Week 9 Day 1

I thought I had been single for so long because I was too critical and picky. Marc was a kind of experiment to see what would happen if I didn’t cut and run at the first sight of him being a human… being. A little negotiation in my expectations might be a good thing.

His glasses were thick and too big, and his mouth was always just a little open, especially if he was watching TV. Those things were kind of cute, but probably only to me. As shallow as it is, I knew I couldn’t introduce him to my friends until things were serious. My friends are amazing and incredibly supportive, but they also are protective and critical. They see no reason why I shouldn’t have exactly what I want, and Marc wasn’t that.

He went home to Yonkers for the holidays and we talked about every day he was gone. What I thought was a thick accent here was viscous when he was around his family. The conversation was so unintelligible, I didn’t know if he celebrated Christmas or Hanukkah while he was there.

The first time I saw him when he got back, he called to say he was riding his new bike over to my apartment. He called when he got to the gate and when I let him in; he was wearing a full cycling speed suit, including an aerodynamic helmet. The five block ride took him only a few minutes, and naturally, he forgot a change of clothes.

He rode his bike to the bottom of my stairs hitting the wall, a neighbor’s patio, the wall again, and the mailboxes in just fifty feet of thin pathway. As he dismounted to carry the bike upstairs, his leg got caught somehow and he fell into my neighbor’s door.

When he finally invited me to his apartment, I was kind of excited to see it. He lived alone and though I had a rough idea of what I’d be walking into, I really had no idea what I was walking into.

Walking into the courtyard, I saw two lights on. One apartment had dim lighting and the blinds were kind of drawn. The other had bright one-hundred watt bulbs lighting up a huge dream catcher and stained glass pentacle.

God, no. Please.

His living room, with the dream catcher and stained-glass pentacle, also had two big blacklight posters of dragons, and another one called Garden of Eden I had when I was fourteen. Oakey wood-grained linoleum covered all the low TV stand, coffee table, and cumbersome desk unit filled with books about computer code.

Running along the head of the sofa was a long stuffed animal of a dragon. Marc was on the sofa, reading what looked like a phone book, but was actually computer code; the whole thing.

The bedroom was painted blue and had one of those kid’s light-up aquariums with the fish that go in circles behind rippled plastic. His bed was a twin mattress and box spring with an unattached headboard leaning against the wall behind it.

With both of us lying on the bed, my back started hurting trying to balance on the edge without falling off, and I wondered if I had been too forgiving. Moderation is a virtue that consistently eludes me, and in the quiet hum of plastic fish orbiting a light bulb, it occurred to me it may have eluded me here as well. An effort to be more open-minded, I completely abandoned reason and saw myself trying to balance on the edge of a twin bed.

Marc started talking about how he wanted the energy in the room to be serene and that’s why he had the aquarium and blue walls. I was about to get off the bed and go home when he started talking about how he felt like he didn’t belong. Not fitting in was something I understand, and it softened me a little.

I asked him what was so different about him that he didn’t think someone would understand. He said he thought he was a druid.

As a metaphor, I get it. But this was not a metaphor.

Because I asked, that’s how I know.

So while he was protecting the forest with his magic, I would be working a corporate job trying to get us domestic partner health coverage and trying to convince him to get a bigger bed.

While he was frolicking with gnomes and fairies and reading computer code, I would be driving us everywhere and working on a Yonkers Decoder Ring so we can have a simple conversation about what to have for dinner, which I would have to go get to prevent him from falling on it in a speed suit.

All these things flashing in front of me eyes as he’s talking about being a druid, and I know we just started out, but where does it go from there?

I can handle the accent. I can live with the speed suit. I can even overlook the blacklight posters. But I’m not about to do gay kama sutra classes at the bodhi tree before a tarot reading and a kombucha enema.

The experiment with Marc wasn’t a success, but it wasn’t a failure. And while I learned not to cut and run in the face of a human being a human being, I learned it’s best to make sure I’m dealing with a human being human.

B