Geek Love*

"She realized she just married him because he would have her."

This is my beautiful, amazing, very fat friend Prisca telling me about her aunt, recently divorced after marrying someone while fat, then losing 350 pounds (holy crap!) with surgery. Prisca recently broke up with her boyfriend, who loved her but whom she didn't love. Brave and mature.

It's crossed my mind to wonder if Coworker sees me as someone who'll have him. Not that I'm not a catch. I am! But some things about me that are neutral from most perspectives are kinda negative from his. He's an atheist; I'm a pretty straightforward believer. And while believers have the luxury of pitying atheists (if not condemning them to hell), the atheist attitude towards believers tends to be more frustrated than tolerant. I have no idea if he thinks I'm deluded, or stuck in habit, or what. We haven't talked about it.

The other drawback? I'm taller than he is. Coworker is a small man. Muscled and distractingly cute, but and small. Oddly enough, it doesn't bother me. I usually wear flats around him, making us close enough in height to feel like equals, which is lovely, although I can also imagine enjoying wearing heels and striding around with him like a celebrity with her man. Atticus ( blast from the past!) was redonk tall--I mean he literally could not get his arm around my waist if we were standing next to each other. Sometimes he'd just drape it vaguely around there anyway, and sometimes he'd put it around my shoulder, which I hated--it felt patronizing, and if he changed his path of movement he'd yank me around with him like a tetherball. I remember realizing at one point that I couldn't grab his ass while kissing him. My arms wouldn't reach.

It's fascinating the way height differences affect your interactions as male and female and in public space, but actually I'll save that for a later post. I just wanted to say that Coworker is self-conscious about his height (size?) and that makes me wonder if he would be so into me if, to hash grammar, me not caring about it weren't so important. If he felt like he had more options.




*Geek Love is a horrible, depressing not in the good way novel about the romantic proclivities of circus freaks, known as geeks in old argot. I'm not linking to it because you shouldn't read it. I proudly declare myself a geek, but in this post I was thinking about the circus-freak way. I know, that's insulting.