We are one chapter away from 0.1. The tension is killing me. Will the fuckening happen? Not like there’s a consequence if it doesn’t, just asking, will it? This isn’t really fun anymore, I think.
I’m currently listening to Okey Dokey, watching, Life in Color on Netflix, after having cleaned wine off the only valuable things I own, which I spilled wine on after a FaceTime with … Erin.
We left off in 0.08 with Annie.
Annie and I messaged for a bit. She went on a trip, she said, then the restaurant texted to confirm our reservation, that was made way too far in advance, and I messaged her to ask if we were still on. Thirteen hours later, no response from Annie, I texted the restaurant to tell them we weren’t coming.
I messaged Annie to tell her so. She never responded. If she was who she claimed to be, maybe she realized she could do better. If she wasn’t, she was scamming me. Either way, bullet dodged.
I’ve had a date and a few video calls since then, most recently tonight, with Erin.
Erin
Jesús Fucking Cristo. On a cross, on a bus, as an albatross, as a cuss.
This human has been through so much. I heard a four-hour summary of it and I don’t think I’ll close my eyes tonight without seeing horrors.
She was drifting off to sleep as I said good night. I said it was a pleasure speaking with her (I lied). She said she looks forward to another conversation. I replied, “If you really want to, yes.”
My tone as I said that was like that of a therapist I didn’t see for a second time, back in 2003.
Missy
A few weeks ago, Missy and I matched. She’s super pretty. She’s a hypnotherapist. Incredibly intelligent, witty, attentive, and refreshingly flirtatious.
Turns out some my flirtations aren’t so clear, though, as she recently texted me, “You can have your dick in your hand and I’ll be like ‘so what do you want to do today? Oh you are hitting on me! I had no idea.’”
We might have something here, so long as I avoid subtlety.
How’d you end up in Nashville?
I get asked this right out the gate by most matches. I recognize that it’s an innocuous question, but it immediately conjures up difficult memories and anxiety. Why don’t I lie? Don’t know. I just can’t. Here’s the answer (the long verion, I usually share an abridged version).
I was married to Sara. It was 2013. I was getting ready for a big sales meeting. We’re talking a quarter mil deal, and I was the one tech person picked to be there.
This was a first. I prepared more thoroughly than anyone expected.
Sara calls me, “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine, but I’m heading to a meeting, what’s up?”
Meaning: I’m fucking busy and you’re calling me at work. Hurry up.
“There was an attack!”
I look around, my coworkers are all watching their monitors with headphones in, looks intense.
“Shit. Are you safe?”
“Yes, but –”
“Good. I’m sorry, Sara, but I have to go to a meeting.”
“OK, but please don’t take the train home.”
“OK, I won’t.”
I rush into the meeting and I’m late. God. Damn. It. Deep breaths.
I get called on to talk about tech shit. I nail it, even make a joke and the client laughs. Handshakes, deal made, I was part of it. Biggest exhale of my life to date.
Walking on clouds. I can do anything. I’m the shit.
It’s 5:30. I pack up my laptop, remember Sara’s request, decide to honor it, start my trek from Cambridge, MA, to the North End of Boston. No big deal. I start catching up on Radiolab.
Can’t remember what all I saw or felt on that walk, as I crossed the Charlestown Bridge. I can say I wasn’t walking on clouds anymore. Just the dirty sidewalks I loved.
I fucking loved, and love, that city. No place else had or has ever beat me up so much or given me so many chances.
I walk by Mass General Hospital and take my headphones out. I still don’t know what happened, but I’m starting to get the idea.
I get back to the apartment. Sara is crying. We watch the news together. I get an email from work, saying we can work from home until this is all over.
Until then, nothing had scared me more than my dad. I was numb.
A day or two after the second brother had been apprehended, I told my therapist at the time that – and I started weeping and leaking wicked snot at this part – I’d just, for the first time in my life, felt like I had a home, like I belonged somewhere, and I felt like I had control over my life, like I could protect myself and my wife and the life we were building, and that I hadn’t enjoyed that feeling for a single fucking day before the rug got pulled out from under me.
He hugged me, and joined me in crying.
Sara barely spoke a word to me, or anyone else, for the next few weeks. She wasn’t a quiet person. “Maybe it’s trauma?” I thought.
“No shit, what about yours?” I think now.
It’d been a couple weeks since that therapy session. Waiting for the train after a mildly frustrating day at work, I realized, “I don’t need this job, or any job. I can code, I can sell, I can teach, I can manage. I just need someone to handle calls and payroll, and a name.”
I’d had some beers with coworkers earlier. I was 31, buzzed, and feeling special. I had it, “Designated Developers”. I couldn’t even pronounce the name because I was slurring.
I texted Sara, asked her to meet me at a bar down the street from our apartment, told her I had news. She was there, looking sad and angry.
“Sara, my love. Let’s move to Nashville, live near your brother.”
“What? Really? How?” She was suddenly happy.
“I have an idea for a company and a plan. Can you handle calls and payroll?”
“Yes!”
“I’m calling it, ‘Designated Developers’. Working title. Kinda sucks, but if we can’t think of anything better, it’ll do.
“I’ll do everything I’m doing now, but for myself, for us. I’ll take on agencies, like the one I work for now, as clients, and anybody else who finds us. We’ll co-own it, we’ll grow it, and we’ll make our own thing, better than everything else out there.”
We spent a couple months in California with her family, bought a car, and road-trip-moved out to Nashville. We stopped at the Meteor Crater, The Painted Desert, Carlsbad Caverns, Grand Canyon’s North Rim, and a few other special places, and cities, like Winslow and Santa Fe.
I drove the whole way. Sara slept through most of it. The majority of it was nice. Texas was torture.
We reached Nashville.
I found a new therapist, whom I still see.
My marriage ended. We separated and divorced in 2015.
But Sara and I got better, individually. It took me longer than it took her. But I know I’m better off now, and I assume she is, too.
I don’t tell all of this to every woman who asks how I ended up here, but I tell most of them most of this.
Why not? It’s the truth, and it gets into some of the baggage they’re going to find out eventually. Better in messages than as pillow-talk.
But, man, I hate when dating app matches lead with this question, and that happens so often.
The absence of abuse is not the presence of love.
I said that to my barber this past Saturday, after she told me about some dating mishaps. I don’t know if that’s a saying, a quote, or what.
I doubt it’s original. It’s certainly not profound, but it caused her to step back and say, “Woh, that’s deep,” before resuming my back-of-neck, straight-razor shave.
On the one hand, the bar is so low for me, like, I just need to bathe and listen in order to get a woman to spend time with me. On the other, there’s no excitement in any of it.
A lot of the women I’ve met would probably enter into a relationship with me, if I pushed it, simply because I’m not as bad as most.
My brother thinks I’m overthinking things and I should just get my dick wet. Overthinking things is what I do, and may be the only thing I do well. My dick can wait.
The absence of rejection is not the presence of desire.
Still not profound. Pretty sure I’m incapable of profound, though I am capable of profusion.
Is it foolish of me to want to be wanted?