So it finally happened today...the it's not you it's me conversation. I knew it was coming and low and behold it did. And now I feel incredibly silly as I sit preparing to write this post because I realize I am more upset about this man that I only went on three dates with than I have been about people I dated for several months.
Date 1: I should have known from the minute I got out of my Uber and met him in line at Mike's Pastry's how this would end, and if I'm being honest I think I did. Our first interaction was an awkward handshake and beginning of a conversation and this look of disappointment at the way I looked. Such is life I guess but I allowed myself to get attached anyway. The Hufflepuff is tall, dark and handsome, a D1 track athlete who works with students requiring an IEP at a special school. He has political aspirations, a husband dick, an amazing body, and is genuinely a really nice person. He is kind with a charming personality and I was really feeling it.
We grabbed cannolis and cappuccinos at Mike's and proceeded to walk to the area by the Coast Guard where you can sit and see the Boston Harbor. After that we walked around and the conversation flowed well and I came to like him even more. He is a man's man and again, just genuinely a nice person. He has a big vocabulary because he reads and he seemed genuinely interested. We grabbed some apps and a drink and then he drove me home. I kissed him goodnight and then went inside. A really respectable first date with a really nice guy.
I should mention that we met on OKCupid and he messaged me first. I think it's nice to know that at least on paper at one point he was interested....again....sort of my MO.
Date 2: We went to dinner and then ended up getting dessert. It was fun and the conversation again flowed easily. He insisted on feeding me cake when we went to get dessert which I find both sickening and was secretly loving. I really do want a man who wants to dote on me and feed me even if I might pretend that I am sickened by the thought.
He ended up spending the night at my place with the understanding that we weren't going to have sex. He was the big spoon and we fooled around and I was and still am in awe of his body. He has muscles everywhere!!! What else was nice is that he gives pretty good head. He wasn't super aggressive in bed, which was a little bit of a bummer, but I thought I would let it slide since I genuinely liked him.
Date 3: We ended up going to a trampoline park and to a brewery which was great. We were active and we fooled around and made jokes the entire day. I really did enjoy myself and getting to see him act literally like a giant kid at a trampoline park was so much fun.
When we got home my roommate was here with her mom who was recently diagnosed with cancer. She was going to be spending the night on our couch. I wasn't sure if the Hufflepuff would want to venture back to NH or spend the night so I made the offer. He opted to stay with us and we made a cake and then watched a movie while we fell asleep.
We fooled around that night be we never actually ended up having sex; just dry humping and some oral fun. I guess one interesting thing is that I never actually came with him. I made him cum a few times but for some reason I could never quite get there with him. I don't know if I was intimidated or nervous. I actually orgasmed once but I didn't ejaculate
*** I guess as an aside I should say, I have acquired this strange ability to orgasm without cumming. I don't know when it happened or why, but it's a new skill and it has happened to me on more than one occasion in the last few months. Its really confusing to me, but it is even more confusing to the people I am sleeping with because they think I am faking an orgasm. I can understand their reticence to believe me, but it really is the truth. So I think that perhaps this played into everything as well though I don't suppose we will ever really know. ****
The next morning the Hufflepuff woke up and shared a pot of coffee with me and my roommate and her mother and then was off to go rock climbing. And right before he left I got this weird feeling about seeing him again.
I had planned on driving up to see him on Valentine's Day since he had always come down to see me, but then I got a cold and I continued to get a sense that he was not really interested in seeing me. I don't know what it was necessarily, but I think it was just a difference in text message response time. I know that sounds stupid, but there was something different about the text composition, both grammar and prose were off and I knew that there was something more afoot.
In Mounting Securities, I think all of my fears came to a head and then today when we met they were confirmed.
We went and grabbed coffee and walked around the bike path in Somerville until we got back to my house. Once back he had a cookie sat down and said, "So how do you think this is going?" Never a good sign...so I told him that while I thought it was going well I got a vibe that perhaps he didn't think that way.....
I could have a been a dick. I could have dragged it out. I could have made him feel horrible. But as he looked at me with trepidation and concern in his eyes I realized I had seen this coming. This has happened to me before. Othello was one in a myriad of perfect men for me who in one disarmingly charming way or another 'let me down gently'.
