After Rudy, there was Grant.
He had initially messaged me on Jack’d near the turn of the year. Though he had no face picture, he was at least able to carry a conversation better than most of the other men and seemed to have motivations beyond sex. Through our discussion, I learned that he had briefly returned to Hawaii for the holiday season but would be returning to Los Angeles to finish up graduate school and work before permanently relocating back to Honolulu. Would I be interested in maybe meeting up during that time?
I honestly thought the two of us would lose touch, but – to my surprise – we kept chatting for several months. When he finally did return to Honolulu, I took an intense liking to him. He replied to my text messages as though he had been waiting by his phone with nothing else to do all day. There was never a lull in conversation during brunch or dinner. He always had an idea for something to do during the weekend. He also had the rather unusual hobby of being an amateur musician.
Strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin, though.
The ease with which he directed his energies to external activities did not translate to an equal ability to guide them inward. I first noticed this when we played a party game where the two of us took turns answering a variety of thought-provoking, romantically oriented questions designed to help people better understand themselves and others.
“Okay, first question,” he said, pulling a card from the box. “Is it a sign of cynicism or wisdom to tolerate affairs?”
“Hmm…” I began. “I suppose it would depend on the person. For me, I would perceive it as a learning opportunity to examine the ways in which I might have contributed to the person’s reasons for cheating. Have I been neglecting them? Have I not been as attentive to their needs as I should have been?” I paused for a moment, absentmindedly fiddling with my bedsheets. “I would like to think that, at the very least, we could have an adult discussion of the relationship, but I guess I could imagine how other people might have a different reaction.”
“Oh, same, I guess. Your turn to pick a card!”
To Grant’s credit, he did not have unrevealing responses to every card we pulled that night, but I came away with the distinct feeling that he either had very little interesting to say or a lot to hide. Before we went to bed that evening, I put on Planet Earth so the two of us could wind down from hours of talking. However, minutes into one of the episodes he was already attempting to engage me in a quiz show-like grilling of every animal and ecosystem flicking on screen.
How many bats do you think live in that cave? Do you think the roaches in there are bigger than the ones in Hawaii? How long does that fish have to live in the cave to get all transparent like that?
I did not have an especially easy time getting to sleep that evening and I had an especially difficult time being around him when his hobby as a musician began to pick up. As soon as that happened, it felt like he took every moment of silence – no matter how tiny – to rehearse, revise, and repeat lyrics to his songs in real time and in any location. I could hear him muttering, mumbling, and murmuring while looking over restaurant menus, during the ten-second moment when we split apart so I could walk to the passenger door, or while placing my coffee order with a barista.
I felt like a new snow globe in a whirlwind. Without even a moment to settle, hanging out with him became a frazzling, disorienting, and exhausting experience. Realizing that my unhappiness would cause me to begin to treat him less correctly than I should and that an open discussion of the subject would be the best way to resolve the issue, I brought it up on a car ride home from brunch one weekend.
“Hey, Grant,” I began. “You know I’m a quiet person, right?”
“I think that is obvious to everybody,” he replied, flicking his turn signal.
“I know your music is very important to you, but do you think maybe – when the two of us are hanging out, at least – it would be possible to tune it down a bit? I feel like I can barely hear myself think half the time.”
Without missing a beat, he answered, “Oh, sure. No problem.” However, he did not say it with the tone of someone who properly understood what I said. Instead, it was the cheery tone one might take when answering in the affirmative to a request to make a brief detour to McDonald’s before a long drive. As I sat in muteness tumbling between uncertainty and disbelief, he resumed his vocals.
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