June 20 - Things Go Fast

Things go fast when you find romance. Is that completely weird - or is it just... normal?

My whirlwind correspondence/romance thing with Francophile just spiraled into a huge ball of mush! But to back up...

Francophile and I began instant messaging - a new and scary thing for us. BUT it turned out rather well. Better than expected. We got to see a little more of our normal conversational selves as opposed to the planned and edited long e-mails we'd been sending. I even sent a video of myself saying hello - so she could see my mouth moving. :) She sent a reciprocation of just her feet - and her voice. Our first time hearing each other!

I finally went out with Irritating Girl and that led to Franco getting jealous that I.G. got to meet me and not her. We planned to have our first phone conversation the next day (while she was out driving her baby for his normal drive/nap) but it was tough waiting.

When it happened - it flowed well but having the e-mail/im personality transfer to phone personality was obviously a little weird. We spent most of the conversation talking about my "friend date" with I.G. By this point we already knew we super liked each other but adding the phone element was a test.

I failed the test! That's not to say that I sucked at talking - I did great! But I was weirded out by the phone voice - the accent I wasn't really expecting - the different flow of it all. But we had a great conversation and really liked each other so we planned another one for just a couple of days later. After our second when it became "audibly" apparent to me that Franco liked me a lot - this is when I failed. After our call she'd sent a new set of "six questions" and I answered them honestly and stupidly decided that she sounded "weak" on the phone (and that I should tell her that). (A weakness for me, I understand, but I like my women strong and a display of weakness makes me uncomfortable. I informed her that if that pissed her off then so be it. Her getting mad would undoubtedly undo that whole "weak" feeling anyway!)

And she did - she got pissed at me - and in another IMing session I totally turned it around so that I was out of trouble (by saying something nice and romantic... since after all... she was displaying her strength).

Also I admitted in that e-mail that I was having mixed feelings about our whole relationship considering I still wanted to be single. I've been single for about a year and still haven't had all the random stranger nookie I'd been crossing my fingers for! And I was starting to get mad that I couldn't even THINK of other girls because she was consuming me.

Well we made up. Continued talking. Talked on the phone more. And she maintained that I was single and could do whatever I wanted - a situation I was strongly behind.

The other element is that we'd been throwing around this term "Free Pass." We offered the free pass to each other often. Using the Free Pass, you see, would be like a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. You just say it and then presto - we stop flirting. We stop being anything other than friendly. We never used it until one day on the phone - after a particularly great conversation - I steered the conversation towards FREE PASS. We decided that we were on a dangerous path ... a path soon approaching a point of no return so I suggested that we use the Pass now before things just got too painful.

So we stopped our e-mail role playing "adventure" that we had going but vowed to continue the question game (as long as the questions were not flirty). We also "outed" our relationship to Irritating Girl who DID NOT take it well. She was pissed on a number of levels. Pissed at Franco for not telling her sooner. Pissed at Franco for ruining her chances with me (which she never had anyway). Pissed at Franco for doing this to another girl (her viewpoint is that Franco used her for flirting and then just tossed her aside ... which is true actually). But we also told I.G. about how we were 'on a pause' basically. I received IRRITATING advice e-mails from I.G. following that!

Moving on - for a day or so I felt as if we had broken up. I felt a little better - a little freer. But we still talked. However I was DETERMINED that we not take it all up again because we really were on a path of suffering. She'd suffer in her marriage by wanting me instead. I'd suffer by knowing she slept with her husband every night and not me.

Well then it came to an honest conversation one morning in which she told me that she'd had sex with her husband the night before and had cried during the act because all she could think about was me. I thought I could just take this information but it did hit me like a punch - not that she cried but that she'd had sex with her husband.

Ugh! Despite free pass usage it still still ended up sucking. We continued our conversation about how sucky everything was currently - us being on pause. Her marriage. Etc. We began to talk more again. Officially we were still "on pause" but not really.

She ended up buying a large pillow that she named after me and cuddled with every night (instead of her husband). I was doing the same with a pile of blankets and pillows. We began our mutual yearn... something a lot stronger than compelling e-mail conversations.

We came to the conclusion that we had to meet each other. We just had to see each other in person and decide if all this strife was worth it. Heck we could meet and find out that we simply had no chemistry! So we formulated a plot with Franco borrowing money from her sister and us meeting in her city (several states away from me but only a couple hours from her).

