The Kat Saga

So, Davis meets interesting girl.  Interesting girl isn’t interested in a relationship.  

Bummer.

Girl is sort of interested in Davis.  And quickly gets more interested.  Suddenly, out of the blue, girl decides a relationship with Davis is a good idea.  Davis is happy, and things start going right.  Not only is girl interesting, she turns out to be downright fantastic in many ways.

That pretty much wraps up the first Episode, the highlights of which are in my previous blog post 🙂

Things between Kat and I were going really well.  Hell, TOO well.  For some reason, everything was “compressed,” time wise.  In the span of less than a month, I ended up cooking supper for her and her parents (along with getting told that I’m welcome to drop by anytime), going to church with her a couple times (I consider that to be a really personal thing, ranking up there with meeting one’s family, since a church is an extended family quite often.  Oh, and it’s a Synagog, not a church actually – wrong religion), did a road trip together (successfully, which is one of my favorite “relationship tests”), survived a minor disaster where she managed to impress me considerably (see my Facebook note: “Book signings gone wild” for that one), and she even shared one of her deep deep secrets with me (when she finished, I walked up behind her, and put my arms around her. She asked if that scared me about her, and I explained, my arms still wrapped around her, the past is the past.  She cried a bit in my arms.)

There’s a bit of that story that’s missing from the Facebook note intentionally, and for obvious reasons.  Kat’s keys were missing on the Sunday that stuff was all screwed up at Great Bend, and after about 10 minutes of searching for them, I found ’em.  I get a great big smile and an “I love you!”  It was a joke, of course – the usual friendly “I love you” sort of thing.  Twice previously (once before we were “In A Relationship” and once after) she had used the Animaniacs line “OKLoveYouBye!”  The second time she did it, she stopped and commented “OK, I really need to quit doing that one.”  So I thought it was funny, and laughed, that she was breaking that particular joke rule a bit.

Then we got in the car, and she started futzing with with the phone charger, and in a different tone of voice says “I love you.”  I thought at first it was another joke, probably caused by me doing something stupid… then I saw her face.  And I was stunned into silence, because I realized she wasn’t kidding.  She didn’t look me in the eye after saying it.

I spent damned near a week trying to talk myself into it being a joke, and just couldn’t pull it off.  Problem was… well, I was falling in love with Kat, too.  Which makes no bloody sense – we’ve known each other for about two months tops at this point.  This is all going too fast.

Thursday at Coffee group, two people (one before, and one after) commented to me on how happy they were to see Kat and myself so happy with each other.  Saturday I was at Kat’s house warming party, and at the end of the party we even managed to get some quiet cuddle up together time.  We talked about it, and she invited me to come cook supper for her on Tuesday.

Well, driving too fast in a car can end up with an extremely sudden stop when it hits a tree.  Going too fast in a relationship can end up with an extremely sudden stop when it hits a ghost.  I can’t speak for Kat’s side of things, but I know my side was definitely caused by ghosts.

Tuesday she cancels supper – too much going on (and, I knew what her schedule was, so that actually wasn’t a shock – was more of a shock that she had wanted to do it that day anyway.)

Wednesday I get a txt that she wants to talk at 8 that night.  OK, no problem, though I inquire what’s up – something didn’t seem right.  She said she was “uncomfortable” “About what?” “Committed relationship.”

I have no idea what caused that part, but what comes next was caused by my ghosts.  These days, I’m pretty good about asking questions.  What I should have asked was “Kitty Kat, what’s causing you to be uncomfortable with our situation?”, and most importantly, it should have been shelved until later that night when we could talk about it in person, not via txt.  Instead, it came out as “if you and I need to change things for you to be comfortable, that’s OK”.  And NO, it wasn’t OK – I was spooked at this point.  My brain went into malfunction.

“Hug.  I wish to step backwards.”  OK, history of conversations here – back before we moved into “In A Relationship” territory, we were talking about the nature of relationships, etc., and something was commented about going backwards.  My reply (and it’s a very honest one) is that the way backwards is sometimes the way forwards – counterintuitive, but that’s just how it sometimes has to happen.

She sets what she’d like the new lines to be – and it lands me squarely in No Man’s Land.  That spot between “Friends” and “Dating” – in this case, basically “Friends with Emotional (not sexual) Benefits.”

