All of this

I suppose this grand experiment deserves a grand ending.
Six months in the field, doing weekly research, weekly battle with the women of Los Angeles.

Fireworks perhaps, or an execution of traitors.
But I've learned too much by now, to end this with a bang.

I'm not going to describe our first kiss, or tell you what she's scared of. I'm not going to tell you what our obstacles are, because every relationship has them, and it's personal. It's no longer my business to share with the world.

I haven't said much about her, because I knew after our first date that she was special. I knew after our first date, that I'd be writing this post.

I can tell you that she's a planner, and a thinker. She's afraid of spiders, but brave enough to face them. She knows enough to say what's on her mind. She dresses herself with a perfect compromise of function and form. She doesn't have a dog, but I know she wants one. She goes to sleep, and she's dreaming of what we might be. We. One day. Us. Together.
Which is nice, because I don't have to pretend that I'm not doing the same thing (See December 20th).

I don't need to pretend anything around her.

I'm still insecure, and I'm still cynical, but I know better than to talk about it. The dank recesses of my mind are puddling with brain juice and unfounded worries. Immense squishy walls of grey fat conceal my problems within a labrynth of curves, and that's just where they belong. These really aren't our problems anyway, just constructs of angst and worry, based on little more than the difference of two numbers.

I guess what still suprises me is that I'm not pretending anything. I'm not holding anything back. I am spam, and I am sometimes paranoid. I am spam, and I am sometimes obsessive. I am spam, and I have the answer to every question, whether I know anything about the subject or not, and she can see everything I am, and she's not scared.

I'm still worried she will be, that all in all I may be a little too cynical, or a little too jaded, but right now I'm not afraid to trust her with my heart.

Right now, she is taking a final.
Right now, she is thinking of me.
I have lodged myself into her brain, she says. Sometimes, she says, she must try very hard to think about something that isn't me. Which is nice.
Because sometimes I'm afraid to say that I feel that way about her.

Right now, I am missing her. And I am thinking about how her hair smells, and how her back feels. I am thinking about her voice, and how it's different when she's nervous or comfortable. I am thinking about how she looks with her eyes closed.
Beautiful.

The Zombie Question

Overnight, the world has ended in a quiet apocalypse as an unknown disease turns friends and neighbors into shambling corpses, hungering for the flesh of the living. You are mysteriously unaffected. What would you do?

When put up to the question, Blandine (archangel of dreams) answered without hesitation. I think you will all be pleased to know that she is a woman with a disaster plan. I am developing a strong infatuation.

"Find loved ones and see if they're affected or not (if I'm not
affected, there might be something in my genes that lets me remain
immune). Get myself some shotguns and ammunition. Raid the
supermarkets and find some food that would last a long time. Find a
secure room to hide in somewhere, maybe a bank vault.
I'm not sure how long I'd last."

When pressed for details, she did in fact put out.

Waking up from her sleep of dreams, Blandine finds her older brother awake, and guarding the pantry door with a golf club.
"Sis... Mom is... Sick." he says. The muffled scream of a diminutive woman is heard, and there is a pounding on the locked door behind him.
Reports of a global pandemic sweep through the radio broadcasts. "The dead are rising from the grave, and the living are falling ill. All citizens are requested to stay in doors. Scientists are investigating, and we will stay on the air..."
The TV channels have already lost their broadcast.
"We've got to get out of here." She says. "I know what is happening, and there are more coming. We need food, and we need guns. Wal*Mart."

I imagine that they keep copies to all of their keys on a set of hooks near the door.
Her family has what I believe is a Navigator, equipped with what she believes is a "goat killer grate." It's big enough to hold a month's worth of food, and powerful enough to crawl over a steadily growing mound of human corpses. All the while keeping her and her brother safe and comfortable with individual passenger climate control, in-dash DVD player, and heated seats.

Since they live in a modern, planned community, Wal*Mart is near by. And the upper middle class population density is low. Unfortunately, the short bus carrying Wal*Mart greeters has already arrived, and crashed through the front door.
Broken glass, and a destroyed security grate means they won't have any trouble getting in, but it means they cannot stay.

Death being the great equalizer, the Greeters find that they are no longer at a handicap, as their ferocious hunger, mangled limbs, and poor mental capacity are now traits shared by all their peers. Complete Equality. Harrison Bergeron style.

They have a specific shopping list: Guns. Ammo.
Canned Soup. Frozen Veggies. Chocolate.
Unsalted Nuts. Granola bars.
Lots of Water.
A portable Generator.
A hot plate.
Several coolers.

This will not be easy, and they will need to engage the bulk of the Greeters by hand. Percy Prickard, 34, who has long since lost the use of his legs, finds a new pleasure in running with his arms, still firm with muscle that has yet to rot. Rushing, galomping towards Blandine, his ferocious charge will be cut short by her aluminum baseball bat. Lots of Head trauma, and very little blood.

They load their equipment into the back of their navigator, and head off towards their grave. I mean The Bank.

The idea is that it is a secure facility. The idea, is that once they kill everything inside, they can recover the keys from the manager, if she is there, and lock the place down. The idea is that if worse comes to worse, if they can get in, they can be safe in the vault.

Worse will come to worse, because it always does. Their ammunition will run out. Their food will spoil or become contaminated. Day after day, Blandine's brother will go out, looking for rescue. Looking for supplies. Sometimes he will come back with groceries. Sometimes he will come back with a story. "I saw a family die today." He will say. "I couldn't help them. I couldn't get them onto the roof."
But one day he won't come back.

