Pardon my rantfest earlier. I addressed my frustration by simultaneously passive-aggressively, indirectly flirting with S on my own Facebook feed and also therefore throwing down the gauntlet in case M thinks she’s the only person who could possibly ever be interested in him. Also I have put my name down for two kitchen shifts tomorrow because there was just no one on those shifts. Joke will be on me if they decide not to have lunch tomorrow on account of it being Sunday, but I doubt that’s going to happen. Which means he’s mine for lunch. Muahahahaha.
But I don’t like my chances overall. He’s still being really distant, but he’ll talk with M in greater detail. That’s a really bad sign. I’m tempted to beat myself up because every time I even think a guy’s interested who I also find interesting, I have to go after that — but I’m trying to go easy on myself anyway because who the fuck else should I go after, guys who show no interest in me at all? But then I run into this hot-and-cold shit. And he didn’t explicitly say he’s interested in me. There have just been little events that could be interpreted that way. But if that’s not what it is then I don’t know what he’s doing. I am so tired of that happening. If you’re gonna ignore me, ignore me all the fucking time. Quit with this on-and-off shit.
I can’t say things are better, but after being disappointed over S like that, I got to sit through a Q&A with Neighbor, and that was fun. He has this dry, sudden sense of humor where he will just say something mildly silly out of nowhere, and then several minutes later he will refer back to the earlier joke, and then a few hours later for a completely different thing he will call back to that original joke and it’s always good for a laugh. I still can’t quite get over that I liked this guy’s writing back in 2010 or earlier and here the fuck I am, sitting in on his Q&As and getting to see him every week and talk about whatever. And yet, my fondness for him is not all fangirling. I have too much of a thing for nerdboys and he is a big ol’ one. Except most nerdboys are sellouts to industrial civilization and he… went completely the other way. I wish I’d met him before I met all the CAW idiots. I’d have likely been a lot happier. Well… maybe. He has said he’s done a lot of work on himself in therapy. Maybe he was more of an asshole years ago. Well, he’s therefore less of one now. And we’re here now. And he’s one of the highlights of my week.
This time a bunch of people went to his house to see the bears, and I got to go along. He wanted me to walk his dogs. [smack] (not really) I am not going to pretend it wasn’t a bit of salve to the ego to be able to think, “Yeah, I get to see this all the time,” meaning hanging out with him, being at his house, seeing the bears, and all of it. Then there was this little moment where I remarked to him that he looked exhausted and he said no, he was only a little tired, and then something I didn’t catch in all the people noise but he looked a bit rueful, and I said in haste, “I know that sounded bad,” and he said “no,” and I said, “what did you say?” and he said, “Thank you for noticing.” It’s like we have hit this milestone where there’s actually been a little bit of energy exchange now, not just us off by our isolated little selves throwing words at one another from across a gulf.
Or this is just him thinking he’s supposed to respond that way and it’ll go back to the mutual isolation. Guess we’ll have to see.
And there’s still the huge Damocles question hanging over everything: are he and L a thing?
I ended up seeing the inside of his little cabin tonight. So, when his mother bought the land he now lives on, there was this little cabin which he lived in back then, and then there was her house which is the house he now lives in. When I first got here the cabin was being leased to some friends of his. Acquaintances? Something? I’d never seen the inside of it. It gets used to house guests now, either for L or for Neighbor, and — of all people — I walked M back from Neighbor’s meet-the-bears thing because she was staying in the cabin. Should have gotten her ass lost in the woods, but I’m being nice. More asshole me. Anyway, so I get in there and I look around and I see Neighbor’s work area from when he wrote most of his books, and… I saw three framed photos on the wall and realized they were from his high-jump days. Wow. All along that wall in his office nook are manuscripts and reference books and all sorts of stuff — it’s amazing. And, of course, L’s book that she got famous for. On his desk. Because of course.
M and another conference person walked me back to L’s land from the cabin. Now I fall down go boom. Zzzzz.