the expected boyfriend?

it's not odd, that I found who I found and I am with him. people find mates every day, they fall in love and somehow decide to share a life together and that has been done so many times in history there is not a number to count the hookups, breakups and stories that would chronicle this most usual and normal of human activities. I don't know why I assumed I was immune from such a thing - I've labored much of life under the misapprehension that I am abnormal - it's the only way I have to really explain the thing I hate explaining, which is that I'm afraid of pretty much everything, and everything I'm not afraid of I hide from view of the world. fear kept me alone - but it didn't stop everyone else around me from skipping in and out of relationships with apparent abandon and no seeming effort whatsoever - which was baffling, because the mere act of speaking to a boy i was interested in was forbidden, or at the very best a laborious torture. men that were interested in me were clearly non-existent. that is perhaps why I have felt the lack of long term relationships so acutely. I barely managed short term relationships, and mostly just managed friendships. my record, before this mate I have found myself unexpectedly in possession of, was three months. i didn't even realize i was in a relationship after i'd been seeing that guy for three months, until one tuesday - we only ever hung out on tuesdays - i remembered with a start that it WAS tuesday. oh, i said indifferently to myself, I suppose I'm going to have sex tonight. that was when I knew I needed to end that - because one shouldn't forget one is dating someone. is that even a relationship? whatever that was, it was my longest at three months. and now dan. i don't think it has even been three months, but time is no indicator here, for he is truly the longest actual relationship I've ever had because I call him my boyfriend, which I have, except for that one time in eighth grade when I had a boyfriend for two days, never called a boy i was having sex with my boyfriend before.

i suppose i am defining my history of relationships as "periods of time in which I more or less regularly had sex with someone." that might have be my problem to begin with, but i'm not actually sure this is interesting.

so i have a boyfriend, who calls me his girlfriend. the reason i have condescended to date him is that he is even more obsessed with music than I am, and as far as I'm concerned, that is probably the only thing that really matters. he is a vinyl collector. i am unsurprised by fate's choice. it is fascinating to me, vinyl collecting and therefore, he too is fascinating to me. i, the girl who finds very little about guys interesting, found a guy who is everything i assumed i should never date, fascinating. figures. today I crouched in a thrift store, hands filthy with record cover dust, going over the few records I pulled from their mostly Christian/Classical inventory, and discussing whether they should be purchased. "what's the condition?" "eh...fair." "okay, yeah, pick it up." he doesn't have a job, he isn't even a citizen of the united states (hello canadian) he's missing a tooth and he hates to exercise - despite these apparent deformities, as I crouched in that record store today going over the acceptable to purchase vinyl that I'd culled from the stacks, I knew that I am actually dating someone I'd care to be with.