( . . . continued from previous)
Shortly before the sun set, he wanted to go down to the edge of the water and put our feet in. We were shivering with the cooling breeze, and the splashing waves were not helping, but we found warmth in each other, huddling up to watch the sun drop behind the mountains. It was a beautiful sunset, pink and orange with neon-lined clouds and the marine layer diffusing a warm glow across the entire sky and, it seemed, all the way to the ground in places.
As we headed back to a car, we spotted over a fence a really tall cluster of sunflowers. He told me about a time when he’d seen an entire field of them.
“I guess they must have been growing them for sunflower seeds,” he said.
“Mmm, those are my favorite snack,” I said. And it turns out that he really loves them too and used to eat them as his main travel snack while on tour. He recommended a brand to me that I’d never tried. I never thought I’d be having a spirited discussion with someone about brands of sunflower seeds, but there I was. That’s kind of the way the day had been going.
We briefly tossed around the idea of going for ice cream, but we decided it was getting too late and we should just go back to his place.
“I have that Sex Pistols documentary I’d told you about,” he suggested. Be still my little punk rock heart.
On the drive back to his place, we ended up talking about fine dining and rock-n-roll and other things dear to my heart. I’ve been sorely lacking a fine-dining partner in these recent years. Rider is more of a greasy spoon sort of person and doesn’t really think it’s worth it to save up money and go somewhere really nice a couple times a year like I used to drag all my previous partners to do. I’d just kind of given up on it, to be honest.
But Dustin gets invited to fancy dinners held by chefs he made friends with when delivering produce from the farm, and he actually dated a sous chef at a Michelin restaurant for a while. Apparently he knows all the good spots and can get a hookup.
Back at his place, we went over our calendars to try to set some plans for a hangout. I shared with him the idea I’d had (and that I’d already bounced off of Rider) to sell my geek con ticket for early August and go to his out of town show that weekend instead, since he’d originally said I should go if I could. (I was supposed to hang out with Beckett and Caleb that weekend, but I had a sinking suspicion that Beckett’s NRE with New Girlfriend meant I was going to end up having to talk to Caleb all weekend and . . . just no. LOL!) Dustin seemed super into the idea and said we could make a weekend of it. He even offered to chip in half for a car if I rented one. We also identified a Wednesday night that I could stay over after we’re both back in town.
While we were scheduling, his brother (who is also his roommate) came in. Dustin excitedly made me show him the fish picture.
When the brother was done bopping around in the kitchen, Dustin and I lay down on the couch to watch the documentary. Well, we didn’t get very much watching done. We kept accidentally talking and making out instead. But it wasn’t all happy stuff.
He kept looking at me and looking really happy and then kind of knitting his brows together looking sad. I asked what’s wrong. He said he’s afraid of liking me too much. That I’m too perfect and he’s 40 and that means he’s lived half his life without knowing it was possible to meet someone like me but he knows it’s going to end badly. And then he immediately took it back and said he can’t tell the future, so he doesn’t KNOW that. But he thinks I’m going to break his heart.
“If I’m ever distant,” he said, “it’s just because I’m worried about getting too close.”
And then it was my turn to be sad. Because these sentiments were way too close to echoes of Beckett and of Jasper. The liking more than he thought was possible. The portents of doom. The purposeful insertion of distance. I had to tell him—it felt emotionally dishonest otherwise—that I’ve heard similar things before from other people, and it’s usually MY heart that ends up broken.
I told him that I’ve kind of learned that when people say those things to me, they are (purposely or not) giving me notice that it will end, and how. Well, he didn’t like that one bit—he grabbed on tighter and said, “I’m not other people. I don’t know if or how things are going to end. Let’s stay in the moment together.” And so we did.
We ended up in his bed again, naked and rolling around and cuddling and talking. Stuff was fun and lighthearted and then heavy and then back again.
He said he’s either never felt this way about anyone before or, if he has, it was long enough ago that he doesn’t remember it. And he thinks it’s super ironic that now that he does, it has to be a married lady.
And so I asked him if he was actually, despite his history, very interested in monogamy.
