Darkside Rainbow

His name is Steve. It’s what my father would call a good, strong name and he’s got a good strong, handshake to go with it.

We meet in a Starbuck’s a few blocks from my place; just a five-minute walk across cracked sidewalk and descending dusk and I’m ducking through the Barnes & Noble, barely resisting the lure of the books to find that he’s already there in the cafe, seated and waiting and looking better than the photograph on his profile. He’s not handsome or even pretty, but there’s a certain sharp precision to his features that says he doesn’t need to be, and charisma enough to compensate even without.

First impressions take in neat black hair, blue eyes, swarthily tanned skin and strong, firm shoulders. Large hands. Rough. He’s got a smile that could knock me over from across the room, boyish but sincere. I’m wondering what the hell this guy is doing hunting down dates on an online dating site, and thinking that I might be in over my head and very close to forgetting that I only went along to blog about this. He’s looking me over and blushing, then standing and pulling out a chair for me. It’s hard not to smile. I’m not used to gentlemen anymore. I’m not used to dates anymore, either. Two years in a committed dead-end relationship and you get out of practice.

He’s wearing a crisp, clean white blouse and artfully faded, deliberately-tattered jeans that fit just right in all the right places - clothes that tell me he knows how to look nice for a date without going overboard. Me? I’m wearing slacks, a tight black tank, and Dragon’s Hide, a Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab scent that makes me smell like leather, musk, and dark, smoky sex. A come-and-get-me scent if ever I smelled one. I’m feeling catty tonight, and wearing it more to spite my possessive-but-dense ex than because I really want the new guy breathing me in and getting all those hot little urges. If the ex-who’s-still-in-love-with-me won’t respond to the “sniff me, I smell like sex” hint, someone will, whether he’s actually getting any or not.

Probably not the best thoughts to be having at the start of a first date.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by how they order their coffee. I wish someone had given me the decoder ring on that, because all I can tell about a double-shot espresso is that Steve likes espressos. Maybe he’s figuring out that I’m a cat person from some secret message in my mocha latte. Or maybe he’s chuckling and indulging my insistence on paying, all the while completely oblivious to the fact that he’s rousing butterflies in my stomach every time that he smiles.

Chemical reaction? I’d say so. There’s something exothermic going on in my adrenals, and even I can smell the BPAL on me intensifying as it reacts to rising pheromones. My stomach’s so twisted that I couldn’t eat even if I wanted to, although that’s not why I decline when he asks. I ate before the date; it’s a habit of mine that I jokingly call a Southern thing learned from Miss Scarlett O’Hara herself.

It’s not hard to start a conversation. He kicks it off by telling me that he’s never gotten far enough to meet a guy from online before, but my article prompted him to contact me. My response is cynical, amused that my jaded take on online dating actually fired any optimism in him. He says he didn’t think I’d accept. I say I didn’t think I would, either. He laughs, and the butterflies ramp it up a notch. This guy is devastating.

He’s also painfully shy, and even if I can’t for the life of me figure out why, it explains why he’s still single. No, Steve isn’t the guy I met online. He’s better. That guy online was confident, cocky, swaggering, a little arrogant. I can’t stand that type, honestly. I like this Steve, though. Face-to-face this Steve is shy, completely unaware of his own charisma and what that smile can do to a boy, and thus trotting it out every time I make him blush with a playful comment - and tonight, I’m full of ‘em. I can’t help it. Someone like that needs to be teased, and I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t rise to the occasion. He gives me plenty of chances.

It isn’t hard to find things to talk about, from literature to music to really bad comedy sketches. We have completely opposing viewpoints on almost everything, and yet somehow manage to counter each other without really arguing or disagreeing even when he tells me that he has two pet birds and I remind him that to a cat person, “bird” is just another way of saying “dinner via airmail”. We can’t even come close to agreeing about the war in Iraq, and yet there’s no tension, no ill-feeling at all. Whomever said politics was a bad subject for a first date never had the chance to twist the word “pundit” into an inadvertent innuendo.

