2004-12-13 - 9:55 p.m. - latin lovers

I decided to be brave the other day and tell a close friend of mine how I really felt about him. He’s the guy that I had the hots for and then decided I didn’t have the hots for (see “God Said No” entry) but ultimately started to have feelings for again. To put it in a nutshell…I’m a bit confused. He has become a close friend and I didn’t want to jeopardize our relationship by making it seem awkward, but I was starting to think, just maybe he might have some feelings for me – I don’t know. I suck at this, basically. But keeping it from him was driving me crazy – I just have to be honest with people, so I decided to tell him outright. I considered emailing him a letter since I’m often better at writing about my feelings than verbalizing them, but then I thought that’d be a cop-out.

So on Saturday early evening, I told him I just had to tell him something. I explained how I valued our friendship and how I didn’t want anything to jeopardize this great thing we’ve got going, but that I had to be honest and tell him I was really starting to “like” him. I put “like” in quotes because that is what I said, and he knew what I meant. In my fantasy world when I had played this out in my head, he came over and told me how he felt by giving me a long, long kiss which eventually lead to the bedroom. I have a great fantasy world because my mind controls it completely.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. His initial silence told me everything. He then thanked me and said he, too, considered me a close friend but didn’t have romantic feelings for me. I put on a brave face and we chatted some more for a while, and then I got to gracefully make my exit when the phone rang. On the way out, he told the person on the phone to wait a minute, and he gave me a kiss on the cheek and a hug.

Even before I had my keys out to open my apartment door about 10 yards away, my eyes were wet with tears. This whole relationship thing is just never going to work out for me. What I thought just might be a prospect has fizzled, and I just wanted to put my head in the sand and never come up again. What is wrong with me???

I had been baking cookies for a Christmas party that was going to be starting downstairs, but at this point I just felt like dropping off the cookies and then returning home to cry myself to sleep. Alas, feeling sorry for myself would get me nowhere, so I showered and went down to the party with my goodies. “Suck it up and have a drink”, I told myself. I just might have a good time.

The night somehow did a 180. I had fun talking with people, dancing a bit and trying out my still pathetic Spanish. Nevertheless, I was starting to feel melancholy again – perhaps it was the consumption of liquor that added to it, I don’t know. But I was tired and decided to go back upstairs to bed. I had been talking with a close friend of the woman who hosted the party. We had met a couple of times before and he’s a really sweet guy. He was pretty toasted himself, but we were having a good time and when I made my break to leave, he asked to see my apartment. Well, now you know where this is going. In retrospect, I didn’t really know where it was going because I’m an idiot when it comes to things like this.

We came upstairs and chatted for a bit. He was trying to explain to me the different words for love in Spanish, and I said we only had one in English yet it had many meanings in terms of friendship, family, partner, etc… Then he kissed me. Things got hot and heavy pretty quickly and pretty soon the clothes were off and we were doing everything but actual penetration to which I said “no” because despite my slightly drunken state, I still refused to have a one-night stand in that sense - been there, done that. A while back I had made a promise to myself that I’d only do it if I was in a committed relationship, because then it just has so much more meaning for me. I guess it must be why men are from Mars and women are from Venus. As I emerge from my half shell, if you want to get inside of me, I demand that you be spooning me in the morning and then asking me what I want for breakfast.

He did spend the night sleeping next to me, but there was no spooning in the morning or breakfast choices to be made. He was a bit hung over and had to get home. He asked for my phone number, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for his call. I know I’ll run into him at some point in the future, and I shall greet him as a friend but with a twinkle in my eye…after all, I must thank my Latin Lover for reminding me that I am a woman who has a lot to offer in every sense – mind, body and spirit.

highlights from Los Llanos - 2005-04-08
total eclipse of the heart - 2005-04-08
vacation - two days and counting.... - 2005-03-21
30-something - 2005-03-01
the holding back the the flow of tears - 2005-02-20
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