Fish Tale - pt. 2

The whirlwind begins...

So by my previous description, you may be wondering why on earth I'd be dating such a man... right? I certainly didn't paint a pretty picture, but at that time, I'd truly given up (yet again) on dating. After a summer of ricocheting from one Mr. Wrong to another to another, I realized that I'd lost all sense of direction. The funny thing was that I never really went looking for any of that... they all found me. Why does crazy seem to be drawn to me like a moth to a flame? I don't think this is the forum nor the blog subject to address it, but I do have my theories.

By mid-August, however, I'd had it with the crazies and decided to hang up my dating hat and head back up that mountain of solitude. I do this periodically... I'll over-date and then I'll stop entirely for many, many moons. This is a pattern that I've repeated... 20 months on the mountain, 18 months on the mountain, 14 months on the mountain... self-imposed celibacy. It's my way of clearing my head. Has it worked? Not really.

So there I was, about 7 weeks into my next retreat when I was hit with a triple proposal: a part-time job, free software and skill training, and a relationship. I'll admit that part of me worried that if I didn't accept the relationship, the other two offers may disappear. The urgency of his offer made me feel put on the spot, but I thought that maybe I could still control the progress of things if I agreed to go along for the ride. Little did I know that I would be lucky to be able to hold on with all the 180s this man would pull along the way. Control was something that I would never have in the presence of such a master manic control freak.

After I agreed to date him, our next day together was to be our first day of work. He explained then that there would be "employee hours" and "girlfriend hours" and that the two should never overlap. I thought it funny and asked what I should refer to myself as if I ever meet anyone... "Am I your significant assistant? Your executive other? Your girlfriend-in-training? Your girl Friday and your girlfriend Saturday? What?" This was something that never was resolved.

Because of the oddness of the situation, I decided that the best thing would be to take him before a not so impartial judge: Cully. Although any meeting of an ex-boyfriend would likely cause a new beau's blood to run cold, my new beau was a huge comic book dork, and I knew that the excuse to see the inner workings of a real studio would make him giddy like a little girl. Well, I didn't exactly know that, until I suggested it, then he might as well have had braids and tube socks, because the nervous giggles didn't cease. It was a surprise visit on Cully, and yeah, I put him on the spot by phoning while in the neighborhood and asking to come by, but he graciously allowed it.

Gigglepuss and I arrived at Gaijin Studios and he never stopped chattering... and the longer we were there, the more animated he became. I eventually dropped back to talk quietly with Cully, as we watched him blather on and on about old times and familiar stomping grounds with one of Cully's studio mates. Cully mentioned the animated behavior to me, which I agreed that he was quite a character and definitely bigger than life. Then as we were about to go, Cully did something unusual for him... he leaned a little closer to the new beau and dropped his friendly tone a bit to say, "Be good to her." A warning that did not go unnoticed and was talked about weeks and months later, with each successive retelling getting sterner and scarier than it really had been.

I met his roommate the next day, a young girl with whom Dean admitted to having a crush on when she was his student... but when I met her, it was clear that she was a lesbian. Actually, I couldn't believe that he was so blind, but I guess when someone has their head so far up their own ass, they don't really see these things. I know Dean had been pussyfooting (so to speak) around asking me if I had a problem with him living with a girl, and finally at the end of our third workday together, he asked. I truthfully told him that I didn't, because she was extremely sweet and genuine and I added that maybe he should be more concerned that she'd dig me more than him. He was still truly clueless.

Since we were on the subject, that's when I brought up the person who didn't sit well with me... the girl he'd gone on several dates with and spent his whole drive from Miami talking to on the phone. I was leaving that afternoon and I was not going to see him for 12 days, because our schedules had pre-existing priorities, and he was flying out to New York City to train folks at ABC (yeah, the network) that Saturday through the following weekend. Unfortunately, the Miami chick was coming in the next afternoon and I wouldn't be there. She was staying the night on her way across the country to resettle in Portland, with cat and all of belongings in tow, and with no job or place to land when she got there. I saw this as a potential pitfall... here he was in a big, empty apartment... and here she comes with all her stuff. If she had second thoughts, which as I later found out she actually was having, then it could be so easy for her to stay. And although he didn't tell me at the time, she's already discussed with him the possibility of Portland not working out and Atlanta being her next choice.

