He asked me if I smoked. Of course I replied that I didn’t. When he countered that he did, I didn’t expect to feel the disappointment that I did. After all, I’d only met him 10 minutes ago. Why did I care what (horrible, despicable) habits that he had?

Ten minutes ago, he approached me in the smoky reggae club and asked me to dance. An overture that I’ve grown accustomed to declining. But, I danced with him. It was only the beginning of breaking all the rules that I had about encounters with men in reggae clubs–No dancing with anyone that asks, no having a conversation, no giving out my number…and if for some reason all those get broken, definitely no answering the phone the next day.

That night, we danced, we talked, he walked me to my car and I gave him my number. When he called the next day, we talked for over an hour. The details of the conversation are murky at best. Actually, most of what’s occurred since then is covered in a thin layer of murk (I’m pretty sure I can’t use murk in such a way).

The next day, he sent me a message saying: Good morning. It’s the type of the thing that made me run in the other direction when other guys did it. But here I was smiling. And when he asked me to dinner later that evening, I found myself accepting.

In my mind, I knew this was going nowhere. I was intrigued, but he smoked. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. He didn’t believe in God. He wasn’t my type. (I don’t even have a type and yet, he’s not it). This was going nowhere.

But there we were at dinner at a cute restaurant in Atlanta…conversing easily…flirting. Dinner turned into a movie. A movie turned into a stroll. A stroll turned into a kiss…

We saw each other two more times that week. We talked for hours. We drank tea. Old ladies smiled as we walked aimlessly arm in arm. I allowed myself to be vulnerable and I didn’t even think about running when he did the same. It was all very…nice.

It’s been three weeks now and we’ve seen each other about a dozen times. If someone would have told me that I would be dating a smoker that didn’t believe in God, I would have scoffed at the idea (so much so that I did about a month ago when I wrote that it would never happen). I’m either maturing and allowing myself to be more open minded than I ever have or this is all very stupid and will blow up in my face in a few weeks.

I don’t know the answer yet.

And for now, I’m comfortable living the questions now and allowing the answers to come eventually (thanks Rilke).

No related posts.