I am surrounded by the clutter of my life. Literally my apartment is in disarray. This is the problem with living in a studio. It quickly erupts into chaos when life gets busy. There are receipts, itineraries, purses and bagels laying everywhere. Strangely, in a fit of what I assume must have been my creative-genius abstract absent-mindedness, a half-used roll of toilet paper has made it to my kitchenette countertop. I am hoping it is sleep deprivation and not dementia driving these toiletry wanderings. And I must admit, this chaos mimics my creative process—things often get messier before they get cleaner.
In any case, while amidst the clutter, in the seven hours I have between getting off my shift at work and leaving for a girls’ weekend away, I should be straightening, cleaning, righting my life, and instead I feel like I must be typing, pondering, and writing my life.
Last night a man who lives in my apartment building invited me to join him for a beer on our patio (let me mention I live in a somewhat strange, Melrose-esque building rife with singles of the upwardly-mobile persuasion). I agreed despite the fact that I knew I wasn’t interested in dating him.
“Try.” A voice inside me started saying, and she continued to point out that it’s time I dated someone seriously again. Did I want to be alone for my whole life? Did I think men would find me attractive forever? Did I ever want children and a family? This guy will be successful. He wants to be a patent lawyer. Just try dating him.
So I went.
And was delighted when I found the patio already occupied by two other friends from the building.
Pressure off, I leaned back and enjoyed my conversation with the three guys, all engineers (strangely), and my yorkie-poo.
“Your dog looks kinda smart,” said the future patent lawyer. “He picks up his leash when he runs so he doesn’t trip on it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He is smart. Too smart.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he understands commands and everything, but he has his own agenda, too. He’ll do what I say but then he’ll still try to get whatever it is that he’s after.” And, because I couldn’t resist the giant button in front of me, I added, “You know, he’s a guy.”
Thus began the teasing, the banter, the trading of stories from adventures in the weird world of dating. My dog became the butt of jokes after his girlfriend, a pug from next door, joined us while her owner was on the phone. “He’s definitely not sensitive,” said one guy. “But then again, no guys are really sensitive.”
Again the button was shining in front of me. “All guys are sensitive,” I said. My friend shook his head at me as if to say, “Oh, you-poor-naïve-little-thing.” But I continued.
“In that they all have fragile egos.”
“This is true,” he conceded. “But it’s because girls are so mean!”
We traded war stories from the battlefield of love (thank you, Pat Benatar) and I said good night, abandoning all the engineers and leaving them to talk about valves and thermodynamics, and basketball.
But I continued thinking about our conversation and about these men with their agendas and their fragile egos and their fears of girls who are mean and of my own fears and my own fragile ego and my own lack-of agenda.
I’m at a strange place.
I’m at home with the temporary clutter in my life. The confusion, the chaos, the roll of toilet paper in my kitchen. It all feels strangely safe. Uniquely mine. I’m feeling selfish, lately, and guarded. I have no agenda, when it comes to men. In fact, I’m avoiding anything I could potentially find serious. I’ve adapted this routine where when I need to I can find some sort of intrigue, some new adventure in the world of romance, but if I’m honest, it’s like wading into the ocean up to my ankles. I’m pretending to get wet but refusing to put my face under water.
It’s almost like putting on a sort of shell. To continue my water metaphor, I’m a hermit crab who trades up for a fancy pink shell when a sand crab asks her to dinner. We meet up, we each do a little dance, back and forth in the sand, and then retire to our separate worlds, leaving the dating shells on the beach and going back to the familiar.
And this feels safe. This feels comfortable.
What is really scary is being with someone I care about.
I think I might care about someone.
And so I am avoiding him.
It’s better, I think, to stay safe, right now. Or at least this is what the practical voice inside my head is telling me. The same one who told me to try to like the patent lawyer.
To get hurt by someone I’m not interested in is not the worst thing in the world. But to get hurt by someone I really care about? That is potentially devastating. That is what makes me raise my claws (back to the crab metaphor) and shrink back into my shell.
And how do I know I really care? (Believe me, that practical-girl voice does her best to make me believe that I don’t.) It’s simple (and ridiculous). It’s the first date. Or the first meeting. It’s knowing I didn’t feel at all awkward pouring out my guts and my life story to the man sitting across from me. It’s knowing I was (strangely) being myself, sans shell, when we first met. It’s knowing that even though I had no interest in dating (this meeting being only months after my divorce), I still wanted to kiss him, wanted him to kiss me. It’s the unexpected rush I felt when, somehow in playful teasing, he took off my sandal while we walking home, holding it inches in front of my foot so that I had to hop and protest in order to get it back. It was so silly and yet, I was flirting. I still can’t believe it. (The practical smart girl in my mind keeps telling me how stupid and corny this is, but unfortunately- it is also just what is true.)
Maybe it’s some sort of reverse-Cinderella fantasy. Didn’t the prince put the shoe on her foot? How appropriate that I would fall for a man who would take it off. But really, when I think of the dates I’ve been on, I realize I shrink from the men taking me out to dinner. I pull back. I hide. I physically withdraw. My knees were turned away from the patent lawyer on the patio and when his legs accidentally touched mine I moved them out of his way. I had a physical reaction to him. (Which is how your body shows you what you need, says another voice in my head, the one who pointed out the shingles and rash on my ring finger were a sign I needed out from my marriage months prior to the divorce.) In contrast, there have been moments of purely physical attraction where I have not exactly hidden from a man, not right away, but days or weeks later I did, and this has led me to realize that I have somehow adopted this belief that it is “safe” for me to connect physically with men who I am not connected to emotionally. Mostly.
Because there is this one exception. And because it scares me so much, I am avoiding the situation entirely.
There. Now I can turn back to the clutter. I can bring the toilet paper back to the bathroom. Put the bagels back in the fridge. Maybe I’m not brave enough to address the situation, but at least I’ve acknowledged it. It's time to get back to righting my life, now that I have spent time writing about my life.
