I was away from Thursday to Tuesday, on a long-arranged trip, and so there was very nearly a week in which Marc and I didn’t see one another. I didn’t have Wi-Fi, so we were reduced to texting, and then only intermittently. There was a lot of walking with my phone held in front of my face, trying to get a signal, in order to receive messages and reply to them.
His messages were not romantic ones. This was disappointing. I’ve always found affection via text and email reassuring, and heartwarming, when I’m away. There is something about it that’s safe: a context for the trip that provides continuity, a loving backdrop, something to look forward to when you go home. Emotional home fires, still burning. In this case, I hoped for a little bit of smouldering. We’d left each other on Wednesday with the promise of sex hanging in the air. Sex had been discussed, or at least alluded to, and there had been a passionate kiss in a doorway, one that kept returning to my mind. The scene might have been set for a little romance. His texts, however, were brief and to the point.
To his own dating-site motto, “Bland in the profile, friendly in the email, lively at the pub” we should add “brief in the text message”. Which is fine, theoretically. People who are digitally monosyllabic are some of the warmest people I know. Digital affection isn’t their forte. But at the possible start of a possible something, on the brink of a relationship (and prone to pessimistic over-analysis), I would have hoped for more than, “Have a great trip!” and “See you on Tuesday!” I would have hoped for kisses on the messages.
I always send two to him; generally he sends one kiss. While I was away, kisses were not offered. Perhaps he was irritated by my absence. It’s possible, though he didn’t give any indication of that. Anyway, I continued to send the provocative two kisses, on my updates from the Wi-Fi wilderness, and he replied to all of them with brief, factual responses. He was working. He was fine. He was having a beer with colleagues. He was watching documentaries. He hoped I was having an interesting time. Smiley faces were used instead of kisses.
I saw him on Tuesday night. “Can’t wait to see you,” he texted, just before I got home. One kiss. (Apparently I was now back in the kissing zone.) “Come round for dinner,” he said. “It’s only pasta, but it’ll save you having to cook.” I suggested we meet at a pub instead, and he agreed. We drank beer and ate pies, and I told him about the trip.
He put one hand over mine when I’d finished and said: “You are going to want to sleep with me at some point, aren’t you?” I must have looked surprised. “It’s just that you don’t seem to want to come to the flat,” he said. “I was hoping for a different kind of reunion than this. That’s all.” He looked disappointed. “I want a sexual relationship with you.”
This is the problem when dealing with other people. Their own normality is pretty much unknowable. For him, polite curtness in texts is normal, and sex after two weeks and four dates is also normal. He doesn’t see those two states as contradictory. I, on the other hand, sail down the middle, unhesitatingly affectionate in words, in our interludes, but cautious about rushing into bed. He found that combination the odd one.
Over another beer we talked some more about it. I told him that I now associate going to his flat with sex, and I’m not ready for either. We were lucky to be in a pub anteroom, early in the evening, with no one else around to eavesdrop. He worried that I wasn’t sure I was attracted to him physically (I am massively attracted to him; I just need more time). He let slip that he’d been back to the dating site in my absence. Only to answer messages, he insisted. He always answers. Not answering invitations is rude. “So do you have anyone waiting in the wings?” I asked, my suspicion and self-loathing mounting. Not at all, he said. He apologised for being pushy. He said I should take all the time I needed. He said that he longs to know me better, and for him, really knowing someone starts with sex, and with pillow talk, and he was just impatient to begin.
• Stella Grey is a pseudonym
