Monday, February 29th

We'd talked online before I first met you, and then we talked on the phone. You were hard to pin down online; your voice came from many different parts of you. One day you'd play sarcastic and describe feeding your children jelly beans for their dinner. Another day you told the story of how you met your dog. I think you slept beside him on the floor his first night home so that he wouldn't be sad. I found the dog story fantastic; the jelly beans confusing. There was no single message that hooked me; not like your profile of what you wanted from me.

Then we talked on the phone. You told me later that you knew we would be good after the conversation flowed. It did. Your voice was....deep. I like a man's voice to rumble and catch on my ears when I hear it. I like to imagine the throat that makes it, the masculine skin vibrating with the sound. Your voice worked for me. You sounded Midwestern, because you are, like me, which I know we discussed. Ohio, you said. Wisconsin, said I. Not quick or glib or really sarcastic, which I admit to also understanding. I've lived on the coasts a long time, in LA and DC and San Francisco. I've met many people from Jersey and SoCal and NoCal and Philly, and I find something familiar in them all. At this point, I'm comfortable on the coasts. But a Midwesterner...they say I am that, at heart, many people. I have no accent, I am told, no Wisconsin drawl. But throughout the years, now and again, someone will look at me, a taxi driver or one of my friends, and say that I seem Midwestern. I am polite. I let people finish sentences. At heart, I like to play it straight.

You did. In our first conversation you told me you liked talking to me, it was easy. I was....startled. The dating response to this? Was there a flirty thing to say? Could I conjure up some meaning from it somehow?

You too, I said. My overly wordy coast-living self anchored by my Midwestern response, brought into the beginning of something.

If you and I were to talk today, what would I tell you of my day? I'd be straightforward. I feel awful, I would start. My head aches and I keep coughing and I have no energy. My throat makes a sound like a sexy frog. You'd say that you were sorry I was sick. You'd say with sincerity, and a touch of firmness that would put me a wee bit on guard, that I needed to go to bed early. Then if I was in the mood and you were in the mood, you would go ahead and be creative. You would tell me that I really needed a handsome silver-haired man to come and rub my feet, that that would make me feel better.

It really really would.