Upon review, I should've broken this up into a few seperate posts. But since I don't know that anyone other than myself will ever read this anyway it mitigates my concern.

Why... so... serious? OR: Love and Herb

So I have this problem, and I figured it would be good for me to type it out a bit.
-The problem: Love, or the lack thereof.
-Corollary problem: I am a good-for-nothing, sullen, stuck-in-my ways coward that's so mixed-up he would shit himself if he ever got what he wanted.

Maybe I'm a little hard on myself. If so, then working that out is part of the purpose of this writing. Enough wasting your time, here's the deal. The woman's name is Miranda. I'm pretty sure I'm in love with her. I may not have a big enough sample size. But I'm happy when I'm around her, excited when I'm going to see her, and anxious when we're not in touch. She's beautiful, she's intelligent, she's artistic. I've known this girl maybe since I was nineteen or eighteen? When I first met her she was dating a friend of mine who I'm still pretty close with. Back then, I was fond of her. Wish I'd been dating her then. I live in one suburb by this friend; the woman live twenty miles south.

That was then; skip forward about five years. For me, a lonely, pathetic period and for her a series of bad breakups at college and a pair of half drug/half depression induced 'episodes' that each time have landed her out of school and back home, where-in we'd hang out. The first of these was in October '07. I got to take her to the SGChicago halloween party. At the time I only knew I was fond of her and that she'd had a rough time lately. I'd forgotten how beautiful she really was, and after that I got the bug. Move forward, December '07. I arrange with her a day-trip to the Shedd Aquarium (PS if you don't live in a city like Chicago with a world class aquariam, sucks to be you) Went to the aquarium, went to dinner, on the way home I asked her in my crude, 'never done this before' way if she would go out...

Upon review, I should've broken this up into a few seperate posts. But since I don't know that anyone other than myself will ever read this anyway it mitigates my concern.

Why... so... serious? OR: Love and Herb

So I have this problem, and I figured it would be good for me to type it out a bit.
-The problem: Love, or the lack thereof.
-Corollary problem: I am a good-for-nothing, sullen, stuck-in-my ways coward that's so mixed-up he would shit himself if he ever got what he wanted.

Maybe I'm a little hard on myself. If so, then working that out is part of the purpose of this writing. Enough wasting your time, here's the deal. The woman's name is Miranda. I'm pretty sure I'm in love with her. I may not have a big enough sample size. But I'm happy when I'm around her, excited when I'm going to see her, and anxious when we're not in touch. She's beautiful, she's intelligent, she's artistic. I've known this girl maybe since I was nineteen or eighteen? When I first met her she was dating a friend of mine who I'm still pretty close with. Back then, I was fond of her. Wish I'd been dating her then. I live in one suburb by this friend; the woman live twenty miles south.

That was then; skip forward about five years. For me, a lonely, pathetic period and for her a series of bad breakups at college and a pair of half drug/half depression induced 'episodes' that each time have landed her out of school and back home, where-in we'd hang out. The first of these was in October '07. I got to take her to the SGChicago halloween party. At the time I only knew I was fond of her and that she'd had a rough time lately. I'd forgotten how beautiful she really was, and after that I got the bug. Move forward, December '07. I arrange with her a day-trip to the Shedd Aquarium (PS if you don't live in a city like Chicago with a world class aquariam, sucks to be you) Went to the aquarium, went to dinner, on the way home I asked her in my crude, 'never done this before' way if she would go out on a date with me. The chatter was brief-she was going back to school in January, which I knew when I asked her. But she conceded that the day had pretty much already been a date, and within the whole 'I'll be gone in a few weeks' scenario she says 'sure'. At eight months remove I'm not sure of the exact words but it was a yes, not sounding like I'd crushed her hand in the car door, not like I'd given her a million dollars. We went to see Sweeney Todd later that month. She had new years plans, and that was that.

Skip forward to June. Miranda's back from school after another 'thing'. Her, I, and our mutual friend Mike hang out a few times. We see Iron Man, play a game of Morton's List. I'm reminded why I asked her about dating months ago. So I get in touch with her... I should pause here to say that aside from calling her parents' house where she stays, the only way to get in touch with Miranda is through messages on her Livejournal. She doesn't like to answer a cell phone when she has one, or text messages. Nothing thus far has been left on the beach head of this livejournal page, though. Anyway. I get in touch with Miranda about going to the Taste of Chicago on July Third when the city shoots off the fireworks. She's quite excited about this, says yes. Again, we pass the whole day. Pretty good time, I don't know if it was any good as a 'date'. We have food, we complain about how it gets cold, watch the fireworks, walk the streets to the train station and so on.

Now, here's where I make the first of many a blunder. She invites me to hang out with a few of her friends, who have jobs with awkward shifts. I said no-it had been a long day and... these people are basically strangers to me; in hindsight this was an inexcusable mistake. It was a considerable chance that I let go-she was nominally introducing me to her gorram friends. I hand't gotten more than a hug from Miranda previously; didn't even get that when I dropped her off. If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm new at this.

A a week goes by; that would make it about a week ago. Miranda mentions that it's an anniversary of sorts for her on her LJ, I ask what the appropriate gift is, and she answer scarf. I know ahead of time that I can't buy a person's affection. However, I'm willing to be that I can at least buy her Attention, or put in a bid for it. This is why guys pay for dates and give gifts, isn't it? So I run out and get a scarf, and drive down to her place to drop it off. I can't imagine how awkward it would've been to call her people and announce this delivery, (partly because It's been nine years ago since I was dating anybody) so I leave it where it'll be found. Vindicating my theory about bidding for her attention I get a proper phone call the next day when she gets it. Recalling her distaste of phones, this is big. We resolve to 'hang out', and the next day or so we go see Hancock. We're back on hugs at least.

