Dear Cary,
I'm a 21-year-old girl and still a virgin. Two months ago I met this nice, fairly decent young man two years my senior at a Dean Meetup. We hit it off and started going out, and we had a good deal in common. We could talk for hours on almost any subject, and I found him smart, witty and infectious.
The last time I saw him was in mid-November when we went to a museum. Afterward we went for coffee and then saw "Master and Commander" and then went for a drink. At one point in the conversation he mentioned that on a previous date he wanted to kiss me. I was stunned since I have been falling in love with him for quite some time. At the end of the night, before I got on my train we exchanged our first kiss. Now I'm starting to wonder if it might be our last.
Following that time he went to visit his family in Vermont for Thanksgiving. He would be back by Dec. 1. Since that time he hasn't e-mailed or responded to the few voice mails that I sent. In the two e-mails that I sent him over Thanksgiving I mentioned the doomed word -- "love." Do you think I made a wrong move? Did my honest approach scare him, or did he lose interest in me all of a sudden? Should I just accept his silence and see him as someone pulling another "kiss and run"? Should I fight on and find the truth? Should I wait in patience or should I just let it all go to hell?
Lost But in Love
Dear Lost,
No, no, don't let it all go to hell. Hell is exactly the place of unresolved narratives into which such little mysteries might drag you if you commit the sin of sloth. So you have to fight on and find the truth.
I would write him something like this:
Dear Meetup Man,
Our records indicate that earlier this year your lips were involved in a minor kiss with the lips of our client. No damage was done, and no claim has filed. Nonetheless, there are a few pending items that need to be clarified before this case can be closed. Would you please contact our office at your earliest convenience so that this item can be resolved?
Please be aware that while the incident in question caused no damages exceeding the deductible, failure to completely resolve this matter can result in substantial penalties. Furthermore, please note: Interest is compounded daily.
Yours truly,
The Office of Osculatory Recompense And Other Related Matters
We have much more to say on this subject, but now is not the time. Except to say this:
In situations like these, it's common for one to "search one's heart," or to ask someone else to search his heart. That is not such a bad thing to do, but it takes much practice, and sometimes when you're young you can search your heart all you want and still not find anything you're looking for. It's best if one's heart is well-organized, with many places already having been well-searched in the past, labeled and remembered. But that takes time. When one is young, one's heart is new and full of unexplored, unlabeled spaces; searching one's heart may therefore be a baffling, overwhelming experience, like walking into Le Video in San Francisco. There are too many videos for one human being. Each one of those videos is a whole experience, and you can't possibly see them all, or even a fraction of them. The heart is like that: You search it but you can't recognize much because everything is new.
Then you get to be, say, 37, and it's different. Your collection is almost completely labeled and alphabetized. Then you have a different problem when searching your heart: You are hard-pressed to find any titles you haven't seen a few times already.
But I digress. Not that digressing is bad. This column is nothing but digression, as is all of literature. A writer sits down and says, "To make a short story long ..." But I digress. You won't find the answers in your heart and neither will he. You will have to find the answers by agreeing to either continue getting together or not. That is really the only pending item: Are you going to continue seeing each other or not? You need, at very least, an answer to that simple question.
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