Part-Time Boyfriends

I have more writing to catch up on: two dreams (one including a knife fight with Michael J. Foxx -- WTF?), the square dance weekend, the HIV social, the man I met at the HIV social... ;-)

But I got a call from Doug M. tonight. He's visiting Key West until Wednesday, so his call was a pleasant surprise. Somebody mentioned my entry about the Valentine's Day heart circle and he took a look at it.

He remembers lying in bed with me and he remembers that I said "I love you" to him, but, he said, "I didn't hear it with my heart." He said that he did read it with his heart, however. I told him to consider it a belated Valentine's wish. :-)

We talked a little bit longer. I told him that I've been hung up on the idea that love was for people in love, that those three words constituted a huge commitment, so that they always stuck in my throat whenever I wanted to say them. It took years for me to say them to Russell and I was always afraid of them. I'm trying to learn to put aside that baggage, to learn to tell people that I love them, and just that.

I've also begun to recognize that there are men that I'm very comfortable with, men that provoke a kind of domesticity, a sense of partnership, of completeness. Doug and I discussed that a bit, too. After the heart circle, he drove David to the metro while I walked back to his place and tidied up for him. At that moment, I felt like part of a couple. I described it to him as sort of a "part-time boyfriend" because that moment doesn't imply a larger relationship. I'm just very comfortable with him.

There are other men that I react to the same way: Bob S. and Bob R. are two. I met a man over the weekend, Tom D., and I think I'm reacting to him the same way, although I only spent a night with him. There's a feeling of connection.

I don't think I'm communicating this feeling very well. I'm afraid that it makes me sound like I'm ready to put any man that comes along into the role of "boyfriend" when that's not the case. I'm happy to enjoy this connection with these men whenever I'm with them, without expecting or demanding any more.

Part of it is that I trust that there will be other evenings, other outings in the future. Other times where I'll enjoy that connection again. I don't need to be greedy.

Addendum

Heh. I remember telling Doug that I loved him that night, and how he seemed to just accept it without having it spin us into some complicated conversation about what it all meant. I remember thinking, "wow, that was easy!"

After our phone conversation, I realize that he was just sleepy. :-)

But it turned out that circumstances conspired for him to read that journal entry, and he heard me after all.

Dreaming

I woke up Thursday morning with this dream:

I had been pulled into a water volley ball game with a bunch of other guys. However, I didn't know the rules and I wasn't wearing my glasses, so I was screwing up a lot, missing points in stupid ways. I was getting frustrated and upset and my teammates all groaned whenever I missed another point. I finally found a corner near the net and put on my glasses, so I started to do a little better.

In the dream, the game became a regular volley ball game on field of sand. Some guy and his family trundled into the game area to sit and have lunch, so the game broke up. A bowling ball came from nowhere to roll into the family group. I went to collect it, but the guy refused to surrender it until my friend Barry H. walked up to help me recover it.

The ball had the name Dan Hanson on it, and the ball bag had gay square dancing convention pins attached to it. I realized that we were in a hotel hosting a gay square dancing convention.

I went to look for Dan, accompanied by another guy from the game. While wandering around, I got a message on my cell phone that Dan had been found, but all I got was a picture of neanderthals having an all-male orgy in some old dining hall with wood paneled walls and a long trestle table. The image was cartoonish, not a photograph and it was graphic.

I opened a secret passage behind a wine rack and we were suddenly in a cozy little grocery store. We walked through it, still looking for Dan. My companion was now riding a bicycle, and he narrowly avoided running over a guy who was kneeling on the floor. He talked about how he liked a product called Man Cream, and another shopper, overhearing us, agreed. The guy on the bike added that you couldn't get Man Cream in the United States, but you saw a lot of it in the United Kingdom, which was where we were. I thought about visiting again for a longer stay and renting a bike for myself.

Somehow I wasn't with the guy on the bike any more. I no longer had the bowling ball and didn't care about finding Dan Hanson. The little grocery store had opened onto a large department store and I was shopping with a young woman. She was going to buy me some nice shirts and we were talking about how each one looked when my alarm woke me.

