Yeah, That

I have not been on a date in almost a year. I suppose what I was doing this time last year constituted dating in a wierd kind of way. Between January and March of last year, the guy I was dating was also seeing someone else. After four or five years together (they start to blend after a while), turnabout became fair play. For the first few years that we were on our own Magical Mystery Tour, he was living with his girlfriend, who I, in my fakeness, frequently hung out with. I look at the person I was then and I shake my head. Would I do it differently? I don't know.

Did I love him? At first, it certainly seemed that way. We were...really good, for a while. We were best friends and I didn't want to be anywhere he wasn't. My day wasn't complete unless I talked to him, hung out with him for a while, went on a walk with him to the bank or the bookstore or whatever other destination we picked out in order to spend time with each other.

When we got together, clandestinely, it was just as good. I could sit in his basement with his friends and watch basketball and...just...hang. And when it was good, it was really good.

But he lived with his girlfriend. And he'd tell me how unhappy he was. And he'd say, as soon as he got that raise, he was going to move out. And he didn't.

I went on vacation out east, to a class reunion. A week in Maine and Vermont. Days on the beach in Ogunquit where I spoke to exactly one person, the guy at the wine store, all day long. When I left, things were great. They were going to have a talk and he was going to tell her that he wanted to break up. By the time I got back, he'd confessed to her that he'd been screwing around (thankfully leaving my name out of it) and they'd recommitted to staying together.

That really killed it for me. I can remember talking to him on a pay phone at the local restaurant/bar complex when I was visiting a bartender I knew. We were supposed to meet for drinks after work to talk about what had happened. I can remember getting one of those flashes when you know what someone is going to say before they say it. And I can remember a little piece of me curling up and dying while I looked at the refinished floors and wondered why I had to hear this on a public pay phone, of all things.

We continued for a while, until I got up the gumption to finally tell him that enough was enough and that I wasn't going to wait anymore. That was in March. By May, she had moved out and he was actively pursuing me. I held out until August, when we started dating again. Another year and a half and it was over.

It was just never really the same, after that phone call when he told me he was staying with her. I never felt the same about him. I never trusted him again. I never told him anything that really meant anything to me. I never opened up to him. I never let him in, because I knew that, if I did, he could do it again. Take it all away. So I never gave him the opportunity.

Since we broke up in March, not a date. No dinners, no movies. Drinks aplenty, but that isn't a date. That's lubrication for whatever comes afterward. Which also isn't a date.

And now I'm to the point of wondering if I ever could give those things again. Those things I gave so freely before that phone call.

See, this morose shit is why I really don't like February.