I’m having a great time, and if his laughter and those bashful glances are any indication, so is he. Sometimes he stammers trying to find a response, then flushes and covers his face in embarrassment. I think it’s cute, and I can’t believe he’s older than I am, a successful contractor who conducts business transactions with absolute confidence every day while I’m just a scruffy, antisocial writer with quite a few years’ less experience under my belt. Apparently the boardroom is his place to shine; it’s just his love life that turns him into a shrinking violet. Frankly, I’m in awe that a man could remain this way well into his thirties.

I’m also in awe and disgust that even though my stomach is doing capricious somersaults, my intellect is feeling distinctly stimulated, and my body’s calling out for a little stimulation of its own…I’m completely disinterested in ever going out with him again. While the rest of me may be completely enamored of Steve, my heart is straining several blocks back, tugging me towards home and, even when Steve’s pretty blue eyes are lingering quite curiously on my pretty pink lips, thrusting in painful, longing thoughts of my ex. My ex, whom I’ve had two years and another relationship to get over, and yet who can still pull my heartstrings with just a look.

My ex, whom I’m wishing like hell was sitting across from me right now, even as I laugh at another witty rejoinder from Steve.

No, these aren’t good thoughts to be having on what should be an otherwise successful first date with a guy who’s attractive, fun, intelligent, and stable. I shouldn’t be distracted underneath my laughter; I should be falling head over heels into that giddy feeling that you get when you meet a guy who can make your toes tingle and your breath come short with just a single look. I can’t help but wonder how I look, to him, especially since he hardly looks away from me the entire time that we chat. Do I look engaged, amused, inviting? Or can he see that slight distance, that little bit that I’m holding back, that refuses to give in and say Hey, I could really like this guy?

Yeah, I could really like this guy. I could really like him…but I can’t get over the fact that he’s not him.

The time flies by more quickly than expected before he’s checking his watch and I’m checking my cell phone for the time, as we both have working evening plans and agreed beforehand that we’d only be able to meet for a set amount of time. I’m honestly reluctant to part, as even if my heart wasn’t in it I really did have a good time. But it’s time to get moving, time for awkward farewells, and time for that moment of truth.

He gets up to pull my chair out for me before I can rise, then catches my fingers in his as I stand. I’m not startled when he kisses my hand. I am startled when he presses his cheek to my wrist, and I feel warm breath and rough stubble. His lips are close to my skin, parted, just a little damp. My pulse is pounding; it’s hard to breathe. What happened to being shy?

“You smell nice,” he says, and the bitch in me feels both vindicated and tempted even if I know I’m being unfair, and snotty to boot. It’s silly things like that that make me so mean, sometimes. So difficult to be with. I could argue that I’m only human, and I’m lonely and responding to some much-needed attention, and well aware that I’m not really mad at the ex for not noticing, but upset over a much bigger issue between us. But I know the truth: I’m a brat. I’m a brat and the brat in me is smug that Steve noticed something so simple without prompting while the ex ignored it even after multiple hints: I went out of my way to smell sexy, I feel sexy, and I want a little male attention instead of derisive comments. The brat in me is spiteful and hurting and wants to invite Steve closer to catch the slight whiff coming from the daubs of musk on my throat and wafting from the hair laying against my shoulders…even if the brat in me knows that it’s not Steve that I want to be inviting at all.

Thankfully there’s a little adult left in me, enough that I can thank him with a quiet laugh and gently tug away from his grip with a glance that I already know from experience says come hither to anything with a pulse. And hither he comes, holding the door for me before trailing me out into the parking lot. Even if he’s shy and flustered while I’m the confident alpha male here, I’ve been placed in the role of the femme fatale. He’s too much of a gentleman for it to be otherwise, and I don’t mind. It’s nice to be treated like the soft one, for once. It’s nice to be courted as an object of desire.

We linger, taking our time in the parting, waiting for one or the other to say the words or ask the question that will end this. Instead “You’re going to write about this, aren’t you?” he asks. I agree, and ask if he minds. He says no, then laughs and asks me not to embarrass him too much.

I promise that I won’t.