By now it's also important to note that her husband really had begun figuring things out. She was honest with him about our friendship and his interactions with her went from angry to sobbing to numb because he'd always known about her interest in women and he could tell (can tell) that she's slipping away from him.

Well we were seconds away from purchasing a ticket when her husband began a fight she couldn't get out of. She IMed a disclaimer that "for now I have to be faithful to my husband." With friends on my other ear warning me about Dateline exclusives.. and her fighting with her jealous husband - I freaked out and called it off.

We decided again - it was too much. We had to use our free pass! I suggested we delete each other's numbers and she planned to erase her myspace account. Clearly we couldn't do the "friend" thing so we had to just do the "no contact at all" thing and if fate wanted us to be together - we'd find each other again.

It was tough. Too tough to last even a night - we were both crying after several minutes and gave up on that idea again. She said she'd still delete her page after a few days but ... for now she'd keep it.

Well again... we just couldn't stay away from each other. We couldn't NOT flirt. It was just impossible - we got along too fucking well! She and I were just on a wavelength and couldn't (can't!) stop talking.

We had more long conversations. She had more fights with her husband. Good productive fights that led her to telling him about her feelings about certain things she'd been previously uncomfortable talking about. And every once in a while he'd say something wonderful about how he wanted to get out of her way so she could find herself.

We also spoke honestly about how we'd both hoped that something physical would have happened on our trip.

Then one day she called me to tell me that she'd had another great conversation with her husband but that for now she really needed us to be on hold. She repeated something I'd once said about how for my previous relationships I'd had to know a girl for at least two years... so she asked for two years. I said great. No problem. We can be just friends. We can't stop talking but we can be just friends. A great idea but ... I went weird. I couldn't handle it really and I guess in a subconscious effort to make her jealous I did silly things.

HotttGirl was online at the time and I knew that Franco hated HotttGirl (for jealous reasons) so I carried on one of those visible comment conversations that you can have on myspace. Nothing flirty but it left a long line of HotttGirl messages on my profile that I knew Franco would see. (And which she did see - and claimed afterwards, "I just can't look at your profile anymore because of her!"

That night I also received a text from Texas Heather inviting me to Houston. I said jokingly "if you buy the ticket" and then we talked on the phone. She insisted that she had my agreement in writing and that I had to go now! Well I figured I was stuck so I went with it ... part of me hoping that I would go and my whole opinion of Texas Heather would change. She's a super nice girl and I'd like to stay friends with her but after that conversation it made me miss Franco more (like it had only been a number of hours) because it was so hard and felt so fake talking to Texas. Conversations with Franco just flow. Well it was late at night when I had that conversation so I sent a text message to Franco letting her know that Texas was going to buy me a ticket to Texas so she'd know when she got up.

Well Franco woke up to a thunderstorm clap early early in the morning and read my text. It PISSED HER OFF! She thought she'd been deceived by me - that I'd been lying to her about the closeness of my relationship with Texas (since how could a girl I barely talked to be buying me a plane ticket). Well we proceeded to have a fiery text message conversation during which she essentially kicked the Sara pillow out of bed! (I still think that's sooo fucking cute!) And during this text battle I also admitted that I was so tangled up in her that I couldn't even think about anyone else. (True.)

So again... another Free Pass thrown out the window. We knew three things 1) We couldn't be "just friends." 2) We couldn't "not talk." 3) We just had to admit that we were mad for each other.

We've spent the last week in an in love bliss - completely consumed with each other to the point of having long conversations about our futures together. Who would move where. When it could start happening. What kind of dog to have as a pet. Who's having the next baby if we have one... etc. And all of this without meeting.

So really - not meeting didn't stop the flow of anything. Knowing this - we concluded that we did have to meet soon. We were/are too crazy about each other not to at this point.

So a ticket has been purchased and I am flying to meet Ms. Francophile this week. The day can't come soon enough. I know the week will be hellish for her because of her jealous husband but... who cares. And this time we're talking not about being "faithful" but instead about just how much we want to make love to each other.

Tonight Francophile received a package I'd sent her full of little odds and ends and she was just so bursting with love for me that she went to her sister's house and told her everything. She went home feeling incredible because her sister was happy for her and glad she'd finally told her why she'd been acting so weird all summer.

Things won't be easy. Things will be soooooo tough. But there's still a part of each of us hoping that we'll meet each other and think, "HA! Wow. No chemistry at all. Let's just be super great friends!" But we both think that chance is minimal at this point.

So good luck to me!

The next update may be incredibly exciting or super disappointing! I vote "exciting."