JUST A CUP OF COFFEE...OR NOT...

Well, it was a complicated weekend.

It started getting complicated Wednesday night, in fact. The Boy and I stayed up until 2 am, ploughing through my position on the mess I’m in. It’s been years since I stayed up and talked until 2 am, or stayed up and did anything until 2 am. Always good to get a look at how the other side lives… It turns out brandy is a good lubricant for conversation, especially as the Boy otherwise tends to the laconic.

I drove him home on Thursday afternoon to hear the Great Theorizer, who turned out to be a rather humble judge of current events with great fears for the future, which his Great Book had seemed to dismiss. Then I dropped him off at at the house and headed over to meet my hostess for a Bean Curd Cook-off. That went rather well, and the evening, which featured a late-ish dinner as we didn’t start preparing the Two-Sides Yellow until, well, late-ish, ended in the rosy glow of wine. Not that we were up all night, or anything.

I'd already done that.

Anyway, Friday was an obstacle course of events, starting with rooting around in a local archive whose resident spirit then invited me to lunch; one thing led to another and I didn’t wrap up with my work in the archive until it was almost time to go pick up the Boy for a farewell dinner. But I managed to squeeze in a visit to my former pastor, close out two bank accounts and my share of a safety deposit box, and get myself to the studio and chip away at the mountain of books, forcing a certain number into boxes before getting the call to head out for food.

I was glad of the call, because the afternoon events had left me with a strong taste of death and things coming to an end in my mouth. So we went and had one of the rare disappointing meals I have ever had at Our Favorite Eatery, and I was back at the House of Bean Curd by 7:30 or so, having gotten a good hug from the Boy, who was to leave for Boston and beyond the following morning. I felt badly leaving him alone in the house, but it turned out he was headed out to have margaritas with his mother and a couple of her friends – not a bad dessert, on the whole.

So there I was again on my hostess’ hands, and somehow, a chance remark about how her refrigerator opened the wrong way for her kitchen turned into her determination to turn it around “the right way” then and there. I had had just that tiny bit too much to drink to do a really good job at keeping track of where all the bits we had to remove from the front of the refrigerator had come from, with the result that, after heading across town to get a balky item loosened by a more professionally equipped tool-person, we wound up with a refrigerator that did in fact open on the other side, but did so without the help of a number of pieces that had certainly been part of its function an hour or so before. Stumped.

Did I mention that my good friend, my hostess’ husband, was away on a trip to England, and not due back until the day after I left? That she had changed the color he had been [and she was] painting the guest room, changed the color she was painting the front door, bought a new Prius, taken on board some bad family news, and now reversed the refrigerator door, all without letting him [who did most of the cooking] know what was going on? How I wish I could be a fly on the wall on Monday night… He’s a patient man, but I will have to wait to hear how welcome I am in future.

Well, that was Friday.

Saturday I dawdled a bit, and then just waded into the bookcases, taping up boxes and cramming them full for most of the day. I snuck into what had been my house and had a purloined meal of nacho chips and salsa for lunch, but had run out of boxes by 3:30, when I decided I should do something else to take my mind off… My Appointment. So I went to the library and read a magazine or two, and left in the nick of time for the Great Metropolis of our section of NH, daring its population of more or less 20,000 [I think] to take away my parking place in front of the bank, which was right around the corner from the fancy-pants coffee place where I was meant to meet the Professor.

Now I should immediately admit to a slight untruth; they have been proliferating of late on these pages, but I think it should be stated that while the website I found his picture in looked great, the Prof was not in fact at any of the swankier colleges in my little corner of the commonwealth. But so what? It was more prestigious than the little office I am working in, and he has been there long enough to lend it some glory of his own, perhaps. Oh, well.