It’s when he asks if there’s going to be a second date that the laughter fades, and I look away. He already knows the answer’s no, and he won’t say that he’s hurt and disappointed - but I can tell, and it wrenches me a little inside and makes me feel like the biggest bastard on the face of the earth. As shy as he is it probably took hell for him to ask me out in the first place, and I doubt he could have done it without the easy anonymity of a screen name to cushion a possible rejection. And as much as I enjoyed his company, I can’t lead him on by saying yes. That goes beyond bastardry and into downright cruelty.

So I tell him that I’m not looking to date seriously right now, but I’d love to be friends. I don’t tell him that there’s someone else, but I think he knows. With that line? They always know.

He hugs me before we part ways; he smells good, too, like aftershave and clean, rough-skinned male. I promise to call him, when I know I won’t. So does he. He’ll call me, I can already tell. He’ll read this, too, and chalk it up to another loss, and hope the next guy works out better. I hope the next guy works out better, too; he deserves it. Hell, I could even say he deserves someone less difficult than I. Steve’s sweet, and charming. The kind of guy women groan over when they find out that he’s gay. The kind of guy men groan over should they find out he was taken.

He could have been. I could have said I’d see him again. Hell, I could have gone back to his place to ease a little itch that’s been building up in me for a while and craving satiation, and ended up going home smelling like sex for better reasons than a little fragrance in a vial. I could have gone with chemistry, gone with instant attraction, and run with it.

Instead I’m walking back to my place. Alone, even though Steve offered to drive me home safely. I can still smell espresso and aftershave, even though I’m blocks from the coffee shop now and the din of traffic is loud in my ears, headlights and street lamps fighting each other to stain the night sky from purple to orange. I’m going home to a cat, an almost-finished novel, and an ex who’s probably pacing restlessly and waiting for me to tell him that nothing happened. I don’t yet know what I’m going to tell him. I may love him. He may love me. But we’re not together, so my dates aren’t his business.

But I’m going home to him anyway, still irrationally mad at him and thinking about spending the rest of the night with him anyway, even as I stand on the street corner and wait for the light to change so I can dodge right-turning traffic to take that last leg home to my apartment. I’m wondering what I’m going to write, how I’m going to describe this night that hurt more than I thought it would, more than I think it should…and how much of my thoughts I’m going to bare to an impersonal network of strangers whose only interest in this is out of a glazed, blank-eyed case of train-wreck syndrome.

I have answers to the points I brought up in that article, now. No, you often don’t meet the person that was profiled online, but that’s not always a bad thing; no, sometimes even when the base animal attraction is there, it still isn’t enough. Sometimes it just doesn’t compare to that intangible something that you don’t always miss when it isn’t there, but that you can’t fight when it’s already taken root in you and refuses to let go.

There’s more to it, now, something more complicated, more personal than just a cup of coffee and a blog in the making. I just left a great guy behind for one who drives me crazy; I just walked away from a new possibility to instead ride that same old dead horse: a nag too broken to run, let alone go anywhere. Damn. I haven’t had a cigarette in a long time, but right now? I could really use a damned Sampoerna. Djarum Black would be even better.

We fought the night before, the ex and I. He still doesn’t know why I’m sulking and depressed. I still don’t know why I let myself care that it’s driving him nuts that I went out with another guy. We’ll talk it out anyway, and then go back to being “friends”. Friends who kiss like the world is ending tomorrow, who hurt each other just from wanting, who keep fencing around each other and yet flinching back every time we start to get close - coming up with a million reasons why we shouldn’t and ignoring the most blatantly, painfully obvious reason why we should.

It’s stupid. It’s impractical. It’s illogical. It’s nothing to do with chemistry; if it was just chemistry, I’d probably be with Steve right now instead of wondering bitterly, eyes stinging and throat tight, why I brushed him off because I couldn’t stop thinking about a guy who can piss me off without even being in my general vicinity. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve done in a long time.

And it hurts like hell, but it’s what feels right.

Yet even as that light changes and the crosswalk signal gives me the go-ahead, telling me that I’m that much closer to home and that much closer to him, I wonder:

How stupid can I possibly be?

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