the world’s first rodeo

i must preface this by stating that i am relatively drunk and upset, so i may regret some things that will be written here. however, these are my thoughts absolutely unfiletered about a night that i will for sure never forget.

it is often that i indirectly interact with certain people and for some unknown reason, they make an impact on me. basically all of my friends here i have met this way. we have a large class together or are within feet away at a party/bar and i become infatuated with their presence. nothing else happens during the rest of our shared presence outside of this strong feeling in my stomach. then a few months or years down the road, they become basically the most important people in my life. these encounters have not always led to the romantic or sexual, but it also certainly has been the case. for better or worse, the most impactful and hurtful romantic relationship i have ever had started out like this. she catching my eye in a way that no one has ever done before and then, out of nowhere, MANY years later we clicked and dated and destroyed each others’ lives.

so of course this mental exercise has something to do with someone that i had multiple classes with, randomly shared a joint at a concert with and saw perform multiple times at local shows. i was infatuated with this person for sooooo long, but this strong feeling in my stomach always left whenever our presence turned unshared. otherwise, i am sure i would have done something about it way way way way earlier. long story short, we matched on tinder a few weeks ago and things sort of took of. at a point there was certainly a ghosting attempt from her part and i had to do something i have truly done before: ask her out. it sounds pretty fucking stupid that at my almost 26 years of age i had never asked a girl out, but i am truly not a chaser. for better or worse, all of my relationships in the realm of the sexual and romantic have taken place not because i channeled my inner Leonard Cohen and turned into this charismatic ladiesman. things always have worked out, one way or another. i meet them, i am myself and then we find each other making out, falling in love, in my bedroom, in their bedroom, texting incessantly, making plans, talking about our future together and then falling out of everything i just mentioned.

of course it took a lot of guts for me to ask her out and i still do not know why. at this point of my life i should have the wisdom and basic humanity of just telling someone that i find them ridicously attractive and i want to do something about it, but i am just not built that way and who knows if that will ever change. after having some glimpses of how this person also had her spirit deeply connected to the strongest parts of my soul, i was certain things wouldn’t go south and i was taking a good decision by breaking my self-imposed rules. however, there’s this another rule that i had to learn the hard way. in the past, i have almost always been guilty of letting my infatuation create a false image of the other person, to the point where almost all of my crashes have come by not taking the time to get to know her and inform my heart from a more grounded reality. a year or two ago, it became my personal mantra that i would stop idealizing people and just letting them be themselves before allowing my heart to start feeling anything. and for the most part, it has worked out! i do feel that the quality of my romantic relationships has increased since then, even though the conclusion hasn’t been satisfying. but life takes its course, people come and go and sometimes you catch a David Lynch movie with them and then wonder for days if everything that happened together was real.

this time around though, i couldn’t control my instincts. the thing that has made me “me” ever since my heart first felt a glimpse of attraction to someone took over and i found myself letting myself go. letting the wheel roll. at this point of my life, i am DESPERATE for answers and actions from the Universe and my spirit has been starving for anything that it can touch it. it certainly couldn’t be a coincidence that this person showed up at this time, right when i always fall asleep wishing for a Don’t Look Up scenario to actually happen so i can stop worrying about my life, or howling at the Universe for any sort of solace.

so on we go. we have more things in common than i do with most people in my life, she gets certain things no one else does and we are now in the world’s first rodeo. it is my first round at it and i know better than to wonder how many rounds she has under her belt, but i am confident that things will at least be slow but ok. in the past i have only used dating apps to hook up with other people and it has mostly been fine, but i stopped being that person a while ago, so it only felt natural that at this point things would be different. we agreed on a date, time and place and i confirmed yesterday and today that we’d actually meet. a playful banter was in between our texts so on we went.

i will take a briefly detour to discuss what happened before we actually met up. my friend Rodrigo came over and we had a couple of drinks and shared a bowl, as we have for the past seven years. it was the first time it truly hit us that we have been friends for almost ten years and that we have been through so many stages of our life together, so we talked about that. i told him everything that is going with me, how i am terrified of the future but that deep deep down i know things will be ok. how i don’t think it’s a good idea for him to keep dating that girl with a baby because he’s not ready for that life. how i matched with this girl on tinder that has been one of my 1,001 crushes since I moved here but that for some reason, it felt different. our conversation was harder than usual and we touched on some subjects we had never talked about before, but after he left i know we both felt a sense of relief. outside of bonding over our rotten minds and weird sense of humor, we have remained close friends for so long because we both are heterosexual men that can openly talk about their feelings and have cried together and have hugged and embraced how ugly and beautiful life can be. this afternoon was probably the strongest our spirits have connected and it was just a regular wednesday for us.

