I Can't Forget the Glamor, Your Eyes Held a Tender Light

Having not heard from Don Juan de Morocco since we friended each other on Facebook, I surmise that I am not going to. This bothers and does not bother me in equal measure.

On the one hand, the relationship is not a runner. I believe that it is possible to fall in love with someone almost instantly; most people I know who feel they have met "the one" say they knew within a date or two. I also don't think it's necessarily an impediment to falling in love that two people be from different countries, cultures, religions. So, it was possible for Don Juan de Morocco and I to fall in love, but we didn't. I didn't, anyway, and I suspect he feels likewise. That said, I know he's someone I'll always think of from time to time with fondness because he was so refreshingly interested in me. The stumbling blocks to our having a relationship (the aforementioned differences of country, culture and religion) are not obstacles that I have ever faced in any serious way. The stumbling block I usually face -- the "he's just not that into you" problem best exemplified by my relationship with The Only Living Boy in New York -- was wonderfully absent. Don Juan de Morocco made me feel beautiful and chosen and he showed me a good time, and I love him for that, even if I didn't fall in love with him.

On the other hand, the exhilaration I felt at Don Juan de Morocco's locking onto me like a cruise missile is not a sensation easily forgotten or set aside. It is emotional crack, and I would very much like to continue feeling the same high over and over again. I forgot (or never knew) that dating could be fun and uplifting rather than a campaign of blitzkrieg for the self-esteem. For that reason, I can't seem to tie a bow around the Don Juan de Morocco experience and put it on a shelf.

I know that Don Juan de Morocco and I could never have a long-term relationship because of one simple thing: conversation. As an avid collector of "how we met" stories, I can state with some authority that a common thread in virtually all of them is that the couple said they just loved talking to each other and felt like they could continue their conversation for hours. I was really done talking to Don Juan de Morocco after about an hour. It's not that he is dumb or boring -- quite the contrary -- but we just didn't have a strong connection on that level. Our connection was more at the physical level. There are all kind of relationships out there, and I would not characterize any of them as "good" or "bad," but I will say that I am looking to connect at a mental and emotional level as much as or more than at a physical level.

Unfortunately, the man with whom I feel the strongest emotional connection and to whom I never seem to run out of things to say is The Only Living Boy in New York, and he is endlessly frustrating. I, who never think anyone likes her, know that The Only Living Boy in New York likes me and has liked me since we met. I also know that I told him at Christmas that I like(d) him, and he said that he and his girlfriend had been together for over a year, that things were going well, and that (in so many words) he did not intend to chuck her. My sneaking suspicion is that his relationship with his girlfriend is going to end (I have no idea what kind of person she is, but I am certain that she has "he's just not that into you" problems with him), and we are headed inexorably toward revisiting the issue of our being together. Part of me craves that moment, and part of me dreads it because part of me thinks uncynically that we are meant to be together and part of me, while still believing we are meant to be, wants to wring his neck because he should have broken up with his unsatisfactory girlfriend as soon as I told him how I felt. I love him (though I am not saying that I am in love with him, not exactly), but I am going to be a little bit annoyed if my fate is to marry an emotional coward. If he can't take the comparatively tiny chance of breaking up with a girl he's patently not that excited about to pursue an enticing alternative, what does that say about the chances he'll be prepared to take in the future? Idiot.

The ideal would be to combine Don Juan de Morocco and The Only Living Boy in New York into some kind of superman. So far, we have not found the science.