Cold Feet

I am not the easiest person in the world to sleep with, and by sleep, I literally mean share a bed. This is because I have the coldest feet on Earth. Something happens when I jump between the covers. I no longer have limbs attached to me. I have two blocks of ice south of my ankles and ten tiny toecicles. It's torture for anyone who dares to snuggle me and also means that the most frequent visitor to my bed is a heat pack. My father tells me that when he was little, they wrapped hot baked potatoes in tin foil to keep the foot ends of the bed warm. Then they'd eat the potatoes for breakfast. Personally, the idea of toe jam as my morning meal makes me more than a little queasy but it is a brilliant concept. Warm feet are far more desirable no matter how you get there.

The geek (Trekkie, Mets fan, virgin) and I met up one last time because I thought he deserved a fair shot. He's really quite good looking and I couldn't shake the image of his sweet face from my mind. His eyes appear as though God took a beautiful, bright, blue sky and added milk. I've never seen anything like them. He's got a great body, thin but athletic, muscular and strong. I WANTED to want him and I promise you that I gave it every last chance I could. Yet he's still terrified of me...

He made no attempt to hug me when I first arrived, nor did he make any physical contact thereafter. I noticed that he usually tries to keep a minimum of three square feet of space between us, kinda like the nuns at a Catholic school dance. If I encroached even six inches into his kinosphere, he'd back up slightly as though I was a vampire waiting to drink his blood. I can only imagine the fears going through his mind, worst case scenarios for letting me get too close. It became painfully obvious that this situation would most likely never improve and it was time to let him go for his own good.

You see, my mother recently told me that there are plenty of other fish in the sea but I've hooked this one now and am just letting him dangle. It would be cruel and unusual to leave him hanging from the pole, choking on the bait, floundering around the deck, bleeding from the gills, gasping for air. (You see where I get my flair from.) She insisted I throw him back into the ocean and let him swim away. Too much longer and he'd just float back up to the top of the water, never to recover from his wounds. There are some big fish you catch and keep. There are some fish that are simply too small and need time to grow. This one is a throwback.

Unfortunately, he told me (while visibly shaking) that he's now informed his parents that he's seeing a girl. They were so happy to hear that he was dating someone they almost threw him a party. He was so scared to tell them because no one has ever taken as much time to get to know him as I have. And now I see why. Exhibit A) He almost didn't come out to meet me for our date because his mother insisted she needed new flower boxes made for the windows on her shed and sent him to Home Depot for the wrong sized brackets twice. Then he got into a fight with the table saw, escaping with huge bruises to his chest and ribs. Handy to have around when it comes to building stuff, but spooks easily when anyone approaches his work space...including his own father! Exhibit B) He told me (without looking me in the eyes) that he really likes me. His head knows it, his heart knows it, and he's just trying to get his stomach to come around. I teased him that I was hoping to graduate from water bottle dates and get a lunch or a dinner date with him soon. He shied away and said that it most likely won't happen because he's afraid of eating in public. Excuse me? Well on top of the nervous stomach, he gets STAGE FRIGHT in restaurants. Oh, and also he doesn't like to eat anything cooked by someone he doesn't know because he might get food poisoning and die. Seriously. He's eaten at Olive Garden and Applebee's before. That's about it. He doesn't know real Italian food or real any food for that matter because he's too freaked out to eat anywhere but home. This does explain why he cooks every night but offers little hope for a dating future.

With this, I know I have to end it with him. I'm a girl who loves her food, dining out, restaurants, the entire eating together experience. While I'd love a man to cook for me at home (and I for him) I can't imagine not being able to run to the diner together at midnight or grab a slice of pizza before a movie. I love dressing up and having a delicious meal and bottle of wine at a casually elegant place, not too formal or pricey: just good. He can't offer me that. When I think about the nerdy stuff, the lack of experience, the hesitation to get close to me, the mommy issues, and the fear of food in public, it's more than I can take. I know that I get cold feet at night but it's clear to me now that he has cold feet all the time. Besides, my cold feet are only in bed and that's just one more place we'l never be together.

Copyright Kimberly Spice 2010