I flat out told him that if she moved in, I would tell him to have a nice time and he'd not see me again, because I had nothing invested and could easily walk away. It was all up to him.

From his later description of the evening, he must've acted like a bigger nutjob than usual, because he was terrified he'd mess up. As soon as she walked through the door, he blurted out, "I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND!" Now, I don't know if that is true, but he sure sold that version of the story. I know that he was too neurotic for anything to have happened, so I believed his story. He claimed that the next day he helped her gather her stuff and basically pushed her out the door. Because he basically had pushed me out the door the last time we were together, thanks to a kiss that went on longer than 30 seconds and he must've been getting thoughts, I could imagine him doing something similar with her.

Back up, you say? Yes, he literally pushed me out the door because of a kiss.

The next week and a half was pretty uneventful. Dean called regularly to check in with me and tell me about the folks at ABC and about the tours he was getting of various show sets. He also told me that although he had a long haul getting from his parents' apartment in the Bronx to Manhattan every morning and evening, he did love that he could walk three blocks, get a knish, eat it for the next 3 blocks, then find another place selling knishes and get another... he'd usually get at least 3 before he hit the subway... each way. I thought he was exaggerating, but time would later bear this out to be quite possible with this man.

Oh, wait. Did I say it was uneventful? No, of course it wasn't... because as soon as he got to his parents house, he decided to show them and his brother some pictures of his "new girlfriend"... but without telling me, he decided to show them my Flickr site as a slideshow.

How could that be funny? Here's how.

When he returned from NYC, we had just 2 days together - which were work days, of course - before he was headed out of state yet again... this time he was driving to a wedding in Orlando. He'd previously asked if I wanted to be his date; but because he asked before I'd ever met him and he was still living in South Florida, I said "no thanks, that'd be weird." After we met, however, I asked if he still wanted a date to that wedding... within minutes he was calling and booking a flight for me to come in for that day. Meanwhile, he was driving down several days early, to be part of the pre-wedding festivities, as a member of the wedding party.

Because he was who he was, he couldn't just get up in the morning and go. Instead, he puttered around and worked on motion graphics stuff, packed, went to the store to buy gifts and things for his friends in Florida, then didn't get on the road until about 6pm... just in time to be stuck in Atlanta's rush hour traffic. The delays made him decide to stay at a hotel in Lake City, Florida, rather than continue driving into the wee hours of the night. If you read the blog that I posted about it, then you'd were probably beginning to believe I was dating George Costanza. (And you wouldn't have been too far off.)

Did I mention yet what role he was playing in the wedding party? He was a bridesmaid, actually. I found this endlessly hilarious, but he seemed only increasingly bothered by his bridesmaid status, especially when I retold the story of how one of the groomsmen was seating me and asked if I was friend with the groom or the bride, and I replied, "Neither. I'm here as a date of one of the bridesmaids." As his eyebrows rose, I had to tell him the rest of the story. He had a good laugh, but Dean thought that I enjoyed telling that story just a little too much.

The wedding was... well, it was a typical wedding. Interestingly, his friend (the bride) pulled me aside at one point to ask me to "be gentle with him," because he had "been through so much already." I told her that she had nothing to worry about with me... too bad she didn't pull him aside and tell him to "not be such a douche." Maybe it would have helped.

She was a long-pined for crush of his youth and was the second of such girls in his life that I was to meet... another two in Atlanta he managed to keep me from ever meeting, despite me asking repeatedly... and the BIG ONE that he never stopped talking about round the clock would be introduced to me later in another Florida visit. It seemed that there weren't any women in Dean's life whom he didn't have some huge crush on at some point or another. Now, we all have our crushes and unrequited flames, but usually we've put them in their proper perspective once we hit our 30s. Not Dean... he gushed over them like I've never seen before or since.

When the wedding ended, we had a moment of truth ahead of us: a shared hotel room. Now backing up a bit, when he booked the plane ticket for me, we also booked the hotel room together. First, he wanted separate rooms, which I thought was too pricey and just plain ridiculous. So then he insisted that we would have double beds, instead of one king. It turned out that all of those suites were taken, so the only ones left were the suites with singular kings. He reluctantly agreed to book the room, but swore "NOTHING WILL HAPPEN!"

