Extra Credit: Giving the Professor His Due

Friday night, The Professor and I ate pizza and watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which I do not recommend unless you want to endure four very uncomfortable penis shots).

And afterward, we moved into the "We Need to Talk" portion of the evening.

What it boils down to is that me and The Professor want this all to work. We want this - whatever it may be categorized as - to blossom into a raltionship. Not for the right reasons, mind you. We both selfishly want it to work so that we don't each have to go back to square one alone. As we talked, I realized that some of The Professor's "whens" were hopeful ones - a relationship version of The Little Engine That Could. Perhaps determination and encouragement would help us up the hill and around the bend to the place where we were partners in a bridge tournament at the family reunion.

But in the end, it's just not there. The IT. The mysterious, unnameable, intangible IT that makes the world go round. I like him and he likes me. And there's some chemistry. But it's so easily smothered in the tangled tendrils of what's left of his relationship with The Ex and the inescapable cloud of grief that seems to have recollected overhead in earnest with the holidays approaching. Neither one of us seem capable of getting past our own boundaries to fan the flames of whatever might be there, and so there's this gaping chasm between what we're trying to pretend is happening and what's really there. But to his credit, he was all kindness and understanding.

I left his house Friday night disheartened. We certainly left on good terms, and I think we'll continue seeing each other in a friendly sort of way with very little expectations of the future. But for the moment, I listened to "Let it be Me" on the way home and let the tears come and hoped for when I find It.