Long lost Valentines

This may be the most unoriginal phrase ever typed: Valentine's Day sucks when you are single.

I blame Valentine's Day, and all the hype about perfect gifts and romance for getting me thinking about past relationships. Even the Google doodle is tormenting us single folk.

Tonight I found myself thinking about old girlfriends, lost opportunities, past mistakes.

One woman in particular has been on my mind lately. While I have spend much of my dating life (when not single) in monogamous relationship -- at least the were monogamous as far as I knew -- there was one woman in my life who I think of as a lover, not a girlfriend. Perhaps that is because she was actually involved with someone else when we had our adventures. I never let myself think that a relationship was possible, even when she got to the point where she made it clear that is what she wanted with me.

So, I never intentionally put my heart into the relationship, but that is not to say I was not emotionally invested. The woman -- let's call her her Tracy -- and I shared an emotional intimacy I had never shared with a woman up to that point. We could talk about most anything. We shared fears and fantasies. We talked. Really talked.

Maybe that was because the relationship started as an online relationship. We talked on chat and on the phone long before we ever met. And for some reason, I find it much easier to confess my secrets at the keyboard rather than face-to-face.

One day, a few months ago, I got an email from Tracy out of the blue in honor of milestone. While we both moved on, long ago, it was great to hear from her. It seemed like old times. She asked a few questions in her message, and I wrote back. But there was no reply.

Blackness. A flash of bright light. Then blackness again. Only the lingering afterimage of the light remained, before fading away.

Things would not of worked with Tracy for many reasons, not least of which was that I was not ready. But I miss the friend. I miss the friendship. I miss the adventure and the daring taboo nature of it all.

I've been playing life safe for a while. Not sure I would recommend it. A crisis of confidence, perhaps. In love. In work. In play.

Valentine's Day is not for the timid of heart.

Yes, I miss Tracy. But perhaps as much as anything, I miss the me I was willing to be back then.

The longest goodbye

At various times, I've written posts lamenting the fact that so many people find this blog by doing searches looking for the answer to the question of how long it takes to get over someone. Frankly, I've been annoyed that this blog's Google image is that of a breakup blog. But maybe Google knows something that even I don't.

That's because here I am writing another breakup post.

Back shortly before I started this blog I had rekindled an online friendship with a woman I had met several years earlier. That relationship had suffered through a couple of prolonged separations, during which we both explored relationships in which we didn't need computers or cell phones to maintain contact.

After my failed engagement, I got back in touch with D. I felt I owed her an apology, because at one point my ex had used my online messenger account to reach out to D. The ex was extremely jealous and distrustful of my past, so she had initiated an online chat with D in and attempt to find out if I had been in touch with D since we started dating.

About a year later, after the breakup of the engagement, I realized that I had given up my friend for the sake of my relationship, but that relationship was dead and the ex was gone and I felt like I had betrayed my friend.

We started chatting again and eventually rekindled the friendship. In fact, D was a big factor in my recovery from the breakup of the failed engagement. She allowed me to talk about all the mixed emotions I was going through and gave me the benefit of her experiences with relationships. It was quite a while before felt emotionally ready to date again, but by the time I did I had realized that my feelings for D had evolved beyond friendship. And hers had too.

Unfortunately, we were still living a long distance apart.

We have had several failed attempts to get together. We seemed to be victims of bad timing. But six months ago an attempt to get together failed when D decided not to come for a visit at the last minute. For a while, it looked liked that would be the end. But we got past that, or seemed to, and talked through what happened. We talked daily and soon fell back into familiar habits. Our friendship had certainly survived, but our more intimate, romantic relationship had suffered some damage. How much we didn't know.

Meanwhile, pages on the calendar continued to turn. I lost patience and issued what D called an ultimatum. I bristled at calling it an ultimatum, but I would have to admit, that in the final analysis, that is exactly what it was. I put a time limit on us. In early January I gave us until the end of the month to set a date to meet and I have us until the end of February to meet.

That meeting was supposed to be this past weekend. And we didn't meet.

In the end, what happened and how isn't really the issue. But I made the decision to call off the meeting, knowing full well that it would put an end to a relationship that despite some extended breaks, dates back nine years.

