#SEEK HELP FOR YOUR WEIRD INTEREST IN DOG DICKS AND LEAVE ME ALONE

[shibalatte]

my post is still on their blog KMS

I DO NOT WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOU!!! I DONT WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOUR WEIRD SHIT!!!! SHOO

[faiteach]

A Wild Love Interest Has Appeared

[I can almost guarantee that everything I’m about to speculate on is nothing more than a sparkling conspiracy dreamt up in the loneliest spaces of my mind.]

Have you ever met someone and the timing just feels like Fate? And of course, that rational half of your brain starts firing the klaxons to warn you not to fall too far into the Fantasy because when has anything that felt like Fate ever turned out the way you expected? 

While I was on vacation in April, my coworkers hired someone new. His initials are the same as another person I write about, so I’m going to call him Aegis. He’s 5 years my junior, tall, dominican, rocks the bald look, fit, warm dark eyes, and a megawatt smile. In fact, he’s so attractive that I’m not even nervous around him because it’s so undeniably obvious that he’s out of my league. I have no reason to worry, there’s no possible way he could find me attractive so I don’t have to try. Plus, we work together. When they first hired AG (tall, also bald, blue eyes, average white guy but sweet and intelligent [later turned out he’s an unsympathetic, judgmental dick when it comes to mental illness booo]) I developed an unfortunate crush which, in the process of seeking absolution for my guilt about feeling that way, I confessed to my boss and my coworker JA during a night when we were drunk. JA, being practical and also having zero faith in my ability to handle romance, dissuaded me from pursuing anything so close to home. “Don’t shit where you sit”, the old adage goes. I never intended to pursue it. I just felt bad about it. She helped me feel so bad about it, that I definitely let it go. 

And then along comes Aegis. 

Well, you can bet I felt JA’s eyes on me during those first few days. Watching like a bitter old crone to ensure there was no whiff of hanky-panky between me and the new guy. She needn’t have worried. Certainly I found him attractive, but the fires of infatuation remained dormant. My expectations were clear and reasonable. He was my new, objectively handsome but virtually unknown, coworker. 

About 4 weeks go by. We’ve all bonded a bit during office hours by now. We joke around as a group, we drink a bit on Fridays, we all smoke weed (except BVK) so we bond over shows we like to watch while we’re high. One Wednesday night, JA and I are supposed to attend an event for a separate organization we’re both part of. I meet up with her, our boss and Aegis at a bar after they wrap up a client photoshoot. I knew right then that JA and I were not going to make it to the event. I was dressed to the 9′s in high heels, hair perfectly curled, makeup perfectly done. Aegis moves from his place at one end of the table to sit beside me on the other end. He gets me a beer. While the boss & JA chat with their videographer, Aegis and I talk relatively alone for the first time. 

You ever have a conversation with somebody that flows so easy you forget that time is even a thing? 

It’s like we were teammates, partners, comrades, I can’t describe it but it’s a chemistry I almost never feel. Synergy. Talking to him was, and is, so easy. Every time I made him laugh he seemed delighted and surprised. At one point, in response to something I said, he held my arm and put his head on my shoulder. For that brief moment, I was frozen in place. JA was watching, most likely she saw the look that flickered across my face. I wonder if it looked more like shock, or fear? 

That Friday, Aegis and I end up alone together at the end of the day. We’d already opened some beers for Beer Friday (the weekly thing we do as an office), so we were just hanging out, presumably until we each finished. I mentioned wanting to walk Jamie in dog parks closer to work and, since he’s native to the area, he mentions a place he knows about that he’d be willing to take me to. I ask him (expecting a “no”) if he wants to go right then. To my surprise he says sure. We stop by his house to grab some weed, drive over to the park and smoke before heading out down the path. I figured it would be a short walk, but we end up a little lost in the woods for a while. We hardly notice because we’re talking, getting to know each other the whole time. I’m surprised and confused that we never seem to run out of things to say.

The following Wednesday is just me, Aegis and BVK in the office. We end up staying late watching The Thirteenth Amendment on Netflix and having a very thoughtful discussion about race in America. When our boss and JA return from the meetings of the day, JA & BVK head home but our boss stays behind with his wife to jump into the discussion with us. The boss’s wife is already drunk and ends up going into a confusing drunk rant about JFK conspiracies. At a certain point, I make an effort to wrangle the conversation and demand a moment of uninterrupted speech to make my point. When she inevitably interrupts me, I don’t even think about shushing her with a finger. I’m so assertive about it, she stops talking immediately. (You should understand that our boss’s wife is a terrifying, but very cool woman. She’s in her 20s too, but very confident and aggressive, so me shushing her surprised everyone). This was also the day my dad disappeared for several hours so I ended up leaving shortly after to deal with that. 

This past Thursday, myself, our boss, JA and Aegis attended a very classy corporate event for a client where the Governor would be speaking. I’ve been sick and had considered not going but then I realized Aegis would be by himself in a new environment with our boss and JA who can be a little cliquey. When I got there, he greeted me with a relieved “Heyyy you!” 

We had time for a drink and a stroll through the outdoor patio before they started seating everyone for dinner. I mentioned that I may or may not have an entire box of tissues in my purse (on account of my lingering cold) and Aegis was reduced to giggles saying “You say the most random things Jess, its one of the things I love about you.” Color me shocked, of course. No one ever says such things to me. I took it as a general expression from someone who is open with his feelings but logged it away later, so that I could obsess over the slight hesitation in his voice before he said love--as if he was afraid I would take it too seriously, or because he was afraid I would realize he meant it? HAHA. Yes. 