Friday

Robyn granted my request for a day off on Friday. Although Bob S. and I hadn't discussed it, I expected to sleep over with him Thursday evening. If I had worked Friday, I would have had to carry my luggage for the weekend with me all day Thursday and Friday or rush home Friday evening only to collect my things and come right back to DC. Neither was a happy option, so I decided to just not work, making my Friday a lot less stressful.

Bob and I started moving around his apartment at about the same time. I quickly dressed while he showered and got ready for his trip to the office, then he prepared and omelet with a goat cheese called Chevre, I think. We sat down with our plates and some tea and had a nice relaxing moment before he had to run off. I hung around to put the dishes in the dishwasher and put the rest of the kitchen in order before heading out myself so I could meet Angelo for lunch on time.

After lunch, I piddled around in my apartment, not really motivated to get back to DC for ACDC. From the flurry of emails deposited in my inbox, I saw that my boss was having a tough day with our current project. The client hasn't bothered to properly test the application under real-world conditions, so this makes for last-minute emergencies.

I quietly fixed a couple of things, but I didn't let my boss know that I was home. I kept meaning to get myself underway at any time, and I didn't want to get sucked into the job.

I manage to get myself together and caught the 7:25 p.m. commuter train to DC. I got a little turned around trying to find the hotel because I thought it was in the 1400 block of New Hampshire, which looks to be in the middle of the circle. After I got the proper address from phone information, I found it okay. :-\

Dude, where's my boss?

Today was Presidents Day, so the commuter trains were running on a holiday schedule, which meant that I had to catch an earlier train because the one I like to take wasn't running.

So I was ensconced at the Cyber Stop before 9 a.m., with a large hot chocolate with whipped cream nearby, waiting for Robyn to arrive, but he never did.

I tried to find something to do on our current project, but there was a lot going on during my day off, judging from the emails, so I didn't know what I could safely touch. I did update my local copies of the production and development sites, synchronized the development and production databases and dumped the development database to my laptop, but there really wasn't much I could find to do without guidance from my boss.

After leaving a couple of messages for him, I decided to pack it in around 11 a.m. and headed back home. Around 2:30 p.m., I finally got a call from him. It turns out that he was in an automobile accident this morning which totaled his car. He spent most of the day in the hospital, then he and his girlfriend revisited the crash site and recovered his cell phone from the side of the road.

While he's recovering, I'll have to hold up most of the coding and we won't be working side-by-side in DC. We'll be working from home instead, so I'll have to make a special effort to get my ass out of the apartment instead of sitting here round-the-clock for a week. :-P

He didn't mention any broken bones or anything, and he was discharged, so that sounds like he's going to be okay.

The Cheer Collection

I've started combing through my music stash, looking for cheerful music for an iTunes playlist. I actually sing a few of these songs when I'm walking to work in the mornings. I often wonder what the other folks on the sidewalk think of the guy singing "Singin' in the Rain." :-)

It's a short list so far:

• I Got The Sun In The Morning from Annie Get Your Gun, performed by Ethel Merman.
• Singin' In The Rain from the movie soundtrack, performed by Gene Kelly
• Good Morning also from the Singin' In The Rain soundtrack, performed by Gene, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds
• Accentuate the Positive by Perry Como
• Singin' In The Rain performed by Bing Crosby
• Beautiful Life by Ace of Base
• Promise by Tony Moran
• Don't Rain On My Parade by Bobby Darin, from the American Beauty soundtrack.
• Accentuate the Positive performed by the Derry Aires on their album Cheek to Cheek (snicker)

I'll keep adding music to this list as I find stuff that's perky enough. Last night I had dinner with Russell and one of the music discs that the restaurant was playing included Barbara Streisand singing "Don't Rain On My Parade," which was pretty good. There was another song that some other artist was torturing, but the original song would have been a good addition. Unfortunately, I can't remember what it was.