What, language? No, touch.

I went out to dinner with Rick earlier this evening.

Met him at a restaurant we used to go to constantly when we were dating.

I haven't seen him in close to four years, I would guess. He's gained some weight around his middle and his jawline. Still easily recognizable. We talked and he told stories, caught me up on social happenings for groups I'm no longer part of.

Told me to date sane men, not men eighteen years my senior. He did it in a pretty amusing voice, too.

He showed me pictures of his wife and his stepchildren, told me stories of the house they bought and all the work he is doing, how little time he has for himself.

It doesn't seem to bother him, though.

Whenever we talk, he reminds me that I've never been alone. I've never had "me" time for more than the briefest of periods. I start building momentum and, invariably, there's suddenly men. Whether or not I've invited them, whether or not I want them, there's men and I love sex and companionship and learning about other ways of being and thinking and I'm hooked.

For the last week or so, I've been distracted by others. I've been getting all tangled up in my emotions and in my issues, instead of untangling them like I should.

I glare at my phone, I glare at myself. I act like a fool, in more ways than most people see.

I keep looking outside myself. I keep abandoning myself for external stimuli.

And I do, gods do I, want that lover. That weeknight booty call. Someone attractive, someone friendly, someone entirely undistracting. Someone I can text who will be at my door in fifteen minutes, ready to go.

So I can get on with my life.

Friday night, tomorrow night, is a club/concert event with friends, or maybe a documentary I want to catch before it leaves theaters, or maybe a night in finishing my desk.

Saturday, maybe Venice Beach. It's getting warm again, beautiful and sunny, but it isn't tourist season yet. Walk the boardwalk, take a book with me and sit on the grass, listen to the various performers put on their shows, leave my hair down and blowing in the wind. Going away party for a friend on Saturday night, out of town for business for a few months.

Sunday, Easter brunch somewhere down in or around Carlsbad/Rancho Santa Fe, on the beach. Family. Patio dining, fine foods, and sea winds. Taking the 5 south, feeling those curves beneath my tires, accelerating at the perfect moments to swing into them, to take that extra tilt of the wheel to slide into the next lane for that slight centrifugal pull. Yes.

I want to turn off my phone, put away my laptop. I want to be unreachable, disconnected from the world, just for a little.

I want to remember who I have the possibility of being.

I want to stop the social games, the miscommunication, the misunderstandings, the defense and mincing words. I want to untangle it all, the people we play at being, the people we are, the affectations.

I want to talk to someone and not have to think.

Send a man to my door. Don't have him speak, and neither will I. Crawl into bed where touches cannot be misinterpreted, where nothing is read into, where fingertips sliding down the spine means nothing more than pleasure and the pressure of skin on skin.