The Thing About Dating, Part 1
So, I’ve been dating someone for maybe a month or two by now. It’s weird.
It’s weird, because the last guy I had anything close to a romantic relationship with was when I was nineteen, and I’m currently 26. For all purposes, he was my boyfriend, and that was that, and we were automatically entitled to do what two gay neurotic nineteen year olds do — make out at clubs, drive around San Francisco, sit around the house watching infomercials, not really talking to each other but knowing that the other person was there, you know?
And I knew that he wasn’t into me as much as I was into him. I knew that he felt uncomfortable if I called him my boyfriend, since he told me that I was #14 of a string of Asian guys to casually date. We both knew the dynamics of the relationship, which made it completely acceptable when he called it off two months later, and when I saw him making out with this guy I went to school with six days afterward.
It hurt, though.
One time, we were hanging out — fuck, I don’t even remember where, anymore — and he said something that I would never forget:
The “Ex”: Have you ever wished you would find someone? Someone that would just sweep you off your feet? The “knight in shining armor,” if you will?
Me: Yeah.[Ed: You will notice that when I was 19, I regularlly used smiley-face emoticons in verbal conversation.]
The “Ex”: Well, get over it. It’s a fantasy. It’s never gonna happen.
Me: Oh. :’(
And you know what? For better or for worse, I took his advice. I mean, we’re cool, now. We’ve hung out a couple of times the years after that. He found my weblog through a google search and sent me a Kylie CD for my birthday. He’s a good guy. But on that day, along with being frightened and insecure about relationships, I became a realist. Or jaded, if you’re a romantic. I close my eyes every so often and imagine a typical scenario with that perfect someone, and instead of shopping for groceries hand-in-hand with whoever, I come up with… nothing. Pitch black. And now that I’m dating someone, is it wrong for that same thing to still happen…?
(How funny, this started out as a humorous post. Hell, this post was supposed to be about the guy I’m currently dating. All in good time, my friends.)
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