Don’t Text Me During The Day

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Don’t text me during the day. We’ve only been loosely seeing each other for five months. I say “loosely” because we’ve seen each other 10 or 12 times since we first met and each time has been after midnight when both of us are sufficiently inebriated because that’s when we’re OK with texting each other.

We met around 2:30am in a club on the Lower East Side. I’m not sure what made us meet – who spoke to who first or what our first words were to each other, but I remember us laughing. Really laughing in a way that sobered both of us up because we were surprised by how much we genuinely enjoyed the company of a stranger at 2:30am in a club on the Lower East Side. We took some shots.

You told me you wrote a famous pop song. I didn’t believe you. Sarcastically, I quipped, “Oh, yea? I wrote TiK ToK. That’s weird.” And you laughed and asked your entourage to convince me that you were who you said you were. I still didn’t believe you, or them, but more importantly, I remember that I just didn’t care.

It’s been about five months now and we’ve slowly graduated from hanging out in clubs (although, we still do that) to hanging out in friends’ apartments, or your apartment since I live at home with my parents. We still only meet after midnight and after both of us have had many drinks with our respective friend groups. When we meet up, we kiss, we dance the way I want to dance, which means goofily, almost like we’re in the 50s, and appropriately mime the lyrics of songs like “Empire State of Mind” or Katy Perry’s “Hot and Cold”, and we talk about our friends, and what makes us laugh. We laugh. A lot. We share a special humor that we don’t share with anyone but our closest friends. You tell me bed time stories, we cuddle, I stay through the night, but we’ve never slept together.

We’ve never hung out sober or before midnight. After inhibiting my tragically romantic Piscean instincts, I managed to convince myself that I’m OK with us being this way. We both have unpredictable working hours and I don’t need another person to pencil into my schedule the last few months before I go off to law school. You’re trying to seriously pursue a music career and you’ve already tasted what it is to make it big, which has left an insatiable appetite for more. And I want that for you because who wouldn’t? You’re talented and driven and you’re almost there. Why spend the rare free time you have being sober and with someone whose place in your life you’re uncertain of? Why go through the stress of making yourself vulnerable or becoming attached? It doesn’t make sense and you don’t have the time.

But now, you’re texting me during the day and when you’re sober. Don’t do that. Because after ignoring my many requests to hang out before midnight and before getting drunk, I’ve accepted that you can’t and/or don’t want to date me. Knowing this fact has enabled me to be my complete self around you and fearless about what I do, say, and wear when I’m with you. I’ve never felt so careless around someone because I know I have nothing to lose.

So don’t text me with questions about my family or friends. Don’t text me your sober thoughts on dreams and nightmares and that you want to someday take me to the Bronx Zoo (we both know you don’t mean it, and if you do, you’ll never find the time to make it happen, plus, I don’t like zoos). Don’t text me that you’re in the recording studio with two Geminis because you know I dabble in astrology and have a particular affinity for that sign, which you, of course, happen to be. We can’t have the kinds of conversations that I have with people whose voices and intonations I can hear through the texts, or whose facial expressions I can visualize while reading the words. I don’t know these things about you because I only remember fragments of the drunken moments we share at night.

So don’t text me during the day because then you’re implicitly saying our relationship is not purely alcohol based and doesn’t only exist when the sun’s not out. I’m sorry for putting what we are into a box but I have to do it because gray doesn’t work for me. I can handle seeing you after midnight and after a few tequila shots. I can handle sobering up a little when we actually meet, and having the kind of fun with you I want to have with someone who would be my boyfriend. We’re perfect just the way we are. Just don’t text me during the day.

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image – Gunnar Bothner-By