I’ve been here more than once.  It’s a land filled with scars, ghosts, and pain.  And fear got the better of me.  I suggested we become friends and call it good if that’s the direction we need to go.  “Friends.” was the reply.

Except… that was anything but what I wanted.  No, I wasn’t wanting her to back off from her stance of going backwards.  What I WANTED to say was “Kat, if that’s where we need to go, that’s where we’ll go – let’s sit down at 8, and we’ll talk about it Hon.”  

Except I couldn’t.  The part of the brain that controls that few bits of smarts about dealing wtih relationships over the years got over ridden by my fear of those ghosts.  The time between what she wanted to do (go backwards) and my suggestion of just being friends was an hour and a half – it wasn’t something I popped off with immediately.  But, in my mind, time was ticking – the longer I made her wait on an answer, the deeper the risk I was going to hurt her.  So I had said it.

Two days later I sent her a note, explaining myself – what happened, why I said what I said, and why it too so long for me to get my brains together enough to even send that note.  I got no response.

So, thus ends Davis’s one actual “relationship” in the last 3 1/2 years, and one that, while fast, could have been salvaged if he used a single bit of what he learned.

Fuck.

So, I find an interesting girl, and work on Muse: Evolution starts again.  I loose girl, and work on Muse: Evolution ends up moving at a feverish rate for a while.  

Worse, there’s another book in Muse now, I think.  Haven’t decided the title, but, it continues the “Muse Saga” in an odd direction I wouldn’t have expected.  And as you might guess, one of the characters will end up being a red head. Hey, might as well immortalize the inspiration for this one, just like I have for the last two Muse books.

One of the interesting comments I’ve heard about Muse though, came from Deb – she’s read part of it.  “You don’t write Muse because you want to, you write Muse because you NEED to.”  I joke about The Muse forcing me to write, but Deb could be right.  Bits and pieces of my life and relationships are a part of Muse, written as the backdrop for it all – it is indeed cathartic to write, if sometimes painful and depressing.  Muse is my way of slowly killing ghosts, one ghost at a time, and them wrapping them in something I’m extremely happy about.  Their headstones, when printed as a tome, will form a graveyard for them to finally rest in.

In any sane world, this story is over and done, except for possibly some fallout.

Fortunately, I don’t live in a sane world – I live in my own little world where I can change the fucked up set of rules to make things more fucked up if I so desire.  And maybe, just maybe, unfuckup the rules once in a while.

It talked to my friend Deborah and told her how things were going (she had seen my status change back to “Single”, and wanted to know what happened.)  Deb and I had been talking about Kat and my relationship off and on as it was happening – she was one of those that was happy to see, well… to see me happy, so when it quit being that way she was a bit worried (as was Tammy).  I told her what happened, and about the note that I was in the process of writing (which explained my actions in the situation).  I told Deb I wasn’t sure when I’d finish it – and suddenly Deb got pretty insistent – finish it NOW and send it NOW.  *BLINK*  Uh, OK.

Deborah is a pretty smart lady that knows relationships.  She’s a PhD in communications, and also at one point had a little local radio bit called Dr. Love, and wrote some articles here and there (actually, I think I’m diminishing that part – I know last year she gave multiple presentations and wrote multiple communications papers, though those were on other topics.)  Point being, she’s an expert on communications and relationships.  She explained her meaning – right now, I’ve screwed up, and asked to be “just friends”, and there’s a good chance I’ve hurt Kat’s feelings with that.  I have a very short window for even starting to fix that.

Huh.  OK.  I sent it, expecting a “whatever” sort of response, but didn’t get that.  Really, it was time to pack it in and call it good.  If Kat wasn’t going to respond to that, well, it means it’s fucked up beyond fixing probably, and anything I do now will probably just get me branded as a psycho or something (not that I really care that much what someone brands me.)  Yes, Kat and I seemed to be an excellent match that had a great chemistry at so many levels, but in the end, it’s just another fucked up thing, and possibly a reminder why I shouldn’t be doing things like dating.

I don’t consider that to be a self-pitty thing, I just consider it to be a reality when you look at my record with relationships – getting one the doesn’t end up hurting me, and leaving a few more scars isn’t my strong suit.  Writing books?  That might be my strong suit.