Our boss and JA decided to go out for a cigarette and left me and Aegis to wait for them. 

“You thought I was kidding,” I said, slyly producing a full kleenex box from my huge purse. 

He practically fell down laughing, saying “Oh man, see I need more people like you in my life.” 

I probed for more detail---what did he mean? He tried to explain how his current friends lacked spontaneity and humor. Then he said something that, and I wish I could remember the words, sounded like “I try but they always say no,” or something similar. To which I replied, 

“Ah yes, I hear that often as well, especially at the end of the date.” 

He laughed, then turned to me with a sudden dubious expression and said, “Really??” 

“Well no, but only because I’m so persuasive,” I said jokingly, tossing my hair.

We eventually got to dinner, and sat through the speech. At the end, we went as a group to get a drink at the bar. Our boss and JA had to leave---he was helping her build a website for her wedding this October, so once again, Aegis and I were left alone together. 

I would normally expect someone in his position to say “Well, that’s it for me too, have a good night and drive safe.” 

But he didn’t. He asked me if I wanted to smoke, and I agreed. We went to my car and rolled a blunt. We got incredibly high. I told him the story of how I dated three of my friends in a row because it came up and he asked for more detail. It’s been a long time since I discussed my past with anyone, having finally learned to simply let sleeping dogs lie, but the confession came anyways. He told me about his past as a PCA, and the experience with a patient that drove him to quit. Shit got real deep. I think I fucked it up when I tried to lighten to mood--he seemed embarrassed to cry in front of me, no matter how much I assured him it was ok. 

If I did fuck it up he was quick to forgive me, because the conversation returned to more jovial things. He mentioned how much he admires me when I do things like shush our boss’s wife (like, we were laughing about it and he said I’m a badass essentially). He has no concept of me as an insecure person. To him, I’m as confident as they come. He said that I’m very persuasive, almost clairvoyant, that I “see what wants to happen and find a way to make it happen.” I didn’t understand what he meant at first, until I realized he was talking about a part of myself that I had always assumed was a fallacy of my own arrogance---my innate ability to read people and to act according to their needs. I was stunned and pleased by the observation, but I didn’t show it. We ended up talking until 11:30pm. When we said good-bye it was like neither of us really knew how, we hurried away from each other, shouting “BYE” over our shoulders. 

Yesterday was another Friday. We were all very tired from the night before. By the end of the day it was just me, Boss and Aegis. I think he felt bad about using my weed to roll the blunt the night before because Aegis brought his own and offered it to me and the Boss after 4pm. Since it was raining, we went up to the abandoned storage room with a door to the roof and stood by the open door to smoke. Boss went over to the far side of the room with his laptop to finish some projects while Aegis and I stood by the doorway and just talked, like we have become accustomed to doing. I forgot Boss was there until he came over an hour or so later and said, 

“I’m heading back downstairs, I don’t mind if you guys stay up here and hang out just....ya know.”

When I say Boss was acting weird as he said it, I mean he was acting very weird. You could assume “Just....ya know.” meant “Please remember to close the roof door when you come down” but the weird, snide look on his face said “Use a condom.” 

I hated it. 

You see, the night I confessed to liking AG, nearly two years ago, JA reacted by dissuading me. Boss reacted by hooking up with me as soon as I was drunk enough. Boss has been the only cock in the hen house for a few years now (AG is still on part-time but doesn’t work in office with us) and if I didn’t know any better I would say he was feeling latent jealousy over the way Aegis and I were bonding so easily. 

At this point, I’ve spent more time with the new guy outside of work than anyone else in the office. Not only that, but Aegis has a weird superpower when it comes to me. When I’m around him, I feel comfortable in a way that I don’t feel anywhere else in my life---except maybe when I’m completely alone. For some reason, around him I always know what to do and I always know what to say. The other day I tripped in front of him, fell to the floor, barrel-rolled, landed in a super chill pose like I meant to do it all and he couldn’t stop laughing saying, “Wow that was a whole lot of smooth that just came out of that.” 

I don’t know how or why exactly, but he always gets the best of me. 

We ended up going downstairs with Boss and heading home immediately after that. I didn’t wait to say goodbye to Aegis, I ran to the bathroom to blow my nose cause I was dying (I think I have a sinus infection) but Boss relayed his goodbye with a smirk on his face. I worry now that he and JA will be whispering to each other soon “Hm they have been spending an awful lot of time together, what do you think?” 

I have made no assumptions abut romance. I still believe Aegis is out of my league and that he’s self-aware enough to know it. But, from what he’s told me, it sounds like he’s in a similar situation to me. Gradually losing touch with old friends, growing apart from past relationships and finding yourself alone in your childhood home with no one left to turn to in any meaningful way. That, in and of itself, is probably why we get along so well. We’re both exhilarated to find someone we can talk to. Someone interesting who cares. Someone who isn’t distracted by hundreds of other, more fulfilling relationships. 

It really would be too complicated to date someone in an office so small. I have no intention of pursuing anything of the kind. But I had to reflect and record what I think has been a very special meeting of two souls who maybe needed each other, just a little bit. Mostly what I take from all of this is that, I really like who I am when I’m with Aegis. He really does bring out the best in me. His thoughtfulness and kindness revitalizes my faith in humanity and somehow enables me to be my wittiest, most confident, most relaxed self. If I get nothing else from this experience, it will be to ability to recognize the traits that I like about me and to cultivate them with lasting consistency.