Cosmic Joke

He was what the cosmic cat had dragged in. Not that I mind one bit, after all he quite fit the bill—he was intelligent, brilliant, funny, and not to mention really cute. It was an innocuous enough meeting, and I was more than willing to dismiss him as a grandstanding academic but that meeting had led to a seemingly innocent invitation for coffee, his way, he tells me, to kill time before he flies off that evening. Now, it may be argued that an invitation such as that could never be totally innocent, but what can I say? He piqued my interest and so I accepted the invite. A few hours later, I was on my way to meet him at his hotel for drinks…yes, just drinks.

And so we met, after what was supposedly my major blooper, to which he tells me, “I would be mortified if I actually did this on the first date.” So was that meeting, in fact a date? He flatly denied it being so, despite shamelessly flirting with me for the next 45 minutes. For the record though, it was probably one of the most fun and delicious non-date I’ve had in such a long time. Perhaps more fun than the actual romantic dates I’ve gone on.

The meeting was shortly followed by numerous late-night, long distance (and sometimes inappropriate) phone calls riddled with several hundred mixed signals. I dreaded the phone calls and looked forward to them with equal intensity. In one instance, he described it as electric. We had chemistry, he said. I let the words roll off me, I didn’t want to believe it. But I knew he wasn’t lying.

But this wasn’t a simple case of boy meets girl, and all that jazz. “You make it sound so complicated,” he once said. But, of course, it was complicated and he should have known better than to tell me that. After all, these weren’t petty things to which I could easily turn a blind eye. These weren’t negligible details. They meant everything if we were to define what we were doing.

I battled with him and with myself. I hated the idea that he could affect me so much, but it seemed whatever choice I had in the matter had been thrown out of the window the moment we met. I remember thinking, “maybe this thing, whatever it is, is bigger than both of us,” and I have no choice but to succumb to it. But if I do, I can rest on the idea that I actually fought him even a little.

But just as soon as it started, it ended. The phone calls stopped, the messages and the occasional emails had all but came to a grinding halt. And the dance that was seemingly choreographed by fate herself just went out of whack, and here I am left reeling. It must have been something I said, I’m pretty sure of that, or my resistance. Or maybe the fact that I had wished him away, I make no denials. I was scared to even contemplate what he had turned me into, much less what I actually thought I would be willing to do. I want him and I don’t want him at the same time.

Funny thing is, the end came too soon just when I had somewhat decided I would take the plunge. But the bottom line is: why did he give up on me too quickly? Couldn’t he have waited a little longer, until I was ready? Doesn’t he know that these things take time? I guess the joke is on me.