Night before last I met up with an old, old friend and former drinking buddy. He was part of the crew of guys I used to hang out with back in the 90s and very early 00s. For the most part, I was the only girl in this crew, save for a few outliers who would pop in and out from time to time.
This friend, let’s call him Clint, was somewhat peripheral due to the fact that he was the first of our friends to marry – and his wife HATED us. So many times he wasn’t around because she didn’t like to be around us. Sad for her because we had SUCH good times together – drinking beer, telling dirty stories, and generally acting like guys…minus the farting, but I can’t really say the same for the burping.
Anyway, I haven’t seen these guys in years, but Clint and I are FB friends and I’d actually seen him on one of the dumb dating apps that I screw around on, so I was fairly certain that he’d finally gotten a divorce (I say “finally” because we all knew he wasn’t happy in that marriage, and he let us know about this in multiple ways such as aggressively hitting on my girlfriends, yet he remained married throughout the years).
We met at the city park close to my place. He drove 45 minutes downtown, which was nice of him. We walked around the park once and then stopped at the little restaurant at the park and asked if they would turn on the heaters so that we could sit outside with the dog and have a drink.
I knew that he wanted to meet up to catch up and see about my status and I’m sure to see if there might be any sparks there. So we started talking. What a catch-up conversation we had!
Jeez, you guys, this poor man is going through a massive midlife crisis. One that’s so weighty I don’t know if I can even describe it, so I will list some of it out:
I think we both fought back tears. I know I did.
I felt so awful, but also OK in letting him know where I am in life and that I’m not interested in entangling myself with someone who’s just gotten divorced, though I let him know in more indirect ways such as noting that my two broken engagements were with men who’d recently been divorced. I will be his friend, absolutely, but more than that is pretty much out of the question. I hope I don’t have to spell that out even further. I did my very best to not give out any indication otherwise.
He was sweet to insist on walking me home after I turned down his offer to drive me. There’s been a rash of crime surrounding my downtown place and even though I had my pepper spray in my pocket, it felt good for him to walk me home.
He called me on his drive home to tell me that he had a nice time catching up with me and I said the same thing and wished him a safe drive home.
I want to be Clint’s friend again, but I’m not sure exactly how. Again, he wasn’t one of the guys I became particularly close with way back when, like John or Derek or even Stephen, but he was there. I just don’t know that it’s in the cards for us to really be close. But he’s texting me like he wants to be kind of closer. I have to figure this out.
Well, enough pondering about Clint for now.
Love you!
GS
Loading comments...