welcome to the new year

So, clearly a lot has been going on since last I sat down to type. I spent 72 hours with the world's hottest Mexican, I spent a couple of weeks getting over 72 hours w/ t.w.h.M., I spent christmas in Vermont with my family, I came back to DC for new year's, and now I'm already tripping through adventures in the first 4 days of this year.

Fernando.

*sigh*

I have not really been able to write about Fernando. It feels like too much. He came to DC and we spent 72 hours talking and kissing and laughing and having sex and sleeping in each others' arms. I had forgotten what it was like to be around him. I had forgotten that I'd started falling in love with him when we were in Monteverde and that I spent that first week trying to shake off the daydreams I was suddenly having of a future life with him.

I had forgotten everything amazing and overwhelming and dangerous about him. I just remembered that he was handsome and smart and funny. I even forgot just how handsome.

I was worried when I picked him up at the airport that I wouldn't feel anything anymore; that I wouldn't want to sleep with him and that he'd be here for 3 days and I wouldn't know what to even say to him. I was worried that he wouldn't want to sleep with me anymore. I just didn't know what to expect. But the moment I saw him I smiled. And the moment I saw him see me (and smile) all worries just dissappeared. And I was just with him. We hugged hello but he wouldn't let me go; he kept running his hands over my back and arms and hair while pressing me closer and closer to him. And then we were laughing and then we were kissing and then it just clicked into us.

I first drove him to my favorite place in Rock Creek Park; halfway up to the stables there is a meadow (no sparkly vampires) and in the summer you can sit there for hours and never hear the sounds of the city. We sat on a picnic table and held hands in the sun. And talked. And kissed.

I think, actually, it's just safe to assume that we were talking and kissing at all times.

We went to my house and dropped off his bags (and talked and kissed)(and almost didn't make it out the door) then we drove to Columbia Heights and we walked around my church. Then took the subway down to the Mall. I told him what all the museums were and he opted to start with The National Gallery of Art. We spent several hours wandering slowly past the paintings. Some of them we giggled about, some of them we marvelled over. Sometimes he would ask me what was happening in a painting and I would make up a story. His father is a Baptist preacher (cue dusty springfield http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZWEEm6xZvU&feature=related) so when we came across bible stories he told me them. When the rooms were empty we would kiss. We sat down in the Monet room and I curled up in his arms on the sofa; and we held hands and talked.

We went to other museums and walked the monuments. We walked through markets. We looked at the White House and the National Cathedral. We stopped for coffee and I would lie in his lap in the booth at the restaurant and laugh. He said I looked like a movie star trying to go incognito without my makeup on. We went to see a play at the Shakespeare Theatre (and as we sat in the dark his fingers would brush the side of my breast and everything went silent) that we spent hours deconstructing to figure out why it didn't work. We had fake fights. We argued about philosophy. We lay in bed and stared in each other's eyes. We danced in my room with the only the christmas lights on. I sang to him with the bench at my piano turned lengthwise (I have no idea why it never occurred to me to do this before in life) so that he could sit behind me -- press against me -- while I sang "the nearness of you" to him.

And here's the thing about Fernando; my favorite thing... My favorite thing is not his extraordinary mind or his debilitating charm; it's not his incredibly large brown eyes or his ridiculously handsome face; it's not his mouth or his dizzy kisses or his smooth skin (or his freckled shoulders); it's not his voice -- sexy enough in English but will knock me out when he speaks Spanish; it's not his soft, sweet, almost childlike kindness.

My favorite thing about Fernando is that when I am with him I feel completely like myself.

I suspect we would fight if we were a couple. I never fight. I have always tried so hard to be as diplomatic as possible; to say only the things that seemed most constructive to getting a situation where I thought it should be. I've always been proud of this. But it's exhausting. And it's a bit of a lie, isn't it? To not let someone know when they're hurting you, to not let them see they've pushed you too far? With Rob I got to the point where I couldn't say most of what I was thinking because I knew he'd freak out. With Jaime...? I think I was just a version of myself. And I liked that version, but it wasn't totally me.

With Fernando, I was just me. Right up to when I would yell at him (mostly laughing) "you're being an asshole right now!"

when have I ever said that to anyone I was dating??

