back on my old blog, the one i wrote when i was 19 and anorexic (and god, reading it back i really do sound so young), i made a post titled "the pleasures of connection" when i met someone new unexpectedly and hit it off with them. i suppose that's not very profound, but... it's what's come to mind lately.
i met someone new. no, this isn't an announcement of a new soulmate or that KW and i are breaking up, or anything like that. i'm not in love. not with anyone besides KW anyway. but... something interesting is happening. this is someone i've chatted with off and on online for a few years now. i'll call him IE. we spoke very frequently for a many months back in 2023/2024, before it kind of fizzled out. i helped talk him through calling off an engagement. we candidly talked about all sorts of subjects, including our respective relationships. in some ways we were familiar with each other's struggles, having experienced similar ones. it was always very mostly platonic. sure, there was some flirting, mostly on his part. he had some qualities i find attractive, if you describe my type you basically described him, but he was also a lil goofy looking and a couple years younger than me and like, we were just friends.
anyway, as i said, it fizzled out eventually. just sort of naturally drifted into talking less, and then hardly ever. for about a year, maybe? closer to a year and a half. and he lived abroad when we started talking, from the US but living in europe. he moved back to the US earlier this year, and wound up basing himself temporarily out of maine. he was coming down to the city for a couple events one weekend and was like hey if you're down we could meet up and hang out. and even though it'd been a bit since we regularly chatted i had every confidence that it'd be a fun, cool time. i really felt virtually no social anxiety about it, which is rare. i felt like we just had a guaranteed good rapport. and i was right! we got dinner and drinks when i was done with work on friday, and had a fantastic time. near the end of the night, after a few drinks on both our parts he asked pretty directly and respectfully, are we meeting up as a friend thing or like is something more on the table? because i'd told him in the past as online friends that KW and i had had some troubles in our sex life and also had been discussing open relationships, but those waters were uncharted for us, but the possibility was sort of abstractly there someday. and i knew he was attracted to me, and i think he figured on some level i was likely attracted to him too, but i wasn't sure tbh. so, y'know, fair play to IE to ask. i told him let's just hang out as friends, and he accepted that.
we parted ways on friday night with optimistically tentative plans for him to come out to my neighborhood for trivia on sunday. come sunday, those plans changed because of his timelines shifting, but i made an impulsive decision to go into the city for a couple hours to hang out with him sort of aimlessly, just wandering around chelsea/midtown with his camera. during our walk, i was aware sometimes of our hands brushing, of him teasing me that i couldn't be a hot girl if i didn't know plants, and him even telling me outright that he was trying to thread the needle of sufficiently downplaying his crush on me while still leaving it obvious. god, his boldness is so alien to me. anyway, this all contributed to a palpable vibe shift at the moment of farewell. there we were, on the corner of 14th and 8th, my old stomping ground, having hugged goodbye but both lingering, just kind of... looking at each other, so clear that neither of us wanted to end our time together when who knew how many months it might be til we got to see each other again. so clear that there could be a kiss between us, so clear we both felt it. eventually he hugged me one more time and planted a fat kiss on my cheek, and we finally said goodbye. i got on the bus to union square, and he went back up to his hotel for his date that night. emboldened by farewell, and partly driven, i suppose, to let him know that my telling him that friday was just as friends wasn't down to lack of interest, i texted him that he was much cuter in person than i had anticipated. and i guess that broke the barrier - now our mutual attraction was acknowledged. he tried to get me to turn around and come back, but that seemed unwise. so i continued home. he pitched the insane idea of me joining him for a sunrise photoshoot in DUMBO the next morning and i was like nah man that's not happening, and besides i have work. eventually we decided he'd come out to my neighborhood to grab lunch with me and see me one last time before he went back to maine. he said he wasn't sure why he so adamantly felt the need to see me again, but that he tries to listen to gut instincts.
i started to talk to KW that night, because after the almost almost kiss with IE, and with the irish guy last summer, clearly lingering in this "we've talked about being open but haven't pulled the trigger" zone is a recipe for disaster. i'm going to take something too far, and this isn't sustainable. but he was home from a long demanding work day on not enough sleep, so it wasn't really a good time for the whole conversation. but when i said that it's been confusing being in this position where two people have tried to kiss me and i'm really not sure if it's an option for me, he said he does think that's an option. but we left it there, bookmarked to return to with more bandwidth.
that night i had a dream in which KW told me after that conversation that he'd kissed someone else, and in my dream i kind of leapt straight over offense or hurt to "sweet, this means i can kiss IE at lunch tomorrow." and i woke up very disoriented by that whole thing having not happened at all, and therefore my conclusion not being true. it left me in a very strange headspace. and then i met him for a bagel on my lunch break. i don't usually even take a lunch break so he already had me breaking patterns for him. and he was waiting for me outside my local supermarket. i approached him and straight away, he kissed me. and i didn't stop him. i kissed him back, and not a little bit. i was quite in my head though, and it was so strange to be kissing someone who wasn't my partner of seven years. i was kind of yelling at myself in my own head that i wasn't sure this should be happening. after, we started walking toward the bagel place and both unsure of what to say. he said "yeah, i need to let the butterflies settle." and i thought to myself but did not say out loud "butterflies, huh? i felt that lower." because while i had not had butterflies and had mostly been going "!!!!!!????!!!" in my own head, there was definitely some kind of physical response occurring iykwim.
so we had bagels, and chatted for the better part of an hour, until reluctantly i had to get home and resume my work day, somehow, impossibly. we kissed one last time, chastely, at the train, before saying a final farewell so he could go back to maine and i could go back to my mundane monday.
but then we never stopped talking.
i talked to KW about the kiss that night, and that cracked the conversation about openness open properly. but clearly neither of us really knew where to begin. but one thing was clearly stated by both of us: our relationship as-is does not have a future. if we remain in a monogamous closed relationship, we will implode. neither of us are happy with our bedroom life, and it's going to lead to bad places unless we try something. yeah, openness might be catastrophic, but doing nothing would be heartbreaking. and god, i'd feel so bitter if something as "petty" as sex broke up such a fucking solid relationship. but... we didn't really get to the point of defining the parameters of an open relationship for us in a practical sense, but we had to sleep so we put a pin in it and knew we had to once again circle back to it at a later date. leaving things uncertain clearly doesn't work.
but after certain things and permissions being granted in my relationship when i was talking to someone online hot and heavy earlier this year, i've sort of been running with that as license to have some fun with IE over text, talking about some possible - and like actually possible? - future where KW and i have figured out what will work for us and i can actually like legitimately sleep with IE. and god, do i want to. GOD do i want to. the possibility is... so tantalizing. he's told me a couple times to come up to maine and see him. he's really trying to get me to do it. not in like a pushy or domineering way, but... he really does want me. how fucking phenomenal that feels after so long not feeling that way.
even talking not-sexually has just been intoxicating. it's hard to put my phone down. i've been so unproductive at work. it's so... fulfilling to get to hit it off with someone new. it's so hard to not get addicted to this feeling. why is learning about someone sometimes so much more satisfying and addictive and... a rush than actually knowing them in an intimate and sustained way? i suppose it's likely the possibility left in the unknown. the sort of dopamine hits of new levels of knowledge being uncovered with more conversation. i... don't know how to be smart about this. i should be smart about this. i'm feeling too many echoes of ZM/KW, even though the title is a callback to HB way back in the day.
what the fuck am i doing?
