Les Affaires de Coeur: November 2009 Archives

Tell her you love big thighs.
Tell her sweaty is sexy.
Tell her you hate high heels.
Develop a fetish for knee-length pants and legwarmers.
Let her lead the way sometimes.
If you are faster than her, refrain from showing that off constantly.
Be patient with her extensive locking-up routine.
Join her for second dinner. Or third.
Flirt with her by making innuendos about bike parts.
Tell her she doesn't have helmet head.
Bring her snacks.
When she falls in love with that perfect little NJS frame but doesn't have the money to buy it, buy it for her secretly and then casually park it in your apartment and wait for her to notice.
Take her dancing.
Understand that she will always love and need her bikes just a little bit more than she loves and needs you. Be okay with that. At least you get to sleep in the bed.

It rained and rained today, after a Friday so blustery that I had to leap off my bike to avoid being knocked down by the wind.

I'm pretty experienced at riding in bad weather, so that emergency-maneuver moment came as something of a surprise. I'm guessing that gust was 60mph or higher. It's been a weird few days, and I am spinning a little in place, not sure which direction to move.

I had a silly revelation in which I realized that what I'd thought was me having lost my magic touch with bread dough was in fact simply ill-placed frugality. I was stubbornly trying to use up the last of a few packets of expired yeast. They weren't terribly long-expired - just a couple of months, but apparently it does make a difference.

This time around I immediately felt the yeast lively and springing under my hands as I began to knead. No elaborate coaxing necessary. The final product is light and delicate and moist and chewy and delightful. Only six ingredients: flour, water, yeast, molasses, salt, canola oil. Seven if you count the fact that the flour was two different kinds - whole wheat and white hard-wheat (bread-specific). I used a larger ratio of whole wheat to white, because I wanted it to pretty much be whole wheat bread.

I brought some to a dinner party and froze one and kept one out, wrapped up, to be eaten in the next couple of days.

I dunno what to say in the boy department. I feel like it's almost time to meet someone. Someone a bit more than the casual-friend-lover hybrid(s) I've been fooling about with for the last year.

But I can't say I'm especially sanguine about the prospects. I just don't meet people all that often or easily, and I have a lot of requirements. Which is funny, given how much I've teased other people about that very thing - "Your list is too long to be realistic."

My requirements, in order of non-negotiability, are:

non-smoker
not addicted to alcohol or drugs
cyclist
attractive (to me)

I guess that's it, but the last item on the list encompasses a wide range of subcategories. I mean, I'm not attracted to men who are significantly less intelligent than me - unless I'm using them for sex, in which case, Whatever.

They kind of have to have a decent sense of humor, and by that I mean that they have to have some measure of original wit and also to think I'm damn funny when I'm being damn funny.

They can't be a macho chauvinist pig.

They have to think I'm da bomb.

They have to be damn good in bed.

They have to smell right and/or taste right.

They can't live in New Jersey. They can't be domineering. They can't be married or have kids. They can't take the subway. (I'm sorry; that just grosses the shit out of me.) They can't be pining for a high-heels, ponytail sort of girl. I'd prefer that they weren't rampant carnivores, since it makes it hard to agree on restaurants, though that one isn't a deal breaker. It would be really, really nice if they wanted to dance with me sometimes. It would be nice if they had actual hair on their head. It would be nice if they were handsome in an un-mainstream, un-GQ sort of way. A little exotic or a little quirky (or both) is fine. Awesome, actually.

Know anyone?

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.

I read my tarot cards the other night, and the weirdest thing happened.

It told me that everything is going to be just the way I've always wanted it to be.
I don't mean that I'm suddenly going to be unnaturally blessed or anything - just that the work I've been doing is going to pay off.

It's a strange thing when you get that kind of message. You're metaphorically standing there, holding the piece of paper in your hand, and it falls to the ground, and you don't even notice it, because you're basically frozen with disbelief. It's like someone's just told you the world is flat, really for real, it's flat, and you have to rethink everything that ever happened to you in light of that new knowledge.

I put the cards away, and smiled, and went to bed.

Last night I dreamed of having sex with an ex-lover, and then woke up and made coffee and rode my bike. I wasn't exactly sure where I was headed; I just knew that I needed to go. On the street I ran into someone I know slightly - a man who'd made it fairly clear on more than one occasion that he was interested in me.

I'm not attracted to him, I don't think, but I keep having these interesting, sunny conversations with him.

I don't mean that the sun is actually shining at the time, just that the thing bounces along in a merry sort of way, and we end up talking about insoluble math problems.
I thought, when the first conversation happened, that it was a pity he wasn't cuter. The second time I caught myself wondering if maybe he is cuter, and I just can't see it quite yet.

I had a terrible time trying to be (natural and relaxed and casual yet sexy) around the summer boy at the party I went to, and today I was mulling it over, and being bothered that it was still difficult, and then I ran into this other fellow, who happened to be heading exactly where I'd loosely planned to go myself, and so we rode together for a bit. I felt like it was the universe trying to help me out of the hole a little.