THE bubble has popped. The infatuation bubble has popped, and now we’re getting to find out what this relationship is really made of.
“Are you having fun?” Super Preppy asks as we hop from Christmas party to Christmas party amid the first snow of the season. It’s beautiful outside, charming and picturesque.
I nod. I smile. I squeeze his hand.
But I’m not being entirely honest.
It’s not him. It’s certainly not his friends. It’s me.
The parties are delightful, and I feel honored that SP has brought me along as a guest. But I don’t know if this world is my world. That’s all.
“I went caroling on the Upper East Side this weekend,” I tell my friend Reed, who snickers at me.
“No,” I insist. “It was fun.”
“Wow,” he says, shooting a glance at my argyle socks and Polo sweater that says, Well Look What Happened to Little Ms. Counterculture. “I used to know you.”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling a little bit nauseated.
It’s the first time since starting to date Super Preppy where I’m Imagining What Life Would Be Like. But now I’m not doing it through the lens of OMG This Is The Most Perfect Guy Ever.
Don’t get me wrong. Obviously, he’s still the most perfect guy ever. I just don’t know if he’s the most perfect guy ever for me.
Before dating SP, one of my closest friends was Hannibal Buress, a young black comic who asked me if I was seriously interested in “dating a dude who wears yellow pants.” This was his shorthand for SP after I showed him a picture.
Now I’m finding myself thinking more fondly about these friends who are joke-a-minute, irreverent-a-second provocateurs of living. Would they ever be accepted into some of SP’s circles? Doubtful. Would I always have a great time with them? Definitely.
We’re lying in bed, Super Preppy and me.
“What does my heart say?” I ask him, because he’s leaning against it, listening to it.
“It says, ‘You’re great, you’re wonderful, and I’m lucky to have you as my girlfriend.'”
He is so sweet. He is so kind. He is so accepting of me into his world.
So what’s my problem?
Fear – plain and simple – that I’m not being true to myself.
“You know,” I tell SP later on the subway, doing my best adorable sadist, “I found the e-mail I sent Mackenzie after our first date this summer. I didn’t think I liked you. Here was my imitation of you. ‘Sailing, sailing, sailing, he is saying something about sailing.'”
What am I doing? I’m being a jerk and I know it.
“That’s pretty funny,” he says, and I’m instantly charmed again. I’ve never dated a guy who was so able to laugh at himself before, something I find to be the highest measure of intelligence. My rule: The more terrified you are to laugh at yourself, the more intolerable you are.
After spending the weekend together, I clean up around his place and stare at his apartment. I notice his eyeglasses on the floor, the ones that make him look young and bookish, like Harry Potter, and my stomach flip-flops. But it’s a good kind of flip-flopping.
“What else is my heart saying?” I had asked SP that morning we were lying in bed, a lazy Sunday before brunch.
“It says, ‘You’re lucky to have me as a boyfriend.'”
See, my heart’s much smarter than I think.