You can only hold on to a dream so long. You can only survive on hope for so long. Eventually you need a hand to hold. To live a life together you have to be together.

I did what needed doing and we said our goodbyes as amicably as could be hoped, but I miss my friend and lover. I wish her happiness, health and most of all, I wish her love.

Finding a familiar plot

I haven't been to the movies in more than two years.

Oh, I've watched a lot of movies. I've lost untold hours -- OK, days, weeks or months maybe -- watching movies on cable. Some I've seen several times, some I missed along the pop culture highway.

But I haven't set foot inside a movie theater in more than 24 months.

I used to go to movies with some regularity, even alone. I had decided some time ago that I wasn't going to let being single, or having a weird work schedule, keep me from doing things I wanted to do.

Then for a while I had a significant other and we went to movies quite a lot. After the relationship ended it just felt lonely to even think about going to a movie alone. After I got passed that, there just haven't been many movies I was dying to see. I'm sure people would tell me I've missed some good cinema in the last couple of years, but off the top of my head I can't think of any films I really wanted to see.

Oh, wait, there was at least one film that I wanted to see and did go see: "Brokeback Mountain". So, I guess my whole not-setting-foot-in-a-theater line doesn't hold up to scrutiny. But the primary point is the same. I just haven't been going to movies, or had any real desire to go either.

But in the last few days I've been seeing some previews for a movie that has piqued my interest. It's called "The Lake House," which reunites "Speed" stars Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. But it's not the stars that is the draw. It's the story, or at least what I can glean about the story from the movie trailer and details on imdb.com.

Here's the plot outline as detailed on the Internet Movie Database site: "A lonely doctor (Sandra Bullock) who once occupied an unusual lakeside home begins exchanging love letters with its newest resident, a frustrated architect (Keanu Reeves). When they discover that they're actually living two years apart, they must try to unravel the mystery behind their extraordinary romance before it's too late."

The storyline resonates with me. I can relate. It sounds a little like a story my ladyfriend Brat and I have lived off and on for a long while. In our case it's not time, but distance, that has kept us apart. We've had a prolonged correspondence and conversation across time and space. Perhaps there is something profoundly intimate about corresponding with someone, whether in letters written with ink on paper or in real time with pixels on a screen.

I've long known that I am better at expressing many things, particularly emotional things, in writing rather than with the spoken word. But I suspected maybe I was just weird or verbally inept. But for centuries, lovers separated by distance or duty have writing to lovers and loved ones with stunning clarity and eloquence. Perhaps technology took that away from us. Or perhaps technology is now giving that power and purity back to us.

Oh sure, there is a proliferation of typographical and grammatical errors all over the Internet and blogosphere. But there is some stunning writing out there as well. People write about the things and people and events most important to them. They write with passion, wit, style and flare. People let us see their heart and that's a powerful, poignant thing.

Brat has let me see her heart, even though she has tried to hide it or protect it from time to time.

And isn't that what we are all looking for? Someone to connect with? Someone who we understand and appreciate and who gives us those same things back? In an exchange of embraces, emotions and bodily fluids, of course.

Movies
Writing
Long-distance romance

Absence make the heart...

I haven't seen or heard from Brat for the last couple of nights. Fortunately I talked to her in the aftermath of the storms in her area, or I would probably be pretty worried. I hope she is just taking it easy and getting some rest, or maybe dealing with some of the after effects of the storm.

Regardless, this long distance stuff really sucks sometimes.

Anyway, enough of the sappy stuff. It's almost St. Patrick's Day. I don't really have any plans for the Irish holiday. I have to say I'm sort of craving some live blues music. What could be better that some blues music on St. Patrick's Day? Would work well for this whole long-distance thing too
Anyone have any recommendations?

Long-distance relationships
Live music
Blues
St. Patrick's Day

Ultimate blind date

OK, so after my last post, perhaps there is the perception that I am only lamenting a lost love and I have no immediate prospects for a new relationship. That isn't the case.

So there is this woman. Everything about her and our relationship is a contradiction.

I've known her almost 7 years, but we've never met.

She's beautiful, but I have no idea what she looks like.

She's become by best friend, but we remain strangers.

