The Plan/Non-Plan

Posted by Rachel Not Rebecca On November 25th, 2008

Over at Hope Dies Last, Hope was very successful in asking for advice about how to deal with seeing a guy who rejected her. Hope has her whole story chronicled out, and had I started this blog sooner, I’d have mine here too. So I decided it was time to tell the story about O-L-B. That way, all two of you can read it, and then I can ask for advice on whether I should go to this Thanksgiving Day gathering next week. Also of note – The Thanksgiving Day gathering is where we first hooked up last year. 

O-L-B and I have been posting on the same political message board for a number of years. We met for about five minutes in summer of 2006, which didn’t count, because I was trashed. In summer 2007, one of the women on the message board held a small gathering in Connecticut. I was still living in Jersey, having just finished grad school, and was planning on driving up. He lived in the city, and needed a ride. We met up at a Metro North station because I sure as hell wasn’t driving in the city, the conversation up to Connecticut was fine, the party was fun, the drive back was fine (except for the fact that Metro North stops running early, so I dropped him off at a subway stop in the Bronx and almost got him killed. Oops) I thought nothing of him.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving, 2007. Another gathering of message board people, this time in New York. We all meet up at a bar. I think it was on the bar to the restaurant for dinner that I learn he no longer has a girlfriend. I think it is as dinner that I wonder if he is sitting closer to me than necessary. It was one of those times when I didn’t know something was going to happen, but I knew…20/20 hindsight will say I had a feeling about the evening when I was getting dressed that evening, although I don’t know how I could have.

Anyway, we all wound up at another bar after dinner, and he was definitely sitting too close to me. It was exciting – I hadn’t done this type of flirting in years, hadn’t felt that electric type of chemistry with someone since the night that HWSNBN and I first got together in college.

“Do you want to…maybe stay out and have a drink or something after…?” I remember asking, after a particularly flirtateous exchange, that involved touching. 

We wound up staying out after everyone else had gone home. I was bold from the liquid courage, and I kissed him first. And then I wound up at his place. He asked me to stay, and I did. Even the next morning I felt startling unself-conscious around him, The next day, I got a text message “Thinking of you,’ and a phone call, asking me to dinner that week. We went to dinner and heavy making out followed. After that, we started to exchange emails of questionable ratings while at work, probably 3 a day.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the attention he paid to me the first two weeks of our flirtation would be the peak of the attention he paid to me.

I can’t decide how to act when I see OLB on Saturday, if I should fake confidence and bravado, or if I should stay quiet. I’m leaning towards the latter. He has seen my faux-confidence before. He has waited for me on the sidewalk outside a coffee house, the night before we left for Chicago, and watched me strut up from a distance. He walked around with me that night, and listened as I spoke animatedly about the lessons I’d learned in the past three months, and how well I was doing. I should have just worn a sign that said “Look at me! I’m happy! I’m good! I’m together! CAN’T YOU SEE THAT?!” It would have been faster, and more honest about what a surface level improvement I had made. Because if I still felt the need to prove so much to him, then I wasn’t really any better.

Chicago was four months ago and still there are moments when I’d like a do-over, because I think of the night before Chicago and how happy I thought I was. There are some moments when I’d give almost anything to feel that way again.

But OLB has seen me tilt my chin, raise my eyebrows, and toss out some line as if I don’t have a care in the world, and what good did it do me?

So Saturday night, I think I will just be quiet. Reserved. I will greet him politely, although I do like the idea of giving him the trademark Rachel Cold Stare. It might throw him off a little. I’ll talk to everyone else of course, but I don’t know everyone there as well as I did at the last gathering, so I will probably naturally be a bit more shy than usual. And I think this is a good thing. Quiet can disarm just as well as a good line.

Beyond that, I am trying not to have a plan, because I always have a plan. I always try to script these things, and then when the curtains up, I miss my cues and forget my lines. It is better to go in without blatant expectations and prepared anecdotes. He should not be important enough to warrant my editing.

I’d like to say I didn’t come this far just to fall apart over him, but if I can even think the thoughts that make this entry possible, I wonder if I’ve even made any progress at all.

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2 Responses to “The Plan/Non-Plan”

  1. Carolyn
    Says:

    I think it’s a good idea for you to stay back. You’re not going there to see him, you’re going to see other people. There is no rule that says you have to pretend that everything’s okay. Good luck and I hope it goes well!

    November 25th, 2008 at 7:52 am
  2. Hope
    Says:

    You know how in Grey’s Anatomy whenever there was a giving birth story and the mothers weren’t listening to Addison and she would say: “Listen Crazy Patient, a birthing plan is just that. A plan. Plans change, we’re going in for a C-section NOW!”?

    I think you should look at this meeting in the same way. Have a plan, choose the one that you are most comfortable with but remember that plans can change and that is OK too.

    November 28th, 2008 at 4:22 am
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