So not perfect
Actor Guy annoyed me for the first time last night. It was over something quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it was as if the scales fell from my eyes. I could see into the future, and picture a time when not everything he said would strike me as adorable and funny. When he would speak with passion on a subject and I'd roll my eyes and think, "Here we go again." When he would irritate me so much that I would want to yell, Shut up, shut up, shut up! You see longtime couples do that, and wonder how they get there. Well, last night I could totally see that happening to us, and it scared me in a different way.
Oh no, he's not perfect! Oh no, the bloom is off the rose! Oh no, maybe he's not so great after all!
In a way, it was liberating. No longer was I in thrall of Actor Guy, worried that I was going to mess up what was turning into an intoxicating whirlwind of dates, romance and whispered sweet nothings. Instead, I was listening to Actor Guy expounding on why he thought my pronunciation of the Chinese name "Wang" was incorrect and misleading (I rhymed it with "sang" instead of "song"). And it was sort of pissing me off.
"Look, I know people with that name, and they pronounce it that way, so that's how I say it," I shrugged.
"But it's not that hard to pronounce it correctly," he protested. "There's a right way and a wrong way, and it just strikes me as an opportunity to educate people on the proper way to pronounce it." He pointed out that people know to say "Hey Zeus" when they see the Spanish name "Jesus," and "Hoo-wan" when they see "Juan." So why not pronounce it as the Chinese do?
My argument that it was Anglicized didn't hold water with him, but my point that Korean last names also suffer the same sort of pronunciation confusion (Park and Pak are the same name in Korean, for instance, and the name Pak can rhyme with "sack" or "sock," depending on how you say it) mollified him a bit. But not enough for him to stop insisting that it was better to pronounce "Wang" differently from how I pronounce it. And that annoyed the shit out of me. Especially since this conversation went on for far longer than I thought necessary.
I didn't tell him I was annoyed, but after a while I just stopped engaging. It took a while for him to change the subject, and a while longer for me to warm back up. By the end of the conversation things were pretty much back to normal, but that moment of realization that he was no longer 100 percent adorable shook me. I wondered if that was how R. felt with me -- bored with the conversation at hand, no longer engaged, not feeling attracted.
I'm not sure what any of this means. Maybe it means that we'll come to hate each other after a while. Or maybe it means that we're normal, imperfect people, getting to know each others' quirks and pet peeves. The thing is, I was on such a high last night before we spoke on the phone. He came to see me before I went in to see "Harry Potter" with some old work friends. He joined us for drinks at a bar next to the theater, and then while my friends went to pick up our tickets, he and I went off to a corner to steal some kisses. And it was lovely. I told him that I'd missed him, and he hugged me and said, "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere." I had trouble concentrating on the movie, because I kept thinking about Actor Guy.
He told me to call him after the movie because he wanted to know what I thought of it, and I did. And that's when the bloom came off. If I think about the part where he came to see me, I can still feel that happy "weak-in-the-knees" feeling. If I think about our phone conversation afterward, I feel kind of put-out and "meh." Is that good? Is that normal? Is it bad? I'm having a freak-out of a different sort now.
Oh no, he's not perfect! Oh no, the bloom is off the rose! Oh no, maybe he's not so great after all!
In a way, it was liberating. No longer was I in thrall of Actor Guy, worried that I was going to mess up what was turning into an intoxicating whirlwind of dates, romance and whispered sweet nothings. Instead, I was listening to Actor Guy expounding on why he thought my pronunciation of the Chinese name "Wang" was incorrect and misleading (I rhymed it with "sang" instead of "song"). And it was sort of pissing me off.
"Look, I know people with that name, and they pronounce it that way, so that's how I say it," I shrugged.
"But it's not that hard to pronounce it correctly," he protested. "There's a right way and a wrong way, and it just strikes me as an opportunity to educate people on the proper way to pronounce it." He pointed out that people know to say "Hey Zeus" when they see the Spanish name "Jesus," and "Hoo-wan" when they see "Juan." So why not pronounce it as the Chinese do?
My argument that it was Anglicized didn't hold water with him, but my point that Korean last names also suffer the same sort of pronunciation confusion (Park and Pak are the same name in Korean, for instance, and the name Pak can rhyme with "sack" or "sock," depending on how you say it) mollified him a bit. But not enough for him to stop insisting that it was better to pronounce "Wang" differently from how I pronounce it. And that annoyed the shit out of me. Especially since this conversation went on for far longer than I thought necessary.
I didn't tell him I was annoyed, but after a while I just stopped engaging. It took a while for him to change the subject, and a while longer for me to warm back up. By the end of the conversation things were pretty much back to normal, but that moment of realization that he was no longer 100 percent adorable shook me. I wondered if that was how R. felt with me -- bored with the conversation at hand, no longer engaged, not feeling attracted.
I'm not sure what any of this means. Maybe it means that we'll come to hate each other after a while. Or maybe it means that we're normal, imperfect people, getting to know each others' quirks and pet peeves. The thing is, I was on such a high last night before we spoke on the phone. He came to see me before I went in to see "Harry Potter" with some old work friends. He joined us for drinks at a bar next to the theater, and then while my friends went to pick up our tickets, he and I went off to a corner to steal some kisses. And it was lovely. I told him that I'd missed him, and he hugged me and said, "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere." I had trouble concentrating on the movie, because I kept thinking about Actor Guy.
He told me to call him after the movie because he wanted to know what I thought of it, and I did. And that's when the bloom came off. If I think about the part where he came to see me, I can still feel that happy "weak-in-the-knees" feeling. If I think about our phone conversation afterward, I feel kind of put-out and "meh." Is that good? Is that normal? Is it bad? I'm having a freak-out of a different sort now.