We can, and do, talk about everything but there are some things I'm a too scared to tell her.

I cannot wait until we can be together, but I'm terrified at the prospect of being in the same room with her.

Our meeting is long overdue and yet it's coming way too fast.

I'll try to explain.

By friend and recent guest blogger, known by the apropos nickname of Brat, and I have scheduled a meeting in a little more than a month. We started talking online before the turn of the century using AOL Instant Messenger. She struck up the first conversation based on one of the items in my user profile. I was living at the time in a small town in central California that she knew because a former boyfriend had lived there. Actually they were engaged. He was the love of her life and broke her heart. Then, years later, in a wierd way, he introduced us.

Our early conversations were pretty light and given that we were living a large distance from each other, it was highly unlikely anything would come of those talks. At the time, I didn't see the brat that Brat would become. Not that I'm a wild man or anything, but my new cyberfriend seemed far too nice for someone like me. Our conversations were pretty, um, polite, and squeeky clean. In fact on of the exclamations that we used at the time still survives in our conversations to this day. I'm not sure which one of us started it, but we both use it now. We say "oh my" when something surprising or shocking pops up in our talks. Offline, I am more likely to say "holy shit" for some other profanity in the normal course of conversation, but she seemed too nice to swear in front of. If this woman had been Catholic I would have pegged her as just a few inches shy of tripping on the threshold of the convent door.

Holy shit! Did I have some things to learn.

And I've learned a lot. And told a lot. We've laughed and cried and, well, let's just say we've flirted, a lot. If flirtation leads to heavy breathing and beads of sweat, then yes, we've flirted quite heavily.

But there have been times when we've drifted apart. I had a splended affair with a woman I also met online at roughly the same time I met Brat. My lover taught me to open up sexually and share thoughts and feelings that I would have previously assumed would have gotten me slapped. I had a great time and made a good friend, but my heart was engorged like the rest of my anatomy by the affair and I played the role of arrogant ass to the best of my ability and dumped her.

A year or so later I dated a woman for a while. She was too young for me and completely wrong for me but she made me grin like an idiot for a few splended weeks. Then she dumped me by refusing to take my calls or return my e-mails. It may not have been too bad except for the fact that we worked together. What is that they say about not dipping your pen in the company ink? Well, my pin never got dipped anywhere precisely, but it's still sound advice because it made going to work quite difficult for a while.

It was such sound advice that a year or so later I decided to ask another woman I worked with out. This would be the ex from the previous post. She literally took me places, geographically and emotionally, that I had never been before. So I gave her a ring. Six month later she gave it back. It's taken longer to get rid of the ring, and the emotional baggage left behind (some of which I'm obviously still dutifully packing around), than that entire romance lasted.

But Brat has helped me pack a lot of that baggage away. Some of it has been mercifully tossed out. And some locked away in trunks out of site. But there are some remnants lingering around, like gum stuck to my shoe.

And now, my sticky shoes and I are waiting for a plane. It's not getting here for several weeks, but we need the time to prepare. To get ourselves spit-polished and ready for company.

Given the long reamble to this meeting and the emotional attachments that have developed over the years, there are high expecations for that meeting. No pressure, no pressure.

I'm full of questions and a few worries about this whole meeting. I haven't dated anyone since the breakup of my engagement. She had a pretty emotional breakup herself a while back, but she's had a fling or two since. She's experienced her "rebound" relationship. Should I have? I don't know? There is a lot of conventional wisdom and advice about love and romance, but it's difficult to know if wisdon and advice apply to matters of emotion.

One thing is clear already. She is a person I care about, even though we haven't met in the conventional sense. We talk almost every day. But what will happen when we are finally together?

That is the big unanswered question.

Relationships
Online romance

Back-breaking love

I just got back from the movies. The first movie I've seen in a theater in more than a year and probably almost 2 years. I never intended to go that long without seeing a movie. It just happened that way. One day passed and then another and soon the calendar had turned before I knew it.

It's become a recurring theme.

There have been several movies I've wanted to see, but some of the ones that were on my list aren't even in wide distribution anymore. I'm spending the weekend housesitting for family in Portland and was getting tired of sitting around someone else's house. So I opted to see "Brokeback Mountain" this afternoon. There's been lots of buzz about this movie, so I decided to see what all the murmur was about. Apparently I wasn't the only one thinking about seeing it, because the 4:15 p.m. showing was pretty full.

