Juxtaposition

As a series of well-intended-but-never-completed entries in my archives will attest, for a good couple of months this past summer, I was seriously and dangerously and emotionally recklessly smitten with K. He was smart and witty and charming and tall. His eyes twinkled when he laughed. He didn't let me get away with shit. And he was fucking hot.

Unfortunately, as I eventually came to learn, smart + witty + charming + 6'5" + fucking hot = I get played.

Still fairly new to the dating scene, I naively misinterpreted what would have been - were K a normal adult male - a series of unmistakable signs that he was just as into me as I was him.

Summer evenings spent on his back patio, eating salmon from the grill by tiki torchlight with his darling son and my annoying dog. Lazing together under the stars in his hammock, my head on K's chest, his hands in my hair. The unexpected sushi picnic in the park that he artfully surprised me with when I thought he was simply coming to my mid-sized town to take me out for dinner. The intentionally horrid poems, the unintentionally horrid song lyrics, the countless emails. And of course our very first date (still relucantly on record as one of the best ever) three hours spent talking and throwing grass in one another's hair and pretending to be asleep so we could steal covert and hopefully undetected glances beneath quite possibly the oldest and most majestic oak tree in my entire mid-sized town.

Silly me.

Yesterday, basking in the afterglow of my perfect evening with M3, I found myself surprised to be hearkening back to those many summer nights with K.

In particular, just how far up my ass I'd somehow managed to lodge my own head.

Next weekend, M3 and I are traveling to the mid-sized city that, until last May, I'd called home for nine years. He'll meet some of my most cherished and dear friends. I'll show him my most favorite places. He'll hold my hand and kiss my cheek and smile at me as we walk together through the rain-soaked streets of a city that not so long ago, for reasons I now have trouble remembering, I was terribly eager to leave.

Last September, with a trip to said city in the works, I decided I might like to bring K with me. The two of us having never even dabbled in the exclusivity arena, let alone spent two consecutive nights together, I hemmed and hawed for days, apprehensive about asking him because of how my offer might be construed. Our relationship (and I use that term loosely) was an ongoing game of cat and mouse. To quote my favorite 80s misanthropic asexual lyricist, the more I ignored K, the closer he got.

One evening after his son had gone to bed and I'd finally had enough to drink that I believed I could extend the invitation without sounding like I gave even half a shit either way (not realizing, of course, that there wasn't enough alcohol on earth at the time to make that even a remote possibility), K's response was entirely and completely non-committal.

I was crushed.

To this day, I think I'm technically still waiting for him to get back to me.

The trip out of town next weekend was M3's idea to begin with, and although he had another destination initially in mind, he didn't hesitate for a second when I proposed we instead visit both the first and last place I've ever called home. Over dinner last night, I presented him with the weekend's itinerary. There'd be a surprise birthday party for a pal on Saturday and an intimate dinner with two or three other couples on Friday.

"I'll be auditioning for two straight days," he joked.

"Everyone will love you," I assured him.

And I meant it.

He unconditionally accepted my invitation.