Tea and Cookies and Disappointment

July 12, 2007

Joe & his mom served me up tea and cookies. Fern is a very nice lady; the quintessential kind, gracious “mom.” Spending most of her adult life working in restaurants and waiting tables has taken its toll on her knees, and even at the not-old age of 64 she requires a walker to get around. Raised Catholic, she teaches a Sunday School class at a Baptist Church now, and is a faithful Christian lady to this day. She was adopted; her parents couldn't have children so they were older when they got her. Her dad had wanted a girl and her mom had wanted a boy; dad won out and one day back in the 1940s they came home with little Fern.

The three of us made conversation for a while after which Joe and I did some makin’ out in the kitchen. It was fun. Like being a teenager again! I kept worrying his mom would walk in. But hey, he’s 44, I guess her boy can do what he wants.

I stayed later than I should have (after all, it was a work night) and finally got home about 11:30. We’d talked about him coming over the next day after I got home from work, since Nathan is with Dad this week and neither of us had other plans. He gets off work about 3:30 and said he had some errands to do, but would probably have them done by the time I got home at 6:00. Cool, I thought, tomorrow evening we can pick up where we left off tonight.

I almost expected Joe to already be there when I got home Thursday. He wasn’t, so I called him to let him know I was home now and he could come over anytime. He said something about having to get “motivated.” Motivated? You’ve got a girlfriend over here just waiting for you to run your hands all over her body, and you need more motivation than that? I thought. At any rate, I expected him to be over in about 30 minutes; certainly within an hour.

I waited for 2 hours. TWO HOURS. Finally I called to see if everything was alright, and by the time he got to my door, I’d lost interest in even seeing him. Oh, he had to take something to his stepmom or pick up something for her or something. But he never apologized or acted like he was sorry for making me wait. Oh, and of course he smelled like nicotine. I have known since that night at Crabtown that he was a smoker, but he said he was "trying to quit." Besides, he knows my feelings about smoking. One of my first rules when we began dating was that he was to never smoke at my house and never around myself or Nathan.

I felt as if he didn’t really want to see me. I felt neglected. I tried acting pitiful, saying, “I thought you forgot about me.” No response. Later I tried a more direct approach: “It really upset me that it took you so long to get here.” Apparently the point still did not get across! When he asked me if I was going to miss him the next day or would I be too involved in work, I hesitantly replied, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if you’re going to miss me?” he said.

“Well, I missed you today then it took you 2 hours to get here,” was my response. It takes me a while to get my thoughts together and figure out what to say. But what I need to say is this: If you make me wait for an hour or more again without at least calling, don’t expect me to stick around.

Nevertheless we watched the 1930 version of All Quiet on the Western Front on Turner Movie Classics, and he spent the night then left for work about 5:00 in the morning. It rained pretty hard and the power blipped out about 4:00. I felt no passion or interest the whole night. I just didn’t care if he were there or not. I was so disappointed.

So tonight he’s taking Veronica (his stepmom) out for her birthday, to Olive Garden then to a movie, probably Harry Potter. Not sure why I wasn’t invited, but I’ve never met her anyway so I would probably feel out of place. So I’m meeting friends for a Happy Hour tonight, and although Joe and I talked about hooking up afterward, I may go to a party afterward. I’m not planning my life around a guy, especially one who makes me wait for 2 hours.