Soggy

If I were to be tortured via sleep deprivation, I would break as easily as I imagine Nicole Ritchie's arm would break if stepped upon by an unhappy, flatulent, obese hippopotamus.

You see? I can't even make up a decent metaphor. I mean, why the flatulence? What does that add to the imagery? Nothing. I suck.

Yesterday I went on a day hike with Scientist at a ski resort area in the western part of the state. It was a good hike -- lots of rocks to climb up and down over, long stretches of fairly flat path to stroll along, clearly marked signs, and a pretty if not stunning view from the top. We brought sandwiches, sweated profusely, got bitten by mosquitoes, and did the whole thing in about half the time the website estimated it should take. It was great.

Afterwards, I suggested we sit by the artificial lake and the two artificial swans bobbing in it for a while and rehydrate. The grass was soft, the sun was shining, the breeze was refreshing -- it was extremely pleasant. I started playfully poking Scientist in his side, the way you do when you like someone and want to annoy them, just a little bit, so that they ultimately grab you to stop the poking and maybe give you a kiss to distract you from trying to annoy them. You know.

Scientist doesn't like being tickled, which I didn't know, and he reacted by rather vehemently wrestling back, which ultimately resulted in him accidentally kicking me. The horseplay stopped after that. He apologized. He said he didn't like being tickled because his brother used to do that to him as a kid.

He was genuinely sorry for having kicked me, and I understood completely that the poking brought up unpleasant memories, but I started feeling upset. I got up and took a walk around the fake pond with the fake swans because I seriously thought I was going to cry, and somewhere around where two Canadian geese were looking suspiciously at me, wondering if I was going to come attack and try to eat their four goslings, I figured it out -- I felt I'd shown some affection toward Scientist and had just gotten rejected.

Did this make sense? No. He didn't mean to kick me, obviously. He explained why he had that reaction. And he tried to be cute about it afterwards, gently poking me after we stopped horsing around. But I felt hurt.

On the way home, the ever-ready Parliament of hkLand called an emergency session and started in:

"We feel rejected!"

"Oh, puh-leeeeeez. He explained, didn't he? He apologized, didn't he? Stop being such a little drama queen."

"We don't care about his explanations and we don't give a flying hoot about his apologies! He should have been abject! He should have smothered us with kisses! He should be grateful that we show him affection at all!"

"He probably is! You are being completely irrational. You tickled him; he doesn't like being tickled -- that's that. Stop reading into everything!"

"He doesn't care about us! He rarely shows us affection! Why isn't he more affectionate with us?"

"He's just a Y-chromosome carrying twit, is why, you muddle-headed morons. They don't think about that stuff! It doesn't mean anything!"

"A freakin' copout -- you know as well as we do that he's a SNAG [Sensitive New Age Guy]. They DO think about that stuff. It means something."

While it was very noisy in my head, it was very quiet in the car, and the SNAG picked up on it. "What's wrong?" he asked. And with one faction of Parliament screaming "Tell him!" and the other hissing "Work out your own irrationalities and leave him out of it!" I did the easy thing and said, "It's not important. It's nothing."

At his house, we dithered about what to do -- take a nap? Play Scrabble? I could see he was tired, so we opted for the former. Except that it was daytime still, and that meant I could not fall asleep, naturally. So I lay there, feeling worse and worse, for half an hour, until I just couldn't take it, and got up.

"I think I'm going to go home."

"Just like that?"

"What do you want me to do?" I asked while sliding off the bed.

"I don't know -- a little dance?"

I came around and stood by his side of the bed. "I'm in a strange mood, and I don't want to subject you to it," I said in my last-ditch effort to be an adult.

"Talk to me," he said.

I started crying. He pulled me back onto the bed and held me, which made me cry even harder, until it was a total all-out bawling session. I put my hand over my eyes. He got up and got tissues, and put them in my other hand.

"I can't help you if you don't talk to me," he said helplessly. "Talk to me. Tell me what's wrong. Is it me? Is it because you want me to be someone I'm not?" (What a strange comment to make, no?)

"I'm just so tired," I sobbed. "I'm so tired of having no place to go."

Scientist is a good listener. And after listening to me talk about various things for a while, he started tearing up himself. "You aren't the only one who gets sad sometimes," he explained. "Or lonely." (I found this disconcerting -- was he crying in sympathy, then? Or thinking of his own problems?)

A little later, I finally broached the topic of what happened earlier that day, explaining that I felt I'd extended some affection and been rejected. And, somewhat horrifyingly, he said quietly, "It's true that I haven't show as much affection toward you as I could. I hope you don't think I'm not affectionate."

"That makes me feel worse," I said. "You're saying that you don't want to be affectionate with me."

"No," he protested, "I do feel affection for you. I care about you. I think you're an amazing person. But I can't show affection unless I have some degree of certainty about where the relationship is. And I have some doubts about it."

I looked up at the ceiling. "Do you want to talk about them?" I asked resignedly.

"We can if you want to."

"If it's going to be a list of my faults, I don't think I want to hear it."

"It's not -- it's mostly me. And about us. But not you -- you don't have any faults."

I was silent for a while. He offered to make some dinner while I rested, and I agreed. I read while he made a rather tasty pasta dish, and we ate companionably, without talking much.

After dinner, I felt much better, and I thanked him. "For dinner," I said, "and for being my friend."

"My pleasure. On both counts."

I put an arm around his neck and absently started stroking his hair. A minute later: "Don't do that."

I pulled my arm away and sat back. "Okaaaay. I'm just not going to touch you."

"No," he explained, "it just feels like you're picking things out of my hair, and I'm all sweaty and sticky..."

"Fine," I said, and promptly started crying again.

"No, no," he said coaxingly, "I thought the crying part of the evening was over."

"Can I just have one bad day?" I exclaimed heatedly. "It's not even one day -- it's one evening! Can I just have one bad evening?"

He murmured assent, and I cried on his shoulder (again), and we had another discussion about affection and the lack thereof, which I don't remember and was probably very boring. I do remember telling him, "You're so ... nice to me. When I'm upset. I don't understand how you can be so kind but withhold so much from me at the same time."

"I just haven't been able to overcome my ... inhibitions yet."

A bit later, after asking if I wanted to stay with him, he took me home. On the way, he asked again if I was sure I didn't want to stay with him, and I cried some more. Finally, in Mathgirl's driveway, I kissed him on the cheek and said, "Thank you for the ride. And for dinner. And for being so nice earlier."

"You can talk to me anytime," he said. "I mean that."

I nodded, about to start crying again, and he unbuckled his seat belt and reached out to pull me in for another hug, but I resisted. "Stop it. Don't do that."

"Why?"

"It's too confusing. I don't understand how you can pick and choose like that."

He paused. "Am I bad for you?"

"Maybe," I said. And then I got out of the car, and without looking back, went inside.

All this time, we've been talking about how Scientist is trying to develop healthy relationship habits. Trying to have a healthy relationship. Isn't it funny how, in the end, it looks like Scientist is unhealthy for me? What am I trying to do here? Can I really still be punishing myself for John? Do I have some heretofore unknown proclivity to seek out men who don't really want me?

Sigh. And it's 3:30, and I still haven't started studying Barbri.