Geek

The message said, "I wonder about what you wrote, in your column, about the guy you dated who wanted to be friends - did it work? How did you do it? I'm in a similar situation, you see..."



I didn't know how to write back that the man who "just wanted to be friends" sat across from me drinking wine and talked about how he thought what we'd like in the bedroom might "match", and who looked at my bum when I went to the bar but wanted me to know about who he'd been sleeping with. The man who "just wanted to be friends" stayed out until 2 a.m. in hotel bars and pressed his body up to mine, and my resolve was weak and I so desperately wanted to be the friend, you see. So desperately wanted the sense of self it takes to say you did not dent my fragile heart because I forgot that the biggest sense of self would be to admit it and walk away.



When will I learn that I have nothing to prove?



I wanted him to change his mind, I suppose. I did a good show of saying, that isn't a good idea when he got serious and pressed his nose to mine. I pulled away. I pulled away twice. But three time's a charm and I let him collide with my hope and we kissed and it was stupid and it was everything and nothing and the next morning he wanted to know if we could just "draw a line under it" and his dismissal of it that way - the way he took zero responsibility and then fell off the face of the earth, save for continued stalking of my Instagram stories, so I knew he was still, actually, alive, in that very particular twenty-first century way - meant that three months after I should've, I deleted his number from my phone.