Between a mistake and a hard place

I ran into a mistake on Friday evening. As I was wandering through the exhibits at Artomatic with a group of friends and the current NotDarling, I caught my mistake strolling through my peripheral vision. The pace of my breathing increased, and my hands got all jittery and hyper. This was not the reaction of an excited girl, but rather the adrenalin of being faced with the inevitable. Despite it's size, Washington D.C. really is a small town, and mistakes can only be avoided for so long.

The mistake in question was a short, odd-looking fellow who fancied himself a mediocre photographer. He sought me out online via this blog (and I believe Flickr) and eventually took our relationship into weird text-sex territory. The burden is not entirely on my mistake. I readily went along for the exciting ride even though I knew he had a girlfriend, and even though I had begun dating someone else. He had a way with words, and I considered it harmless. Harmless turned into a few notes left in bookstores and the eventual discussion of when talk would end and action would replace it. After months of teasing, I decided to take my mistake up on his offer and meet him at his apartment for porn and sex. I have never before gone into a situation with only the basest of needs and no desire whatsoever to get to know or like the person I was meeting. Needless to say, this was not the makings of the best situation. To make a long story short, I did not fuck him. I think neither of us were what the other expected. We had each seen pictures, and I knew he was not what I would look for physically. However, the personality also did not match the person who had pursued me online either. The confident guy who talked of doing many, many things to me was really a shy giggler who would not shut up. He was overconfident in all the things he should not have been overconfident in. After about 30 minutes of listening to him, we both knew this was going nowhere. So, I left. Angry. The troops I had waiting in the wings swooped in for their extraction, and I learned a valuable lesson.

(1) This was not me. Not really. I felt guilt going in. I felt guilt while I was there. And, I felt guilt afterwards. (2) This was not the kind of guy I would ever associate with. It was just all a mistake.

All of my friends knew about the mistake, even NotDarling. Knowing I had told NotDarling about it, however, made Friday worse. There was no interaction between me and my mistake, but I knew NotDarling knew about it and was judging me. That, my friends, was hardest to take.