My pants are smokin'.

The old Dr. Dolittle (Rex Harrison, was it Rex Harrison?) used to be one of my favorite movies, and next to the magic sea snail in which they traveled (which I really thought of more as a conveyance than a character), my favorite character was the Pushmepullyou. This amounted to a llamalike beast with two front ends and no rear. I am going on memory here; I refuse to google for a Proustian essay.

Over the years the pushmepullyou has become a personal shorthand for a person (often me) who isn't sure what they want, whose desires are all over the map, pulling him or her in several conflicting directions at once.

At the moment, pushmepullyou describes my emotional state perfectly, especially as it pertains to boys. Or what I'd want from a boy if I were offered one. Or...you get the picture. I can't even write in a straight line to tell you what it is that I can't think in a straight line about.

I sent Summerboy a rambunctious text message today, to which he chose to respond in a fairly straightforward manner, ignoring the subtext. Which I guess is okay, and allows me to pass it off as merely jesting and not outright flirtation. I can pretend I was talking about sex because we always used to talk about sex, before we'd had any together. I can pretend I was trying to go back to the way we were, to act as if it all had never happened, or as if it hadn't made much difference in how I feel around him.

It was a total lie.

And the funny thing is, I always joked with him about the fact that I can't lie, that I never even try.

But, hanging around with my girlfriends at a party the last time I saw him, I realized that I lie all the time - to me. I lied when I told myself I wasn't interested. I lied when I told myself all I wanted was a "friend with benefits." I lied when I told myself I could handle that arrangement. And then later, I lied when I told myself I was over it, and that I couldn't even see why I'd been attracted to him.

I lied like a rug when I smiled and played the cool unruffled bachelor at the party, and I lied when I ignored him standing there talking to other girls, and I lied when I told myself it didn't matter that his lunch date probably was a date.

So when he called tonight to follow up on that cagey text, it's no wonder that I lied to him, too. I put on a good show of the lighthearted friend making sex jokes. And I got off the phone and thought, Shit. That new boy, whoever he is, better fucking show up fast.