Hope Dies Last

[I started this series three days before I met him. And as we are currently 'dating' I still consider myself semi-single. I don't want to date anyone else, I don't want to meet anyone else but I'm also nowhere near Girlfriend or Attached Status. So, onwards. Notes from a singleton #1 here]

***

Dear Attached Hope,

STOP TALKING ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP.

Stop it.

Relationships don’t talk into being.

They are into being.

STOP TRYING TO FORCE INTIMACY.

Stop it.

True intimacy can’t be coerced, sideways, by thinly veiled ‘innocent’ questions.

It grows through shared experiences together. In a staight line. Directly. Naturally.

And if you really need to consistently talk about your relationship? Go see your therapist. Its probably got more to do with you than with him.

From your alter ego,

Semi-single Hope

At the very beginning, in that undefined time of first kisses and first sleep overs, he appears to have eyes only for you. Yet, at that same undefined time it also appears (at least to you) that every pair of female eyes are on him.

You can’t really blame them. (You’re a woman. You have eyes. And they’re only on him too.)

Flecks of gray intersperse between his dirty, dirty blond hair.  The late afternoon rays falls on each one of them separately and the light dances off each one of them and for a moment you wonder if the color of a diamond shines as brightly as those flecks of gray. His usually dull blue eyes have brilliantly lit up and now easily match the colour of the tips of the crests of waves; the kind of sea that you’ve only ever seen in photos. He squints in the sun and the sun seemingly bored with his hair falls into his eyes and you notice yellow specks of gold dust that look like story book stars that have lost their way in the dark and found themselves in the irises of a mere mortal man.  His firm body is accentuated by the wet suit he is wearing. There are lines; lines that you have run your hands across in darkness. There are hard muscles in his arms that jut out as he walks and you blush because you have seen those exact muscles– rigid–keeping your own arms down. And then you smile–your secret smile– because you know a truth that he doesn’t know yet.  Desire can never be restrained. Even by the strongest of men. Adding fuel to this fire, he is wet. Drops of water drip. Some fast. Others slow. Both creating puddles of connect the dot puzzles on the scorching cement beneath his feet.  Even his eyelashes are wet. His ears.  The tip of his nose. His lips.

His lips are cold.

It is only then that it occurs to you that the only reason you know his lips are cold is because they are on yours. While your eyes have been darting back and forth from him to those roaming female eyes on him, his eyes have never left your face. It is then that you realize that this man has chosen you. You! And that the most exciting realization of all is that you chose him too.

(But could those women seriously stop checking him out? Especially that one, the one with the long legs.)

As he walks away from you and happily shouts: “Please don’t go. Stay. Wait for me” you shrug your shoulders and yell right back, “We’ll see. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.” You want to keep him guessing because certainty, you have been told, will turn him from the man you hope he is to the type of man you have always known. So you withhold, you appear less eager than you feel and you say “No” when every fiber of your being is screaming yes. You wonder how it is possible that the truest, purest, most instinctual feeling you have right at this moment could be the feeling that will inevitably drive him away?

Later as you catch sight of his sail, his legs balancing his board, as you watch him manouvre his way out of the safety of the bay and toward what appears to you to be the deepest, darkest, most turbulent end of the ocean you feel the stirrings of a knot in your stomach.

How long does it stay like this? At this undefined time where you are so taken by a man that you genuinely believe that every single pair of female eyes are on him? How long does this last? This time where he appears to have eyes only for you? How long does it last? This effortless time where you want to write bad poetry about the colour of his hair or an ode on his one chipped tooth? How long does this feeling last?

So you try to come up of ways to collect it, keep it in a jar and open it–years from now–to remind yourself that that one summer, that summer of 2009,  you chose a man.

And, while you weren’t looking,  he chose you too.

We sat under a canopy of trees in the most secluded part of the Beach Bar. We sat on the ground on large cushions and every twenty minutes or so he would reach out and massage his back before untangling his legs and trying on a different position. Every twenty minutes or so I would then make the obligatory age joke because of the 8 year gap between us. “I shouldn’t have bought you here. You’re old. Want to go sit at an actual table with the orthopedic chairs?”

He stuck it out. To please me, I think.

Half way through our 5 hour first date, he looked up at the canopy of trees that seemed to enclose us in a moment that defied time and said:

“We could live here.”

