on purpose
The Accidental Date and I had a second, non-accidental date last night. (I guess this means I’ll have to think of a new name for him. Would calling him The Rebound be too true to be funny?) We went to a concert. We danced the whole time. I don’t mean we danced together - I mean he and I both danced all through the concert. If you are not a concert dancer, and specifically if you are not a concert dancer who has dated a non-concert dancer, you may not understand how important this is. So let me just tell you: it’s really important.It’s so important that when I noticed the couple next to us – a cute guy about our age in a sweet little hipster hat, dancing around, and a pretty girl in red, resolutely standing still even when he tried to dance with her just a little – it took everything in me not to walk up to him and say, You, her? Bad idea.
Afterwards we went to a bar down the street and started talking to the couple next to us. They had been married for ten years and were having a date while her parents watched their daughter. I asked her how they met, and she lit up. She started telling the story – about seeing him when he was visiting a friend in her apartment building, and how he almost wasn’t there that day, and the way they contrived a second meeting – and when he heard her telling the story he lit up too, and joined in.
I was handsome then, he said at one point, and she said You’re still handsome, not in a reassuring tone but just straightforward as fact, and went right on with the story. I was hot then, she said later. You’re hot now, he said smiling.
At the end she turned right to me and said Look. Here’s the point. True love really happens. You really don’t have to settle. You Do Not Have To Settle. We’ve been married ten years and sometimes it has sucked, but we love each other. It can be done. You can meet someone and love them, and just be good to them.
It’s a phrase Operaman and I used often: I just want to be good to you. But we never figured out how to do it. And we never mastered that part where it was ok to take a little risk – I was handsome then – and trust completely that the other person would be there as backup.
In any case Accidental Date and I are meeting up again tonight. And that may be all you hear from me about him and/or Operaman for a little while. Because it doesn’t take much doing to come across this blog, and endless posting about how he’s cool but I’m clearly not over my ex doesn’t seem like the best thing to have out there. (Hello, Accidental Date! Sorry about the whole not-being-over-my-ex thing. I sure had fun dancing though.)
I guess you’ll get to hear a lot more about cement and so on.
posted by tortaluga @ 12:29 PM
3 Comments:
It's OK if you don't talk about him for a while, but when you do, please continue to refer to him as Accidental Date. It's kind of perfect.
I think you should switch and start calling him The Rebound.
But Accidental Date isn't bad either.
Accidental Date is much better than Rebound. Much.
Cement is good too.
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