On that day, where will she go?

When Our Paths Cross

Dear Woman in Red.
It was really nice going out with you, and I think you're an absolutely wonderful person, but I think we're just missing that intangible chemistry that makes things spark.
Maybe it's sort of obvious with a week or more between our messages, but things between us never really got going. I want to be clear and open about my feelings because you're such a great person, you really deserve that respect.

I really enjoyed going out with you, and I hope that we can still dance when our paths cross.

Take Care,
Daniel

The Dorkiest Way Possible

"Blandine, archangel of dreams, has requested to add you as her girlfriend, but before we can do that, you must confirm that you are actually in a relationship with
Blandine, archangel of dreams.

To confirm this request, go to: ..."

Imagine my suprise to find this message waiting for me from facebook.


She asked me to be her girlfriend. In the Dorkiest way possible. She's a winner.

The boyfriend/girlfriend agreement is always vague. What are your obligations? What are your responsibilities? Every person has their own expectations, and I thought it would be important to have this understanding before we stepped into a commitment. After all, if I expect her to dress up like a teddy bear and wear a leash on special occasions, I would hate for that to be a suprise, right?
what follows are some of my expectations out of her, as a girlfriend.

I expect communication. And I expect her to initiate it sometimes. I hate being the one who makes all the phone calls.

I expect physical contact. I need her hand like I need gravity.

I expect her to work.
This one is tricky to explain, but basically I need her to put into the relationship too. I need her time, her energy and her love. I have a lot to give, and I want to give everything I have. But if I give my time and energy without getting time, energy, or affection back, it really dampens me.

I need spoken affirmation.
Speech is my primary love language. I prefer to express and receive love, in words. The idea is that non spoken communication must be interpreted, and anything that must be interpreted can be misinterpreted. Spoken word can be misinterpreted as well, but to a smaller degree than non-spoken language. Contact is my second love language, as I'd established previously.

We talked about our needs and our expectations, at least as far as we understood them.

"So you're requesting exclusive dating privilges, as well as exclusive access to kisses and lovins?" I asked.
"Yes!" she said.

"And in exchange, I can stop lamenting my own day to day existence, and finally go back to living a happy and normal life?"
"Umm.... sure?"

"Sounds like a deal." I said.

So now I'm her girlfriend.
I imagine we'll work out the semantics of this situation at a later date.

I think it's a little unusual to do this after two dates. After two weeks. But if you met her, you'd know.

Blandine is the vigilante I've been looking for. She's the artist, she's the adventurer. She's a learner and a doer. She's a playmate. She's a thinker and a cynic. She is a person I feel I have known forever.

So now we're an item. Plodding off into the great purple future, to kick some ass, and take some names.

Ba-donk-a-donk is a Euphamism

"Are you cold?" She asked.
"Yes. My pecker is about to fall off, slink down my pant leg, and get lost in the road," I said with a set of much classier words. And she moved close to me. And she held my arm.

My set of classier words didn't in fact contain an allusion to my penis. While, in general, the terms "Little Bishop," "Ba-donk-a-donk," and "One-eyed Cowboy," appear in my list of "classy" words, I had decided to forgo my own shrunken penis as a topic of thought. A piece of advice that, despite my own inclination, I tend to heed.

Because she was touching me. Because I could feel her through my arm. Because her weight, and her warmth, moved along at my side, and I knew at that moment that no matter what my insecure, panickey, little mind told me, she wanted to be there.

You see, forever and a day, I have had a crippling logic error, causing the occasional infinite loop in my dating algorithm. I believe that physical contact has a meaning beyond "I am touching you." But it is a meaning that needs to be interpreted. Anything that must be interpreted can be misinterpreted. And through all the things my insecure, panickey little brain obsesses over, presenting myself, my thoughts, and my actions honestly, clearly, and concisely takes up the bulk of my processing power.
In other words, I try my best do do without ambiguous communication. And while this means that you won't often here a "maybe," an "I don't know," or even silence out of me, it also means that I very seldom initiate touch.
Much to the detriment of my dates.
Because, as I am learning, touch is *very* nice.

For dinner, we had italian. It was... okay. The company was better than the food.
For entertainment, we saw Ultraviolet.
A post apocalyptic dystopian action flick that was everything the preview said it would be. And nothing more. That being said, we both had a wonderful time. I laughed at children being shot, and she laughed at special effects that looked like fat cartoons. The film had enough plot holes and continuity errors to give us plenty to talk about afterwards.

Blandine, the archangel of dreams, is a university student I was introduced through a mutual friend. And that mutual friend's little sister. She's a bit younger than me, but the courts won't have anything to say about it. As integers go, she is closer to my age than The Woman in Red. The difference here is that I find her profoundly attractive, and she says things like "you're wonderful," instead of "stop talking."

We had our date, our time together, and it was wonderful. Holding her hand was enough to help me push behind the refuse of my own broken heart, and to make me feel like maybe I could trust her. That maybe, this time, I didn't need to be afraid.

Ultraviolent

I had a wonderful date this weekend.
I am morally split with my desire to tell the world about it, and my desire not to betray her trust and affection.

I will write something reasonably telling later.
In the mean time, I have put this into it's place.

RE: Zombies
http://heroseekingvigilante.blogspot.com/2006/02/re-zombies.html