Here's where the anxiety comes in. One of the topics of conversation between me and Miranda on that ride home is getting stoned. In my short twenty-four years I've been complete straight edge: no booze ever, no drugs ever, no copulation ever. (The last one has more to do with incompetence/antisocialty as you maybe can tell by now) I'm not uptight about this-my brother drinks, and my best friends get stoned and copulate. In the words of Chris Rock, if you're going to be with someone you have to be into what they're into. If she's a churchgoer I gotta go to church, if she loves IHL Hockey I have to love the Chicago Wolves games. She like getting stoned, so I'd had better give it some solid consideration. I'm not saying Miranda or anybody else would really judge me about using or not using marijuana, but I don't want her to 'not judge' me. I want this woman to love me, plain and simple. So my personal decision about avoiding all substances? That's about to go right out the car window.

Skip forward to this past weekend. Miranda, like everybody else, wants to see The Dark Knight. I'm taking advantage, and with some further LJ kibbutzing we arrange to go see this. We're actually starting with three people because the aforemention friend Mike wants to see it too and Friday is his only open night. At this point I'm holding. (If you're not 'hip' like I am now, then know that 'holding' is slang for 'in possession of controlled substances') Ironically, I got the marijuana from a friend of mine-the friend that was dating Miranda five years ago. He says it's 20-something grams. Like a Chinese newspaper, that means nothing to me. Mike and I go down to her neighborhood and meet Miranda at the house of a friend of hers. This would've been one of the friends from the abortive post-Taste thing, who's also her connection for marijuana. She had little gift for me: a piece of concrete with the words 'Dark Knight' and the date written on it, because I'd said over the phone that the plan was set in stone. So I produce the weed, she gets excited and painstakingly tries to instruct me through my first pipe hit. Miranda seems excited about it. I learn a few things right off. 1) I don't have the manual thumb dexterity to operate a conventional lighter; Miranda has to do it for me. 2) I'm a sissy who can't stand pipe hits, which may be for the best because I take shitty pipe hits anyway apparently. 3) It's going to require a copious amount of marijuana before I actually get high. I only took one real hit, didn't feel anything beyond a sharp unpleasantness in my throat, and wound up leaving the remaining twenty or so grams of marijuana with her. Best that it get put to good use.

So we get to the theater later than I would've liked. As it's opening weekend there aren't any seats together. So no sitting next to Miranda. Cinemark moviegoers, three of you who sat in contiguous seats deserve to get stoned. Well, just two because I can accept not sitting next to Mike. We see the film-it's good-and then we have to go homeward. By now I'm desperately trying to be a little smarter and a little more active. Rather than drop Miranda off, I drop off Mike first. Not entirely my idea since he had work pathetically early in the morning, but it meant driving north twenty miles to drop him off, then south twenty miles again before I could drop Miranda off. If I could've taken a knee to keep the clock running I would've. What's more instead of taking Miranda straight home, we stop at my house that I can lend her a copy of Slaughterhouse Five, then go to the Diner-a denny's by any other name. (double irony-the friend who supplied the weed and used to date her also years earlier supplied me with the copy of slaughterhouse five)

I had a plan in this, mind you. Eight months ago when I'd asked her if she'd be inclined to date me, I had waited to near the ass-end of the evening. I thought, if she's uncomfortable with the idea at least I won't be forcing her to remain in awkward circumstances. I had promised myself before this past evening that I was going to say a few things to her in clear, unambiguous terms: "Remember when I said I wanted to date you eight months ago? I still feel that way," and "I'm happy when I'm around you and sad when I'm not." I'll credit myself only with the following: I said just what I planned to say. I don't know if it was because it was late, or because Miranda didn't want to let on to anything, but I can't tell, or can't recall how she reacted. She didn't break into hysterical sobs, and she didn't thrust her boobies into my hands and say 'Take me NOW!'. Conversation kept up, I didn't push at the topic. Don't think that it wasn't some nervous shit for me. When the night was over and I dropped her off we had a hug, but I said to her 'If we keep up like this eventually I'm going to start pushing for kisses.' Maybe it sounded too much like a joke because everything I say sounds like a joke(bad joke, depending on your taste); maybe it sounded funny because I'm timid. She chuckled. I meant it.

Anyway we talked a lot for the rest of the evening/morning. (It had been a late showing of Dark Knight) We have a 'pinky swear' agreement to go to a ropes course together, though I don't think pinky swears are actually binding agreements and I'll leave it at verbal confirmation. If that was Saturday morning I figure I'll wait for Monday at least to go to her LJ and post listings of different ropes courses in the area.



Now at this point, already I'm seeing some of the therapuetic value here. I'll be able to look back on what I think has been the most objective retelling of the facts that I'm capable of providing. What's really bothering me is Marijuana and no, it's not because of paranoia. I had believed of myself that I was a straight edge. I believed that before I even knew the term, and believed it the first time I was surrounded by drinkers and smokers: highschool, 15 years old. I believed this about myself in the way some people believe that a man died on a cross for their sins, that ketchup doesn't belong on hot dogs, and that Roger Moore was the best James Bond. But I really want to make something happen with Miranda and I think that participating in her interests will be important to that. In fact I'm already regretting that I didn't give a more expeditious effort to smoke marijuana in front of her when I had the chance. But I didn't like how it felt so I said so and took just the one hit. Fuckin' stubbornness at work.

I suppose I'm just scared and nervous is all, scared of changing things. Because I know for darn sure that I'm going to use Marijuana again, not because it was fun or anything but because it seems that it's going to be of some importance to getting more involved with Miranda. Maybe just tangential importance, but I can't cut corners on this because I don't get many opportunities to be with a girl I may well be in love with.

Christ, I don't want to screw this up.