Once outside, he asked what I was interested in doing next. He said he didn't know where else to go, but he did know some bars in the area. I asked him if he wanted to go to a bar, or if he wanted assistance finding a place to have dessert (I actually had a short list of places near the restaurant that I looked up in advance, but I didn't want to blurt that out). He asked if it would be OK if we just walked back to the subway together, and I said that was fine (even though of course I was disappointed, it felt like the night was going by really quickly).
He told me he had a new years' resolution to fail more often--how he was putting together a website and starting a blog on his website, and doing it himself with this inexpensive software. (WHY does he keep telling me about his websites?? and now he has a blog? I am afraid to look at them lest I become a CYBERSTALKER). He told me he realized he was so afraid of failure, and how other people around him seemed to take it in stride when they made a bad album, or people didn't like their songs, or they printed an ugly t shirt design, or whatever. I told him I really liked his goal. He asked me if I had any new years resolutions, and I said, "maybe to floss more often?" and we talked about my mom's excitement about my family's new (hot) young dentist. Then I told him, honestly, I am so tired from my degree, and I've been thinking and striving so hard, maybe I should resolve just to take a break from thinking about it. I briefly told him about a recent conversation I had with a friend about how I had been in an existential crisis all semester, and really soul-searching and wondering what I should do next and still so confused, and my friend recommended that I take a break for a month from thinking about it at all. My friend's two pieces of evidence were: When you take a standardized test, if you skip the hard questions, your subconscious will still be processing them while you work on the easy questions. Her other piece of advice was from a sex advice column, about a gay man who was in a loving relationship but had so many negative associations with his sexual orientation that he couldn't have an orgasm. The columnist recommended that he and his partner try NOT to have orgasms for a month... and then see what happens! B definitely laughed at this. I would have liked to ask him for more advice about my future, but it did not seem like the right moment.
We strolled past a wine store and he said he wanted to pick up some wine and asked me if I wanted to come. This was a MAJOR improvement over his weird behavior at the end of our last meeting together. In the wine store we joked about the store and the wine. He mentioned in the checkout aisle that his best friend from college was coming to visit tomorrow. I am not sure for how long... I felt sad because if he has an out of town guest AND is busy with string quartet rehearsals it seems EXTREMELY unlikely that I"ll see him again this week, and then it will be March at the earliest, May or June more probably.