I got there a few minutes before the appointed time. So far, so good. There was no one there who looked even remotely like his online portrait. That could mean one of two things: either he was not there, or he didn’t look even remotely like his online portrait, himself. I went back outside and occupied myself perusing the posters on the local bulletin board, getting accosted by some young punk on a skateboard waving a campaign sign for my pains. A few minutes after the appointed time: no one in sight. I went in to check out the assembled caffeine addicts, and again, no dice. So I wrestled a bearable periodical out of the stack – NH newspapers only have so much to offer – and made myself comfortable at the high table in the middle of the establishment; I had no sooner opened the paper than he walked in. No mistaking him, though he looked a little less gray than his picture. But it was definitely, recognizably the Right Guy. The Professor.

He came over, we shook hands and headed for the counter. He asked me whether I was going to get a beer – in retrospect, I suppose, because I had gravitated to the draught handle end of the counter, and not the espresso end, though I was in fact only in search of a human being to take an order. Suddenly, I realized that I was nervous enough that a beer seemed like a really good idea; I started my winnowing of draught choices, and had just about made up my mind when he said he was getting a cappuccino. Suddenly steamed milk sounded like it might be better for my stomach, and less befuddling all around. By the time I had decided on a latte, he had decided to try a beer.

To make a long story short, in a few minutes we both had our coffee and were sitting at a table making small talk. I WAS ON A DATE [OMFG!] for the first time in almost thirty years. And the odd thing was that I relaxed into it. That may have had something to do with the fact that after five or ten minutes it became clear that things were going well enough; in fact, I had the distinct feeling that I was being complemented, not to say flattered, not to say wooed. I was, it seems, much better-looking than my picture; that kind of statement makes it pretty easy to relax. It seems. We talked about the rules of internet dating, among other things, and he allowed as how it had taken him a while to realize that it really was best to start with coffee, and let it go on from there if the situation warranted, but to always have the escape clause of impending dinner in the Worst Case Scenario. The Dater could always include the Date-ee in his dinner plans if said Date-ee passed the Coffee Test.

After about an hour and a half, I asked if I had passed the Coffee Test. Well, it seems I had. We repaired to the Italian joint down the road [just far enough to make me wonder if it wouldn’t have been wiser to drive] and ordered a couple of glasses of wine while we waited for a table to materialize; we had no reservations, and it was Saturday night. It was a very pleasant evening, and what made it particularly pleasant to me was the pleasure the Professor seemed to take in it. Was this the Inner Girl showing up again? If so, she had some competition: on the way home I got more and more confused. Suddenly this felt much more like cheating on my wife than telling someone, telling two people, in fact, so far away that I would never meet them, that I had fallen in love with them. It was true, I had, which is hardly a good sign in anyone’s marriage, but this was actively courting such attention, and taking pleasure in receiving what I had gone looking for. It seemed balder. It was balder.

And there were the little things that suddenly became clear: I was definitely being wooed, so any encouragement beyond what I felt I could accept and reciprocate was only going to make matters worse. Don’t get me wrong, it was delightful to be found delightful, but all I could think of was winding up several months from now with some guy on my hands who felt I had led him on to believe that we were headed for something more serious than I was ready for.

That freaked me out a little. I thought I’d been pretty straightforward about how there was going to be a Decent Interval in which I remained, well, decent. But who knew how he felt about it, now that he had driven several hours to find a kindred spirit?

I am still chewing on it, though I did respond to his effusive e-mail of today with more decorum than effusion. I mean, I like him; I just don’t know if I could ever like him that way, even after the Decent Interval is over and I turn indecent at last. I just don't want to be a jerk.

Well, here’s what I hope: I hope we can be friends. Do people ever stick around to stay friends with someone who doesn’t respond the way they’d like them to? I guess there’s only one way I’ll find out. Stay tuned. I’ll have to.

This morning I had breakfast with my Bean Curd Buddy and headed out for the trip home, only to discover on rounding the end of her street and hitting the main road, that I was still early enough to catch the morning service at the E-piscopal church that had become my home during my forty days in the wilderness. So I headed over, and found a modicum of consolation in praying for others, and great solace in the idea that bread and wine connect me with all those who have tried to follow this way, in years and centuries past… therein lies the splendor of a simple common meal.

What I took away is that I am indeed a mess, but that the situation is not hopeless. And that is not a bad note to conclude on.

Hang in there.
Keep in touch.
And if you pray, pray for me as well.