anyway, my afternoon with him had a strong impact and made me feel like whatever happened tonight would be alright. i have a strong community here that i am begging the Universe every night to not take away from me. i felt confident, until i took a shower, shaved and realized that the time for my date was actually approaching and i have never had a first date before. last saturday i visited my friend Liz and i told her everything that was going, basically that she was invited to my wedding. since the bar this girl and i were meeting up at is a block away from her apartment, we agreed that unless things took us to a bedroom, i would go visit her and have a drink to discuss every aspect of my date. so as i got out of the shower, i called her and she said she could my nervousness through the phone. i don’t remember much of what we talked, probably all the things that i have mentioned here, and reiterated that we would see each other tonight unless i ended up having sex with this person. that certainly wasn’t my plan and i’m not sure how i would have felt if it had happened organically, but i knew since things became a possibility between us that i wouldn’t want that to get in the way of truly getting to know each other. so i hang up with liz, get on my car and make the short drive to the bar. we’re both on time, get inside and start talking.

the bar was relatively empty and my nervousness dissapeared in a matter of seconds. there’s sides of me that no one seems to understand and whenever they try our relationship goes sour and tonight i let all of irony-layered guards down with ease. we talked about how much we hate working, how people that are passionate about their job and take it seriously are cringe, why do we like Bob Dylan so much if he’s not a good singer, how adult cartoons from the 90s are the True Golden Age of TV, why Pride and Prejudice is an underrated movie even though every basic girl likes it, when did Joni Mitchell became this messiah for us, why I stopped trying to make music and focused solely in writing and why she did the exact opposite. it all was going great! i didn’t feel any sort of tension so i knew i was going to see liz later tonight. we shared really good laughs and confessed each other things that other people would never understand. it is not so much that the content of these confessions is relevant, but it’s more about the fact that we shared something so niche and specific and we opened ourselves about it with a total stranger without even thinking about it. she did say that she’s working two full-time jobs and has to get up at 6, so the date ended relatively early. i picked up the check and as we were walking to our cars i said that i had a good time and we should do it again, to which she replied:

“I’ll see you around!”
I

W
I
L
L

S
E
E

Y
O
U

A
R
O
U
N
D

I WILL SEE YOU AROUND!
I WILL SEE YOU AROUND!
I WILL SEE YOU AROUND!

WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN!
IT FELT LIKE A GUT PUNCH!
AFTER HAVING A GREAT TALK!
LIKE YOU HAVE MULTIPLE OPPORTUNITIES TO JUST NOT TEXT ME BACK
OR ACT LIKE YOU WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN TOO!
and AAHHHHH
OKAY, I SEE.
LIKE I UNDERSTAND THAT’S THE POLITE WAY OF SAYING
“HAHA, NO.”
BUT
???????
THEN?
WHAT THE FUCK?
I KNOW I DON’T DEAL WELL WITH REJECTION IN ANY ASPECT BUT
I’M NOT GOING FULL JOKER MODE BY THINKING
THIS WHOLE THING
IS
INSANE
RIGHT??
RIGHT???????

LIKE OK, SHE MAY HAVE HER REASONS. WHICH WILL BE THEORIZED LATER. AND THAT’S OK!
IT TRULY IS OK TO NOT WANT ANYTHING ELSE OR THINK THAT MAYBE SHE JUST DIDN’T FEEL THE SAME WAY
OR WHATEVER
IS GOING THROUGH HER HEAD
IT’S FINE AND HONEST! I GUESS?
BUT STILL, WHAT THE FUCK?

i don’t remember if I said anything after that, I probably didn’t but who knows. i got inside my car, lit a cigarette and called liz to see if i could come over now. i drove around for a solid half an hour, chain smoking and listening to Everyday on repeat because of course that’s what you do after such a gut punch. because yes! True Love Is Making a Comeback! But for Only Half of Us! The Rest Just Feel Bad! DOOMED to Wander In the World’s First Rodeo! Doomed I am! DOOMED! i picked up cigarettes and beer before heading liz’s way and oh my god what a breath of fresh air was it to smell that particular cat smell her apartment has. it usually bothers me at first, but now i felt like i was home. i told her everything that had happened in order but she could tell i was upset by the whole situation before i even mentioned that
I
WILL
BE
SEEN
AROUND.

