7. Post-Hookup Etiquette #2
He’d been raised near LA, competed in Japan and Europe, then attended college in New York City; he couldn’t even think of Portland as a city if he didn’t put quotes around it.
But Lily cared about him, for whatever crazy reasons, so he should let her know he was in the cavorting-with-singing-animals stage of his morning after.
Apparently that’s what friends did, and he wanted to keep the best one he had.
The rose garden in Washington Park would be an ideal choice, assuming he could park on a lovely Saturday morning in June.
A few minutes later, the gods smiled with their favors and he parallel parked on the first try. Even the phone app to pay for an hour worked easily.
The paths and grass were both immaculately maintained, not like a trail, so his cute sneakers and the cuffs of his linen casual trousers should stay clean.
Clearly, he should hook up more often. Or maybe eat more doughnuts. Okay, both.
The rose garden was a spectacular place, one that made him momentarily yearn to have a yard he could fill with a maze of roses, lilacs, hydrangeas, lilies, or whatever else inspired him, but that was a financial goal for the future.
Unless his father suddenly became interested in helping him to purchase real estate instead of securing yet another Southern California strip mall, Jonathan was going to stay a renter.
His immediate need, however, was not a garden of his own, but a good selfie spot to send Lily a photo.
Opening his phone, he saw that he’d received a notice in the iEros app.
His breath did a funny thing when he tapped on the icon and read that new messages in an unfathomably plural number far more than one had arrived from Connor.
While saying awkward goodbyes in front of Voodoo Doughnut, they’d floated the possibility of keeping in touch, and Connor had casually mentioned he was going to Powell’s, in a way that had felt thirty percent like an invitation to join him at the bookstore, but Jonathan had obeyed his instincts and returned to his car.
Having seven messages from him within an hour was unusual, yes, but also, perhaps, refreshing.
And that ping made eight.
Actually, he didn’t know what it was, other than confusing, because nothing like it had never happened to him before this moment.
But he was in a shade-spattered corner of the garden, which made him free to check messages on an app without shocking anyone except himself with the fact that a hookup was already texting.
BatsAndBalls
Made it to Powells Books
Everything makes me think of last night
Photos flooded his screen. The Overstory by Richard Powers. Entrances and Exits by Seinfeld’s Kramer, aka Michael Richards, and Shakespeare’s Richard The Third.
Jonathan didn’t have to struggle to understand the trend. And then of course a photo of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick, which made Connor’s theme unmistakable.
His hand looked bigger than Jonathan remembered as he held a yellowed vintage paperback by Dick Francis called Proof.
BatsAndBalls
Hope you like the Dick pics!
The last photo reminded Jonathan of the battered paperbacks that had crammed his grandmother’s shelves in her Palm Desert bungalow. That was the second time this week he’d remembered the times he’d found refuge at her book-filled bungalow, and the missing hit hard.
He was a librarian because of Gammy.
She would have hooted over a guy who sent photos of books instead of the traditional dick pic. She’d enjoyed her romances, decades’ worth double-stacked on her shelves, all the way back to those stalwarts of the Eighties like Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Jude Deveraux.
He couldn’t remember the title or author, but there had been one particular cover with a male model standing naked in the wilderness, body concealed only by the flowing dress and hair of a kneeling heroine. That had rocked teen Jonathan’s world.
He and Lily should definitely put together an Eighties-themed display.
He moved to a more central bench where the sun warmed his shoulders and head, making him feel slower than he usually did.
Relaxed, that was the word.
Surrounded by roses and sunshine and thankfully very distant yapping dogs, it was something he didn’t feel very often, but right now, reading texts from a guy who spammed him with book porn, even though he didn’t know Jonathan was a librarian, he could examine that feeling and use its proper name.
On Saturday, June 14, at one in the afternoon, he, Jonathan Park, felt relaxed.
He looked at his phone and reread the messages. It was laughably clear that playing along with the Dick-but-not-a-dick-pic game wouldn’t alienate Connor, but maybe it would be better to wait.
He looked at the photos and texts again.
A steady voice inside his head that, as usual, sounded like his former New York therapist asked him to consider what could realistically happen in the scenario where he went ahead and sent a text now.
Not everything that could possibly go wrong, but what could go wrong here in this situation, and did that matter.
No, of course it didn’t matter.
And anyway, Connor had sent him a total of eight texts since they’d said goodbye so realistically Jonathan should assume Connor would be happy even with a solitary gif.
A quick phone search informed him that there was a rose named St. Richard of Chichester which was a deep velvet red with a superfluous number of petals.
Connor wouldn’t know that the particular red rose in front of Jonathan’s bench was something else entirely, some disease-resistant, long-lasting whatevermajig, because even though Connor liked elderflower cocktails, “borrowing” classy moisturizer, and being ordered around, the nuances between deep red roses were certainly too much for ninety-nine-point-nine percent of twenty-something year-old men, gay or not.
Axel1998
I’m at the rose garden.
I met the glorious Saint Richard of Chichester.
He’d give it a moment, since he was suspicious that Connor was closely monitoring the app because, please, he was so fabulous the man had already spammed him this morning.
BatsandBalls
A doggo? Please say St Richard is a puppy!
Suspicions confirmed.
BatsandBalls
I pick her a tiny papillon with a very big name
Picture
Connor’s messages before their meeting, while not entirely punctuated, had at least been proofread. Now that he’d met real life Connor, the too-fast fingers and excited texting made sense, but they also hurt his eyes.
He should enjoy this with less judgment, he knew he should. Not punctuating messages was normal, was in fact what everyone else did. No one cared about mistakes in texts and the world would not end if he stopped using periods, too.
Bonus, if he stopped using punctuation, it would annoy his mother. You must not let your standards slip, she’d say if she knew, sloppy thinking begets sloppy living.
But for her to notice, he’d have to text her.
Just sharing a room with Connor’s hair would set hers on fire.
Axel1998
Sorry, not a dog.
There, he sent a photo of the rose.
BatsandBalls
That is one gorgeous Dick
Seond best I’ve seen today
If this man could proofread, weekends driving to the city were absolutely on the table.
BatsandBalls
Sorry for the type-Os!I’m carrying a stack of books
His carbon footprint was so, so, so screwed.