Thursday, May 04, 2006
"J" (Pt. 1)
Earlier I began writing about J, my first significant female relationship since I got back into the swing of girlie dating online. She answered my sarcastic, out there kind of personal ad that I had placed on Craigslist. Actually, it was a good friend who saw the ad, and passed it on to J. We started emailing one another.
J sends me a picture of herself from a yachting cruise she had undertaken the year before in the Mediterranean. Mischief seemed written all over her features. Trim body, nice rack, in a sundress, her arms upraised in a kind of "So?" expression. Short curly brown hair, turned up nose, brown humorous eyes that looked out upon things with confidence and yet a desire to find out more. I liked her look a lot. She liked mine. I sent her my Gym Rat photo, of me seated, strategically naked, on my Weider home gym. Short curly blonde hair askew as if the owner lived in a perpetual wind tunnel. Bizarre tan lines. The face mostly like an Everest climber, all white around the eyes, ruddy brown elsewhere. Lines for cycling, lines for skating, and swimming.
J tells me she and other women participated in operating the South Fork Sluts, a group of white water rafting women who lead groups of women down the local rivers. She sounds trim, outdoorsy, educated, well-travelled, and she gets my sarcastic backdoor approach to things.
You could say I believe in long distance relationships. J lived in Berkeley, my old stomping grounds. I drove up from L.A. in spring and we made plans to meet in a local eatery in the Montclair district.
Later, J asked me, out of the blue. "So, when did you first realize we were going to be...." I forget how she put it. I don't know how I would have put it. What were we? And without hesitation, as if it were one of the clearest, most truthful things I could ever say about anything in my life, I said, "When I saw you coming down the street toward me, that first night at the restaurant." I must have said this with such authority that it probably worried her, I could sense a kind of...almost a slight physical reaction on her part. She had gone fishing, and lo and behold. She caught something.
We proceeded according to her experience, which was far greater than mine with other women. She had been in an eight year relationship with another woman, which had ended a while earlier. Now that she had decided to try and date women, she seemed to have a clear agenda, and I thought I did the wise thing in letting her set the tone of that. I could follow. I sensed she had some issues around dependence, and being independent. So I tried to reassure her. I was partnered already with a male, and he was a life mate. I wanted a passionate female friend, but one who does not require me to necessarily merge myself into her life. I certainly had ample room in my emotions for a female friend. "An intimate friendship," is what J voiced she wanted. I liked that a lot. We were on the same wave length, I thought.
TO BE CONTINUED
J sends me a picture of herself from a yachting cruise she had undertaken the year before in the Mediterranean. Mischief seemed written all over her features. Trim body, nice rack, in a sundress, her arms upraised in a kind of "So?" expression. Short curly brown hair, turned up nose, brown humorous eyes that looked out upon things with confidence and yet a desire to find out more. I liked her look a lot. She liked mine. I sent her my Gym Rat photo, of me seated, strategically naked, on my Weider home gym. Short curly blonde hair askew as if the owner lived in a perpetual wind tunnel. Bizarre tan lines. The face mostly like an Everest climber, all white around the eyes, ruddy brown elsewhere. Lines for cycling, lines for skating, and swimming.
J tells me she and other women participated in operating the South Fork Sluts, a group of white water rafting women who lead groups of women down the local rivers. She sounds trim, outdoorsy, educated, well-travelled, and she gets my sarcastic backdoor approach to things.
You could say I believe in long distance relationships. J lived in Berkeley, my old stomping grounds. I drove up from L.A. in spring and we made plans to meet in a local eatery in the Montclair district.
Later, J asked me, out of the blue. "So, when did you first realize we were going to be...." I forget how she put it. I don't know how I would have put it. What were we? And without hesitation, as if it were one of the clearest, most truthful things I could ever say about anything in my life, I said, "When I saw you coming down the street toward me, that first night at the restaurant." I must have said this with such authority that it probably worried her, I could sense a kind of...almost a slight physical reaction on her part. She had gone fishing, and lo and behold. She caught something.
We proceeded according to her experience, which was far greater than mine with other women. She had been in an eight year relationship with another woman, which had ended a while earlier. Now that she had decided to try and date women, she seemed to have a clear agenda, and I thought I did the wise thing in letting her set the tone of that. I could follow. I sensed she had some issues around dependence, and being independent. So I tried to reassure her. I was partnered already with a male, and he was a life mate. I wanted a passionate female friend, but one who does not require me to necessarily merge myself into her life. I certainly had ample room in my emotions for a female friend. "An intimate friendship," is what J voiced she wanted. I liked that a lot. We were on the same wave length, I thought.
TO BE CONTINUED
