said, clearly twisting everything and given him shit for stuff that just cannot be true.  Or if was true, could not have hurt anyone.

A few weeks later I caught up with him at a gig where his GF wasn't playing, and we tried to discuss things; this after an email I'd sent asking exactly that.  Turns out, he didn't want to talk about it.  The GF had decided, and so it seemed had D, that I wasn't to be their friend anymore.

That was that.

Given, in Thailand, and a few times before and since Thailand, but before this had happened, D and I had talked about the fact that we wouldn't ever be able to be so close and that we would see less of each other if one or other of us became seriously involved with someone, I was ok with this.  Sad and upset I had to be hurled out of the friendship, but fine.  I loved D like any friend and I was happy he was happy, and still am, even when every other mutual friend we have tells me they did recently get engaged, that they're of course now getting married, and even when my one, tentative, reach-out text to them both asking for us to have a chat, was ignored.

Sigh.

But now, something else is starting.  Another pal's new GF is starting to have issues with me.  Another pal, N2 and I discussed this before he met anyone and his lovely GF and I are friends.  She came to Rome with us all and I hope like mad doesn't privately hate me or want to stop N2 and I being friends.  But this new situation is with N1, aforementioned from the party with D and his GF.

N1 has met someone 6 months ago and it's starting to feel like I am becoming mistrusted again.  For being close to him.  And we aren't even that close, but friends of the opposite sex.  I think that's all it must be.

Pointedly, not one of my boyfriends has ever been remotely threatened by any one of these close male friends.  Not once.  In fact, one ex, J, would hang around with them as much as me and we all meet up on occasion, just as carefree as ever.

Things have to change when you begin a longer term, more serious relationship, I understand.  But what's beginning to severely fuck me off, is that these insecure girls are younger, more beautiful and way more close to these men, and have absolutely nothing to feel threatened by.  Not me, not any hidden feelings, not any hidden feelings on the part of their man, nothing.  No past, no close encounters, no secrets, nada.  Of course my dear male friends would cut me off if they had to, to please them, if they were really so insecure, but why do they really feel the need to ask them to do that?  Or to force them to?  I am way older than them, sometimes more than 10 years.  I have been close with these guys for years without anything happening more than a lot of laughs and a lot of shoulders to cry on.  These men are my friends, who give me advice on my own pathetic love life, who laugh with me when I'm telling stupid stories about the messes I get into, who pick me up and stop me falling into black holes of misery when I don't have anyone else to do this for me.  When you guys have argued, I listen to them telling me how much they love you and how shit they feel, and I tell them that they could try this or that to appease you, or to get things back together with you again.  I support your relationships with them; they are trustworthy, honest and kind people.  They wouldn't cheat on you with bloody anyone, and haven't, from what I've heard, so why on earth do you think I am any sort of a problem?

I'm starting to get sad and miserable about it.  I understand groundless jealousy, possessiveness, insecurity and the fear of losing someone, but girls, please, you won't lose your men because of me, or to me, so give me back my friends.

Just every few months.  I need them and miss them.

Fever

London in the sun reminds me of ants frying under a magnifying glass, the scurrying more furious, the collective need more desperate.  Unless you have a garden or sit very still in the middle of an unpopular park it is unbearable.  I escaped with a poorly H to my parents' house but, despite the rolling fields, there is no breeze whatsoever and the spindly spiders that hang for dead in the corners of the least used rooms have collected quite some feast of tiny flying insects, caught in a webbed row like miniscule birds on a wire.  I watched them from the loo seat, they do not move and they are not eaten.  Perhaps they are being stored for the inevitable winter.  Do spiders think ahead like that?  Do they even live that long?  Maybe the spider is dead and I had been looking at a museum of wasted triumphs.

The heat from the day has collected around the house like smoke in a Brownian Motion display; the bedrooms are like cauldrons.  H has been stripped of all clothes and is lying on his bed, already with a fever, and I feel like I'm on the set of some southern American plantation movie, fanning myself on the porch, swinging gently on a hammock and moaning about how hot it is, although I'm actually smoking in the garage and raiding the fridge for cold things.

It feels as if the windows should be steamy, like a low level sauna. My mother and I flop about on the sofas like decadent wives with our husbands out at war.  It is almost too much effort to pour a drink.  We eat take-away chinese, too hot and lethargic to cook, and I lament how much take-away food I have eaten this week.  I have not been to the gym for 4 weeks, either.

Soon my friend V and I will fly away for some non-UK sun, but before then:  Date Four !