When he left, when I turned my back on him at the airport and took the escalator down towards my car, I burst into tears. This didn't surprise me. What surprised me was that when I stopped crying I didn't feel normal. I didn't go home and write out my visit with him in juicy detail for this blog. I didn't bounce up to my friends and say "OH MY GOD I HAVE TO TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED."

I went home and I lay down in the bed he'd just been in and I stared into space until I fell asleep. When i woke, I went to choir practise and everytime someone touched me I started to cry because I wanted it to be him. I'd had my hand in his for 3 days.

I just felt this incredible loss. I felt like I would do anything to have him beside me for real. To have him and Lucas (his son) move to DC; to have him ask me to move to Mexico. Anything. It just felt so big this love I have had inside me for him just waiting all this time.

But the letters he wrote me, while kind, were not in any way loving or even passionate. They were, in fact, so chaste they could have been written by my father to me. And the feelings ebbed back into a comfortable, dormant, waiting place.

They're all there. I know. I still miss him, but not enough to entirely block Rob out. And not enough to stop me from meeting other men (more on that in a bit).

Everything else is the same level of detail. I could write out our conversations and our activities. I can remember the way he made love to me (highly innovative btw)(and I must say I like having a man as a lover who likes to wake me up in the middle of the night!) and the things he did that pissed me off. I should write all that down so I can read it sometime when I'm 90. I don't know why I resist it. It's like the most private thing to me. It's weird. Unlike me.

And I truly believe that all the things I feel for him, he feels for me. But I am one to embrace love, and I think he is one to run away from it as fast as his skinny, Mexican legs can carry him. Maybe he will decide not to run one of these days, but I feel it would be a mistake to bank on it.

So I move forward.

I went to Vermont for Christmas and I sang with my Mom's choir on Christmas Eve in the beautiful Old West Church with the entire community sharing the holiday together. I played hockey with my dad on the pond. I went hiking with my mom and watched silly videos with my brother. My mother had a stereotypical breakdown where she lamented the lack of grandchildren and suggested that I consider marrying my old friends Van or Seth because they seemed nice enough.

really.

I asked her later if she REALLY thought that I should marry someone I wasn't in love with. She said yes. This made me very angry.

But what would the holidays be if your family didn't piss you off once or twice.

Ben and I drove home together and were about 6 miles out of Montpelier when my car lost control in the snow and spun across the highway, narrowly missing another car before slamming to a stop against the guardrail.

that was scary.

But we were fine and the car was still driveable (I get really depressed when I see the damage, though) so we forged ahead.

Ben and I talked a lot and had fun while he was here (seeing SHERLOCK HOLMES together and going to Lisa's restaurant for dinner once).

I worked New Year's Eve at PS7 but we made very little money because there was a winter storm advisory and everyone cancelled their reservations.

grr.

whatever. I was done with money transactions by midnight so I chocked it up to more of the 2009 same and figured 2010 would be different.

New Year's started off with a 3 mile run and some yoga. I worked on my voice for awhile then met Lisa at Open City and we headed off to see NINE. Afterwords we stumbled through the freezing city and laughed and went to a bookstore but then she needed to go home and go to bed. I was still jazzed from all the singing and dancing in the movie and on a total whim decided to see what was happening at the Chevy Chase Ballroom (for those of you not in DC; chevy chase is a neighborhood, it's not named after the actor).

Turns out it was Tango night at the CCB and i have ALWAYS wanted to learn how to tango. There was a separate studio they were sending people to who were new to the tango, where a teacher would work with you for 20 minutes or so and help you get started with the basics. It was just enough for me to realize that I wouldn't have the easy transition from salsa to tango that I'd had from swing to salsa (much the same, just more hips). Tango happens all on your toes and very much from the waist down. It's so much about balance and smoothness. It was an entirely new physical language and I knew only enough to know that I was a totally inept.