There are plenty of places on the 'net where you can read reviews or summaries of the movie, so I won't go into the plot here. But I will offer some commentary about the theme, or a theme, of the movie, and that is that sometimes we let life get in the way of love. Society's morals or values of what's acceptable or not can derail a lot of relationships. Time and distance do damage to many others.

The lead characters in the love story spent about 20 years seeing each other periodically. A few fleeting moments of happiness amid year after year of marking time earning a living and living a life of deception.

The timing was rather ironic. Last night, Brat and I had a rather serious conversation. For those of you who may not have caught the bits and pieces of our story scattered through this blog, Brat and I have spent the last 7 years, off and on, talking online, on the phone and through voice chat, but have never managed to get ourselves in the same place at the same time to actually meet face to face. During that time, including a couple of extended breaks, we have become friends and developed strong feelings through those long hours of talking. We struggle sometimes to explain, even to ourselves, what those feelings are and what they mean, but we know that they are real. And it sort of struck me that we are like the story in "Brokeback Mountain," watching the years slowly tick by at the speed of light and we are still pretty much where we were in 1999 or 2000.

In the movie, there was no happy ending, sadly a little too true to life. Fortunately for Brat and I, the climax of our drama has not yet been written. Let's hope -- no, check that, we need to make sure -- this isn't a case of life imitating art.

"Brokeback Mountain"
Long-distance romance

40-love

It started with a simple, innocent question: What do people do in this town for fun?

The e-mails volleyed back and forth like a spectacular rally in tennis. Forehand, backhand, overhead lob, backcourt smash. But without the grunting or sweating. Just friendly banter seemingly bordering on flirtation.

L is easily the most beautiful woman I've met in Salem so far. She has one of those smiles that makes butter melt. And her big, expressive eyes can hold you like a vise.

But from the day we met I have assumed she's married. But then the e-mails. And an invitation to an event with a group of folks on Saturday night. And one day the ring(s) I was certain I had seen on her finger was/were gone. So, my head started spinning. Had she been engaged and was now free? Was she just one of those women who sometimes wore jewelry on her ring finger to keep some men at bay? Or was her jewelry just in for repair?

So one day on my lunch hour I stopped and talked with her about taking her up on the extra ticket she had for the dinner. And the ring was back. The conversation was still light, and smiles still lit up her face. But later in the day, in another e-mail there was confirmation.

She is married.

There it was, in a casual reference to her husband, tucked in to the text.

My heart should have sank. But truth be told, it was a relief.

She's married. I'm off the hook. Thank God.

Oh, I am certainly ready to date again. I'm almost 40 for fuck sake, we need to get on with the program. But this was not the right opportunity. Too many potential complications. And one big reason for wanting to save myself.

There is a woman back in the Midwest.

D.

We keep fucking up our opportunities to get together. And usually it's me doing most of the fucking up. You'd think in more than 7 years of conversing online or by phone off and on we would have found a way to get together.

I had plane tickets in hand and was hours away from boarding a plane once, but she got sick.

And I've tripped over my dick a few times too.

I had an on-again, off-again affair with a woman from out of state who I would meet up with when one or the other of us took a vacation.

And D and I reconnected.

But eventually I turned my back on her again to date a clerical assistant who worked in my last office. But it turned out that woman was still technically married. But she was separated from her husband. She got cheating on him. She got pregnant. She ended the pregnancy and her marriage. I knew quickly that relationship would go nowhere. She was too young for me. She didn't want or like kids. She didn't want anyone to know we were dating. We never actually had intercourse, but we fooled around a little and she absolutely refused to be on the receiving end of oral sex and was convinced she would never change her mind. Can you imagine? But I was still smitten and it still hurt when it ended. First she put me off because stuff came up. Then she just suddenly quit returning phone calls and e-mails. It took me weeks to figure out that there was more than something wrong, but we were in fact through. And it took many more weeks not to feel that sinking feeling anytime I saw her face or heard her voice in the office.