So in the same composed-nurse way that I tell a patient that they have HIV and that everything is going to be okay even though I have no idea if that is true or not. I looked him in the eyes and said, "It's okay. I'm a big boy. Sometimes things just don't work. It's cool. I'm fine." He looked surprised and relieved all at once.
Then almost on cue he said, "Are you telling me the truth or are you doing that nurse thing where you pretend everything's okay when it's not?" At this point I had two options: 1) Double down and confirm that I was a mature person capable of rationale thought with control of my emotions or 2) Tell the truth, that I was secretly dying inside wondering if this was all my dating life would ever amount to...an almost or a just not quite right.
You just can't devastate a Hufflepuff...that's fucked up. So I doubled down. I offered the friend card like I do with everyone I've ever dated and he seemed happy and content and most importantly relieved. He kissed me goodbye and I told him that the ball to hang out was now in his court.
I'm disappointed.....mostly in myself....I never get attached like this. I don't usually tell people, particularly my family about who I'm dating and I broke all of my rules with this guy. I fucked up. I let him get to me and now I feel like shit. But such is life and sometimes....you just feel like a useless piece of shit.
So what do I do? I go back to the one thing that I know I can always have....my patients. I put stew in the crockpot and headed out to check on all of my beautiful disasters. Even if nobody else wants me....they're stuck with me.
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Alcoholics Abound
There have been countless times in my dating and professional life where lines and boundaries have gotten....well let's say blurred. I walk into the waiting room of the STD clinic to find a guy that I , dated or have previously fucked. I'm out at the club and one or another of the dancers wants to ask me questions about the bicillin shots that I had given him earlier in the week to treat his syphilis. One of the disease intervention specialists is given my name by a patient who thinks I may have been a contact to their rectal gonorrhea. Luckily for me I have come up with two sure fire ways to deal with these types of situations: 1) I ALWAYS use a condom and 2)I ALWAYS offer to talk about things more at the office and can provide my phone number for you to leave a voicemail on.
Recently a new situation came up for me though where the lines between casual friendship/fuck buddy blurred into a more nurse patient relationship. A guy that I have previously hooked up with....LOC....asked me if I thought he had a drinking problem. I think this was the first time that someone I was hooking up with had a questions about their substance use disorder. I mean in the past I have had guys I dated interested in doing drugs, but they never involved me in their drug use. There was something about the way he framed the question though that really threw me for a loop.
"Like do you think I have a drinking problem? No seriously I have been thinking I might need help but I want your professional opinion?" At this point I was so flummoxed that the only thing I could say was, "Well how much do you drink a night? and what happens if you don't have a drink one night?" The answers to both questions indicated to me that LOC would require a little more TLC to get his life in check. Drinking 3-4 drinks per night and getting shaky by 6 if you haven't had a drink yet is almost certainly an indication that you have a drinking problem.
And I can't help myself....so with true grace and class I said, "Yes I think you need some help." and I gave the number to a detox or two with the expectation that he would never follow through. But now what do I do? Do I continue to hook up with him? Do I try to use myself as leverage to get him to seek treatment? Do I just ghost him?
Ultimately I decided on none of the above. Instead what I did was provide the patient/LOC with info on places where he could seek treatment and encouraged him to do so. I also continued to talk to him like a friend and someone who I had slept with a while back but still enjoyed flirting with. I think I am going to try and treat it in the same way that I treat chlamydia/gonorrhea in a guy who is really interested in me. I give it some time and if the interest is still there, but the original problem is taken care of then I give them a second chance. If any piece of that is screwed up then its back to the drawing board for me but at least I can't be accused of not giving people a chance.
Recently a new situation came up for me though where the lines between casual friendship/fuck buddy blurred into a more nurse patient relationship. A guy that I have previously hooked up with....LOC....asked me if I thought he had a drinking problem. I think this was the first time that someone I was hooking up with had a questions about their substance use disorder. I mean in the past I have had guys I dated interested in doing drugs, but they never involved me in their drug use. There was something about the way he framed the question though that really threw me for a loop.
"Like do you think I have a drinking problem? No seriously I have been thinking I might need help but I want your professional opinion?" At this point I was so flummoxed that the only thing I could say was, "Well how much do you drink a night? and what happens if you don't have a drink one night?" The answers to both questions indicated to me that LOC would require a little more TLC to get his life in check. Drinking 3-4 drinks per night and getting shaky by 6 if you haven't had a drink yet is almost certainly an indication that you have a drinking problem.