“Right now, I’d have to say ‘yes,’” he said. “Right now, I’m only interested in you.”
“What happened to the other girl? The virgin girl you were telling me about?”
“Well, it turns out I don’t think she’s very nice. I haven’t actually seen her since I’ve started seeing you. Though she still texts me all the time.”
“So your past relationships—when you have had them—they’ve been monogamous ones?”
“Wellllll,” he said. “Technically. But I was never monogamous in them.”
“So why would you want a monogamous relationship with me, then? If you tend to not be able to do monogamy?”
“What if you’re special?” he asked.
“I’m the same way, by the way. It’s nearly impossible for me to do full monogamy. Which is why I’m doing what I’m doing now. I’ve had that thought, too, when I met someone. Maybe they were special. Maybe I could do that for them. But it turned out that I still couldn’t, or, at least, I didn’t want to. My marriage aside, even if I were single right now, I couldn’t do monogamy with you. And it sounds like you can’t either. So why don’t we just see where THIS goes, for both of us,” I said.
“It’s not normal . . .” he hesitated, “ . . . but then, I’ve never really liked things that are normal. This is pretty out there, though.”
“Well, how do you feel RIGHT NOW?” I asked, snuggling deeper into the puddle we had become.
“Better than I ever have. This might be the best day of my life.”
“So . . . maybe ‘out there’ is good?” I asked. “What if . . . you got to keep having days like this with me, but when you’re out on tour or doing whatever out on the town, you get to do what you always do—except you don’t have to lie to everyone? And when you’re gone, instead of having someone sitting home pining for you, I’m off living my own life with my other partners . . .”
“I can’t tell if you’re an angel or a devil!” he exclaimed. “I knew that people did this but . . . it still seems weird.”
“Weirder than cheating on people you’re supposed to love?”
“Well, that’s just sex, though. It’s always meaningless. I can get sex anywhere. I could even pay for sex—not that I have.”
“I wouldn’t judge you if you had . . .”
“OK, well, maybe a couple of times,” he admitted. I just stroked his head.
“See, I told you, you don’t have to lie to me.”
He hugged me tighter and said, “I want to tell you that I love you, but it seems like I shouldn’t.” I hugged him tighter back.
“I feel . . . things,” I said. “Good things.”
We checked the time, saw that we had about 10 more minutes left of the time I said I had. It turned into 22. When we finally hopped up and got dressed, he said he wanted me to have something. He went into a little box on his shelf and pulled out a leather bracelet that matched the one he was wearing, except a different color.
“Think about me when we’re apart,” he said.
“I always do,” I said.
He walked me out to my car. Right before our last kiss, he said, “And when we both get back, let’s just pick up where we left off, if we can, OK?”
“That’s what I want too,” I said.
Rider texted me just as I was leaving, saying he was leaving the poly meetup because it was too loud in there. I told him it was perfect timing and offered to pick him up. Apparently he ran into a friend there who is also a member of his fan club group and neither knew the other one was poly. This guy is going to hook him into the poly and kink scenes so he can have better luck finding girls. I met him for a moment; seemed like a nice enough guy.
On the way home, I had to be completely honest with Rider, both about the condom mishap and the fact that the Dustin thing seems to be heading in the direction of either WAY more than FWB or complete implosion. We’d had some preliminary conversations in this vein where we agreed that we could loosen our agreements if it looked like it made sense and/or needed to happen, so he took this in stride pretty well and it was not a bolt out of the blue. (I’ve been too busy to write out some of the processing stuff we’ve been doing, but we’ve been doing really well and both come a long way.)
I also told him (after he said he wanted to know) about the events of the date. “Wow,” Rider said, “is he Google? How does he know so much about the exact things you like?”
“Maybe we just like a lot of the same things,” I said.
“That’s really cool,” Rider said. “I’m happy for you. I hope he doesn’t just bail like the others.”
So.
I have a lot to chew on. But I have two weeks to spend on the chewing process before I see Dustin again. In that time, I hope to spend lots of time with Rider and some with Cherry, and let a bit of this Dustin storm blow over so that I can think clearly.