And D and I reconnected again. And I later tossed it all away again. Although in my own defense the next woman I decided to ask out did get serious. We moved in together. We got engaged. We were together about 15 months. But that ended too.

And D and I reconnected yet again. And if truth be told, she was probably the most important person in helping me move on and have a reason to smile again. We had hoped to get together this summer, but her summer is now over and it will obviously be some more time before we can meet for the first time.

So, yes, I allowed a pretty woman who was merely being nice and friendly to turn my head. I developed a little crush. It felt good and it was harmless. But fortunately she is married. And I don't have to go all gah-gah.

And maybe, just maybe I'll have a new friend. It never hurts to have a few of those who aren't 1,000 or 2,000 miles away.

Whoever said distance makes the heart grow fonder, whether between friends or lovers, was full of shit.

I'm a believer in a sort of fate. I think some things happen for a reason. But I know too that fate needs help. Phone numbers don't pop into our pockets. It's hard to dance unless you ask someone to join you on the dance floor. Plane tickets don't buy themselves. We have to act. We have to make things happen. Serve the ball. Swing the racket. The score is love-40 G-man.

Game point.

What the fuck are you waiting for?

Relationships
Crushes
Friends and lovers

Time well wasted

They aren't exactly front row, but I have seats to the show. Rose Garden. Portland, Ore. Friday, Sept. 23. Sugarland, Sara Evans and Brad Paisley. It's Paisley's "Time Well Wasted" tour. You got to love that name. It's a motto, it's a way of life, it's the name of Paisley's new album and the name of a concert tour.

Yes, country music, deal with it people.

I bought a pair of concert tickets when then went on sale this morning. I haven't been to a big concert in a while. I've seen a few concert shows in Vegas in recent years, but that's about it.

In fact I saw Sara Evans in Las Vegas last year headlining a show with Phil Vassar. I've got some photos I took from that show. I may have to post one or two when I get back home, if anyone is interested. I saw Paisley in Vegas a few years ago too with Chely Wright.

Yes, I have major crushes on Chely Wright and Sara Evans. And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

I'm hoping I can convince my long-distance lady friend to venture to the West Coast for the show. But she blew me off the last time I bought a concert ticket for her for a George Strait/Jo Dee Messina show at the Forum in L.A. So I may need a backup plan.

But for now I am stoked. Scored a pair of tickets minutes after they went on sale for a concert that I've been looking forward to since I first heard about the show on my new favorite radio station, KWJJ, The Wolf.

I'm as giddy as a teenager. Now I need to hop in the shower and get dressed and run a few errands so I can go pick up my teenager and bring her home.

I doubt she will be impressed with my Brad Paisley tickets. She probably won't want to be my date either.

She doesn't like country music. I will so make fun of her someday if she becomes a country music fan someday. My dad missed that opportunity with me. I will make sure not to pass up the harassment opportunity if it comes my way.

Country music
Concert tickets

Covered in cat fur and sweat

Tonight after work I'm going up to the big city of Portland for some excitement!

That's right ladies and gentlemen, it's going to be a hot time in Stump Town to be sure. The wild and wacking activity for the weekend is, you guessed it, pet sitting.

My daughter and her mom are out of town, so I have been suckered, I mean talked into, house sitting and taking care of two dogs and four cats for 48 hours.

Why do people have that many pets? Shear insanity I swear.

But I might sneak out of the house for some R&R of my own. And if I can fit it in (and their computer isn't locked down) I might even log on and make a blog post or two.

... And to steal a page from the Monty Python troupe's book... now for something completely different.

"I'm gonna smile my best smile
And I'm gonna laugh like it's goin' out of style
Look into her eyes and pray that she don't see
That learning to live again is killing me"

"Learning To Live Again"
by Stephanie Davis and Don Schlitz from Garth Brooks' 1992 album "The Chase"

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I had a pretty major breakup a little over a year ago. In all that time I really haven't been much interested in getting back on the horse as they say. I've just been content to get my career back on track and then had a major job change and a move to a new city, state and job.

To be honest, there haven't been many prospects for dating anyway. There is one very special woman that I spend a fair amount of my free time chatting with, on the phone or online, but she and I are still separated by a couple of time zones and half to two-thirds of the American mainland. I thought we were finally going to get a chance to get together this summer, but the summer is rapidly slipping away, so who knows when we might get our priorities and schedules aligned.

