Hello stranger

Artboy now resides in the same city I do.  It's a technicality really, as he wasn't far away before.  He just happens to be a little bit closer now and his mailing address is in the same city now, just a few miles away.  Oh dear.

Yes, it was his apartment I was talking about in my last post.  No, I didn't get my farewell.  Yes, I was disappointed, but the feeling was mitigated once I realized it was now basically just an empty shell.  Everything that made it memorable, most pointedly it's resident, was no longer there anymore.  It stung a little less then.

Saturday night  was strange.  I ended up with an Artboy ringing my doorbell.  It was a really odd shift from the norm.  He'd only ever been to my place maybe 2-3 times tops, and that was well over a year ago.  I was surprised he even remembered where I lived. 

Having him in my space was odd.  Going to his apartment always felt so surreal and secretive and mysterious.  That's why I always chose to go there than to have him come to me. It was like I stepped into a separate universe when I crossed his threshold.  But in my apartment, it was different.  He brought food and drink.  We laughed at my cats.  He saw his art on my wall.  It was weird, weird, weird.

I had this brief flashback to the other times he'd been over, when we were actually dating each other.  It felt almost exactly the same.  We interacted like real people.  He laughed while I drunkenly played Fruit Ninja as he watched from the couch.  The room was spinning and I couldn't focus on him the way I wanted to.  We ate gummy bears and I laid with my legs across his lap while he played with my Xbox.  My cute heels lay discarded on the floor the entire time, I never even put them on. We listened to music and he sang along, and I had enough presence of mind to realize that many of the songs that were coming up on my ipod I'd discovered through him. 

He was exhausted, so he wasn't there for more than an hour and a half.  He'd spent friday moving and saturday moving, up until about 8:30 that night.  I was surprised he'd even suggested coming over that night. 

So I'm not dating, but I'm okay with this.  He is the exception to every rule, and nothing that we've done in the last year has fit any definition I know, and that's okay.  It's enough right now, it's what I can handle, it's something, but it's nothing. 

Artboy was harrassing me (good-naturedly) sometime in the last month or two about liking him.  Asking why he was doing so much better than the guys I'd gone on dates with.  I didn't have a good answer, and he teased me, saying I would go on dates with him.  I demurred, and he went on.  "And you would hold my hand." 

I denied it.  Of course I denied it. 

But he was right.  Of course he was right.  I would hold his hand.  Damn.

Such is life.  Such was my saturday night.  I got to curl up with him on my couch on Saturday night.  I got that physical contact and proximity that I miss, and he is familiar and safe, even though all practical signs say he is decidedly unsafe. 

Conundrum.