Hello darling, putting my arms around you, kissing you hello. Another day, another date, another first in a chain restaurant, Panini Bread (or whatever it's called). He and I sat in a pair of armchairs by a plateglass window overlooking the parking lot and chatted, mostly about how the physical landscape has changed so much over the decades, and how everything we had worked so hard for -- . It was a dispiriting date, he's a nice guy, but there was no spark between us. I don't mean to be unkind, it's just me typing, but it was like trying to light a campfire on a soggy day -- it simply isn't going to instantly catch & kindle & burst into delightful, crackling, self-sustaining flame, the more one throws on more & more winsomely conversational fuel. It's totally okay. I am getting really good about meeting some of these men, and then in no uncertain terms (though as kindly as possible, of course) letting them know that it won't work out for me. I knew it couldn't, it just wasn't my -- I don't know, habitat, meeting in a place like that. And no, I don't mean to sound snobbish, it's just that I am a romantic, and I'm not inured to the hardscaped corporatized realm -- and have no wish to be.

Anyway, he & I cordially parted company. My head isn't spinning anymore with too-many posts responded to at one time. There's one in the wings, and I know truly nothing about him, except that he has a very modest yet devastating way with words in our brief but eloquent exchanges. Yesterday evening, he charmed the hell out of me when out of the blue he sent a message saying that while he & I haven't communicated much at all, he senses about me, among a few qualities he mentioned, that -- "you seem like a very pleasant person."

Which sounds like the most innocuous, deadpan, noncommittal utterance there could hardly be -- but a lighted match of wonderful associations flared for me -- I instantly connected it with one of my very favorite poems, My Erotic Double, by "local" eminence grise, John Ashbery.

You seem like a very pleasant person.

(I need you as I need salt on my food.)

I said it but I can hide it. But I choose not to.
Thank you. You are a very pleasant person.
Thank you. You are too.

Sweetheart, there were so many other inputs too. I returned home, following back roads snaking southward along the west side of the river - I simply didn't feel like getting back on the Berkshire Spur. At "Panini" I had bought my own coffee, and a loaf of bread. I am truly a cheap date, except from D's point of view -- if I'm not interested -- well, I didn't even want him to buy me a cup of coffee. And he didn't. And so we didn't. (Mr. Titf*cker the other day seemed to begrudge, perhaps, the thimbleful of pinot grigio at the corporate watering hole -- wow!! are you kidding? I mean -- I don't know what I mean -- there's always an economic component -- and yet you're not paying, or willing to pay, for a prostitute, and so -- because I'm a "good girl" - we basically 'go dutch?'" I've never understood that, my entire life -- there has rarely ever been in my life, a man who freely, gladly, 'but of course' with an indifferent shrug, picked up the tab.

So -- no, I paid for my own cup of coffee today. Which is fine. A whole lot of us, at our age, and income brackets, and expectations from life, are feeling squeezed.

Mister "you seem like a very pleasant person" -- I haven't met him yet. And so I tried to check out possible congenial places where he & I might meet, for lunch or coffee. There isn't much around here -- at the traffic circle where 9 & 9H meet, an effulgence of the usual fast-foods -- not, to my mind, ever an auspicious place to meet - but who knows? No, nothing good, in that vein, at least for me, could ever come from meeting at a fastfood chain the likes of which I gave up - seriously - at the New Millenium.

Anyway, I'm just going on & on here --- and sorry -- no great finish.

Wait, no, I should concentrate
dearest - my love - wherever you are on this Friday evening --- or perhaps it's past midnight where you are -- well who knows?

Oh dearest love
I would have given anything -- anything at all
if it had been you
sweet delightful adorable beloved you
sitting cattycorner so near
next to me
where everyone could see
and everyone could see
and I wouldn't have gingerly backpedaled
conversationally
I would have absolutely planted the most luscious
obscene loving kiss on your beautiful adoring self
and I would have taken up the multigrain thick-sliced loaf
in paper bag that I had purchased
and I would have said
are we done here?
because darling -- oh my sweetest darling love ---
touching knees as we had been in that lit corner alcove --
isn't there somewhere we can go?