(no I can't read his) Poker Face

Ok so back to the actual story. PF comes over and I pretty much give the speech verbatim like I typed it out. [Alex C: I thought about doing it after dinner, but it was weighing on my mind so heavily I just wanted to get it off my chest]

He nodded a lot and said he understood that I was new to all this and wanted to try out more stuff before settling down, and he was comfortable moving slower. His actual paraphrase was "got it, you don't belong to anyone", which sounded a little more to the point, but... whatever works, I guess.

After the talk we went to a cool tapas joint in Chelsea, but there was a crazy wait so while we were waiting we walked up to the new High Line park here, which is awesome. Among other things, it's a really popular make out spot for gay couples, so... PF and I did that a bit. Then we went back to the restaurant and our table was ready- we got really good tapas and split a cheap bottle of Jumilla wine. It was really a great meal and conversation was great and everything. We got back to my place and had a really intense oral session that was really hot and took a shower together, and then went to sleep. Around 2am, though, I woke up a bit and noticed PF was still awake, and he said he was just having a bit of trouble sleeping, and around 5am I woke up again to him getting dressed. He said he just wasn't feeling well and thought he should head home, so I said ok and saw him out. The next morning I texted him to see if he was feeling better and he said he actually took the day off work, and it didn't have anything to do with the conversation or anything. I was as up front and honest as I could be with him, so even though I thought him leaving early on Wednesday was a little weird, I'll take what he says at face value; other than that everything on our date was great.

We have plans to get dinner tomorrow, and hopefully he'll have processed it all more and maybe we'll talk about it more, but despite the little apprehensions, I am still looking forward to the date!

An ominous portent?

Alternative Title: "Oops, I did it again".

[So all this stuff happened on Wednesday, but between having the talk, training for the half-marathon, and dinging 80 in World of Warcraft, I have no time to post!]

So a little background- during my posting hiatus at the end of february, the first guy I hooked up with was this guy I met at a bar and we hit it off, and whatever. He was a little younger than me (24), which given my 0 sexual experience seemed like a good match. On the 3rd date (we had fooled around but not had sex), he asked me "where is this going?" And knowing that I wasn't ready for a relationship, I told him I was just looking to fool around and not looking for a relationship, and he was, so things ended there. For the sake of anonymity we'll call him D.

So, I was prepping for my date and talk with PokerFace on Wednesday, and literally 10 minutes before PokerFace arrives, D calls me and is just chatting about his life and his work and whatever, and I'm totally confused. We've barely spoken at all since February, and he left cause he wants a relationship, and all of a sudden he's just calling me to hang out? Especially given that I was expecting PF over and was still going over the talk in my mind, I kind of just let him know that nothing had really changed since last time, but if he wanted to hang out as friends that would be cool. But... it was just weird timing right? This is pretty much the only other guy I've ever gone on more than 2 dates with, and the first guy I had to have a talk with of any kind. I couldn't tell if this was a good sign (hey I was mature in that conversation too and no one got hurt!) or a bad sign (apparently the last time I had this talk, it didn't stick).

Crap, now I'm late for work. I'll get to the post-talk with PokerFace in another post later today.

The Talk

Well Poker Face is coming over in about 2 hours and I am waiting for my iPhone software to download and I'm going to go for a quick run before he gets here, but I thought I'd lay out my points from before into a planned script for tonight. It's not that I want to give a canned speech, but I know I'm going to get nervous when he gets here and there are some key points that I don't want to miss so here goes. Also some of these

"Hey- before we go to dinner, there's something I wanted to talk about. I have something on my mind and I kind of need to get it off my chest, so just hear me out here.

So, I don't know if you realized this, but during dinner on Sunday with your co-workers you were telling this story and you called me your boyfriend. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not like totally against that, it just kind of startled me because we've never really talked about that, so it was kind of a shock. To be honest, it wasn't just that, it was also all the talks about rafting trips and what our plans were for pride and 4th of July and stuff. I just felt like suddenly everything is moving faster than I thought and I don't know if I'm ready for it. So the thing is, I really like you, but I just came out 4 months ago really, and I'm turning 30 at the end of this year. This probably sounds selfish, but the thing is, this is my only chance to be a young, single gay man, and I had my own plans for this summer that I was looking forward to.

I really like you, and I thought this was going really good, just keeping it casual and going slow, but I know that probably wasn't really fair to you- and instead of having a mature conversation with you about our relationship, I just kind of let it go on without talking about it. I thought about it after Sunday and having a boyfriend does sound really great and it's something I want eventually, but I just know that right now I don't have the maturity for that, and I can't rush that. I am still at the phase where I want to be able to go out with my friends to a club, and flirt with the bartender or a cute guy if I want, and not feel guilty about that. I know that makes me sound like I want it all, but that's really all I'm capable of right now.

I totally get it if this is not what you want or if you think I led you on. I mean, you came out 8 years ago, and probably went through all this a long time ago and you're in a really different space than me. If you're not totally disgusted by me, I still want to date you- and after the summer or so, maybe we could reevaluate things and see where we are.

So, that's it, I just had to let you know where I am, emotionally and stuff.

[Q&A period goes here]

[If he still wants to have dinner with me, then that goes here]

[If that goes, well, more sex]."

And that's where my my mind goes of course. I wonder if he's seen that doctor yet...