Red Flags and Marshmallow Goo

There is a moment of clarity when you first start dating someone, but you haven't yet let yourself fall into the wonderful, marshmallow goo. In that moment, you clearly see the big, red flags the other person is waving. And then you decide to dive into the goo anyway.

The first things I noticed about the cute guy from the bus were:

• He talked a lot, but revealed nothing.
• He routinely made offensive remarks about women.
• He had a tart sense of humor.

I had already had a prophetic dream about him.

I was in bed with my husband, but not quite in bed with him. I was kneeling on the floor and lying across his lap because I wasn't quite comfortable being in the bed with him. He knew exactly what I was up to. He kept thrusting against me very seductively, and I kept inching my way into his bed. Finally, I was on top of him. He said, "This is your house. This is your bed. So get used to it."

A few days later, we had our first phone conversation. It lasted 2-3 hours.

It was totally against The Rules, the how-to-catch-a-man book of the 90's. The rule for phone calls was to set a kitchen timer and hang up after 10 minutes.

We talked and we laughed, not a kitchen timer in sight.

He was 15 minutes late for our first date. That was also against The Rules.

I let that go, too. Watching the movie I picked turned out to be his punishment. It had gotten an A+ review from the LA Times. But it turned out to be a horrid, artsy-fartsy film about poor folks in Ireland. He talked sh*t through the whole movie, but he stayed to the end. He also paid for the movie tickets, bought coffee afterwards and put $5 worth of gas in my car. After Semi-Homeless, that made him a keeper.

I still knew very little about him. I had picked up that he was divorced, that he had three kids, that he was 39 years old. And he was a UPS driver. I wasn't sure how I felt about his blue-collar job, but I was sure how I felt about Brown.

I was now up to my hairline in goo, and I loved every minute of it. My lust for him was hotter, redder, wetter, more explosive than a volcano. At the same time, my heart was soft, liquid, gooey, sweet.

Brown didn't try to put the moves on me on the first date or on the second. Nor did he engage in one of my pet peeves, lacing our conversations with sexual innuendo. He was cool, respectful, and for me, slow-paced.

Giving it up too soon was definitely against The Rules.

I decided that if I could just make it to the third date, that would be Rules enough for me.

(Brown Diaries Part 2 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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