And I can't help myself....so with true grace and class I said, "Yes I think you need some help." and I gave the number to a detox or two with the expectation that he would never follow through. But now what do I do? Do I continue to hook up with him? Do I try to use myself as leverage to get him to seek treatment? Do I just ghost him?
Ultimately I decided on none of the above. Instead what I did was provide the patient/LOC with info on places where he could seek treatment and encouraged him to do so. I also continued to talk to him like a friend and someone who I had slept with a while back but still enjoyed flirting with. I think I am going to try and treat it in the same way that I treat chlamydia/gonorrhea in a guy who is really interested in me. I give it some time and if the interest is still there, but the original problem is taken care of then I give them a second chance. If any piece of that is screwed up then its back to the drawing board for me but at least I can't be accused of not giving people a chance.
Mounting Insecurities
Shortly after restarting this blog I met someone online. He is everything I have always thought I wanted. Tall, handsome, friendly, ambitious, a total Hufflepuff, sexual chemistry, a GRE level vocabulary...he is essentially the hot gay nerd. I struck gold. We have been on three amazing dates, he has slept over twice, he met my roommate. I have gushed about him to my friends and coworkers. But for some reason this week I got this sinking pit in my stomach that I shouldn't get too attached. I hadn't thought once about jumping ship and then this week it hit me that I was nervous about what was going to happen next. There is some part of me that is petrified that what happened with Othello is going to happen here. I have been protecting him from the blog, because usually by the time I write a post about people that means they are not long for my dating world. I realized tonight that was ridiculous. Tonight is the first night that I have sent him a text message and he hasn't responded. I know that's stupid, and I know I'm being ridiculous and that this might mean nothing, but in my experience this is the beginning of the end.
By the third date the charm of dating someone who works as much as I do for my patients who have nothing has worn off and you want someone who can devote more time to you. By the end of the third date, you're sick of my swearing sailor mouth and want someone who can just chill and be cool. By the end of the third date you realize my life is really a fucking shit show and I am rarely in charge of what I am doing from one second to the next. By the end of the third date you realize that my room is always messy and I really don't care much about my appearance. By the end of the third date you realize my taste in everything from clothing to music isn't eclectic its just fucking weird and you are over it. By the end of the third date you realize I really am not that nice of a person and that the reason I have my jobs is to give me some chance of not going directly to hell. By the end of the third date you realize that I am more trouble than I'm worth and it would be way easier to get some Grindr slut to suck you off. By the end of the third date you realize that until you have a conversation with me about where we are in terms of dating I will assume that the buck stops there. By the end of the third date if I am still interested I have already become the clingy, annoying, and desperate boy that no one really wants to date.
So here I sit....several days after the end of the third date....and all I face are mounting insecurities about things that I have said, actions I have taken, and text messages I have and have not sent since we started dating.......waiting patiently to hear the chime from my phone indicating a text rather than the depressing trill of some horny Grindr queen.
By the third date the charm of dating someone who works as much as I do for my patients who have nothing has worn off and you want someone who can devote more time to you. By the end of the third date, you're sick of my swearing sailor mouth and want someone who can just chill and be cool. By the end of the third date you realize my life is really a fucking shit show and I am rarely in charge of what I am doing from one second to the next. By the end of the third date you realize that my room is always messy and I really don't care much about my appearance. By the end of the third date you realize my taste in everything from clothing to music isn't eclectic its just fucking weird and you are over it. By the end of the third date you realize I really am not that nice of a person and that the reason I have my jobs is to give me some chance of not going directly to hell. By the end of the third date you realize that I am more trouble than I'm worth and it would be way easier to get some Grindr slut to suck you off. By the end of the third date you realize that until you have a conversation with me about where we are in terms of dating I will assume that the buck stops there. By the end of the third date if I am still interested I have already become the clingy, annoying, and desperate boy that no one really wants to date.
So here I sit....several days after the end of the third date....and all I face are mounting insecurities about things that I have said, actions I have taken, and text messages I have and have not sent since we started dating.......waiting patiently to hear the chime from my phone indicating a text rather than the depressing trill of some horny Grindr queen.
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