Here in Katie’s Head

[I first drafted this entry back in August. I thought the second-to-last night of NaBloPoMo was a good occasion to revisit my draft and finish it off.]

A few months back a friend and sometimes-columnist asked me how many dateable guys I thought there were in Wichita.

My answer got edited out of her column. But I said 5. Because I’d decided to be a little pickier than in the past. Because I’d written off all the following categories:

1. Guys who are age inappropriate in either direction
2. Unemployed guys
3. Guys who have personality disorders
4. Guys who don’t get my sense of humor and are completely oblivious to the lightheartedness in posts like this
5. Wichitards (which is, of course, hypocritical; also, see #4)

So I had this brilliant idea: Move to greener (younger, hipper) pastures.

But I wasn’t in a huge rush because (a) being single for a more than a few months for the first time since I was 17 was actually pretty awesome and (b) I am paranoid that I can’t write for shit when I’m in a relationship.

And then a nice guy asked me out. Over email, in fact. Some guy who’d been commenting on my blog for years. And I ran over and told my columnist friend and she thought I was a freak for considering it. I told her I had nothing to lose, and if nothing else it was blog fodder. (This is how she and I excuse all questionable dating practices.) She accepted it once I framed it that way.

So he and I went out for dinner and ended up sitting and talking for a few hours without a single awkward pause. And I recited to myself, “But I don’t want a boyfriend right now.”

And we went on a few more dates and they were great too. And I recited to myself, “But I don’t want a boyfriend right now.”

I convinced myself that he was too nice for me. Inevitably I would break his heart because I am not so nice. And I kept reciting to myself, “Next time I will tell him that this isn’t going to go anywhere.”

But it was nice to spend time with someone kind and interesting who was going through a lot of the same early career issues that I was. Someone both fun and grounded. So I consented to another date. And another.

At last, someone who’s not the kind of guy who’ll IM me drunk after months of silence, cry about how things are going with his druggie stripper girlfriend and tell me I was the best sex he’d ever had. (We had sex?) I was done with the “artistic” (pothead) type. And now I was faced with this guy who was the anti-jerk, who was exactly what I want, yet I was fighting the impulse to cover my eyes and ears and wait for someone more destructive to come along.

All at once — in the middle of a late night discussion about what the hell we were doing — I realized I was being a colossal wuss.

Being someone’s girlfriend did not have to carry all the baggage I was projecting onto the title of “girlfriend.” Not every relationship needs to involve exchanging “I love you”s within two weeks of the first date. Not every relationship has to start with true love forever. Maybe it could start with a simmer and take some time to reach a boil, instead of starting at a boil and quickly boiling over.

So I explained my fears and cautiously donned my girlfriend badge.

I quit telling myself that I wasn’t going to truly fall for him and that I’d soon start to feel smothered and freak out and leave. No, instead I lowered my guard and — thwack! — found myself lovestruck.

And now I walk around with this stupid grin all the time.

Meanwhile, columnist friend has found her own dateable guy who leaves her with a stupid grin. That leaves three left for the rest of Wichita. Good luck, ladies.

Posted: Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Category: Kyle, Wichita · Feed: RSS 2.0 · Trackback: URL