Book 3 Part 2: Rapping to Lin Manuel Miranda (Gavin the Golden Girl)
When we got back to his house, he invited me inside instead. I agreed, because I was happy that we were getting along well and I wanted that to continue. He said he had thought at the start of the date that I didn’t like him. I was surprised by that, since I had been determined to like him since we had first started talking.
He offered me a glass of wine. I sat carefully at a distance on his leather, L-shaped couch. He parked his wheelchair at the end of the short side, at a respectful distance. His house was perfect, decorated like a magazine. Everything was in gray and white, sparklingly clean, and seemed brand new. He had just bought the place and he told me about how one of his brothers had designed it for him.
He showed me pictures of himself with Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. He wanted to be a politician himself. He pulled up music on his TV and I sang along to “Satisfied” from Hamilton and “You’re Welcome” from Moana. I can’t remember if he sang Golden Girls, but I’m pretty sure he at least played it for me (he loved the show). He played some of his other favorite songs for me. One of the album covers showed the band members in a boat, in iconic poses. He asked me if I knew what it was a spoof of, and when I told him it was a spoof of George Washington Crossing the Delaware, he acted very impressed and said most women didn’t know that. I was proud in the moment, but by that point in the evening, things were going too fast for me to decide. Later, I was offended. I ignored that.
When I indicated I was attracted to him, he offered me more wine, and drank more alcohol himself. When I indicated I wasn’t sure about getting physical in any way, and said I should go, he got more persuasive.
The next day, I was uncomfortable with how parts of the date had gone. I hadn’t social distanced with him. I’d gotten more physical with him than I had intended to. Some things about the way it had played out felt off. But it also felt good to be wanted after Chad. So I ignored those feelings and pushed on with the texting.
The final result—it took more sessions to complete this tattoo.
Back in October of 2019, I’d booked a tattoo appointment for my first tattoo. The artist I’d chosen was very popular, and my appointment was for June 1, 2020. It was an idea I’d dreamed of for years, one that represented my journey in life, to represent the word “rise,” my theme word. I’d begun to resign myself to the fact that I wouldn’t be getting that first tattoo date, because of COVID.
Then, in an incredible turn of fortune, tattoo parlors were allowed to open back up the day before my appointment. I was still a little unsure about going, but my friends encouraged me, citing the cleanliness of a good tattoo parlor. The artist assured me they did temperature checks at the door (remember when places did that?), wore masks at all times, and wouldn’t have any other clients in there at the same time. Since it was the day after they’d opened back up, I felt especially safe — I figured the artist hadn’t had a chance to interact with a procession of different people she was tattooing.
I was a little scared leading up to the appointment, and considerably more so when I first heard the buzz of the...I just realized I don’t know what it’s called. Electronic needle? Tattooer? Pen of Pain? Anyway, lying half naked on my stomach with a stranger wielding a pointy, buzzing instrument behind me was a moment of intense vulnerability. But as the first lines were etched into my skin, it turned into a triumph. This was the culmination of all that had led up to that moment. I spent the first hour going over all that I’d overcome to get to the moment of that tattoo. All that the broken, almost-dead tree meant to me. All that the birds, alive and free, represented. What the few leaves left in the tree were. It was a meditation on flight, transformation, survival, and self. I spent the second hour breathing through the pain as the artist etched into the skin of my hip, back, and shoulder. The third hour was dedicated to tricking my brain into ignoring the needle by digging one fingernail into my forearm before each line. We took several breaks; during one of them I draped clothing over myself as best I could and stepped outside into the warm June day, pulling my mask away from my face. I texted Gavin—it felt nice to have someone to check in with while I was standing there wondering if I really wanted to go back inside.
Three hours later, I walked away with the beautiful outline of a tree with birds flying out of it and fingernail marks up and down my arms. I was elated.
It was a week and a half or so between Gavin’s and my first and second dates, because of our different custody schedules. We continued to text and we talked on the phone, too. The second date was very weird, though. It contained much less talking and laughter, did involve a board game, and ended with an unspoken assumption that I didn’t know how to handle. It felt like something had shifted. Overall, looking back, I’m not at all proud of how I handled any of it, or of where I was mentally or emotionally at that time in my life, but I try to give myself grace.
