I’m always amazed at how quickly life can change from one day to the next, after being reliable and somewhat stagnant and predictable for the longest time, too. What happened over the past month, and how I handled all of it, really means that I am truly ready for anything!
Life has definitely thrown me some curve balls these past three weeks.
For starters, my boyfriend B and I broke it off (via text, mind you, and refused to meet with me face to face to discuss) on April 1st – a mutual agreement, only through texting – with no actual face to face conversation for nearly a week leading up to that mutual decision, and I’m guessing we will never get to meet to discuss the end of our nearly 2 years together, which saddens me, but like always and out of self-preservation and neccessity – – I’ll get over it.
Fast forward to a few days later… Saturday the 6th. I was headed with my Lyft passenger Damian to his dropoff point and a woman ran her stop light and smashed right into my 6 month old Kia Soul. Life happened, quickly, and then in slow motion just then. Four hours later, after the cop had arrived and we’d made all our obligatory phone calls (and my passenger, our only witness, skipped out on the whole thing), I drove home in my partially damaged car and just felt so depressed.
Actually, I had intended to meet up with a new friend for coffee an hour or so after the accident, and had to cancel on him. A little depressed and sad, I began chatting with dudes in the dating app I use and suddenly, there was this man named Joe – who didn’t have a profile picture but kept texting me, telling me how handsome I was and that he wanted to meet up for lunch or what have you.
His profile said: Latin, 6 ft tall, 300 lbs, and a heart of gold.
I had fresh car crash anxiety, and was already feeling a little lonely after five days of being single. So I said yes.
We met for breakfast across the street from where I live (didn’t want to drive my freshly wrecked car), and Joe and I met. We were both blown away. We clicked almost instantly, conversation was great, and suddenly, he plopped down beside me on the bench from his chair and put his arms around me. I’m a little awkward on PDA’s, having grown up in the Bible belt and feeling like a second class citizen as a gay man well into my mid-20’s. So here I was at 43, with a big lumbering latino guy named Joe with his arms all over me. It was a little weird, to say the least. That should have been a sign though.
Yes, a sign.
A week passed. Joe had already been to my place a few times and spent the night one night, in which he proceeded to touch me constantly with his legs, and I got zero sleep. On top of that, his imperfections began to rise to the top, and all I could see suddenly were his bad sleeping habits, his possessiveness, and how angry he got when he didn’t get his way.
He’d brought over some groceries the night before (about $100 worth, by the looks of it), and had even left some clothes here and a toothbrush and hair brush in the bathroom, like he was already moving in. I know he lived with his Mother in her trailer about 30 minutes outside of town, and seemed to be moving very very quickly. “I don’t want to be a rebound,” he told me one night. “You sure I’m not a rebound?”
A great thing about Joe is that he was actually very considerate and had the best manners, usually. I know that he meant well, and he was definitely cute for a husky guy, but there was just something behind those eyes – a kind of impatient loneliness – a need to be in my arms at all times, and after awhile, I just felt like I wanted my bed back.
Suddenly, Joe brought up marriage on the 5th day, and he asked me to “really really think about” he and I while he worked one of his typical 12+ hour days that Saturday. He was going to come back over after work, and I pleaded with him to go home and rest since he’d worked two 12 hour plus days back to back. “Ok then,” was all he texted, and nothing more, which was unusual for him. On Sunday, we didn’t talk all day, and then he texted me on Sunday ‘Are you mad? What’s going on? Do you want to break up?’
“Yes,” I responded. “I don’t think this is going to work. I need some time alone, I don’t want you to be a rebound, and you’re a great guy, Joe, I’m just not ready.”
The problem is… I was ready. Sort of. (Maybe in a few months or a year.) I want to be single, I want to be alone and have time to breathe and be able to sleep without some 300 pound dude constantly touching me. It’s funny how I asked the universe for someone to come into my life who was the opposite of my ex B, and boy was Joe the exact opposite! Super communicative, very emotional, a little anti-social and lumbering, and he wore his heart on his sleeve, kind of like me.
And here I am, single, on April 19th.
For now, I couldn’t be happier.
And I’m closing the door again.
I think I’m done.
BB
Ballistik Coffee Boy. 
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