Neighbor always notifies me on Monday evenings when he’s leaving Tiger Sanctuary with his meat haul and, given that the sanctuary is in southern Oregon and an hour out from here, I give him about forty minutes and then walk over. I ran a little late with it today because I got to the end of L’s driveway and remembered I had left behind the bag I use for my personal haul at the end of the visit. I still got there well before Neighbor or Mac (I don’t know who Mac is to Neighbor; a friend, I guess, and maybe some sort of property caretaker? He’s there pretty much every week though).
As I’m ambling down Neighbor’s driveway I have gotten to the bit where it sort of curves and then I can see the meat-sorting area, which is a little ways before the house, but the house is visible from the sorting area. You can’t see whether someone is parked there until you get fairly close due to all the underbrush — this is in woods, including redwoods — and no one had texted me going “where are you?”, but as I walked I saw what looked like a person already at the sorting area peeking around the bushes at me. But I couldn’t be sure, and then whoever it was disappeared. I got closer and no one was there. Bear? It seemed quite likely.
I walked almost to the house to make sure no one was home for real, then went back to the sorting area and sat down to wait. Then I noticed the dogs were barking like crazy from inside the house. I had already been hearing a lot of crashing around in the underbrush on that side of the driveway so it wasn’t hard to figure out what was probably happening. I walked back toward the house and there’s this little path that branches off the driveway on the way there, perpendicular to the driveway. Peered through the underbrush and saw what looked a lot like dark furry legs. But they weren’t moving, so I couldn’t be sure. Oh, god. Neighbor has huge windows on that side of the house and the dogs probably had front-row seats for the action outside. Hence the barking.
Mac showed up in a borrowed truck not long after, and after he passed me I looked down that little side path again and what I had thought were legs were gone. The space was clear. Poof.
Neighbor showed up not long after him, and we did our usual thing and holy shit I ended up with a lot of food, I’ll be stuffing myself stupid this coming week… and as we were wrapping things up, I finally got to see the bear. It continually amazes me how small black bears are. Beautiful animal.
This time Mac drove me back to L’s — they drop me off at the end of her drive, which is fine. But before we left Neighbor’s, somehow they got onto the subject of Neighbor getting an injection tomorrow and hey, I’ll admit, I was curious, but I didn’t ask. Mac did. Turns out Neighbor likes to talk about his health issues about as much as I like to talk about mine. Here we go with the sex-related talk again. He’s in his early sixties and this sort of thing happens to guys in that age range eventually; he had had low testosterone, like scary low, and depression along with it and everything, but now he gets these shots every three weeks and he’s like a new man. He said at first the dose was higher and he felt like he was twenty again, and then they lowered the dose a bit but stuff is still pretty much okay. He asked his doc at one point if he’d have to keep doing this forever — here he apologized because he was going to get explicit — and he said the doc asked, “Well, do you ever want to have sex again?” and Neighbor was like “yeah?” and doc said, well, keep doing this then.
So Mac is all interested in getting the shots himself, and goody for him. Of course now this has all got me wondering, “Okay, who does Neighbor want to have sex with?“, but I probably already know. But again, I’m not going to ask. None of my business.
I’m still wondering if this is normal, though, this frequent bringing up of this subject (no pun intended but hey… if you want it, there it is), or if there’s something else to it because thirty years ago, if a guy had talked about fucking this often around me, it’d have turned out he was angling. Maybe shit changes as you get thirty years older. I really don’t know.
But I’ve had lots of practice gray-rocking sexual interest. Had to, with Matt being the way he was. When a guy knows you’ve dumped him but won’t stop saying “I love you” and touching you at random moments and stuff, you don’t dare even hint that it might be reciprocal because then it is just all sorts of nonsense at that point. I am not saying I wouldn’t want to reciprocate with this guy, though. Really the main thing stopping me from even flirting is I know I look like shit with my clothes off. Well, that and being pretty sure he’s already with L. But if he isn’t with L, then he’s going to have to do more than mention sex in every fucking conversation (ha ha) or else I’m just going to assume that’s him doing the typical writer oversharing. Because that is probably what it is. I may never have published anything other than my internet shit, and almost no one cares about that, but I guess I’m also a writer of some sort and I do the same fucking thing. Know it when I see it.
Unless I’m wrong. But again, I don’t take hints. Tell me.
So we’ll see how that goes.
It won’t, of course. I feel like if there were anything to this, he’d be more chatty when he comes over and I go downstairs. He IS chatty, but 99% with L. If I were to press the issue and initiate a conversation with him, of course he’d reply, long as I wasn’t rude and interrupting something. But he doesn’t usually initiate*. Now, he could also be shy. Perhaps moreso when L’s in the room, assuming I’m wrong and they’re not together. I could totally see her picking on him about me if it came to that. She’s got that personality, and she’d be affectionate instead of mean, but she’d tease, and if I can tell that about her, surely he can. They’ve been friends (at least) a long time. So, I mean, that scenario of him just being shy is possible. I just don’t think so. And it goes back to the hinting. I’m sorry. I’ve done enough chasing: if a man’s interested and he can’t even get up the fucking nerve to tell me that, the fuck else is he good for? Sorry you’re shy, dude. I’m a fucking reject. Have been all my life. It has really done a number on my self-esteem. I desperately need to not feel like a reject anymore. I have my own personal list of red flags in a potential guy and you don’t need to see that because I don’t need to give you ideas for mistreating me, but a definite green flag is a willingness to come forward and let me know you like me and mean it from day one. If you can’t even do that, oh well. Next.
Honestly it’s for the best. I think I’d rather just have friends at this point anyway. Thoughts of anything else are really just what’s left of my libido talking after a more than ten year dry spell.
Sigh.
Oh, shit, I didn’t mention it here. GUESS WHAT STARTED UP AGAIN
Yep. Fucking Aunt Flo.
[rage]
I’m dealing, but I didn’t need the expense. Not only in supplies but in the time needed to mess about with this thing. I’m DONE, okay? GO AWAY.
Friday I walked to Walmart after two days dicking around with my cloth pads and I’m so glad I did because it got heavier after that. And that was a four-mile fucking walk and my feet were very sorry afterwards, but now that I know I can do it, it’s not so bad. I even have plans for building up my walking tolerance for the next time I have to go. It’s all good.
However, I am stalling hard on getting more earnings, and that’s not good. I do seem to be picking up more Substack subscribers, two even paying (one monthly!), so there’s that at least.
Okay. I need to go to bed. Gromp.
—
*One notable exception: he saw me mention, on Facebook, attracting hummingbirds to L’s yard and exclaimed that he’d seen one on her blackberry bushes, and the next time he came over and happened to see one out the window, he came upstairs JUST to tell me he’d seen it. This was one of those little things that’s got me thinking of him as kind. Could there be anything else to it? No fucking idea. Sometimes people are just kind.