The following day, Gavin texted me significantly less than he had been. I’d been ghosted by a guy before at this point. I’d had men lose interest. It looks like this:
He stops initiating texts as often. It’s relative; whatever frequency they’d been coming in at before (which in Gavin’s case was all day long), it’s noticeably less now. At first, you think he’s just busy. But then it continues.
He responds to your texts, but on an increasing delay.
He doesn’t ask as many questions, and his replies don’t invite return conversation.
He isn’t as enthusiastic in what he says.
He’s suddenly a lot busier. All the time.
I debated whether to say anything, because I also knew my anxiety was being triggered—I was already wary of being hurt by men and I had jumped in faster than my comfort level allowed with this guy, so my emotions were rocky. So I knew I might be off base. My female friends and my therapist encouraged me to just check in to see if that was what was going on. Communication seemed logical to me, so the next morning I gently asked about the lack of texts, being careful to word it in such a way as not to be accusatory or overly dramatic, but instead information-seeking. The whole day passed, with me agonizing over the lack of information or response. He replied that evening. “I saw your text this morning when you sent it but I had a major presentation to the BOD this afternoon and what you said caught me off guard. Not sure how to respond that or what the vibe is that you’re catching.”
Relieved and absolutely mortified, I apologized. I explained my nerves briefly, and said, “Basically you seem really cool and I’m waiting for the part where you’re not, which isn’t fair to you.” I asked how his presentation went. He didn’t respond.
The following day, I added, “I feel like maybe I need to explain a bit more...This is the sort of fear that doesn’t last for me—it disappears with time and trust. If you are someone who is okay with that and willing to keep seeing how this goes, I would really like to keep seeing you...I don’t know how to handle this situation other than by being open and honest with you.” I said, “We all have our insecurities.” I never heard from him again.
Epilogue
Well, that’s not completely true. We’d already friended each other on Facebook and Instagram (ah, the 21st century suburban equivalent of dating in a small town!). I decided he didn’t deserve even the effort of me unfriending him. So I let him stay online and watch my life sparkle without him. After a while, he started liking my posts again. Just the other week (two and a half years after these incidents), he tried to friend me on Snapchat (!) (I deleted the request) (and then went online to confirm what I thought I’d seen a while back—he appears to be dating someone). I posted a meme about trusting your gut to my story just the other day. He liked it. I laughed. I truly don’t understand where men get the audacity.
(Also, in case you’re wondering, I put settings on my social media posts about this blog post and the last one so that they won’t show up on his feed. I’m not looking to go down whatever road that might lead to).
I was more ashamed than anything after Gavin. I beat myself up over it. I felt like I’d been too emotional, too anxious, had put too much on him too soon, had been too insecure. I also felt like I’d gone too far too fast for my own comfort level (no, not that far) and had consequently let myself down. (I now know that anything other than a resounding Yes is not consent; but I didn’t know that then). I felt like I’d opened up about something really sensitive to someone who didn’t deserve that sort of vulnerability and who then hurt me with it. I was furious that he ghosted me, when he’d claimed to be open and self-aware (for a laugh, go back to the pictures in the last post of the “men are fragile” text conversation—I only just rediscovered his statements when writing this).
But honestly, him ghosting me made it easier to bounce back. I felt like I had the moral high ground; at least I’d tried to communicate with him. And he made it clear in one move that he wasn’t worth my time.
Now, after the years of experience I’ve had since him, I’m fairly certain he truly was already losing interest, and just hadn’t been ready to tell me yet. I’ve seen it too many times, and my gut has never been wrong. But after him, I’ve never had the courage to ask a guy about it again.
Either way, I knew then and know even better now that I need someone who can communicate. I need someone who can handle the fact that I’m not perfect, and I have scars (because dude, you aren’t perfect either—and on my most confident days, I almost feel like I’m pretty damn close to perfect). I need someone who can be kind to me. From my time with Gavin, I learned a lot more about paying attention to where I was at, and to red flags. I learned (yet again) about who I wanted to open myself up to. After him, I wanted safety and reliability more than ever, which is where, strangely enough, the chemist with a motorcycle and two adorable pit bulls came in.