February 13

A friend of mine had been talking up her brother to me for over a period of several months before I finally got the sneaking suspicion she wanted to set me up with him. I’m not comfortable with set ups in general. There’s too much pressure. What if he’s ugly? What if he thinks I’m ugly? What if he’s really into me, but I’m not into him at all… Then what? How does that affect the friendship involved with the set up? Is my friend going to think I’m a complete snob for not giving him a chance? Or… what if I’m into him and he’s not into me? Awkward! There’s too much pressure. Not only that, but as you’ll remember, I came home from Florida fat, depressed, and completely broke. I wasn’t sure I had the confidence to be meeting anyone at all.

My friend’s birthday came around, and her brother was in town to celebrate it. She wanted me to come over to meet him. I wanted to come over regardless because it was her birthday, but I have to admit: I was definitely curious.

I almost left the house wearing something far too sexy for a family birthday bonfire party. I looked in the mirror and said to myself, “This is ridiculous, Jess. If he turns out to be something good, you want him to be attracted to who you are, not your boobs.” So I covered the girls with a T-shirt and sweatshirt. So, outfit: check. Hair: check. Eyebrows needed a tweak, though. So I got out the wax strips and got to work. Before I could help it I accidently covered more brow than I wanted to with one of the strips. When I yanked it off I split my right eyebrow completely in half. I now had three eyebrows. Swell. Forget the fifteen pounds I still had to loose, I was now a chunky, short haired, three browed frump. I colored in the missing hole with my eyeliner, and hoped it would do the trick. I left the house saying to myself, “It’s not like it matters anyway. With my luck he’s probably ugly and stupid.”

Yeah, so, I was wrong. He was definitely not ugly. He was definitely not stupid. He had a smart sense of humor, something that especially turns me on, and he was brilliantly nurturing with his family. I was taken aback by this. I had been expecting the worst. It’s easier to expect the worst: no disappointments. You would expect, too, that since he turned out to be something promising, I would’ve been feeling especially self-conscious (considering the state of my present physique). But the funny thing was, I didn’t. By the end of the night I was feeling comfortable around him, as if I had known him from a past life (a familiar feeling), regardless of my three brows, extra fifteen pounds, and frump wear. This was… new. I hadn’t felt this comfortable to be myself with a man I was attracted to since… well. You know.

My friend reported back to me later on what her brother had to say about our meeting of one another. Seeing on how he lived in a different state (a big reason having feelings would've been a waste of time anyway), we had talked about communicating online through a social network. I can’t remember the exact words my friend used, but they were to the effect of him not wanting to connect with me on a social network because he didn’t want to lead me on. Heartbroken? Hardly. My friend doesn’t even know this (well, she does now as she’s reading this…), but I was, to put it in layman’s terms: pissed. Who the hell does he think he is? Don Juan? So let me get this straight: He thinks that keeping in touch over a social network is going to lead me on? This was so unbelievably arrogant and condescending that my on switch was suddenly turned off. I was done being interested. If he wasn’t attracted to me, fine. No connection on his end? Fine. I’m a big girl and can deal with that. But to assume that I was going to fall head over heels for him through Facebook? I’m not a thirteen year old little girl with a crush, man. Conversation via Facebook posts is not going to get me hot and heavy for you. There’s this grown up thing where grown men and women can be ”just friends”…

Over a period of two years we saw each other now and again. I was no longer finding him arrogent(I got over that), and we passed a few words online anyway. A lot happened throughout those two years, but I’m not going to write out the entire story with all the drab on-and-on details because it would not only bore you, it would take up too much of our time. I want to get right down to the point, right down to that night and that fateful kiss…

I went to my friend’s parents’ house with her last winter for her brother’s birthday. Seeing her brother meant nothing more to me at this point than getting along with him as a friend, and it was nice. We were there for two nights, and it was on the second night that everything happened.

Everyone else had gone off to bed. He and I stayed up to watch a movie. It took us a long time to actually pick out the movie, and we never really got around to watching it all the way through because we ended up having a really deep conversation about spirituality and change and growth. That deep conversation converged into playfulness, jokes, making up stupid things, and trying to listen to the wolves that were supposedly howling outside. Throughout our conversations I was either finishing his sentences, or he was reading my unspoken thoughts, and we spent hours and hours of connecting to one another in a way that completely blindsided me. It was all so familiar. “I remember this,” I said to myself.

It was four in the morning. We popped in an SNL video. I was lying on the makeshift lounge he had made for me, and as we were watching the television I began to think about what this night had consequently dug up from my past. I began to think about that fateful Thanksgiving so many years ago. I thought about sitting in my car with him in when I drove him to his parked car. I thought about our goodbye and the moment that I would regret for years to come. I thought about how I had gone for the cheek instead of the mouth. So, I made a decision: I was going to go for the mouth this time.

I got up from that make-shift lounge, my decision made, and told him I was going to go to bed. He was stretched out on the couch, so I stood over him, looked down into his face, said good night, and bent down and kissed him. He kissed back for a second, but as I recall now there was reluctance thereafter. I was too caught up in the moment to realize this until after the fact, but I was way beyond a point in my life of trying to be cautious. I had already done the cautious thing in my past, and it bit me in the ass. I spent six plus years paying for that mistake, and trying to make up for it with meaningless men. This, here, now, was exactly what I wanted, and this man wasn’t meaningless to me (go figure), so I went for it.

I crawled up on to the couch with him, kissed him again, and our heads touched for one, split tender moment before I realized that immediately after, it was gone. Friends, it is.

I went to bed that night with extremely conflicting emotions. I was realizing that my friend-only feelings were overcome by the familiarity of an old love. I was doing it all over again. This was soul wrenching and confusing for several days after the fact. I was trying to process my motive, the real reason I kissed him, and did I just ruin a potentially great friendship because of it…

The reality was that it taught me something extremely important: that it is definitely possible to fall in love again. It is definitely possible to connect with more than one man in my lifetime. It is definitely possible to take a chance, and thereafter feel the freedom of no regret. I went for the mouth this time. Now I know. And now I can go on without ever looking back.