Feed Me!

So I'm at the beach Sunday afternoon with my friend Batman and her husband Mr. Science, and she asks, out of the blue: "How you manage to imbibe enough calories? With all the biking, I mean?"

"Simple," I said. "I eat six meals a day."

Now, this is unremarkable, except for the fact that I was wondering, last night at about 3 am, as I finished my sixth, why it is that I always seem to be running out of groceries. Well, duhhhhhh. I am basically eating for two people. I mean, if the average human eats three meals a day, and I am eating six, well, there you have it.

It's not that the meals themselves are especially large. They're average-sized, for a person of my height and gender. There are just a lot of them, and I guess it adds up.

I am not really sure why I am telling you this. It just struck me as funny. I keep getting frustrated by things like eating right before I leave for a bike ride, riding to a friend's new apartment (about 40 minutes away), and then being hungry again within ten minutes of having arrived. Sigh.

Oh well. I am currently replete with spaghetti, so it's all happy satiation in the vicinity of Lizbon's tummy at the moment. Though by the time I am done writing this, it may well be snacktime.

Anyway, to leap from the trivial to the slightly less trivial, the other thing that's been on my mind is this:

I wonder if getting older carries with it a higher tolerance for relationships that are less strictly defined. I have wondered this several times in recent weeks, as I keep coming up against examples of undefined relationships in my own life, which give me greater enjoyment and cause less consternation that I would have expected.

For example, I called Boywich last night because I was feeling blue, and he is still (often) my go-to guy when I feel that way. Sometimes it makes me feel better to talk to him, and sometimes it doesn't, but that's okay. Our relationship would look very odd to an outsider. Sometimes it looks that way to us, too. But we both appreciate it, even treasure it.

We love each other. We aren't exactly romantic, and we're not in love anymore, but we care deeply and differently for each other than we do for our other friends. And I'm cool with that. In fact, it's really nice.

Example #2: Redhead #1. We are certainly friends. And I am quite friendly with his girlfriend, whom I met recently, and whom I quite like. And yet we were, until his girlfriend arrived on the scene, highly flirtatious. The kind of flirtatious where you realize, at some point, that people you both know are talking about you, and wondering if there's something going on.

There's nothing going on, and there never has been. And won't be, because I don't get involved with other people's boyfriends. But I have really enjoyed the flirtatiousness, the fact that there's that energy between us, even if it will never be acted upon. In years past, that kind of thing would have driven me crazy. Now, I like it. It's as if it's a spice, something that adds a little extra enjoyment to being around him.

Example #3: da blonde. A guy I dated for a few months, then stopped seeing, then slept with once casually, then didn't see again for several months, then recently saw in a platonic context, and then had text sex with. Could it get more nebulous than that?

In the bad old days, I would never have wanted to see him again unless I could see him. Or I wouldn't have still been attracted to him, once I realized he wasn't right for me. Or something.

Now, though, it's lovely and fun. I have a playmate, whom I only see now and then, when one or the other of us feels like getting in touch. It's light, and I find that enjoyable.

I find, too, that I am able to enjoy the "crush" stage of things a lot more. It used to simply be painful. Heck, it's been simply painful at various times and with various people this year. But I don't know - I think I am growing more open to the permutations of love, lust, attraction, and everything in between. It's like enjoying the whole process instead of just racing to the orgasm. I am being metaphorical, mind you.