Day in the Life

Morning.
So I’m dating again. Or maybe I should say I’m still dating. For anyone not paying attention—or, uh, not inside my head till now—I’ve been dating for, oh, let’s say NINE YEARS. Nine years with no cigar. Go ahead, throw me on the commitment-phobe line-up and trot out your analyses. There MAY have been several “the one” potentials in those years, but it never turned out that my “the one” thought I was his “the one” too, or hers as the case may have been.

Afternoon.
The funny thing about this post is that it started out on a high note, this morning, me giddy from Matt’s congratulations for my dating good fortune—finally! My roommate for two years, I endured Matt’s sex-with-loud-girlfriends in the next room while he endured the string of overly clingy men that found me one after the next. I mean, extraordinary cling. Fire blanket cling. I spent a lot of time giving the “I-don’t-see-the-long-term” speech as a result.

Imagine Matt’s empathetic thrill for the new, improved, anti-cling of Allen! Allen is like dryer-sheets for the love life. Allen makes you feel fresh and soft, AND static-free! We have a ridiculous fun date, he asks me out again, we live our lives in between, then go out and have another ridiculous fun night. Just last week we’re bolting into the ocean, moonlit and naked and so geared up on the rush of our spontaneity that the slippery, salty kisses take on breathless surprise.

Evening.
Tick tock the merry clock goes tick tock-ing all day.
Frick frock the flippin flop has launched me on my way.

Yep. By 3:30 today my stomach starts twisting like a sail in a storm from these few words: “Are you free this afternoon to talk?”

By 4:00, I’m free as no-static, free as no-cling, free as a Bounce sheet left in a Laundromat dryer.

The speech. It’s like currency. I spend it this time, you spend it next. And so on.