Despertar

not so quickie

3,010/4,500.

*

Break was good. Gooooood good. Significantly different from the usual, like he was trying to tell me something. Not to read too much into it, or anything.

We hold hands, during. He initiates. I always assumed it was my doing, till the one time I paid attention, and realized no, it was him. He also gets very chatty, needlessly self-conscious. Always asking questions, always wanting reassurance. All the needs he likes to attribute to girls manifest themselves in him when he is supposed to be at his most masculine.

*

I am really, really afraid of becoming Katy. There are extreme differences, yes. Aaron told Katy he will never want her; Justin told me he wanted me immediately. That should be enough. Aaron isn't closed off to the idea of intimacy itself, and neither is Justin, really, but he purports to be. He doesn't want to feel responsible for anyone else's happiness. Aaron just doesn't want to feel responsible for Katy's, because he doesn't care about her. I say that with no judgment. He's perfectly entitled. Justin, by the same token, would be perfectly entitled, were that his attitude, but it isn't. It isn't. That's what is such a brainfuck about it. It's different enough that I shouldn't worry, but I do.

There are thresholds you don't cross, because there are some things from which you just can't ever recover. After you threaten suicide, you can consider any relationship developments purely reactionary. If you're going to imply that your guy's cruelty has pushed you to experiment with cutting yourself, you're going to have to follow it up with a serious foray into self-mutilation, or else how do you prove it wasn't a ploy?

I stop myself just short of certain thresholds. Not those two in particular, but others. I learned things from Marcus. I never call twice in a row. I never go over there without announcing myself first. If I invite myself over and perceive reluctance, I pretend I changed my mind and I don't go--way more comfortable for both parties than, say, huffing and puffing about being unwanted/storming off in the middle of the night expecting to be consoled by someone who already didn't want me around.

But it's not usually like that. He wants me around. His mouth writes checks his heart can't cash. He keeps hinting at future plans, Googlemapping routes between our two houses, kissing me on the lips after I told him, point blank, that that move signals a certain level of intimacy, for me.

So, I don't know what the shit his problem is. I can't foresee the length of my patience. We have a Dark Knight date in July; that much I know. I know he knows the best way to walk from his new apartment to mine, and that he takes the good-luck bracelet I made for him to interviews and on planes. I know that other guy is like twelve times as perfect as he is in every significant way. I know I've made my decision anyway.

I'm just really afraid of becoming Katy. It's one thing to look at a girl with complete physical and emotional indifference. It's another thing entirely to totally write off the possibility that you'll ever find her lovable.

*

As of this very moment, I'm really afraid I'm going to fail Property.