Holy crap

Holy crap, dating is scary. I think I understand now why I haven't been on a date (with someone I wasn't already "hanging out with") since I was 15.

In tenth grade I went to a movie with a cute boy who had asked if I wanted to go to a movie. By the end of the evening we had held hands, and by the next day we were considered an item, which meant Dave was expected to walk me to my locker between classes and help carry my books (even though I was totally stronger than he was). For a month of Fridays, Dave and I would then feel obligated to call each other up and figure out what we were doing on Saturday. Somewhere around the fourth one, I got bored and told him I thought we should "just" be friends (so, no more of that book-carrying nonsense). Other than the obligatory nature of our relationship, I have no idea what changed after that. The hand-holding had been short-lived, and really, who had time for kissing when there were midterms around the corner?

So is this what I'm to expect now? After I've eaten my bread roll this coming Monday, will I have entered into a contract of mutual obligation to finish my dinner? To make a phone call? How does this work?

Ok, backing up. I mentioned "hanging out" above as something totally distinct from "dating." Dating seems to me to consist of going out on dates-- and that's the part I kept skipping as an adolescent, college student, etc. Not deliberately. I just happened to spend a lot of time skipping along through the wheat fields doing my own thing, but then I would fall into these situations now and then where I would end up having some kind of physical contact with someone-- and we'd just take it from there. Meals, movies, those were just icing on the cake of already being in a relationship (however haphazard its foundations). It never occurred to me to try to do things the other way around; to seek out affection rather than bracing myself for the moment it might find me.

The key difference, though, for me seems to really be about emotional honesty and availability. I got pretty good at "falling into" relationships, quasi-accidentally, taking what comfort and lessons I could from the situation, and eventually slipping out of the room as if it had never really mattered whether I'd ever walked in or not. I ended up with a number of awkward ex-friendships and a lockerful of possible wisdom-- but as I'm just now starting to see, no experience with actual dating. I am 33, I've been in something like five real relationships, and right now I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

So these butterflies-- the ones that are genuinely wondering whether or not a person I'd really like to really care about will turn out to be someone I could be really close to, or not; and genuinely wondering whether or not the other person will feel that way-- these little stomach-flutterings are not something I have ever associated with the prospect of dinner at a restaurant, ever in my life. I think at least half of my body and brain must be convinced that I'm on my way to give a presentation to the Queen of England (who apparently still looks like Elizabeth the First, in my mind), who will laugh heartily and clap her bejeweled hands with mirth as I recite my latest verse while juggling fire and tap dance my way around an army of venomous scorpions.

It's ok, stomach. At the end of the play I can always go back home and spend the evening quietly reading my psalter by the fire. And by then, at least I will know what she thinks of my poetry.