My teacher sent me back out and told me to watch the other couples. I was almost exclusively watching everyone's feet. But there was one couple where I was looking at the way their whole body moved. It was so passionate. It made me think "the tango is like the most intimate conversation you can have". The expression on the man's face was so sensual that it made me think "THAT is why I want to dance tango. I want someone like that to dance with me." Really, I just wanted that guy to dance that way with me but he was REALLY good so clearly that wasn't going to happen. My teacher came out and sat beside me and asked me what I thought. I mentioned a few observations then pointed out the couple saying "I'm really liking watching them." and she said she knew the guy, that he was Argentinian, but that she'd never seen the woman before. I realized that the guy (when he didn't have his sexy tango face on) looked an awful lot like Jeff Goldblum and immediately started referring to him as "argeninian jeff goldblum" in my head.

Several men were kind enough to dance with me. When they asked I said "I'm really, really bad, I don't know if you want to dance with me." and they each smiled and said that was fine, they were happy to help me. So I got a little better with each partner....

... so when AJG (Argentinian Jeff Goldblum) DID ask me to dance I was moderately literate. Still, I could feel how clumsily I was moving. But AJG just pressed his chest to mine and put his face so close that our noses brushed and our mouths were right next to each other and he whispered directions now and then. But mostly he just talked to me with his body, and eventually, my body started to listen. At one point he smiled at me and said "can you tell? you're dancing now." and I could.

He danced with me for a very long time (maybe an hour, maybe 90 minutes, I don't know). We were together until they closed at 2am. There were other people around then and we stopped acting like we were lovers (which is totally how we were dancing -- especially with him massaging my back the way Fernando does when he wants to feel my body pressing into him and squeeze my skin in his hands...) and we started being polite strangers.

said that I would be back sunday night and he said he'd see me then.

I was totally glowing from the whole night, but I didn't really think he'd be there; this fall has taught me nothing if not "don't believe a single word a man says to you". But he was there. And we did dance -- in fact, he danced with me from the first to the last and didn't let anyone else get near me. At one point he got fed up with the music and said "follow me" and took me into the other room and pulled out his iPod. We each put an earphone in one ear and danced that way for the rest of the night.

He's not as good a kisser as he is a dancer; but I think I can fix that. If we wind up seeing each other again and if he gets all kissy w/ me again I want to say "you don't kiss me like you dance with me."

When he dances with me he waits before he starts until he can feel my whole body there with him, then he suggests something to me and waits to hear how my body answers him before moving onto something else. It's a very soft, but firm conversation.
when he kisses me it's just too aggressive; all hard lips and blunt tongue. completely different from how he moves otherwise. But he's a good mover, so I think it's possible I could like kissing him.

I had kind of a revolutionary moment with him, though, when we were kissing. At first I liked it, but then I thought "ok, I don't want to do this, I want to dance" so I [seriously, I have never done this before in my life!] pulled away from the kiss and said "can we dance for now?"

and he smiled and we started dancing again.

was it really that simple all along? All these years I've never known how to draw my own line and it's that easy??

Actually, I just felt so proud of myself!
I had to do it a few more times, but that was cool; it was nice that the dancing was so hot that every once in awhile he'd just grab me and kiss me.

Later, in the car he was kissing my neck (mi cuello) and I pulled away saying "ok that's enough" and he stopped but he is Argentinian after all so he said "why, doesn't it feel good?" and I said "yes, of course it feels good but just because my body likes it doesn't mean my brain is ready for it"
and he was like "I don't understand, if your body likes it..." so I said "look we've been dancing like we're lovers, but I don't know you. I don't know what I want yet."
again. I have never spoken to a man like that before. "No" was sort of drilled out of me (no pun intended) in terms of sex when I was a kid, so to find it so easy to use all of the sudden is kind of a heady thing.

It was also nice that he turned out to be fun to talk to too. We spoke some in English and some in Spanish. He is my age more or less (I never did find out how old he is, but he has creases around his eyes, so I know he is not a child). I asked him why he came to the US and he said that he wants to see as much of the world as possible. That he thinks of the world of his house, and Argentina as his bedroom, but that he doesn't just want to live in his bedroom.

He took my card and said he'd be in touch, but still (again, after this fall) I wasn't really sure what to expect. So color me surprised when I got an email from him today telling me what a lovely time he'd had last night (he wrote me in spanish :)

ok.

so that's some of what's been happening.

golly life is fun :)