meeting david

Wednesday, Jul. 16, 2008 | 12:22 AM

so this is what happened on friday...

i arrived at the park around 1:30, and sat down in a shady spot in the grass. i attached bubble to a table with a string of leashes, so she could walk around and play fairly loosely. i was uncomfortable with the number of people around me, but i didn't want to move farther from the parking lot.

i watched cars pull in and out as i waited. excitement and fearful doubt built up within me. if he didn't show up, i'd have felt very let down. if he was only leading me on with some sick and twisted plot to leave me hanging and spy on me from afar, i'd not only feel stupid, but i'd never be able to trust again. of course, i'd declared all humans untrustworthy a few times before.

then i saw it, a guy pulling into the parking lot on his motorcycle. was it him? he answered my question with a wave in my direction. it was cute.

he had told me that it would take him a while to take off all of his motorcycle stuff, so i stayed where i sat and waited. my doubt and excitement was replaced with anxiety and nervousness. i had a hard time looking at him as he walked over and sat down in front of me.

"i'm all phenibuted up," he said. (phenibut is some cool stuff that helps with anxiety. i had chosen to not take any.)

he took a sandwich out of his backpack and began to eat it. for a minute or so, which felt like forever, it seemed that there was silence. i mostly stared down at my lap. i glanced up every so often, saw him looking at me, and looked back down. he was smiling, sort of. he looked happy at least.

at some point he asked me something like, "do you want to say something?"

i responded with the first thing i said to him, "hi."

once i felt comfortable enough to say more than one word, i told him that i wanted to move to a different spot in the park. after moving, we attempted to talk, but were met with much silence. i'd thought it might be easier than usual for me to talk, since i'd already chatted with him online. however, this was not the case. i wasn't very afraid of him judging me, but still something held be back. i told him, "this is harder than i thought."

we did do some talking though. we talked about how we were feeling. i asked him if he felt awkward, we each shared that we were worried about boring the other, and i told him that i didn't find him creepy. he thought that something he was doing or not doing was keeping me from talking more. i told him that it's normal for me to not talk.

we had wanted to plan an activity to help keep the awkwardness level down if we had a hard time talking. i'd mentioned a frisbee, but he liked flying discs better, which i guess are different somehow. we had been looking at "aerobies" online, and i particularly liked the squidgie, mostly because of the name. he had brought some of these with him, including the squidgie, five in total. we decided to throw them, and moved again to a place in the park that had less trees for them to get stuck in.

i normally have trouble doing anything in public, or with anyone other than tara or my parents. active things are even harder. for some reason, i thought i'd be ok throwing these discs around with david, but i was wrong. i was my normal socially anxious self. however, his willingness to work with me, as silly as it was, helped me to fight my subconscious fear.

at first i just watched him throw them. then, after much waiting, building up courage, and talking about it, i finally threw one. we both sat and just threw them out away from us. it was kinda weird, but it helped me to build up a small bit of confidence in my squidgie throwing abilities. after doing that for a while, i worked up to throwing them at him.

he then tried throwing them back at me. at first i just sorta let them land next to me, or (haha) hit me. i hesitated to actually try to catch them. i eventually did, though.

i felt open and exposed where we were sitting, since there weren't many trees around, and we were in plain view of the street that my dad would drive on while coming home. i asked if we could move someplace else, and so we did. i didn't like the new spot either, so then we moved again, close the the spot in which we had been sitting before. i felt silly that i kept wanting to relocate. hopefully he didn't find it weird.

when we were at our final destination, i successfully threw the squidgie back and forth with him for a short while. something that might take years for me to achieve with someone else, took about an hour or so with david. oh how much easier things would be if everyone were understanding and patient!

throwing a squidgie back and forth didn't seen very social to me, and i was still uncomfortable and felt awkward with the throwing, so i stopped, and we just talked for pretty much the rest of the time. i was still very quiet, but i tried, and i enjoyed talking to him.

the time moved quickly, and before i knew it, it was 5:30. i had to get home, but i wanted to take a picture of him before we parted ways. of course i had to take like 27 pictures (or maybe just six) before i got one that i decided was good. (not because of my subject, but because of my picture taking. i want to emphasize that since i know he'll probably read this.) he also took some pictures of me.

i wanted to also take a picture of him with all of his motorcycle stuff on. he had a helmet of course, as well as some special jacket and pants, in case he ever falls off and skids 100 feet or something. i don't know why, but i found his motorcycle outfit kinda cute.

while he was suiting up, he randomly shared with me that he also gets tonsil stones. we seem to have some pretty obscure things in common. like, we found that we both were holding onto plastic wrap tubes, because of their smallness and thickness. really, how many people in the world are keeping those things?

after he was all done, i told him, "be safe on your thingy." (the motorcycle worries me a bit.) i then watched him leave the parking lot, before turning and going home.

so, as i said before, i think it went well despite my nervousness. he didn't do or say anything bad, he didn't seem creepy, and we got along ok. he seemed like a nice guy. i liked him enough that i didn't feel ready to end the meeting when i had to. i had gotten more comfortable near the end.

hopefully i am not naive and just being lulled into a false sense of security.

we later made plans to hang out again on tuesday, which was today. i'll try to write about that here soon.

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