Two Week Anniversary

On the other side of the wall that separates my living room from my bedroom, there is a man asleep in my bed. He's tall, and handsome, and may well be the smartest guy I've ever met. He talks to me about science, and medicine, and history, and art - and he loves music. He loves it the way I love it - he feels it - he feels a lot of things the way I do. Enough that it scares me. But in that good sort of way.

I met him two weeks ago today. In fact this morning he pointed that out, right after he asked me if he was my boyfriend. My dog was feeling a bit jealous of all the attention I was giving this magnificent stranger, and so he ambled across the bed, plopped his chin on my shoulder and started licking an nuzzling my neck with his cold, wet nose.

I laughed a little, wondering if my new found lover found this totally annoying or disgusting. He seems to like them - the dogs that is - but I think its one of those cases where he like them because I do, and probably not quite as much as I do.

"My other boyfriend is getting jealous," I told him.
He smiled. "Am I your boyfriend?" He asked.

I'm rather certain he already knew the answer. But it's one of those questions you ask just because it makes you feel good to hear the answer out loud. And the way he asked it made me blush with a sort of schoolgirl crush happiness.

"yea. I think you are."
I pulled myself in close to his body and buried my face against his chest. He smells like laundry detergent and soap mixed with some sort of crazy pheremones that have just about pushed me beyond the brink of all sensibility. I breathed him in.

He had asked me this the first night we slept together too, which totally caught me off-guard. I wasn't prepared for the committment questions while I was still basking in the glow of our fist post-coital, oxytocin-induced high. "I don't know," I told him at the time. "Do you want to be my boyfriend?" "I don't know," he replied back. But we were both smiling.

He was quiet for a while and when I looked up I caught him staring rather intently. He has these gorgeous blue eyes with flecks of brown. When you get up close the irises have these colored swirls in them that remind me of those abstract looking posters where you have to cross your eyes to see the 3D images in them.

Those eyes are always watching, observing, and feeding his inquiring mind. By his own admission he's always thinking about something. Always arranging the pieces of one puzzle or another in his head. It's a trait he says has driven one two many wedges into past relationships - but I can't help but find it an incredible turn-on.

I knew he was thinking about me. He was thinking about saying something. With some people you can just watch the decision making process going on inside. You don't know what the steps are, or how long it will take them, or even what the final verdict will be - but you can literally see the the wheels turning inside their head. Eventually I couldn't take the suspense any longer.

"What are you thinking about?"
"Oh no. are you going to be one of those girls that always asks the guy what he's thinking?"
"No." I blushed.
"Yes you are," he laughed in a way that said he already knew me better than I thought. And he was right. I AM one of those girls. A more serious look came over his face.

"Are you really interested in all the stuff I tell you?" he asked me.
I paused just a second to study the look on his face. It was a genuine question. He was worried that I was just trying to please him. That I was trying to be something I'm not for his sake - feigning interest in his interests and his stories. I suppose it's understandable. I feel a little bit the same way sometimes. We are so compatible that it's almost becomes hard to believe that its real. You have to wonder if the other person isn't just putting you on.

"Absolutely," I replied.

In my head I'm thinking, "are you kidding?" He sends me new words he learned. Stories about diseases Abraham Lincoln may, or may not have had. Articles about Medicare and health care reform because he knows I'm writing about it. He tells me about LBJ and how the medicare system was born. And this morning we had a discussion about the history of phrenology and how it was used to make a case for criminal minds, and as evidence in a court of law. A man who wants to lie in bed and cuddle after sex is already getting bonus points, but a man who wants to give me a mental orgasm right after a physical one? Are you kidding me? Do it again.

"I love that you tell me things that I don't know. I have always wanted to be with somebody that added something to who I was - that brought something new to the table. You teach me stuff. I love that. I'm definitely going to get smarter if I keep hanging around with you."

"Well I think it's better if it works bilaterally."
"I hope it already does - I hope you are interested in what I have to say and you're learning something too."

He paused.

"You know the other day, when you knew that word that I didn't know?"
"What word? Legerdemain? Slight of hand?"
"Yeah. I almost asked you to marry me."

His face was dead serious. My heart literally skipped a beat. And then, in a sort of panic-stricken, knee-jerk reaction I brushed it off.

"shut up," I said in a playful manner and looked away. I suddenly wasn't sure if that hurt his feelings a little. I didn't know how serious that comment was meant to be. His normal expression is rather deadpan - and sometimes when he's joking it takes me a second to catch on. This was the sort of joke I didn't want to misinterpret. I didn't really think he was serious about marriage - but I also knew that comment meant something. It was his way of saying, in that moment, I was the girl of his dreams.

Maybe he sensed my sudden discomfort, because he let it go and we made small talk for a minute. We both were quiet for a while, until I asked him finally,

"You never told me what you were thinking."
He cleared his throat.
"I was just thinking how nice it is just lying here next to you, and how I think it's something I think I might want to do every day, and how that's a little dangerous."
"Dangerous? You mean because neither of us would ever get any work done?"
"No. Because we've only known each other two weeks. Today is our two week anniversary."
"Happy Anniversary," I giggled. He wrapped me up in his arms, pulled me in close, and we stopped talking.