The New Guy

There's a new guy. We had our first date on December 1st. I haven't written about him yet because I haven't been sure how to put it into words. I suck at feelings talk; I either over-analyze it or completely misread things, and besides, the whole feelings thing makes me completely uncomfortable. I can write about the guys I've dated here because they've all been complete stories, with a beginning, middle, and end. This guy doesn't have an end, and I don't even think we've reached the middle yet.

The first date was very nice; we had dinner after drinks, but I pretty much already knew I was going to let him get to the dinner point based on our previous conversations. This is an intelligent, thoughtful guy who actually had a conversation with me about my thesis that lasted longer than 2 minutes. And he was funny. So when he came in to meet me, he came over and gave me a hello kiss, which was a first for me, but nice. Considering we are both professed shy first-daters, the conversation went relatively well, and after dinner he wanted to continue the date, so we decided to see a movie. We stopped at my place so I could walk Ginny and the movie we wanted to see wasn't starting for awhile, so we played Wii for a bit. That was fun.

At the movie, he never tried to hold my hand or anything, so I began to think maybe I was misreading things, and he was having a good time as a friend but wasn't attracted to me. I spent half the movie wondering whether I should just take his hand or wait for him to make a move. On the car ride home, I decided to at least let him know I was definitely interested physically, so I touched his hand and thanked him for a very nice night. I guess that was all he was waiting for, because he took my hand then, and when we got back to my place I could tell he wanted to come up but I wanted to wait, so we just made out in the car for a bit, exchanged numbers, and promised to see each other again.

That was Saturday. We saw each other 3 more times that week. On the third date, we slept together. The sex ... he knows all the right things to do at all the right times. I don't think I've ever been with someone I felt knew my body like him. Since then, needless to say, we've spent a lot of time in bed. One day he played hooky from work and spent the whole day at my place. We imbibed a bit, so I was not of my right mind. I hadn't spent more than 4 or 5 hours (awake) with a guy I was dating since the Big X. I started to freak a bit; it was the only time in the weeks I've spent with the New Guy that I had the remotest onset of panic attacks.

In my impaired state, I was worried that if he spent too much time in a row with me, he'd start to get annoyed with me, or I'd start to get bitchy or something, so I tried to overcompensate by being extra extra nice, and apologizing if I thought I sounded at all snappish, and trying to get him to say that he liked me a lot to compensate for my insecurity. The next day, he came over at lunchtime to tell me that he likes me but he thinks I'm falling for him too fast and he doesn't want to hurt me so I need to slow down. Because he has commitment issues. I, of course, knew that the day before (and actually the day before that for another reason, when I stupidly asked if he was my boyfriend) I had behaved like a bit of a jackass, and fully agreed with him.

If only he knew the reason I was perhaps coming on a bit too strong was because I was trying to cover up my panic and not scare him away or hurt his feelings, should he realize I was panicking about him. At any rate, I think I managed to assure him that I truly wasn't falling for him as fast as he feared. We continued to see each other for the next two weeks pretty much any night we weren't doing something else. He left on the 22nd for India to spend 3 weeks with his family, so we'll see where things are when he gets back.

I have more thoughts but my niece is back from her basketball game so I must entertain.