Posts Tagged ‘silent bob

03
Apr
21

The Return of “Brad Pitt”

By risquedivorcee Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Is it weird to have a crush on someone that you are regularly shagging? Because I did. I had a crush on “1994 Brad Pitt from Legends of the Fall.” I have written about him a few times in the past in Friday Freak-outs, Flirtations, and Friskiness from March, 2013, Embracing the Unexpected (Firmly, With my Thighs,), I Don’t Often Get Nervous, and but…but…I wore Sexy Underwear and Shaved from the following month, and Brad Pitt Got Fat from October, 2013. His “designation” under the “old system” of naming people that I dated was “P29” – but the system was impersonal and flawed. First, it was hard to keep track of folks without a nickname. Secondly, people age. “P29” would be “P37” if I met him now. Nicknames like “Dancing Dr. Who” and “Teddy Bear Pirate” make it easier to follow. I once said that this guy showed up at my door with a leather hair tie looking like Brad Pitt from Legends of the Fall and the name stuck. He’s been “Brad Pitt” ever since – even when he’s looked more like Kevin Smith before he went vegan.

I really liked “Brad Pitt” and he was a regular hook-up for about a year or so. We had most excellent sex and, when he wasn’t aloof or in a “Pitt” of depression and despair from his PTSD, we had fantastic conversations, lots of common interests, and a remarkably similar world view.

I think I was a little bit in love with him.

I mean, just a little.

I recently responded to a question in a poly group about whether you have to be “in love” with each of your poly partners in order for it to “count” as “poly” or whether it would be considered “friends with benefits” if you weren’t. I’ve never really been a fan of labels, but basically, I feel like we have lots of different levels of friendship, affinity, attraction, common interests, etc with lots of different people. We can love them in different ways, and with different degrees of intensity. Different people meet different needs – that’s the whole point.

Anyway, it’s been a while, but I really liked Brad Pitt. I know that I was a low maintenance booty call for him, and that was really okay for me. I would occasionally see him near the beginning of my relationship with “Working Class Whimsy” and they knew about each other. But as things progressed with “Whimsy” “Brad” and I didn’t see much of each other. I assumed he was figuring his shit out, or maybe had gotten involved with someone – as I had. There was no drama or bullshit, we just sort of faded away from each other. I would occasionally think of him fondly and wish him well.

Then, after years of no contact, he popped up again a couple of months ago, on Facebook. I should be clear – we are not, nor were we ever Facebook friends. It was not that sort of relationship. (Plus, I generally don’t friend people that I date.) He and I mainly communicated by text. So, in the midst of a global pandemic, I get a message from someone using a slightly different nickname than the one that I knew him by, (both different from his real name, which I also know.)

So after about five years of no contact, he reached out and said:

                So, are you married or not?

His profile picture didn’t show his face, and the name was different. In the span of about 30 minutes, I did a complete social media creep on the dude and read about a year’s worth of posts. I soon found video and photographic evidence that it was him, but I already knew. Eventually I responded:

                Hey, it took me a few minutes to figure out who this is.

                Yes, I am.

                How are you surviving the apocalypse?

He said he wasn’t good. We briefly chatted about how fucked the world is, how much we miss singing, about TV shows, video games, movies, and how we were managing during isolation. We talked about fears, feelings, despair…we even talked about how he had legally changed his last name – due in part to his no longer wanting to have his father’s last name. After my social media perusal, I wondered if his name change also correlated to a significant change in relationship status. Did he get married too? There did seem to be a woman in some of his social posts. A chubby, older woman – hmmm, I think he has a type. I mentioned that I had planned to keep my exes last name as my middle name, but then decided that I no longer wanted or needed it. That was literally the entire extent of our “relationshippy” talk.

It’s funny that even after so much time and distance, we were able to be extremely forthright about serious, global, emotional, painful, personal stuff, while completely misfiring on general, social, small talk. It’s always been a bit like that with us – deep, intimate connection, but also weird, guarded, aloofness bordering on “ghosting” – then back again. I think it speaks a lot to his damage, and it’s just the way that we’ve always related to one another.

I’m not sure why he reached out. I like to take it as a compliment – he was thinking about me, looked me up, sent a message. But it probably wasn’t like that. I probably showed up in his “people you may know” on Facebook and he was likely curious about my name change. Still, it was really nice to hear from him and know that he’s alive. If we weren’t in COVID isolation, I may have explored the contact with a little more seriousness and interest, but we are, and it was nice to reconnect a little bit. I continue to think of him fondly, and to wish him well.

–RD

A post-script to my own post.

This could probably be an entire post unto itself, but I don’t want to do sound like I’m obsessing over this guy.

As I mentioned, I’m not Facebook friends with “BP” – never have been. But he did hit me up on Messenger when he reached out, and that’s where we have communicated most recently. When I started to write this post, I went back to our Messenger chat for reference and I noticed something new: we now have one FB friend in common. Wait, what?! That’s new. We did know people in common from the local karaoke scene, but he wasn’t friends with any of them on social media, and told me that he didn’t keep in touch.

Our mutual friend is a slight, attractive, single woman who is much closer to his age than I am. I found myself having a brief flare of…ooooh…is that jealousy? How WEIRD! I’m completely comfortable with the notion of him being married to the chubby gal in his photos, but I had the slightest spurt of “grrrrr” when I saw that these two were recent Facebook friends. Very interesting, and something that I will have to consider more. Not quite what I expected from my open-minded, polyamorous self!

