magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

i dreamt i was living in an apartment with bret and a girl whom one of us was dating (although i can't recall which). another girl took over the apartment and redecorated the whole thing (walls, ceilings, floors) with these dark grey, geometrically embossed tiles.

i decided that i couldn't live there anymore and was walking down the street when i came across a billboard that was being taken down. it was made up of six or eight giant, flat, magnetic pieces, like the advertising signs that you can stick on a car door. i thought it would be cool to have the pieces, and so was trying to pick them all up and take them with me.

the girl that bret and i had been living with came along and she was headed out to dinner or a movie or something, and asked if i'd like to come. and then we were indoors, and i said sure, but let me grab my keys.

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er!n called around noon, said she was working 'til four or five, but would come by afterwards. spent the next couple of hours a bit anxious. she called again around 530, said her mom was giving her a hard time about the car, and she couldn't come. i said how about i come to see you then?

so i drove into bristol and er!n and i went out to get something to eat, and we ended up eating at a japanese restaurant in west hartford that i had been curious about. it was pretty good.

afterwards i asked what now? and she said you decide, you missed it, i spent seven months being decisive. so i drove down random streets based on their name or the way they looked and ended up near this little rock sculpture park place where we had hung out before, and she pointed it out, and there was a parking place, so i stopped.

and we hung out there for a while, and my shoes declared war on me. and then we walked through bushnell park and spend some time near the big scenic hartford arch. and then wandered around the other half of the park, in front of the capitol. and ended up sitting on the pavilion stage down near the end of it.

we had been acting more and more intimate over the course of the evening, and sitting there, we kissed. we sat there for quite a while, although i felt aware from time to time that even though it was dark and no one was around, we were sitting on a stage, in a pretty public place.

when my legs couldn't take sitting anymore we got up and wandered back to my car. we drove back to er!n's house and cuddled for a while more. and eventually she said: "i want you to talk to me. i want you to explain what we mean to you." and i was quiet for a long time. and then i said "well, i'll try to explain, and without poetry, which usually makes explanations easier, but takes longer."

and so i said that before i left for austin i was sorta starting to get emotionally attached, and it made leaving difficult, but i did it anyway. and how while i was in austin we had drifted, and felt very distant at times. and when she had moved to boston that emotional attachment had really dissolved.

i said that while in austin i had something of a relationship with q, although i knew that in the long run i could never really fit myself into her lifestyle, and that i hadn't had my normal sort of emotional involvement.

i talked about how when spending time with sonali, a bunch of old feelings, some of which i hadn't even been fully aware of, resurfaced. and that i knew that for a number of reasons sonali and i would probably never be more than good friends.

i told her that recently i had felt that she and i would likely never be exactly what i was looking for either. that i had formulated a number of different possible scenarios: that we'd be nothing more than friends, which already seemed out. that we'd just accept this for as long as it lasts. or that i'd just pretend that this relationship could be more than it was likely to be, and maybe it would become so.

i told her that i didn't know where exactly that left us, but that things, for the moment anyway, felt kinda right.

she was quite for a long time. until i asked for her thoughts/feelings/reactions. she had said that when i first called to say that i was back in connecticut, her initial reaction was to avoid me. she told me that this was because she knew i had a propensity for getting hung up.

she told me that while i was in austin, after a long time, she had dated a little, and that that fact made her think about how poorly we communicate. (i had sorta suspected this, either out of some sense of reading between the lines, or out of a fear/hope that she'd find someone else, or out of a projection of my own relationship with q.)

parting, we kissed goodnight, she said "don't worry, this isn't the final word. i'll see you again soon."