The Non-Starter

He and I. Me and him... It was an energy that built over the course of a year. We flirted, we spoke. It wasn't that kind of shallow conversation that normal people have. Afterall, I don't really know how to have those.

Maybe I mistook that he met me on my level. Maybe I wanted to believe he admired me as I did him. Maybe it was the worst end of a date that never happened.

He was tall, and possibly handsome. It's strange with tall men. Sometimes people perceive them as good looking just because their eyes are drawn to the highest person in the room, but they aren't always so.

I have met many people who say a man is attractive to them, and it really is just because he is tall. I admit: height does add a certain charisma, but I always try to see past a person's born attributes, to who they really are. I don't want to be blindsided by someone who knows they are attractive and uses that to get what they want.

Right: this is a story about a first date I will never forget. And every first date, that I will never forget.

Because. It was horrible.

It started with me seeing someone and remembering him. I see so many faces all the time of people I may or may not ever see again, that I could see the same face five times and still not remember seeing it before.

If I remember a face, then I know it must be special.

A face, a dream, a possibility. I project onto him the fantasy of what could be, and a dance begins. He is smart (enough) to beguile me and I am willing to be beguiled.

We have drinks (after all we are adults).

We are adults who can accidentally meet for a drink (because we go to the same place at the same time) and during the conversation we realize each of us are hungry, and so we decide to go to dinner. We eat together separately, drink some more, pay separately, and say goodnight. We decide not to sleep together. We are adults.

We are adults who drink and enjoy each other's intelligence and conversation, and depth, and say things like "you know how much I admire you, even though I have never told you" and "I like you but I will never say it".

So one day, after a year of these accidental meetings and deep forays into whether or not there is an afterlife, or the earth is flat, or death is real, or we are actually in hell and he's the devil, which is really just a fallen angel (I argue) and I'm a psychic, or just super observant (he argues), he says "let's go home".

And I think " ".

"Yes", I say.

We go.

In the morning, he says, "Come back to bed. I'm leaving in two weeks. I have the next two days off. Come back to bed"

I say, "oh" and put my shirt on.

I leave his home for mine. I can't spend two days falling in love with someone that's leaving. I don't want to, that's not what I want. I don't know any other way to react, than to withdraw, to make myself scarce again, so that's what I do. I leave.

That was the worst date I never had.

It was a non starter.