Being Neighborly

I have this neighbor who is absolutely gorgeous. He’s also the perfect age for me, slightly older, but not too older, and he had a great job and a nice apartment. What he didn’t have were kids, a drug problem, a current marriage/former marriage/live-in girlfriend/live-in boyfriend.
He also didn’t seem to have any interest in me.
He was nice, though, and interesting, and his friends made me laugh. We had hung out a bunch of times and always had a good time. And who doesn’t need a friend? Especially one that lives in your building and, like you, keeps less conventional hours, so might be around for a drink at one in the morning, when you’re completely stressed out and feel like if you don’t get alcohol in you, you might just curl up into one big stress ball.
So you can just imagine my surprise when he kissed me one night.
We were just hanging out, having a drink at his apartment. Originally, the plan was to leave and find a bar, but it was so cold outside and he had a really interesting bottle of wine, so we decided to stay in. All of a sudden, we’re on his bed and he’s playing with my hair and we’re just hanging out and he’s kissing me. It was a good thing we were already on his bed, because you could have knocked me over with a feather, I was that surprised. But it was great, and I felt like we had chemistry and the way he held me so tightly, and would kiss the top of my forehead, it was just so…right. I wouldn’t have ever been able to predict or explain it.
So then you can just imagine my surprise when he didn’t call.
Three days passed. We had made tentative plans to go to dinner during the week following “The Incident” and I was excited to see him again. But he didn’t call. I decided to text message him. Now usually, I am pretty adamant (and pretty good) about not calling, emailing or contacting boys unless they contact me. But this just felt different. He was a nice guy. Clearly, he was painfully shy. And he had been my neighbor and my friend first, for almost a year, actually. So the rules shouldn’t apply here, right? Besides, text messaging is way more casual than an actual phone call. So it’s only really bending my rules, not breaking them. (I can also convince myself that Carrot cake with cream cheese icing is a balanced meal according to the food pyramid if it has walnuts in it…all 4 food groups represented. What can I say, it’s a gift).
Nothing. No text back. No phone call. Nothing.
And this is when I got to wondering: Why do men pursue if they have no intention of following through?
We had a good thing. We were friendly neighbors. We were able to spend time in each other’s company and I felt that we were getting closer. Not “The Incident” closer, really, that was a total surprise. More like “bitch about your family” closer. Fun closer. Not that “the incident” closer wasn’t fun. But I just didn’t expect it. Or, necessarily want it. But it happened and then I did want it. I wanted more, actually. So when it didn’t come, that left me confused.
And, honestly, sad and angry and self-conscious, which made me even angrier. I hate when people make me doubt myself. But that’s what was happening. Was I a bad kisser? And, if I was, why didn’t anybody tell me before? Should I not have stayed over? But it was so weird, he fell asleep holding me so tightly that I don’t think I could have left if I wanted to (and, I’m not just saying this now because things didn’t work out, but part of me wanted to. I couldn’t fall asleep for the life of me. But I felt like it would be even weirder and more wrong to just slip out while he was sleeping. That’s such a cheesy, asshole-guy-in-the-teen-movie thing to do). The doubting went on for all of the third day.
My girlfriends had no answers, so I asked a guy friend of mine, “When guys don’t call, does it really mean that they’re not that into you, like the book?”
He didn’t mince words. “Usually, yes, that’s exactly what it means.” Then he went to watch 24. And I was left alone to obsess by myself again.
Women are given this bad rep about being so confusing, but I have to give it up to the men. They might perpetuate this myth that they’re simple, but when it comes right down to it, there is just no understanding their motives. When I or my girlfriends kiss someone, it’s because we’re actually interested in that person. When we sleep with somebody, it’s because we’re really interested (even if we shouldn’t be). There has only been one time when I kissed somebody to see if I felt chemistry, and I got called onto the carpet for that one by the guy, my girlfriends, my one girlfriend’s mother, who happened to overhear the conversation. But I was 18 and didn’t know any better and I felt so bad for “leading the guy on” that I never did it again. I don’t just kiss and run.
Guys do this all the time though. They will kiss you, make out with you, sleep with you, feign intimacy and then never call again. And it is so hard for women to come to terms with the idea that an entire gender could be that good at faking it that we convince ourselves that he’s scared, he doesn’t know what to do next, we sent off some kind of mysterious signal that has chased him off for good. And we obsess about a guy who has already moved on to another woman.
If we want to talk biology, it’s probably got something to do with perpetuating the race. But since we’re not stuck in the traditional hunter-gatherer roles any more, you would think men would evolve along with us and act more like the current homo-erectus we are (instead of thinking with their erections). And there seems to be no way to tell if the feeling the new man in your life is expressing is real or real fleeting. Otherwise, why would there be so many self-help books on the shelves, pondering and over-pondering these questions? Let’s face it, why would I be writing these essays?
That still doesn’t answer my question though. The question just leads to other questions. Is it curiosity? Lack of savvy? Some morbid desire to emotionally destroy the female gender one kiss at a time? Nobody seems to be able to give me a straight answer on this one. And the one person who might have been able to shed some light on this is still ignoring my text message, three floors down on the right.