Lies of omission

Yesterday I posted about I often fantasize about men I know as I go to bed. (Get your mind out of the gutter!) I admitted to thinking about T even though I'm not proud of it. Well, there is someone else who keeps appearing in my fantasies--his name is PJ.

I was fine until I saw him in Chicago for the 4th. After we broke up I had to convince myself that I didn't like who he'd become. I think that was legitimate--I didn't like the PJ who wore glasses, applied to Rabbinical school and dated the giggly freshman who shall not be named. But seeing him that night, he was the 25-year-old version of the 18-year-old I fell for. He drank beer and was able to casually hang out, but he still has every moment of his life planned and in him I could see the freshman who always did his laundry at 1:30pm on Tuesdays. I think PJ may be the only person in the world who would say that he was excited about reconnecting with his old friends because he wanted friends in his life who didn't think of him exclusively as a rabbinical student--who else analyzes their friends that way? I was immediately attracted to PJ the first night I met him in Connie's room freshman year and I felt the same way that night. If he and I lived in the same place now, I would be in trouble.

We're trying to be friendly now. We send the occasional email and we've talked on the phone once. But it is still a little stilted and I work hard to be breezy. (Remember that Friends episode where Monica finds a message from Tom Selleck on her machine after they've broken up? "Old or new? Old or new?" So she calls his machine and totally negates her breezy message when she says "I'm breezy.") In fact, even when I want to immediately respond to his emails, I make myself wait a couple days.

So in my head I imagine a day when he is a rabbi in Denver, our friendship rekindled and once more leading us to become more than friends. I know it will never happen but it is still a nice picture to fall asleep to.


(This does raise an interesting issue of how men can be perfect when I fantasize about them and essentially I'm creating an ideal man from the template of an existing one. But I'll put that off for another time. )