dirty birdy

it's getting more and more difficult to come up with fake names for people. it's only a matter of time before i resort to things like ronrico and thomasio. anyway, here's this week's column.
Playing with Fire

I’d said it so many times, to so many different people, that I’d nearly started to believe it myself: I don’t date. There were lots of reasons. First I’d just gotten out of a messy breakup; then I was taking time to get to know myself, to learn how to enjoy being single again. Most recently, it’s because I’m moving to New York. I don’t date. It had become my edict, the thing I automatically said when someone started to seem like they were interested in me. It was the easiest way I’d ever found to keep myself from having to get close to people. Then I met Paul.

Suddenly, “I don’t date” turned into “What time on Saturday?” It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still leaving Baltimore soon, though, and making the decision to date Paul wasn’t an easy one. I thought it was best to come clean with him from the beginning.

“So I always tell people I don’t date,” I started, “because I’m moving to New York. And, you know, I don’t want to get all attached to someone or have them get attached to me because I’m not good at long-distance relationships.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but I’m moving to California in May. So it’s not like I’m going to have my feelings hurt or anything. I know what I’m getting into.”

Yeah, I thought, but do I? I’ve never been someone who just dated people for fun; I tend to date people that I can see myself having a future with. Honestly, if I need someone to hang out with, I have plenty of friends. Friends with whom I don’t have the complication of a sexual relationship.

When I met Paul, though, something felt different. We just got along so well; we made the same sick joke during Scattergories (What’s something that you hide that starts with a J? We both wrote “Jews [Anne Frank].”). We share a borderline-unhealthy obseession with the Food Network. He’s got a great job, great friends. He’s smart and evil and funny. He’s marriage material. And so, of course, we’re moving to opposite coasts in a few months.

Until now we haven’t tried to define what it is we’re doing together. For instance, he’s always “my friend Paul” when he meets my friends. We’re not “boyfriends” and we don’t make big, romantic plans for the future. For once it seems like I’m in a relationship that just is what it is, which is maybe one of the reasons it’s going so well. Since we’ve already given our relationship a sort of shelf life, having decided to date while we’re here and then be friends on opposite coasts, there’s no pressure on either of us. It’s almost as if we’re able to just enjoy each other while it lasts, since we’re free from the rules we usually follow in relationships. I hate to say it, but this normalcy, this lack of urgency, feels strange. I’m not complaining.

I suppose that I shouldn’t be overanalyzing all this, that I should just go with the flow, let our friendship or relationship or non-relationship play out the way that it’s meant to. I can’t help but wonder, though: Am I going to be able to pull this off? Am I going to be able to date someone and then just put my feelings for them up on a shelf after we’ve moved on to different lives?

For better or worse, I’m assuming that the answer is yes. I might be completely deluding myself, but I think that I can make it work. I don’t know if it’ll be by virtue of never making our relationship official, or if it’ll be because I never let myself get that close to begin with.

Or I could be playing with fire, setting myself up for distaster. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.