Yesterday I think I had a flirtatious exchange with a man. It's all very strange, mostly because it didn't feel all together very strange. It felt....fun. Nice. Kind of exciting, even. The story goes, my good friend works at a nice bar downtown and knows one of the bartenders there pretty well. He's a bit older than me and just got out of a very long term relationship because the girl he was with doesn't want what he wants, being marriage and children. (this is all second hand intel on him from said friend of mine). Just as I was trying to work through the fact that in order to have those things, marriage and children, of my own, I would have to date again: my girl tells me "I want you to meet this dude I work with." Holy jesus, shit just got REAL. A few weeks ago I went into her bar and met this dude, he was our server. He was pleasant and I was awkward and I was fairly sure that I had made no impression on him whatsoever, but I did notice something. I was attracted to him. Hella weird, because though for the last year i pretty much had blinders on, I could still recognize an attractive person, I just didn't care about it one way or the other. This time, and I still don't know how, but I kinda cared. I cared about what he thought of me. I attributed this mostly to the fact that my girl had talked to him about me and I knew that, so I wanted to be sure I was maing a good impression, even though I felt quite certain I had made no impression at all. Well, I guess I was wrong about that.
I went into that restaurant yesterday to meet some friends and I was the first to arrive. I was mildly embarrassed to show up to a bar (where i won't drink) alone, in front of the first man I thought was cute. He came to my table and showed me the happy hour menu, gave me a minute to look it over. He came back around and I asked him to make me a "mocktail" (non-alcoholic cocktail) and he said, "oh sure thing, just like last time," smiled, and walked back behind the bar. In my head? Holy shit, he remembers me. Weird. He came back with my drink and introduced himself, and we chatted for a moment about our time spent for the holidays. We agreed we were glad they were over with. Stressful. My friends came in and he went back behind the bar. After a while, my friends and I moved from the table to the bar so we could better see monday night football, and I chatted with him off and on throughout the night. The whole time it felt like I should feel weird about it but I just really didn't. It was oddly comfortable and I was really having fun. He is super nice and likes the niners, so we got along well. I have been thinking about it a lot because when I got home last night and looked at the picture of myself and KC on my nightstand i got an overwhelming sense of guilt. Like a cheating feeling though I know that isn't the case here. One of my girlfriends had made a very good point to me: I have spent the last year fine tuning my ability to feel my feelings and own them, happy sad good or bad. So why should this be different? Why should I question or deny these feelings now? Why can't new feelings coexist with grief, they will have to if I ever plan to date because the grief doesn't go away. And isn't this part of the plan? It's scary because it's a first for a lot of feelings but it is exciting too. If I am going to live true to the mantra "Onward" that I have adopted, I have to let myself be open to these feelings, including the fear. It's time to quit speaking of Onward, and live it. So here we go, Happy New Year!
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