our second date

carol and i went on our second date just a few days after i ate that abandoned tater tot. we went to the old tony’s talking to, an an open mic night poetry reading run by my old henry county buddy tommy gaffney in one of diviest dive bars you’ve ever seen. i wanted to introduce carol to tommy and the rest of the weirdos and maybe get up and read a little of my own. in 2007, i’d just extracted myself from a horrible almost two decades long relationship that just about killed me. tommy and tony’s suggested writing as a way to catharsis, i listened and started writing, a lot. anyway, carol liked tommy (everybody likes tommy) and the poems that i read, so after an hour or so in that smokey ass dive bar, we decided to go somewhere else. i was feeling kind of confident, which is way outside my comfort zone. i suggested we go to my place and play some scrabble. we’d been playing a ton together online, but there’s nothing like in person scrabble. so we played and played and talked about how so many sad things brought us to this point in our lives, how much we had in common despite our wildly different upbringings. we talked about our dating lives and i told her i hadn’t really done much dating. i had one steady girlfriend in high school and i’d taken care of that 20 year boat anchor and that overall, i was just kind of scared of girls and rejection, how even in the obvious romantic situation, i just couldn’t take action. she smiled and was sympathetic and ask “you wanna make out?” and boy did i, but what came out of my mouth was “i guess so.” she guffawed “you *guess so*?“ “i am a master of an understatement.” and then i kissed her and we haven’t been apart for more than a day or two in 16 years.

i go back to the hospital tomorrow for another week long high dose interleukin 2 treatment. i don’t have a real medical update in me right now, suffice it to say that that the last 3 weeks with the first hdil2 have been the worst i’ve ever experienced in my life bar none. i could not have done it without carol. the way she supports me is unreal.