Not a date

I had dinner with Suzie last Friday night, but it wasn't a date.  I had a lot of spaghetti left over from when the boys were visiting over Christmas; she had texted me when she got back to town from the holidays and said "Yum" when I mentioned the spaghetti, so I invited her to come over some night but clearly not for a date.  I had a bottle of cheap wine to serve with the spaghetti, but it wasn't a date.  Oh, and then at the last minute I saw there was an art opening that evening so I suggested we go there first, ... before heading back to my place for dinner.

But it wasn't a date.  She has a boyfriend.  I'm not looking for a girlfriend.  And she's more than thirty years younger than I am.

I realize I haven't told you much about her yet, so let me try for a quick thumbnail sketch.  She volunteers at the same place I do on Saturday nights, which is how we met.  She's a self-taught Wiccan ... well, self-taught and Internet-chat-room-taught, but she's never been part of a real, live, get-together-in-the-priestess's-living-room-at-full-moons coven.  She dresses garishly (I keep reminding myself that she's only 21 and so I can't expect better) but speaks very softly: I regularly have to ask her to repeat herself.  She chatters quickly and repetitively, but explains this by claiming to have ADD.  (Listening to her, I believe it.)  I keep an eye open to look for signs of narcissism, but so far haven't reached any firm conclusions.  She does talk a lot about herself, but I'm not sure about the blindness-to-others which is also part of the equation.  We'll see.  She works part-time, attends community college part-time, has vast but vague and inchoate aspirations ... and in many ways she's very young.  Lives with her boyfriend, four hours away from her parents.  Somehow, in ways I haven't itemized yet, she reminds me of what Wife was like at that age ... there are differences but also strong similarities.  That's enough for now.

Scattered notes from the evening:

She drank her first glass of wine very slowly, one little sip at a time with long minutes and plenty of food in between.  Her next two (we finished the bottle) went down like juice.

Her mother was very sick through much of her childhood, and Suzie got the idea at a very young age -- kind of like Son 2 -- that it was her job to take care of her mother: to care for her physically (because she was sick) and also emotionally (in fights with her father).  The similarity with Son 2 isn't absolute, because Suzie's mother now holds a responsible job (unlike Wife).  But when Suzie started talking about the troubles going on today -- over Christmas Break -- between her parents, she started sobbing.  (I think she was about finishing her second glass of wine by then.)  I'm a sucker for a woman in tears, so I got up from my chair across the table and came over to hold her; after a minute I sat down next to her and held one hand while she kept talking, and finally she felt better.  I also told her in several different ways that it's not her job to protect her mother, and that no parent wants a child to stay behind tangled in the same sorry messes the parent's tangled in: we want to know that even if we've screwed up our lives, somewhere out there our kid is soaring with eagles and conquering the world.  I don't know if I convinced her, but for a while she talked as if she bought it.

I told her about Wife's chronic infidelities.  She agreed with my having wanted honesty even if I couldn't have fidelity.  She said that if her boyfriend wanted to fuck some other woman -- that's how she put it -- she'd want him to come tell her, "I want to fuck this other woman."  Then she went on to say, 

And I might be hurt but I'd probably say 'Fine, go ahead and get it out of your system. If you want to fuck her, then fuck her; then afterwards you can come home and fuck me.' Or I might not even say that. I'm not very sexual anyway, because I have a lot of issues with it. Maybe I'd just figure he could fuck her and that way I wouldn't have to deal with the sex ....  

 "Not very sexual"?  That's interesting.  Then why does she always dress so provocatively?  I think the answer is that she doesn't really know how she wants to dress.  I believe the "issues" part ... other times she has said things that make me speculate (but not certain) that her father might have sexually abused her at some point in the past.  So maybe the ever-present tights and the loose, flimsy tops are really a sign of deep confusion on her part.  I kind of think that's likely, in fact.

She feels deeply inadequate to ... what?  I don't know, but she wants to have accomplished something that will let her believe she's made it as a grown-up.  Living on her own for the past three years doesn't seem to be enough.  But of course it's not enough.  I remember when I was 21, and I sure didn't feel like a grown-up.  I tried to reassure her that this is something that comes with time, and that she's got all the time in the world.  No-one feels grown-up at 21.  I'm not sure she believed me.

She walked home late at night after half a bottle of wine.  Maybe I should have walked her home, or driven her the few blocks separating my apartment from hers.  But I was ready to sleep, so I didn't bother.  And after all, it wasn't a date.