first_date DammitJanet I slowed my pace down when i saw the bus. I didn't want to get there as soon as it did. I watched him get off and walk around, he looked at me a couple of times but didn't know if i was the one. So i smiled. And he smiled back. We said hey and started to walk side by side. He's alot taller than me which i loved. I can finally wear my boots. But i didn't do my homework. Two days ago that bar was open, i swear. Now it's gone bankrupt and we were stuck at swiss chalet. We sat, we talked, we studied eachother. I became comfortable, less nervous. We joked, we laughed, we listened. Our conversation flowed from one topic to another effortlessly. Finally, someone who knows how to talk. We headed to Tim Hortons and sat again, and talked again, and studied some more. All i could do was compare. He's not making me uncomfortable, uneasy, nervous or shy. It was great. We walked back, we hugged and said goodbye. And i walked home with a smile. But, now we play the waiting game. Was i enough for him like he was for me? 040319 ... lycanthrope We met at a summer pool party I didn't want to go to. I was tired and grumpy having spent the better part of the day negotiating the final terms of a breakup I had initiated several months ago as there were the costs of rent to consider. There are no homewreckers in San Francisco, but there are apartmentwreckers. It was a rooftop with a pool in Oakland. From the streets the occasional shout into the void, sirens, and hyphy music from a park so loudly pleasing, we turned off our Spotify. The sky was cloudless, sunny, and even the cops could be heard laughing from the street. The type of day they don't talk about on Fox News. The water of the pool rippled gently but I felt it was impenetrable somehow. I had been dating here and there, but largely had Tindered my resignation. I was tired of other people, myself, the tedious interaction between the two. It was a gathering for instructors at a fight gym, so everyone was fit, angular, and in peaceable tension. I was cutting weight, so I looked about as good as I likely ever will. You were wearing a blue string bikini doing its best, made of the type of material that doesn't turn translucent, but clings and darkens when it's wet. I felt the notification of nature's algorithm, muted though it was. I was introduced and said that color agrees with you. I didn't mean anything more than that, I've found that disinterested objectivity can be charming when it touches on the right topics, but I wasn't trying to be charming. You responded with "suns out tits out, am I right?" I was very hungry and didn't really want much to smile. But I did, and one of us blinked, I did or you did, I can't remember who did first, but it took longer than it should have. You then said, it's cerulean. You asked me for a fun fact. I said my favorite color is cerulean. I was trying to be charming. But it was true enough. I remembered the long wavy word on the crayon wrapper, and scribbling out cloudless cerulean skies. I remembered my rent dispute and after some pleasant gibes and small talk, I excused myself. I was tired of myself, you see. I was reckless and hurtful in my youth. A bull in a vagina shop. I don't say this with pride. I had sickened and saddened myself enough with my endless complications and half drafted poems by that point in my life. I was finally making money, finally sleeping 8 hours a night, why ruin that? So I said, I have to go. You seemed surprised. I certainly didn't mean to be intriguing. I was still in a low mood, still hungry. On the way to the car, I did throw on a reflexive thizz face, because that's how hyphy music works. I tried online dating a bit after my match and the hunger subsided. The breakup price was paid, and I eventually stopped returning calls about one more item left behind. But I just couldn't keep staring at message boxes and page after page of souls looking like blobfishes taken from the depths of the sea - not their looks, everyone was polished and filtered, but the vacant expressions we all seem to think are neutral, not too telling, and so attractive. So I found you online. Added you. Professional courtesy anyhow I thought. I won't belabor it - we talked ourselves into a date. I suggested Radio. It was a dark, mixed theme punk bar with pinball tables, and relapse pours. I came straight from work in a suit and tie. The bar isn't there anymore, like most cool things in the Bay Area, like us. It's been replaced by a place that serves cocktails up with floating rubber duckies as garnish. I was at the bar and had ordered a double Jameson and a Miller High Life. I figured the problem was I started too many relationships with polish and filter. You walked up and ordered the same. And maybe we hadn't cleared our favorite TV shows, or expectations for our partners' educational accomplishments first, but for all of their data, the apps don't seem to get that one thing people have been doing forever quite right. That feeling that you were found when you thought no one was looking, that you found something unknown to the world, new and strange and very interested in the empty seat next to you. I damn near spit out the whiskey upon your order. I turned and in the dim light just said, "how did you know?" Complimentary madnesses finding one another - you can't program the things no one is willing to admit. Three blocks later we were kissing against a wall. 260302 what's it to you? who go blather from