....was highly anticipated.  Subconsciously, I had passed him on a test I didn't realise I probably always set up for anyone I want in my life in an intimate way:  he had put up with me drunk and babbling.  Not blubbing and mental, but emotional enough to be vulnerable and easy to exploit.  And he hadn't exploited or run.  He was someone I thought I could take a bit more seriously and while the last few dates had been innocent and casual, light hearted and fun, it felt like this next one was going to be a step closer together and possibly forward.

And it was, in both good ways and bad.  We stopped talking about the superficial things we like and our opinions on mutually loved subjects and on to ourselves and each other.  The measured way you try to let out truth but hold back the baggage; the little by little sharing of pains or pleasures; the small secrets, tentatively divulged, the admission of discrepancies.  The wine lubricated us well but it ended in tears, my tears.

Back at his spooky house, the atmosphere was strained, weird even.  I couldn't relax there, it felt dank and depressing, I felt like I was caught, hostage, although he was gentle and calm.  It's a very run down house, unloved and miserable, haunted, even, but by him.  I felt bleak and the conversation moved way too fast into wanting me to stay the night and suddenly I was actually scared.  I didn't want to stay the night, I didn't want to be talking about if I would or wouldn't stay the night.  Because the minute that topic was raised for debate, I found I had only negative answers, for several reasons, but mainly that it was way too early to think about anything more serious than an already intense and personal night.  And I knew in the back of my heart that I didn't fancy him enough, and yet kissing had been great and fun and wanted.  

I ran off in a cab and woke up with a mildly depressed feeling.  I checked my phone to see what he might have to say about the situation, but it was blank.  I didn't feel like initiating any further dialogue.

H's dad came early and I had the magic feeling of nowhere to go.  Then he text me:  is it just me or did you also wake up feeling depressed and confused?  It was a passive aggressive's way of saying let's clear that mess up from last night, I assumed.  The sunny day shone into me and I suggested we meet up.

And it was a gorgeous day, a day for cycling and drinking mildly and being glad to be alive.  Which we did.  All day talking and laughing and ranting and cycling and drinking a bit and eating and making good the weirdness of the end of the night before.  But then we went back to his house again and I felt the energy and sunlight drain out of me.  He kindly suggested he left to buy me more cigarettes but I couldn't bear to be alone in there and so went with him and paid for his cigarettes, sort of guilty of my mind.

This week, most prosaically, I just thought, no, not for me.  Not really the house, but that didn't help, but many, many other tiny things that don't matter by themselves and actually don't matter collectively, but become the only things you can grasp at to explain to yourself why whatever the fuck it is, isn't there.

And I have been shit about articulating these things to him.  I blew him out twice this week, and yet for genuine reasons.  But I didn't offer him enough to stop him being able to read between the lines.  He'd said previously that he thought 'we amuse each other'.  It was nice to hear his take on our situation.  And I think I agree when I get called commitment phobic (but that wasn't by him).  

It's usually the intellectual spark that starts the fire;  I am not interested in money or size or popularity, just articulation of emotion, sensitivity and compassion.  Humour, of course.  Beauty and strength.  And in fact he had all of those things.

Gah.  

Up-dating

Date two was a much more enjoyable affair;  a secluded pub in a local place I'd never been to before... twinkly blue lights lit up the trees, there was an awful lot of wine...  some kissing....  and an absolutely brilliant non-ranty speech about the Olympics that lasted from mid-way through buying the wine, to the slow walk outside with bottles and glasses jangling, to half way through the first cig.  The biggest smile spread over my face as he spoke, articulating perfectly exactly what it was all about and why he wasn't that bothered about it...  fantastic.  Someone way more articulate than me, happy to be anti all the hype; I really wished I'd recorded it.

And hilariously, he got way more pissed than me.  I think that's almost a first.

Although I made up for it quite a bit on date three:  another local, another few hundred bottles of wine, no food and quite a lot of hormones...  usually the equation for an awful lot of emotional shit and about a year of insecure panicking afterwards...  but it was lovely, he was lovely, he is lovely...

Predictably the kissing high, from another lovely man a few weeks ago, has evaporated, not even because of New Man above, but for all the reasons I foresaw; it's in the kiss and I think I knew even while we were kissing it wasn't going anywhere else.  Because it's also in the length of time you receive a text, or an answer to your text, after the kissing.  The amount of and quality of the dialogue and 'correspondence' that comes next.  Not that he hasn't got a pretty good excuse, but...

And then, greedily, I spent a few drunken evenings, separately, with two platonic male friends:  one I have kissed and still want to again, and another I haven't and want to.  You can read anything else into 'kiss' too, I do.  Raging hormones.  Not really platonic at all, especially in my head.

So, lucky me.  But tomorrow is a new and busy week at work with the new boss;  I can't sustain such partying or passionate embraces and get anything done at work at the same time.

Date 4 is this Saturday...  eeek