I told Deb I didn’t get any response from it Saturday, but she said that wasn’t too much of a surprise.  Just relax.

It was a little thing that spawned the thought, and I turned to the moon and talked for a moment. Yes, this is my sort of prayer – if I wanna talk to my Creator, I’ll damned well talk to my Creator, no formalities nessisary.  And no, the moon is not my Creator, just another expression of the Universe – just happens to be a focal point.  Boil it down to the following “I wish I could fix this.  I really think there’s something deep there, something worthwhile to us both.  And you know what, if there’s anything you could do to help get that back, I’d appreciate it.”  It’s a mundane request, and I don’t believe in bothering the Universe/ God / Creator / Deity of choice with mundane requests, even if I have bothered to go to church a few times lately.  I also ain’t a big believer in the idea that God would listen to closely to something like that (though, there is one friend who once made a prayer like that, and she got her request.  So who knows.  Then again, if God is all about us loving one another, maybe that’s more appropriate than most of the prayers you hear in church.  But I’ll leave such theological discussions to another time.)

I stepped through the front door back into the house.  There are somewhere around 10,000 sounds in my iTunes playlist.  When I shut the door, a song ended, and the next one started – I heard the first guitar cords, and had to say it out loud “No shit?!”  “Find your way back” started.  Huh.  One in 10,000 odds are often hard to explain away after something like a prayer, but we humans also like to find patterns where there are none – we call it superstition.  But what the hell – let’s throw logic out the window for the time being, and we’ll say it’s some sort of sign.  Why not – if I’m going to write the rules of Davis’s less insane world, it could happen.  Plus, superstition is a lot more fun when telling a story, and if the story doesn’t pan out, I can always just claim I was insane.

I actually opened the door up, and looked at the moon for a while, contemplating.  You know what, if Kat really is that good of a match, why would I just walk away from my fuck up.  But… I still have no clue why she wanted to back off, I have no clue what damage I’ve done to the situation, and I have no clue of there’s even really a reason to explore this.  See, for all I know, Kat might have wanted to back off because she found me objectionable, or because she found someone more interesting, or because she’s moving to Kenya (she’s not, that I’m currently aware of).  Any possabilty exists, since I haven’t had any meaningful communication with her.

Later that night, Deb chatted with me on Facebook, and inquired as to if I had gotten any response yet – still none.  I told her I was thinking of txting Kat good morning the next day – that had been something Kat and I did nearly every morning it seemed – one or the other of us would end up texting a good morning.  Dunno why, it the way it worked.  

Deb caught on quick somehow – she knew my goal was to try and make this all work again. 

So I txted Kat this morning “Good Morning, Kitty Kat”

“Hi”

So far, so good.  OK, then I fucked up and tried to start a conversation (not about relationships, or anything like that.  Just “how’s your day? Mine’s suckin’ so far, the mail server(insert blahblahblah)” and didn’t get any response to that.

So today is Monday Margaritas (did I mention Jose Peppers has $1.99 margaritas?  Yeah, serious cheap stuff, and since I always limit myself to one, I can almost afford that.)  I told Deb about txting Kat good morning, and got “And did she respond?” “Yeah, she said ‘Hi’ and that’s it.”  “Excellent!” (insert blank stare on my part here – that seems… so generic as to not really be particularly encouraging.)  “And then I responded by…” Deb face-palmed, and sighed. (Insert another blank stare.)

Um… so now I’m sorta, kinda, cheating-ish.  Deb spent a good part of the evening coaching me, patiently (OK, somewhat patiently – there was one point when we were having margaritas that she did the exasperated “Good lord, boys always get this part wrong!  OK, what you do is…”)  Not only what I should be doing, but most importantly, WHY.  Very… odd to have things all explained out, including timeframes (which it could already be too late anyway, but whatever.)  

Apparently, I’m doing it wrong in some very specific areas.  Usually right intent, wrong execution.  Huh.  And the explanations she gave were pretty good sounding – she threw in a lot of psychology behind it, etc. to explain it all.

Well, what the hell.  I’m going to try and follow through with what Deb has told me, and see how things go.  I mean, the worst that could happen is I’m branded a moron.  No worries there, when it comes to my own relationships, I was branded that a long time ago. 🙂