Friday, February 28, 2003

Bad timing

I have incredibly bad timing. I've come to accept it.

Oh, I can tell a joke or sell a laugh line like nobody's business. That's in no doubt. But in all other endeavors — say, romance or professional advancement — my timing sucks.

I used to believe that my inability to make a move at the right moment was just a matter of cosmic forces beyond my control: coincidence, wily fate, El Niño maybe. But more and more I'm aware that it's just me. I apparently emit some sort of emotional distortion field, some force that surrounds me and renders me incapable of collimating a connection.

As recently as five years ago, I was more or less all about, for lack of a better word, nesting. Having sown a healthy helping of oats in my teens and 20s and, against the odds, living to tell the tales, I was unabashedly on the boyfriend hunt. Settling down, fella. That was the path for me. In spite, even, of having had my heart not merely broken but separated from my body and stomped upon just a couple of years before, I wanted a relationship.

And everyone else? They were into "hooking up", tricking and taxi dancing as fast as they could.

My pendulum has swung back though, friends. These days, I couldn't care less for a stable relationship. Hell, I can't even keep a long distance telephone service provider for three months at a time. There's no way I can keep my house clean and pretend to be able to cook long enough to snag a man anyway. And suddenly, inexplicably but unapologetically, I'm back at the other end of the spectrum.

I'm in the market for casual connections, frankly. Anonymous if necessary, "friends with privileges" ideally. I'll take my intimate relations with an eye toward variety, in size, shape, color and venue, thankyouverymuch. Towel-clad in a sauna on Saturday night? Sign me up.

And who are the guys I'm meeting now? Of course. The same ones who wouldn't have been caught dead putting "LTR" in their personal ad when I was desperately seeking are now totally into pairing off and hoarding Fiestaware. Turncoats!

But then there's Wes, my best-of-both-worlds boy.

Wes and I stumbled across each other a few weeks ago. We "met cute," as The Giant Queen used to say, our initial liaison a classic sitcom confusion laden with clever banter. We found each other in a mall, for pity's sake, and something just sparked.

Damn but he's nice looking, an unfortunate haircut notwithstanding, and he's just nearsighted or polite enough to think I'm cute too. We have almost nothing at all in common, which makes our friendly, brief conversations a delightful bramble of fascinating discovery. Even better was finding that, when the lights and the jeans are low, we have damn near everything in common, which makes the privileges a real privilege.

Wes is also moving to Arizona next week, taking a job there after living in St. Louis all his life. Last weekend, the final Saturday we'd carved out time to fool around, he was pulling on his boots as he said, "Damn, why couldn't we have met a long time ago? We coulda had a good thing going all this time."

"It's my fault," I said. "I have incredibly bad timing. I've come to accept it."