It's been a couple of "bad" weeks in a row. It was time for a change. My back has recovered to 80% and I was feeling like getting out. And so this week, I had something planned for every night this week - it was going to be great. Monday I met up with the Pagan Meetup in Pasadena. A nice chat about gratitude and patron Deity, about reading queer spirituality, and then I brought out my runes to do a little divination. And I chose Inguz: fertility, new beginnings following endings. And I thought: Right on! New Beginnings! Excellent. As it turns out, this was a week more of endings, because every big front has a big back.

So then Tuesday. I had "met" Van online over the weekend. MySpace, you know. He seemed very artistic and interesting. So we had a few email exchanges and a couple long phone calls (for me, that's huge) and we set a date for Tuesday night: dinner, a movie to give us time to think and reflect on dinner, and then coffee after to discuss the movie or the date or whatever. Only it didn't go that way. First, there were no movies I wanted to see. We did have dinner, some Thai food, and while my rice was tasty, his curry was bad. We then went off to the Americana (apparently I don't hate it as much as I thought I would) and did some walking, some shopping - I picked up The Witch of Portobello and Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas.
And while I did have some attachment to results, hoping that this would be a hugely romantic date, filled with sexual chemistry and sparking all over the place, it just... wasn't. Here I meet a sexy, mature, intelligent guy, and it just didn't happen. We had long talks about religion, spirituality, philosophy... but no charisma. And so I told him goodnight. I told him he was dead sexy, very attractive, but that I just didn't feel it. And so the night ended.

Wednesday. I had made plans with Gus to make up for the Tuesday night date failure. I was going to take him to Numbers in West Hollywood - it's a restaurant/bar that has a rather odd specialty. And then I figured we'd go to some bar for more drinks or something. Only, well, it didn't work out that way. I got a call from Gus that his gear shifter had fallen off his car, fortunately just before he got on the freeway, so he was safe. And while I certainly don't hold Gus at fault, it was another night I spent home alone.

August, Dieux du Stade 2008

Thursday was a disappointment that was... well... disappointing. I really am trying to see the positive in things, but this past week was just a test of my vision. Thursday was a meeting of the group called P.L.A.Y. and I had wanted to meet with them since I heard about them in late June, but they only have one meeting a month. So, looking at an older website, I got the address of the MCC meeting hall in West Hollywood. The key reference on the website was that it was next to 665, the leather shop on Santa Monica Blvd. Except there wasn't a meeting hall there. Just an empty building. No MCC. No P.L.A.Y. And so I drove home feeling disappointed. I got home and dropped an email to the group, and found out they have moved to the Silverlake area. So they were 5 minutes from me, and I drove an hour in traffic to get to WeHo for nothing.

Friday was sort of the nadir of the week. It wasn't just disappointing, it was anger-causing and may have ended up with me weeding yet another person from my garden of friends. The plan Friday was that James was coming up to spend the night so we could go to the CMG pool party on Saturday. I talked to James on Thursday, and he said he would be leaving around 7:30. By my figures, having driven to his house just a few weeks ago, I figured he'd be here around 8:30. I figured we'd go out for a bite to eat, hit a bar or two, get our party on, and have a great night.
8:30 came and went.
9:30 came and went.
10:30 came and went.
11:30 came and went.
I sent an email to the party guy telling him that we wouldn't be coming so that he could open up a spot for two other guys. And then at 11:54 my cell phone rang. It was James. He was finding parking on my block. "What?" I'm sitting in my gym shorts and a tank top; I haven't showered because I didn't want to miss the door if James showed up. And it's midnight. I'm feeling my night is ruined, I didn't go out - again - and I'm feeling angry. Angry at being taken for granted, for being overlooked. "You could have called me," he says. Wait, what? So James and I just don't see eye to eye on how friends treat friends, or how one person treats another person's time. We've gone back and forth on this - you may remember that I almost walked away from a play one night because James just hadn't shown up for Miss Saigon...
I just realized I'm venting more than I intended. I'll sum up. I sent James home, saying we'd talk later. And I didn't go to the pool party alone. And Saturday was more or less wasted.

Saturday was a bit of a ray of light in an otherwise dark week. I woke up, went out to my garden and found someone there praying for me. And all that purple. Nice. And then I went off to brunch with roger. We had a nice little bite at a sidewalk cafe, lots of good chat and caught up on a bunch of things we've been wanting to talk over. And he loaned me a book that he had talked about at Monday's MeetUp So the week ended as it began - with a friendly face and a nice warm hug. Maybe the endings have ended and cleared the way for some nice new fertile beginnings.