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9:06 pm – Two friends and I are are breaking down our volunteer booth after enduring an overly long outdoor concert. They start chatting with a guy who is wearing the most unfortunate clog-like shoes. It turns out he's a friend of their friend Chas, and looks like a vaguely more cleaned up version of the typical Pacific Northwest hippie stoner. This image is reinforced when we are introduced, as his name is clearly a moniker that he has given himself.
Female, 23, non-profit employee
with
Male, 28, unemployed
9:14 – My friends have left and this guy is still here, helping me take down my pop-up tent. I'm confused. He asks if I want to chat when we get done, which confuses me further, as I don't think I've said anything particularly witty or interesting.
9:33 – We are sitting outside a closed cafe, and he is telling me about his energies–he's water, and he's pretty sure I am too. He's been reading up on those sorts of things recently and finding them pretty life changing in a way that's "hard to articulate."
9:40 – He says he's impressed that I haven't left yet. I am too, but I've become accustomed to this kind of West Coast quirkiness by now. He's got a nice face, and I have nothing better to do with my evening.
9:50 – We are in my work truck taking my supplies back to my office. It does occur to me that letting a near stranger into a work vehicle is slightly foolish, but he's seemed remarkably trustworthy and I'm usually pretty wary of strangers.
9:52 – He tells me that he usually wears suits, and I have just caught him on an off day. He says his suit wearing is partially because he's been trying to work on his manners recently. I'm getting more and more intrigued.
9:55 – “I should probably tell you that I'm very attracted to you,” he tells me. I tell him I'll watch out in case he has dishonorable intentions. Officially intrigued.
9:57 – I mention the frog research that I've been doing recently. He tells me that frogs are his spirit animal, but not in a way that has any particularly strange implications.
10:13 – We have finished bringing things into my office, and I stay behind to lock up. When I emerge, I can't find him and get this sinking feeling that he's left, but I find him outside, examining the building and wondering if there's ghosts in it.
10:40 – I seem to have stumbled into my first date ever. We are wandering downtown, trying to decide what to do with ourselves. He says he wants to play me a song, and I listen to Bjork sing “All is Full of Love” for a few blocks and I feel like I'm in a movie.
11:06 – We are on the roof of a little bistro, sharing a grilled cheese and drinking beer. I let him pay, and wish I hadn't, because he seems to be in-between gainful employment right now, and I have a tiny but at least steady income.
11:35 – We attempt to hold a conversation in Spanish, which we both studied in college, but I can't remember enough from my few semesters to keep it up. Instead, he shows me some videos on his phone from his days as a sponsored snowboarder. I'm impressed, but am starting to realize that this evening's conversation has been a bit more one sided than I would have liked.
12:11am – “So I guess you're coming to my house,” he says. We have left the bar and started wandering in that direction, and my house is in quite the opposite. I'm not sure whether that is a good thing or if I'm being overbearing, but I'm leaving the state in a few weeks so I'm not in the mood to drag things out.
12:26 – We pass a large herb bush, and I identify it as lemon balm. We pick some to make tea out of.
12:43 – His roommate walks into the kitchen, where we are standing and drinking water. I don't like that I am obviously that girl that he has brought home and will likely sleep with, but she's cool and tells us about her night at the bars.
12:57 – We are sitting in his tiny nook of a room, looking out the window at an island in the bay, drinking our tea. I tell him I haven't been there yet, and he says we should go soon, and at that moment there really is nothing I would like more than to take a ferry there with him.
1:06 – He unties my shoe, and I warn him that my feet are probably kind of stinky and I should have worn socks. I take them off and he picks one up, smells it, and diagnoses it as alright. He then offers me his own to sniff, which I politely decline.
1:15 – We are in the shower together, and I have just told him that I'm a virgin for all intents and purposes, not that I have any qualms about changing that. He's says that he's had a spell of attracting virgins recently, but he's cool with it.
1:32 – We are back in his room and he is rubbing olive oil all over my body. Its by far the most sensual thing I've ever experienced. I'm too sober and feeling overly cerebral, and don't really know what to do, but I'm down to let him be in charge.
9:02 am – We are back in front of my front door, my virginity still more or less intact, after he has walked me all four miles home in the cool morning. We exchange phone numbers and hug goodbye. (We chastely hang out a few more times before I leave, and he gives me a piece of advice that I still sometimes ponder–upon telling him that my shoes are falling apart and I need to get new ones, he says, “You don't have to get new shoes. You get to get new shoes.”)