SEEING RED (PART 2)
Last time I used this title, it had a double meaning. It still does.

First of all, my uterus continues to hijack my body & hold it hostage. There is no longer any discernible pattern to when I bleed, nor for how long or how profusely.

Now to the other Red. On Thursday I won tickets to a Friday concert. So I sent out a mass email to my local friends (including Red) asking if anyone wanted to go with me. My loyal concert friend was the first to respond, as she usually is. So we agreed to go to the show together.

About an hour later I get an email from Red telling me that he's going to be in the city that day and he would love to go with me. I shot him an email back that sorry, I'd already promised someone else the ticket. But I had a couple of hours in between work and concert to kill, and if he was going to be in the city I'd meet with him then.

I went home that night & began a mad rush, during which I dyed my hair and fished one of my nicest tops out of the laundry and hand-washed it. On the way into work the next morning I did my nails on the bus. Toward the end of the work day I scrubbed my face clean in the ladies' room and completely did my makeup. I even spritzed on a little perfume.

We met in an area not far from the venue & went to a tiny restaurant. He was wearing jeans & dirty sneakers. It didn't appear as though he was dressing for a special occasion. Since I was planning to eat at the concert venue, I just had a small soft drink while he noshed on an appetizer.

Since I have a tendency to monopolize conversations, and since he tends to respond to emails in monosyllables, I kept quiet and let him do most of the talking. I liked some of the things he had to say, but not all of them. He told me that when we had originally met, his job was sucking him dry & he just wasn't in a place to take on more in his life. But now that he's lost his job (which he now believes was the wrong job for him), he very much wants to have more culture in his life. And he wants me to be his concierge (his word, not mine). He also mentioned at other points during the conversation that he'd taken acting classes at some point, and that he's currently singing in a choir. These things are all pluses as far as I'm concerned. Live music is so much a part of my identity that any man with whom I enter into a relationship needs to understand and support that. He also said that his godson lives sorta kinda near where I live, and that there's a music venue near there. He told me that if there was anything playing there that I would recommend, he'd be happy to pick me up & take me there. So he obviously DOES want to see me again.

He also told me a story about going to see an artist who's very much a social activist, and how he didn't like sitting in the audience being surrounded by "hippie liberals". Bad move. You don't speak disparagingly about hippie liberals in NYC, not without looking over your shoulder first. That's like going south of the Manson-Nixon line & cracking wise about Bible-thumpers.

Then when it came time to leave he goes to pay with a card, despite signs all over the place that say "Cash Only". He had NO cash on him, so I had to pay the bill. In his defense, we did walk to an ATM & he immediately paid me back.

It's just as well that he didn't go with me to the show. The show sucked, & by the end of the night I was exhausted & cranky.

So...we managed to spend an hour together without any major disasters. He does apparently want to see me again, although it's unclear at this point what his motivation is for wanting that. If we do end up spending a significant amount of time together we're obviously going to have some major political disagreements. And the pay fiasco was not cool, although he made up for it.

So he's not perfect. No one is. And I have no right to expect perfection when I'm not capable of offering it in return. What I have to figure out now is where his imperfections lie and whether I can live with those imperfections. He in turn has to do the same with me.
- posted by Pat @ 4:10 PM