Take care

It hadn’t even crossed my mind that he might actually be feeling weird.  Girls feel weird, getting hung up on subtext, reading entire essays between the few mumbled lines coming out of a guy’s mouth when he says “Thanks, it was nice, take care.”

Take care? Take care? Take care doing what exactly? Getting on with my life? Because presumably I am never going to see him again with a comment like that…or just take care getting off the train, walking home, going to work tomorrow, take care until I see him again.

There would be a million and one reasons why I, a female, might act a little odd on the morning after the night before.  Reasons all beautifully crafted and intelligently justified; I feel used, I feel guilty, I feel hung over, I wasn’t sure about the underwear I chose, I should have made more noise, no, less noise; I should have tried harder, he was a little disappointing, and on I could go listing these entirely valid reasons for being a ‘back-turner’ in the cold light of a December Sunday morning. But a guy, a guy is simple; he either had a good time or a bad time.  He wakes up, picks one or the other and then acts accordingly – he gets up, gets dressed and leaves or he gets up, gets dressed and says “Thanks, let’s do it again” and leaves. Not – “Take care”. 

I can assure him that I am taking care; I am taking great care in wondering just exactly what he meant.  The fact that this strange behaviour may have been due to his considering the moments of intimacy spent with another woman who was not the girl he has recently broken up with was not a natural assumption made by me. That conclusion could indicate “nice guy, 30, has feelings, will travel”, which simply is not an option. No, it couldn’t be that blokes get the same emotionally charged and confused “I’m not sure if that was the right thing to do” feelings as we do. Maybe they do, maybe “take care” does not hide a barrage of reasons why he might not want to see me again but maybe just an element of confusion as to how he feels about meeting someone else that is testing his ability to be a 30 year old bachelor, playing the field after a nasty break up.

Well, if it is true that men are from another planet, then I appreciate his alien visit to Venus for the evening, I just hope he takes care getting back to Mars, we wouldn’t want him hurting himself on the way now, would we?