Another Door Opens

36 - Cock tales

I’m all for sharing your feelings, but when those feelings have overt shades of obsessive, detached-from-reality stalker attached to them, I reconsider my stance on open and honest communication a little. And by a little, I mean, so much that I cancelled the date with a ‘Sorry, family emergency. I won’t be able to make it tonight’ text, and then felt so guilty for lying and not telling him straight up that that kind of approach to dating is actually so thoroughly disconcerting that I can’t imagine he’s going to have much success, and he should probably tone it back a little to have more of a chance.

I may be growing so disheartened by this whole process that I’m becoming seriously bitter, which is not an adjective I ever thought I would use to describe myself and it makes me feel like a bit of a failure, which on some level I do know is irrational, but today I’m finding hard to shake from my brain.

That’s probably why I agreed, self-destruction mode, to head out with Austin tonight instead. 

We’d been chatting a few days, and his date plans for tonight also fell through, so he asked whether I’d be interested in heading out and grabbing cocktails on such short notice, and my dismal outlook decided it was a better idea to get dressed up and head out than mope around wretchedly at home.

And so far, I’m actually not regretting it. Like, at all. I may even be having fun, though my perception of fun might be skewed given the plethora of non-fun I’ve been having out lately. But the key logic applied to my assessment is that he’s the first guy I’ve been out with that I haven’t just instantly been wishing was Miles instead.

He’s perhaps the most well dressed of all the dates I’ve been on, wearing tan slacks and a maroon button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to show a little skin, and his light brown hair is styled in a fade, with a hipsterish moustache that I never thought I’d ever be attracted to until now. It suits him, and I’m loving the way it moves when he smirks, which he has been often.

I think he finds me funny, or at least he’s been laughing at my jokes a lot and actually getting them, which is more than I can say for Izaac who I went out with last week who I’m not convinced even knew how to laugh at all, which is so sad. For him and for me, because I was a total hoot that night.

Austin asked about me, and showed a genuine interest in my answers, unlike the bloke I went out with the week beforehand who spoke excessively about himself. And he was happy to let me in on some details of his life in return without me having to pry, and actually seems really interesting. We don’t have a lot in common by the sounds of it, but it’s been kind of fun learning about the things he’s into, and he’s into a lot of different things. Film, art, electronic music made with something called modular synthesis.

Admittedly that part of it had me a little confused because it involves a lot of technical knowledge about music and sound, but he talked about it with such gusto and desire to have me understand that I’m finding myself wanting to know more. He’s clearly a story-teller and a natural educator, because the more he’s expanding on his answers, the more I’m actually committed to heading home and watching YouTube tutorials further explaining the difference between voltage control oscillators, filters and amplifiers, as well as the fundamental pros and cons of analog versus digital sound production.

I’ve never even heard these words before tonight. My only experience with anything relating to this whole subject has been heading to clubs and festivals when I was younger (and recently when I went out with Heath) and dancing to techno sets by DJs I don’t know, but Austin clearly does whenever I was able to recall some of the bigger events I’ve been to in the last decade.

I’m actually having a genuinely good time, and am reasonably sober too despite having been taken out to a cocktail bar. I had a couple when we first got there, but knowing I drove and therefore needed to be able to get behind the wheel of a car again, I swapped over to mocktails shortly thereafter, which, again, were not at all disappointing seeing as this place apparently stocked quite a few non-alcoholic spirits and liquors, which I didn’t even know existed before heading here.