the solipsist in love

Lukewarm is not sexy

I’m on vacation this week, which in theory would mean that I should have lots of time for idle reflection and that sort of thing. Well, this isn’t actually the case, but I’m going to pretend it is for just long enough to write this post.

I saw Seth a few days ago for the first time in over a week, since he had been sick the week before. I wasn’t feeling much like going out with him, since I had a lot of shit I needed to get done and anyway I seem to be perpetually in a state of talking myself out of the relationship. But I showed up and then he showed up and the first thing he did was give me a mix CD for my long vacation drive. Aww! I’m a sucker for gifts. And it was a kinda cute thing to do. So the date went decently. After dinner we wandered over to Mitchell’s for ice cream and while we were eating it, he asked me, “So are we dating yet?”

“We’ve always been dating. We go out on dates,” I told him.

“I guess that’s true!” he responded, though not exactly happily.

“Are you trying to bring up the girlfriend/boyfriend thing again?”

“I was mostly kidding,” he said.

“OK.” I ate some more ice cream. “Wait — mostly kidding? I almost let that slip.”

He grinned at me uncomfortably from behind his sugar cone.

“I have to say I really don’t get the difference between a girlfriend and someone you’re dating when it comes to the polyamorous lifestye,” I admitted.

“That’s a good point.” He thought for a moment. “I guess it has to do with the expectation of continuity.”

I told him my only real hangup at this point is the whole sleeping-with-a-million people thing. We talked about STD testing and such. I told him that I knew it was my thing at this point, and that I just needed to decide whether I wanted to continue to accept so much risk to my “sexual health,” as they say.

He said he understood. “You haven’t decided whether you are committed to poly as a lifestyle or whether it’s just a passing thing, so it makes sense.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Well, if you were committed to the lifestyle you might be willing to take more risks for it because it’s a principle around which you organize your life.”

I looked at him. “Are you saying you want me to organize my life around you?”

He laughed at that and apologized for pushing so hard. I asked him why it was so important to him. And then he told me that it was because the last girl he’d dated from OkC had just up and disappeared after a month of dating. He was trying to prevent that from happening again.

Unfortunately, I failed to take this opportunity to reassure him that I would not disappear without warning. Honestly, it’s something I’d consider doing in general, but he’s been too nice to allow me to justify it.

Driving home that night, I realized that he was probably sticking with me — and interested in dating me in some consistent, reliable manner — for reasons that had little if anything to do with me as a person. He wants to be wanted; he wants to be able to consider this experience stable. And I guess that’s what I want, too, or at least the most basic level of it. Which is why it’s okay right now that we don’t have very much in common, that no crazy sparks are flying. We are, perhaps, just serving each other’s narcissistic ends in a perfectly complementary way.

Listening to his mix CD on the drive yesterday, I skipped about half the songs. Approximately two-thirds of the way through the compilation I began to seriously wonder whether this was just some random travelling music mix he’d had on his computer that he had simply burned and given to me — not made specifically for me, but presented that way in order to endear him to me. Am I unreasonably suspicious? Granted, he really has no good sense of my musical taste, nor has he had much of an opportunity to get one. But then why make a mix CD? The songs, for the most part, clearly aren’t about him, or me, or “us.”  This possibility of having been given a generic mix CD depressed me. I’m also not sure whether I should bring it up, and how I could do so without seeming like an ungrateful bitch.

In other news, last night I received my first message from Luke in something like six weeks (i.e. whenever I last posted about him). It said:

Hi Jana,

I haven’t heard from you in a while. How are you doing?

Luke

What the hell? Luckily I was tipsy when I got this, and responded with:

i took an update in your profile a while back to mean that you and the girl had decided to take things between you more seriously. given that you wrote that you were looking only for new friends, and that you and i had already established that you wanted something more than “friendship” from me, i concluded that any possibility of interaction between us had been voided. the fact that you’re writing me now suggests that something has changed on that front, whether or not your girlfriend (or however she’s currently labeled) is aware of it. so what’s the story? in other words: what do you want?

This morning I got his reply:

Yep, the girl and I tried to take things more seriously. It turns out we were just meant to be friends. We left things on good terms. The result is that I’m single.

What I want is to take you out sometime. If you’re available, that is.

If not, no worries. I hope you’re well!

Ugh. Of course, being the person I am, I’m considering letting him take me out, despite the following red flags:

• He was willing to lie to the last girl he was dating regarding sleeping with someone else, which means
• He didn’t respect the last girl he was dating, and
• He was willing to risk her sexual health for this secret fling. Furthermore,
• He didn’t have the balls to tell me that he’d decided with his girl-thing to take things more seriously; he left it up to his OkC profile to inform me. Fucking lame. Finally:
• He doesn’t seem very interesting as a person.

I’m not sure I have it in me to date two guys at once with whom I am far more sexually than intellectually/emotionally compatible. It might get… tedious. And depressing. ALSO, for all I know he could be lying about having broken up with the other chick! Christ.

The reasons I might let him take me out:

• Free dinner. (And he’s a foodie = excellent free dinner.)
• The sex would be good, most likely.
• I am technically in a “poly” relationship and the amount of risk I’m taking being in it is totally stupid because I am not even reaping the benefit of that risk, which is that I get to sleep with whomever I want. So, like, I should start sleeping with more people.

That’s all I’ve got. Oh wait:

• My life is a sociological experiment focusing specifically on male-female relationships. More data!

So, it’s time to vote! Should I let him take me out? If yes, should I include caveats/conditions? Which?