9/17/96 - Off The Deep End

9/17/96 - 1810 Chapala

It's only a matter of time for one of us to say the L-word. This is scaring the hell out of me, and I'm trying to figure out whether it's because it's too quick (just like with Ben), or whether I don't want to fall in love because I'm moving.

I'm not even 100% sure it's love. When he says he feels more connected to me than he has with anyone, including his boyfriend of five years, I'm not sure I can honestly reciprocate.

He's moving too fast. He mentioned wanting me to go to the Esperanto conference in Australia next July, for God's sake. No, I just can't do this. Am I crazy, running off to join the circus? Or, rather, which is more like running off to j. the c.: moving to S.F. on a wing and a prayer, or falling in love (if that's what it is) within a week?

Well, I said I was tired of the same old routine. Be careful what you wish for...

[Esperanto?! You should know that during my first couple of years at UC Santa Barbara, I was a linguistics major. The relatedness, development and variety of languages fascinated me thruout childhood, and it seemed like an obvious choice. It turns out to be a fairly rigorous social science, and my misty brain was unable/unwilling to impose the discipline required. I switched to English, and had a bit more success, before the whole thing crashed and burned. But I still have an amateur interest in linguistics.]

[When I found out Gary was into Esperanto (yes, even then I knew how geeky that sounded), my eyes and heart lit up. Ben wouldn't have known an Indo-European language from an Indonesian restuarant. Have I made sufficiently clear my basic attraction to men less educated than I am, which I then hold against them? Gary was more educated than my usual, so, in reaction to some of the elitist thoughts I'd been having about the men I'd been dating, I jumped at the opportunity.]

[Gary Grosse. My most intense "falling" between Ben and my current partner John. You may have noticed that I'm not big on physical description, but I feel like I owe Gary a bit more. He was tall and thin and lean, not a speck of fat. Lovely dark, wavy hair and intense, sincere blue eyes. Mid-thirties, angularly handsome, not "model" cute. The first time I saw him (at that 4th of July party), he was wearing lycra cycling shorts, and he had a cyclist's physique. A goatee, but everyone had a goatee in the mid-90's (I, and a larger percentage of San Franciscans, have yet to eschew the look). And up for anything, sexually.]

[Gary was also spiritual in ways with which I wasn't comfortable. He was trying to "find himself," and had more self-help and self-actualization books on his shelf than anyone I'd ever met. He was a Course in Miracles aficionado, and thought Marianne Williamson was brilliant. He wanted kids (liked the name Ashley, eeeeewwwww), a dog, the whole domestic catastrophe. He and his ex, Richard, were still very close, in a way that found a little creepy. There'd be drunken, sobbing messages on Gary's machine from Richard, or just long, rambling messages about how Richard's day went.]

[I've heard that the thing that you most love about someone is the thing you will most come to hate. I loved Gary's up-for-anything open-mindedness. However, he was so open-minded that his brain would often fall out. No discrimination, no healthy skepticism, little irony. Naive, and sweet, and impossible.]

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