BEAR EVENT...

OK, no Silver Fox, who was off with the Regular Boy Friend this weekend. But he had sort of given me my walking papers: he could only do so much; I had to find someone unattached... well, not my idea of a good time, but I do [sometimes] try to do what I'm told...

So I decided to celebrate my birthday by spending an extra day out of town to attend a Bear Event in the Big North Woods; how crazy is it for it to turn out that all this stuff was going on right under my nose for 20 years and I never noticed? Half the guys who responded to my on-line profile lived within 50 miles of my former home... but not so close to me now.

Never let anyone tell you God has no sense of humor.

Anyway, off to Bearville. Great food, lots of nice people, but I got more and more depressed as the evening wore on. I was on a hopeless mission, but horny, frankly, and got more so as the evening wore on and other people got friendlier with each other...

"I've got virtue but it ain't been tested --
No one's even interested."
Well, OK, so that's not strictly speaking true, but anyway:

There I was in the Big Woods, and the low-level bears from far and wide had gathered around the chips and dip, along with a number of Bear Cubs and a [very] few Bear Fanciers like myself. The High Level Bears, like the Silver Fox, were all off doing something else, or just staying home doing whatever it is that bears do best, like his friend the Grand High Polar Pooh-Bah Bear, whose acquaintance I had been semi-promised. There was an incredibly Hot Muscle Bear there with his married lover -- grounds to contemplate suicide on the spot on a number of fronts:

where was I when he was looking for a married lover?
where was he when I was looking for someone who turned me on?
what on earth did I think I was doing looking at him, anyway?

I did a number of things that are incredibly hard for me: I circulated. I introduced myself over and over, I made small talk, I joked and listened nearly as much as I talked [talk about hard to do...]. And I did listen, especially to the Hot Muscle Bear and his married lover, who were telling all kinds of stories to a soft-featured Ethnic Bear who had just connected with a Very Married Man. That all cut kind of close, but was probably helpful in the "Quitcher Bitchin'" department.

The long and the short of it? I suppose if the HMB had been alone and had been able to get past my "noli me tangere" attitude, I would have rolled over. But as it was, watching various couples, and a few groups, get Rather Friendly, I did get wildly horny, but all I wanted was my absent Fox. I don't mean to say that people shouldn't have done what they wanted to do; that's their business. My business is that it made me feel very alone and very far away from what I wanted. I wanted him so bad I could taste it. I drowned my sorrows in chips and dessert, with the result that I never want to see another potato or chocolate chip in my life. It will take weeks of exercise I have not started yet to work that off.

Then I got to drive home in the dead of night to beat the incoming storm, up to two feet of snow expected in high-lying spots like the site of the Bear Event. Then up [but not early] the next day, and out the door again and back up to the Old Homestead for a family birthday dinner. Don't get me wrong: everyone was very nice, the food was great [did I mention I ate too much?], but what I really wanted for my birthday was far out of my reach, and now that I was back in Northern New England for the day, even farther out of my reach than before. And I had no cell coverage in the Frozen North. After supper, back into the car and back "home;" I will say one thing about my Little Burg and my Weird Little House: I really have started to think of them as "home." That's got to be a good thing.

I fielded a call from my daughter as I finally pulled into the home stretch on the way home, and we visited for a while, long distance. It felt great. Then I saw that I had missed a call while we were gabbing about the best techniques for getting a Really Scary Movie out of your mind before you go to bed [watching an incredibly silly one helps].

Of course. It was the Silver Fox. I couldn't decide whether I was crazier because I had missed the call, or more deliriously happy because he had called me.

By the time I could actually listen to his message, I would have been walking on air, if I hadn't been hung over and sitting down in the kitchen. I called him back and, as almost always happens whenever I call anyone I really want to talk to, my service dropped out. After it happened the second time, I drove five miles toward town to where I knew I could get a reliable signal, and called him back.

It was like a long hot bath. Or a walk on the beach.
It just felt so good.

And I hadn't called him -- he had actually called me of his own free will, without any begging or whining or carrying on on my part. He actually wanted to talk to me. To set our next meeting, alas all too far away. It does look like the first weekend in May. If you don't read much new here between now and then, it's because I'm trying to get all my non-office work tied up and delivered before he comes, or, weather not permitting him to travel, for me to head back out to the woods. Significantly [or not???] there was not a word about having to find anyone else... I have to watch it, as I can't afford to get my hopes up, but that's what happens every time he talks about "us" in the future. And hints of exasperation with the RBF, which I have to say sounded like hints of a shift in allegiance which could take all three of us to a Really Ugly Place.

Well, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
I think I have to work to focus on that one...

And get this: he says he likes the poems I've sent.
Now I have to figure out if I can send him the rest...
Maybe not: better safe than sorry.

May 5th, with luck: my own private Bear Event, with no dessert and no potato chips. Just those arms and those eyes, and that voice! Have I ever mentioned that aside from being a Muscle Bear to begin with, and having the regulation Bad Eyes like a Gypsy, and the EARS, the Silver Fox has a voice that slides under my radar and my skin and undoes all the little knots I spend my time tying? I think he went to some continental National Finishing School for seducers, and majored in voice there.

Either that or he's just a natural talent...

Dear God: please let me get all the work done in a semi-acceptable manner, and don't let anything happen to keep him from coming here on the 5th...

Please, please, please...
.