I thought it would be a good test of will power. We'd been dating for only about 3 weeks and I did feel it was still too early, especially since he'd been out of town for 2 of those 3 weeks. I decided to make it easy on him and not do anything to upset the delicate balance... I went to bed dressed in nothing seductive and I kept to my side of the bed. Unfortunately, I hadn't planned anything beyond that, and despite all his previous protests and exclamations that nothing would happen, he went ahead and made something happen anyway. Caught a bit off guard, I didn't decline his advances, mostly because my libido is always up for some fun... although there was a part of me that had hoped things might be less stereotypical this time.

We hung around Orlando for one more day, visiting my old friends and then spending time in the village around Universal. The second night together, he started acting a bit strangely. One of the things that he said was, "I really don't want to disappoint you." That made my heart sink, and I told him, "Then just don't." I explained that it was my experience if a guy says those words, not only will he disappoint soon enough, but he also knows almost exactly how he's going to do it.

He snapped out of the low period a little, but the next day as we drove back to Atlanta, he grew quieter and quieter. The closer we got to Atlanta, the more withdrawn he seemed to get. He was driving straight to the Atlanta airport to drop me where I'd left my car and take my parking spot, so that he could hop on a plane to fly back to NYC yet again, this time to train folks at the National Association of Broadcasters for most of the next week. I thought at first that he was just starting to wish he wasn't leaving so soon... that he might miss me... so I tried to get him to talk about it, but I soon learned that I was mistaken. Dean finally broke his silence to announce that he regretted having sex in Orlando, because it ruined his whole plan... a plan that involved waiting until my birthday before crossing that bridge.

Let me clarify: We started dating at the very end of September, and my birthday is December 12th; so he wanted to wait approximately 12 weeks. But the waiting period wasn't the part I found amusing... it was his reason for wanting to wait was the best part.

"Because you said in one of your old blogs that you wanted sex for your birthday."

I couldn't help but laugh and replied, "(A) That was two years ago! (B) I'm sorry to tell you, but no sex is amazing enough to stand alone as a birthday present. And (C) I also asked for a pony or a trip to Prague in that same birthday blog, but I don't see you offering either of those!"

Despite the humor that I found in his lament, he didn't seem to cheer up and was visibly distressed. He was so distracted by this that he wasn't even interested in saying goodbye when we swapped car places and parted ways. This issue of "it ruined my plans" thing about sex would be a point of contention for him for the rest of the relationship.

The other bad omen that hit in October came when he finally returned from NYC. Our next day together was a workday again and he wanted to know where I was with the training (a series of cds that he'd created to let people train themselves, which he was making me go through from start to finish to edit them and work through them instead of him training me). I admitted my frustration in working with the software and it's lack of common sense. Final Cut Pro is pretty intuitive, but After Effects is not... not to mention that I was going nuts working on one little 5 second moment of imagery, rather than putting a story together. I told him that I thought I was most definitely an editor who wanted to use motion graphics on the side, but that I didn't think I could do what he did full-time for a living.

That was the first time I saw "the twitch." His upper lip began to twitch and although he was still smiling, his eyes looked enraged. He then said we needed to stop everything, because he had no use in his business or personal life for "just an editor." He proceeded to talk about how editors were monkeys who push buttons and that he wanted someone creative. The whole day came to a halt while he tried to reorganize his business plan and what he was going to do with me.

It was a strange moment. He instantly became cold and distant and started to treat me like I was a nuisance to him. I continued to talk to him through the day, telling him that I wanted to continue learning from him and maybe I'd change my mind, but I felt that it just wasn't sticking with me at all and that perhaps he could develop a new training program - one that other editors would need to learn from him. In this way, I could be his testing ground for what other post-production folks need out there. He finally agreed to such a plan, but not before acting as if I'd ruined everything for several hours.

Things between us seemed to calm down and resettle before the end of the month, but there were definitely some telling moments in those first 31 days that in hindsight really sum up the rest of the relationship and predicted the end.