there's this guy (lyn)

Once upon a time, back in 1984, I met this guy.  He wasn’t my type at all.  He wasn’t particularly intellectual.  Didn’t care about school.  And worst of all, he was from my hometown.  He was a little unrefined.  I mean, his manners were good, and he dressed well, and he appreciated good food and nice places.  But he didn’t filter what he said.  You might even say he was a bit coarse.  But I liked him.  He was sexy.  Had good street smarts.  And he was a lot of fun.  In fact, when I think of him, I think mostly of the fun we had.  At his Back Bay apartment.  On his boat.  At dinners.  At his apartment in New York.  Pretty much anywhere we were.  Our relationship never progressed to anything serious, so there were never any real issues.  I was with him in Chicago for a long weekend, and after that, it was over.  Nothing really happened; our thing just ended. 

We have no mutual friends, so when we stopped seeing each other, we also lost total touch.

This past September we bumped into each other.  He’s married now (and has been for over twenty years).  He seems happy.  But it was clear that our unresolved thing is still unresolved, and the attraction is still there.  He is loyal to his wife and would not cheat on her; and I would never be the other woman.  But we have been communicating, very unromantically.  In fact, he may be fixing me up with a friend of his who is moving to New York in late December.

The irony about this guy is that I really think he gets me, while I’ve discovered that I don’t get him.  For example, I knew him as a wealthy playboy.  He worked, but his expensive hobbies seemed more important to him than his job.  I also didn’t find him particularly athletic.  Now, it seems, he is a triathlete.  He is always at the gym.  He is always going on some marathon bike ride or doing an exhaustingly long swim.  Or running.  Or playing squash.  And, he is more altruistic than I ever knew.  He’s heavily involved in helping youth who are physically disadvantaged.  He also cooks.  Something else I never knew about him.  He comically explained it this way.  “I learned to cook when I was delivering boats for boat builders.  I got to keep dry (while down below cooking), and egotistically, I could control everybody's bowel movements! “  In another email he wrote, “You are too obsessed with your weight.  It's your sense of humor & your personality that I always appreciated.... Christ do you need stroking.“

He’s refreshing to talk to.  There is no pretense about him.  I feel comfortable around him, and still think he’s fun.

In my next life I’m sure we’ll be married.