Your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

24
Oct
13

‘Brad Pitt’ got fat

By risquedivorcee 2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I caught you up on the return of Pirate Bear, so it’s only fair to catch you up on the “return” of “Brad Pitt” after I ran into him Tuesday night. Saying that we “dated” would be an overstatement, but we had fun hanging out for awhile and I really liked him, so it was good to see him alive – even if I failed to recognize him at first. He’s packed on about 20 pounds since I last saw him in May, the golden highlights he’d picked up in Afghanistan are gone from his hair – now several inches longer – which puts it well past his shoulders, and instead of a tidy goatee, he’s now wearing a full beard.

When we met in February, he caught my eye because he was my type – cute, scruffy and casually sexy. That first day, he was wearing jeans & a hockey jersey and though we flirted a bit, I figured he was too young and pretty for me. When he gave me his number and expressed clear interest with his subsequent texts, I responded positively and we started a brief affair.

The “Young Brad Pitt” nickname came from conversation with my girlfriends. He was 29 when we hooked up and other than the fact that he has brown eyes, the first time he showed up at my door he looked like a 1994 version of Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall. By the time I last saw him five months ago, he was looking like the scruffier Brad at the end of the movie – which is still pretty yummy. At that time, we were discussing the notion of moving our “relationship” from “occasional FWB/fuck buddy” to “dating” but he was really inconsistent. Sometimes we would text all night. When we were together he was attentive, complimentary, sweet and thoughtful. When we were apart, he sometimes would just drop out of the middle of a conversation and disappear. We had planned our first public outing with friends – a real date – and he essentially stood me up. He later told me that he’d been experiencing really bad panic attacks and PTSD as well as depression. I appreciated what seemed like honesty, but it didn’t change the fact that soon after he went full hermit and disappeared for nearly five months – until a few weeks ago.

The text progression on my phone shows my last text from him on May 11th, followed by a 2am text on October 9th asking how I’ve been and asking if I was at his neighborhood bar. I assumed that this was merely a closing time booty call query and was somewhat bemused. I considered not responding at all, but eventually did the following afternoon, saying that I’d been sleeping like a baby at 2am and that my formerly regular Tuesday hang-out had become pretty busy on those nights and I don’t go as often. He didn’t respond.

Interestingly, I had received a report from a girlfriend that he had been there a few weeks prior on a Tuesday night when I was off at a different place with my boyfriend. At the time I wondered if “Brad Pitt” had been looking for me. I also joked with her: “Did he get fat?! Tell me he got fat!” Well, he did. To the extent that this week, when I was out on the patio at said bar, talking to my same friend and she stopped, stared behind me and said “I thought that was D” I said “no, that’s T’s friend, B.” The person walking in the door looked familiar, but I didn’t recognize him as the guy that I’d been fucking for three months this past spring.

He was decked out like the Kevin Smith character, Silent Bob – complete with trench coat, beard, long hair and backwards Mooby hat from Dogma. I heard a couple of guys shout “hey, Silent Bob! What’s up!” A few minutes later, my friend had gone home and he walked out onto the patio, greeted some people, looked straight at me and said “hey, how you doing?” Even then, I still thought he was the other guy…for a minute. That’s how different he looked! I even went back into the bar for a second drink without speaking further to him – but as I passed and heard his voice I felt like an idiot! I came back out a few minutes later and sought him out – I mean, I didn’t want it to seem like I was pretending to ignore him or playing games. He said “hey, you never texted me back the other day!” I said that I had, then showed him my phone with the text. He then apologized, saying that his phone had been acting weird and texts were really slow – he said he hadn’t sent the text at 2am, but that he had sent a bunch of texts to his “karaoke buddies” earlier in the evening to see if anyone was going out.

We chatted for quite awhile and he acknowledged that his PTSD and panic attacks had been really bad and he was trying to force himself to go out. Several times he mentioned trying to be healthier, wanting to lose 30 pounds and how he’d been riding his bike and working out. Okay, duly noted. We talked about his 30th birthday last month, how that really sucked for him and we casually chatted about movies, music and such neutral topics. When he asked what I’ve been up to I talked about work, my summer and the fact that I’m seeing someone pretty seriously – but that it’s a poly relationship. We briefly talked about that and it was interesting to gauge his reaction. Part of me wanted to know if he would still be interested in seeing me if I was seeing someone else. The fact that he made some noises about getting together again and that we exchanged some more texts yesterday seems to indicate a strong…maybe…

The rest of the maybe is with me. I’m so over the moon with my current guy that I’m struggling with the notion of being poly at all. I haven’t been dating for awhile and I took my OKCupid profile down – at least for now. I haven’t really been sexually aroused by another man since Whimsy & I got serious. I did make out with a new guy but then I called it off before it went further. It hadn’t felt hot or sexy – it felt awkward.

“Silent Brad” could be a different matter. I like him, we’re very compatible in bed, he has his own place and he’s not looking for a relationship. I know he can curl my toes and I’m attracted to him – because let’s face it, Kevin Smith is pretty hot too, right?

There’s a big part of me that just wants to be monogamous with Whimsy to see if we could be successful at that. I think we could be, but there’s another part of me that rebels at the thought of being one of his “harem” and waiting to see if he’s willing to take a risk with me. We’re really good where we are, but it feels somewhat weird that he is seeing other people while I am not. I’m not sure that this inequity is reason enough for me to date, but it’s something that feels out of alignment.

Meanwhile, my options are open as long as my relationship is.