The CFO (Redux)

From the Single in the City archives (2/2/09):

"So....we left it with a kiss and a goodnight and I wrote him a note that night to say thanks.....but I haven't heard back yet. Not worried about it, either, and that itself is a weight off. Really. It seems important that we had a reunion....for me to realize that I still liked being with him but could live without him."

I know I wanted to tell you yesterday all about the boy from San Francisco, who dominated the weekend and deserved the space.

But I didn't mean to not tell you the details of my CFO date on Sunday afternoon, our first since November 2009.

(We reconnected via e-mail after I thought July 4th was his birthday -- it isn't -- and wrote to wish him a happy one.)

I saw his apartment, saw photos of his 2 sons for the first time ever (one recently graduated from college and one from high school), and he gave me the book I picked up while browsing his bookshelf, not expecting its return.   We then cruised out towards the Lynn Woods Reservation for pajama brunch at the place of his longtime female friend.   Him indeed wearing pajamas. Me too, recalling this is how he rolls: taking one woman he used to date to a party given by another woman he used to date -- everyone wearing pajamas, everyone totally fine with everything.

Brunch was decadent and tasty and the afternoon quite nice.   The CFO still oozes joie de vivre and ranks as a gregarious and giving conversationalist. Unchanged in his conviction that he's already been married and raised his kids and wants to date as many women as he has time and energy for without commitment. Still as frank as ever about his (still) varied dating life and skilled at drawing frank details about sex and other assorted wildness out of mine.

What our "date" came down to be was the equivalent of a couple hours of road-trip girlfriend chat. He asked for my take on perplexing females in their 50s. I bemoaned men in their 40s who had never settled down and didn't seem to ever want to. He drove me home and we left it with a kiss and a goodnight again -- followed with a solid, lingering hug -- and I went off to go running and watch the sunset with the boy from San Francisco. It was the CFO who wrote me later that night, saying thanks for making the date. We haven't (yet) made another.

With all due respect to my past self, it amuses me now to read how I wrote about the CFO in 2009 with such heartbreak because we weren't working.  (We certainly wouldn't work today, either, despite his being a guy who commits to reading the Sunday Times cover to cover.)  Three years younger, yes.  But that level of naïveté doesn't feel like an emotion I remember having. 

Of course, though, I did.

Am I more laid-back since then? More circumspect? More seasoned?

Maybe more of a realist, most of all?