while dissecting everything with liz, we started to theorize what may have happened. i truly do not mean the following as a judge of character or commenting on anyone’s physical appearance. and you know what, i just changed my mind. i won’t write what i was about to write. anyways, liz said that maybe the thing that i was about to write had something to do with how this girl felt about herself, why she was putting herself out there and maybe forced herself to go on this date with me. which is something that people certainly do and often find themselves digging a hole that they can’t escape from until it’s too late, so it may be a good thing that there’s no way we’re ever texting or seeing each other again. i’d rather be dumped now because of whatever is going through her head than but i was so upset! why go through the whole thing then! AHH it’s really not about rejection, it’s more about why did this thing happened in the first place? was it my Phil Spector comment when she said that The Beach Boys are the first emo band? anyways, none of the “whys” that may come from me truly matter. i was myself, for better or worse. but WHY go through the whole thing! when whatever connection/chemistry we had was already clear! and if she wasn’t about it then ok! it’s really ok! i know i am not everyone’s cup of tea! but then WHYYYYY go through the whole thing! ahhhhh anyways.

i vented to liz for HOURS about this, we also talked about other stuff and how much it sucks being single. how if this girl had wanted to just have sex instead of going through this whole thing i honestly honestly honestly wouldn’t have minded, how most men do not know how to have sex. then we started talking about how a while ago i taught her (JUST VERBALLY) how i (WHOLE ASS PARAGRAPH WAS DELETED BECAUSE SOBER ME THINKS IT’S KIND OF STUPID I WROTE THAT)

and of course that was just drunk me venting and ranting, of course whatever happened tonight runs deeper than whatever male ego i have inside of me. that’s something that i have learned to tame and it doesn’t always come out, i’m not animalistic. what bothers me the most is that dating at this moment of my life is the most difficult thing i can do. after eeeeeeeverything that i have been through, all the failed relationships and all the pain my heart has been through, i am finally ready to put myself out there and roll with the punches. but i wasn’t expecting the first opportunity that i had to do so to me a gut punch that left me speechless! i am not crazy, right? like texting someone for days about deeply spiritual stuff, agreeing MULTIPLE times to go on a date, having a great conversation and then just act like none of that happened is sort of insane, right? i do understand that what i am saying is one-sided, that in another universe she’s writing this from her point of view and feels like i was a fool by thinking that everything was fine only because we talked about a bunch of shit and laughed a lot, that why would i think of wearing that green cardigan to a first date, or suggest a bar like Eloise, or talk about why most of the contemporary artists that I like are women. who fucking knows dude. and i truly feel that what i am saying is one-sided. the whole “there’s two sides to every story” is usually a fucking lame ass attempt at depth because thinking that there’s only two is so ridicously limited. but who knows what her point of view was/is, who knows how she felt. i do not belive i was entitled to anything from her tonight, i should be grateful we even had the date because that’s how you learn and grow, you know? even as upset as i may be, it’s not personal and i’m just mad at the situation as a whole. how did i find myself in the parking lot smoking a cigarette in the phone with my friend, why am i single now? am i even built for dating? is anyone truly is? i hope whatever is going with her is not some heavy shit and she just didn’t feel a connection to me rather than acting on an impulse. after having some time to truly reflect and calm down, i am happy it all happened the way it did. i truly hope she’s ok and liz’s theories are wrong.

and that’s what fucking stinks about dating right now, specially for someone like me that doesn’t know how to traditionally date and his only romantic/sexual experience comes from being himself and letting things take its course. meeting new people is HARD DUDE, so fucking HARD. and i would never ever date or fuck any of my friends right now, they feel more like family than my actual blood family. perhaps i should go back to not doing anyhing, perhaps i really should just let the Universe give what it has to give me and then go from there.

i just know i’m tired of the world’s first rodeo, that i hate driving back to my apartment listening to Weyes Blood’s Everyday after a night like this, that i know it won’t be the last time i do it, that days like this are the ones that show how true the Elephan’s theory about how true love is not romantic at all, because even after all that hapened at Eloise, today i felt loved in such a strong way that i wouldn’t mind being celibate for the rest of my life if i can still have afternoons with Rodrigo where we are almost close to tears and I can still knock on Liz’s door to just vent and rant about how much life sucks but we are so grateful for having each other.