“What? Me and you?”

“Yes, Hope. Me and you.”

“How would we do that?”

We then spun a make believe story of our life together, under this canopy of trees.

“We can sleep here” he said pointing to the cushions, “And we can eat here.” Pointing to the wooden table. I’ll go out in the morning and milk the goats for our coffee.”

“But I don’t like goat’s milk. I need soy milk.”

“Honey”, he said in the tone I imagine he would use on our 100th date, “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know how to even begin doing that.”

I added my own details onto his own story. A vegatable patch. That we could both bring our cats with us and imagine the fun they would have.

“But really” he said his brow furrowed in earnest, “What more do we need?”

“Honey” I said in a tone I imagine I will be using on our 100th date, “I can’t live without my laptop.”

***

On hour four of our date, after we had established that we have more in common than is allowed; after he had used the word ‘fate’ in conjunction with meeting me; after he had labeled himself ‘lucky’ for meeting me, he said:

“So, we moved in together on our first date, what do you think we’ll do on our second?”

At 11:30p.m on Saturday night I found myself standing in a club next to The Man Friend while he introduced me to the man whose smile had knocked me out a week earlier.

Had the stars finally aligned? Were the planets giggling mischievously overhead? Or perhaps it was something far more mundane?  Paths that needed to be crossed were crossed in that mismatchy sort of way that can only be described as blind luck.

***

Minutes later we find ourselves sitting side by side on a white couch. The club perched upon a mountaintop some kilometers outside of Athens allows the wind to flow casually, effortlessly between us. Nature’s way of imitating our conversation. Wisps of my untamed hair fall into my eyes as the first chords of Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean pound their way out of the speakers. Music’s way of imitating the beat of my heart.

***

Two hours later, we are still side by side. Our chat nowhere near ending because written across both our poker faces are the obvious signs of a beginning.  The Man Friend gestures from across the table. “We’re leaving in 10 minutes”.  The man sitting next to me takes out his mobile phone. I gently take it from him and punch in my number. I pause. My name is pretty common.

“Wait. How should I write my name? How many other Hope’s do you have saved in here?”

“Just one.”

“You mean two including me?”

“No. I mean just you.”

So, I type in my first name, hit save and return it to him. His phone back in his hands, he calls me.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m calling you.”

“Are you afraid that I gave you the wrong number?”

“I’m calling so that you can have my number too.”

***

At 2:30 a.m, early on Sunday morning, one short week after this complete stranger first walked into my life, his number is stored in my phone. My phone number in his.

And I don’t know about you, but I have a good feeling about this one.

Almost two years ago, I ran into N and her sister on a street. N, her sister and I all went to high school together. That night we had a couple of drinks and when we parted we promised to keep in touch. To hang out more often. I never followed through. They didn’t either.

Last autumn I deleted almost 50 ‘friends’ on Facebook. My reasoning at the time was “If I haven’t communicated with you in the last year, then we’re obviously not friends.” One of those people happened to be N. My hand hovered over the delete button for a second and with no second thought deleted her.

A couple of weeks ago, I agreed to work part-time at my old job as a shop girl for the summer. This Saturday a man walked through the doors looking for a wedding present and found me. He smiled and when he did I was smitten. In a moment. By that smile. For the next 30 minutes we chatted like two old friends. We found that we both graduated from the same high school; years apart. We discovered that the present he was buying was for N’s sister. We discovered other mutual friends. When he left he took his smile with him. And when he did I felt a sharpness in my chest. Is it even possible to miss a smile?

The next day, lying next to a hotel pool thumbing through a magazine my ears caught the sound of a familiar accent. South Africans. I pretended to read but I casually began to eavesdrop on their conversation. A son and daughter dissected the happenings of a wedding for their mother. I heard N’s name and I heard her sister’s name and my heart beat a little bit faster. There I was and there they were. These people that were in the same room as that smile last night.

For a moment, I was jealous.

My mind raced backwards connecting hypothetical dots. What if I had made an effort to get together with N and her sister two years earlier? What if I had been invited to her wedding? What if the same man had walked through the shop door and what if instead of wishing him a pleasant evening I could have said, “See you there!” What if I had gone to that wedding?

Would I still be lying next to this pool, reading a magazine, eavesdropping on a conversation, wishing that that man with that smile would find me and knock me out all over again?