Found an old journal entry (scribbled on one of the little legal pads I use at work, then buried under one of the stalagmites that SOMEHOW form on my desk) pining for Alejandro, a dude I dated right before I moved here. It is not helping my cynicism (?--how 'bout, my deuced  cold and frigid heartlessness) about Coworker. I mean I had to read until I got to his name before I figured out it was about Alejandro, so little do I now associate the feelings with him--"Because we did have something, I feel. Something unfakable by calling forth that flow of hormones. I don't know why it should matter so much. How can I say it's not just his touch that I miss, but something behind it, when his touch was joy from the beginning." Etc etc etc. Now looking back, I can say with no compunction that whatever we had probably came from the joy of being two (relatively) intellectualy compatible folk willing to hook up with each other. He was more or less the first guy I'd dated who could talk at the level I like about the things I like, so no wonder it felt like something amazing. But what's the difference between finding someone you like to talk to and also happen to like to make out with, and finding someone you actually care for?

I think it's time. Q and I were talking lately about the amazing connection you had with the people you met first week of college, and how frequently these connections fizzle once your life really begins. But that doesn't mean that you didn't have fun having those conversations--only that you somehow both couldn't sustain the interest to keep doing the same things with the same people. In the case of couples, sexuality and social pressure make it much harder to dissolve such a bond than it is for friends, especially freshman week friends--but time is still a trial that you can't fake with any other measure. Coworker is making me a little nervous on these grounds. He seems to be rushing us on the terminology quite a bit, for one thing. He's been calling me his "lady friend" to colleagues for quite some time (I mean, they still don't know it's me, but they know I exist, which is more than they do for him, if that makes any sense) and the other day he told this story in which a client spoke of me as C's girlfriend. UM. Would you have caught me relaying such a story without redaction, one month-ish in? Hayl no. Oh, that's the other thing. He was out of town for work this week and called me, seriously, almost every day. This after we'd spent time together on three days of the long weekend--at his place Saturday, out at a bar Sun where he met Q (the Bouncer's bar--AWKWARDNESS--but it couldn't have been avoided and in fact, all escaped without incident) and then on Monday, when he was swamped with work stuff, I went with him on a work-related errand.

Well, why'd you do that, Elle? That doesn't sound fun.

Well, it was, though. And that's the thing. I totally enjoy him. We can talk about work, or books, or most often random crap, and it's just so much fun. He affects (?) this sort of giddiness around me that can get so obnoxious when other guys do it--you know the kind, where all you ever talk about is how cute you both thought you were when you met each other or whatever--but it just makes me more enchanted. Q says that all my talk of one-month this and that "doesn't matter if you really like someone." But I think it does. If you haven't sttod the test of time, you have no way of knowing whether your connection is real (as I conveniently avoid describing either "real" or "connection" in this entire post) or just infatuation. Viz. Alejandro.