digital fisherman

shipyard 1, originally uploaded by pinprick.

you would think that living on a boat and fishing for a living would be a very quaint, old-timey way of life. which in a lot of ways it is, but they also have computers and cell phones and tvs on boats now, meaning i can have a tiny fling with a fisherman and spend most of my time text messaging him instead of just talking to him on the phone.

truth be told i am just so bad on the phone, just so impossibly awkward and uncomfortable, that even talking to some guy i don't know that well and who swears like, well, a sailor (my people for crying out loud!) it would be easier but it's not. i can hardly talk to my friends without sounding like i have a massive head injury. i like to think i sound okay in real life; that i have conversations with people i know and they are easy and fun and i can string together a coherent sentence, but maybe that's not even true! maybe i hate the phone the same way i hate hearing myself on tape; it just doesn't sound like me to me, but to everyone else, it totally does. truthfully, it takes me years sometimes to get all comfy with talking to a particular person on the phone. years in which i over analyze anything i might have said and wonder if it came out right or how else i could have worded it, years i which i cringe at every third word that comes out of my face.

the fisherman fling (which is what i now think it should be called) is still going on, oddly enough. i sort of thought it would be a one-time, "dude, you're never going to believe what i did this one time," sort of story to add to my repertoire of dating lore, but instead it's a small thing now. a tiny thing with a very clear expiration date; he's only in town for a while, i'm only in town for a while, he's way too young for me, but we have fun together. he's straight-forward, which i like in everyone but especially appreciate in people i make out with; he's a little shorter than i am, which evidently I LOVE*; he's got the whole freckles/reddish hair thing that seems to be my M.O. lately; and he's a nice distraction. i feel like it's been so long since i've been out of the dating loop that i need a few practice runs, you know? get my bearing, see if my old tricks still work, test the waters. ha! "test the waters." the seamen jokes about this are going to rule. if you have any to add, please feel free.

*see all the boys i've dated lately. while they aren't all shorter than i am, they tend to be either a few inches of me or just exactly my height. do i have a type? i mean, i love tall too, but lately i find myself wanting to grope men of shorter stature. i wonder what that means. can you change types in mid-life? is this the equivalent of me going from being a boob guy to being a butt guy?