Forgiveness

At 2:53 this morning I was lying in bed, listening to the BBC and talking with C-2.  On the phone.

I had started it at 2:15,  texting.  For the second straight night, I was unable to relax into sleep.  C-2 is the only one appropriate for this situation, as someone who, as a rule, doesn't go to bed before 4 and tends to be game for anything.  Indeed, he was on his way home from someplace, and after a few messages he dialed in, electing (thank God) not to text and drive.

C-2 and I have known each other for 22 months and this might have been our first real phone conversation.  And save our online Scrabble match, we have rarely even been in touch since the Night of Raucous Kissing.  He works in congressional politics.  The fall season was insane and I understood the delay but didn't love it.  I especially didn't love not being able to kiss him any time in the past 7 weeks.  I was waiting for November 4 and its aftershocks to fade off.

So, sigh, this morning he he tells me he's leaving town on Tuesday to work elections not in this state, not anywhere near this state.  He has sublet an apartment there.  He'll be gone a minimum of 3 months.  More like 5 months if the elections succeed for his candidates.

Which means that just as he was becoming ostensibly more available he became unequivocally not available.

Which unequivocally means I shouldn't hang my hat anywhere near any expectations for him. Which I have in some ways always known.

But it's difficult.  I've liked C-2 a lot, since our first exchange when he dared me to go, in the middle of a February night, to the bar in my pajamas. We were IM buddies. Then late-night Guinness buddies.  Then awesome car-make-out buddies.  He's single. I'm single. We're near the same age.  We're both responsible and hard-working and are, on occasion, known to be insanely irresponsible.

(I recently told a friend that C-2 is someone with whom, if the stars aligned, I would want to be with. He has the elusive intangible that for reasons I can't explain, feels tangible about him.)

Back to this morning, when he said he really wanted to see me before he left. That I should evaluate my next 72 hours and figure out when I could spend it with him, and if I didn't he would harass me until I did. Said he was getting folks together to go out dancing in Central Square tonight and that I should come. Said, "I would really really like that if you did." 

And of course I am going to go dancing. I know I'm not required to jump when this man snaps, but I want to. I seem able to forgive him for anything (absences, moodiness, his need to have a drink before feeling comfortable enough to say anything sweet) in large part because I like kissing him. I'm thinking right now about the kissing. And the idea of the intangible that can draw people together. Trying to decide why I crave being with him when he gives me so many other reasons not to, and why I still want to even as he goes away for 5 months.

Dangerous, this.