four

00:36:06

I’m sleepless in Beirut.

Hugg left in a hurry yesterday, we both suck at keeping track of time when we are together.

What. A. Cutie. He kept on walking back and forth between the elevator and me, leaving me with a hug, me and the elevator, and then a kiss, elevator and me, and then a tighter hug until finally he actually disappeared.

(Only to return in five minutes on the pretext that he needed some new music in his car.)

In my room, I found his jeans, his T-shirt, his watch. He really knows how to wear it well. When I first met him, he looked too cool to be straight, and even though that stereotype took a walk down "wrong judgement" lane, there is certainly a peppering of diva glitter on him.

I put on his T-shirt, and it was as though "The Fonz" entered me. I put on his jeans, and I felt a very strong impulse to walk down the streets of Hamra, with my headphones on, rap music rhyming with my swagger. I’ve been wearing his shirt since then, and I don’t want to take it off. It’s as though he’s enveloping me. It’s a shame it smells more of washing powder than of him.

Hugg is a recent distraction in my life. I met him through work a while back, but unlike the Botticelli story, he had contacted me instead.

It was barely a few days after one of those underground parties that I received a very brief message from him on Facebook. We exchanged a few more messages and decided to meet. I had no idea what he looked like.

I remember approaching LINA's with the phone to my ear, listening to the signal and scouring the tables for a guy fumbling with a cell phone. I feared it was the Kiresh sitting at the corner or the wrinkled Thumb at the entrance. I heard a voice at the other end of the line and simultaneously, the most handsome guy at the café (an understatement; he was probably "the most" within the entire district) spoke into his phone.

He stood up and I was overwhelmed by his height and shoulders that roared, "This is Sparta!!!". I have to admit that as soon as I realized how attractive he was, I instantly filed him under the "gay" category. I had to stereotype; I would have no peace of mind otherwise. I wouldn't have to stare into empty space, I could look him straight in the eye and fantasize about us going shopping and making other guys exclaim how unfair life was.

One of my rules: never date super good-looking guys. It’s not so much of a rule as it is a foolproof method of avoiding rejection. I just don’t go there. I feed off attention and they feed off themselves reflected in the glazed eyes of the hundreds of heads they turn. I don't see no hope. So I stick to the cute ones, the ones who need a little reassurance, and the ones who find that little reassurance in having me by their side.

We talked, and discovered that we were on the same wavelength, ticked the meeting off as a success and went our separate ways in about an hour. We would keep in touch for professional reasons.

Oh, important detail: he was in a serious relationship. I was at peace, one temptation less! We couldn’t be more wrong for one another.

And just to punctuate that with an exclamation mark, in about a week’s time, I started being serious myself; my first real boyfriend.