And I haven't met someone I want to date either. But I can tell that something has changed. I've changed.

I've started looking again.

The realization hit me today (or I should say yesterday). A woman who works in the office of, um, let's just say an elected official, visited me at my office Thursday as a representative of her boss. Just in the neighborhood, touching base with constituents, and stopped in to see if her office could do anything for my office. My boss was out of town, so I was asked to take the meeting.

When the young woman arrived and I escort her back to my office and we sat at a small table and chatted. During the conversation I caught myself looking at her left hand to see if she was wearing a ring.

There was no overt intent to be anything but professional. I hope she didn't notice that, or the fact that beads of sweat were building up on my forehead shortly after we sat down to talk. For some reason the temperature in my office, which was perfectly comfortable before she arrived, shot up to what seemed like 80-plus degrees.

I'm such a geek.

So, even if I wanted to date, I probably couldn't pull it off. And then of course, there is the whole meeting a woman in a town where I hardly know a soul, which would then be followed by working up the courage to ask a woman out on date.

For much of the last year, I haven't been the slightest bit interested in plunging into a new relationship. Oh, sure, I would have gone for tawdry, no-commitment sex, but just how often do those opportunities come about? And if they do come about regularly for you, please share your secret.

But there are signs that I'm coming around to appreciating the fairer sex again. I'm not a no-strings guy, as much as my libido might like that. I'm a one-woman man. I can't help it (damn it anyway). And, from what I'm starting to notice there are a few women around, even here in Salem, although I'm surprised at the seemingly high proportion of them who have no teeth. Come on people, if you go out in public at least wear your dentures. Is that too much to ask?

The woman who visited my office today had teeth. And a sharp mind. And sparkling eyes. And a ringless ring finger on her left hand.

Is it warm in here, or is it just me?

Weekend
Women
Learning to live again

Happy Valentine's Day

I don't claim to be the most romantic man. I have my moments, and I can shed a tear during a sappy movie with the best of them. Hell, even a heart-wrenching TV commercial can result in water works if I'm in a vulnerable state of mind. But I am not good at grandiose romantic gestures. I made a few over the last year or so and got them eventually tossed back in my face.

But, I'm not bitter on this holiday for love and lovers. Quite the opposite. I still believe in love and all the happiness we are told it brings in silly love songs and Hollywood happy endings.

Well, there is someone I consider my Valentine this Feb. 14, and I certainly hope she feels the same way. She has been a friend and so much more for a long time now, but over the last 7 months or so, she has been my salvation. My lifeline to being willing to entrust my heart to another. We have talked online or on the phone for hours, often to the detriment of her, or my, sleep patterns. And it has been invigorating, uplifting and exciting.

I never quite know how to describe our relationship to others, because while we have known each other about 7 years now, we have never met face to face. Is she a friend? Confidante? Lover? Yes, and more, and yet not someone I've been able to take home to meet mom or who's hand I can hold. The Internet is a wonderful, and cruel, thing sometimes. We have each explored dating and romance with others during this time, but we always seem to somehow find our way back to each other. I've called her D on here. Readers of this blog (all 5 of you) probably would recognize her moniker of "Brat."

I don't know what the future hold for us, but she has been here for me through a broken, and healed, heart. Frustrations about family and job and life. Our on-again, off-again correspondence has endured, even flourished, after we both thought the end had come and gone a few times due to circumstances one or the other of us found ourselves in. She is indeed a special, wonderful person who has helped make me a better person as well.

This time we have made a pact to not let time and distance successfully conspire to keep us forever as disembodied voices through a phone or computer. And I fully intend to seal that pact with a kiss.

No, there are no flowers or Vermont Teddy Bears, or lingerie, or even KY Warming Liquid packages en route to her door. Just my thanks, my appreciation and my deepest affection this day, and for everyday of the last 7 years and for untold years to come.

Happy Valentine's Day D. You've helped me find my heart again. It was a bit battered and bruise, but essentially right where I left it -- resting comfortably in your hands.

Valentine's Day