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Well, WTF.

Sunday he came by and informed me that he'd dropped his phone at work and it was "fucked". Monday he slept away the day and didn't get to it. Tuesday he realised that he could use voice commands and was at least able to send me messages. He came by that evening and we had a wonderful cuddle session. Yesterday I didn't hear from him at all, but he was working. This morning I tried to call and wish him a happy one-month anniversary and got the message:

"We're sorry, the number you have dialed has calling restrictions that has prevented the completion of your call, announcement 19”.

My first though, of course, was that his phone had given up the ghost completely. So I opened the app where we made first contact to see if I could message him there. I couldn't find his profile, something which (as I understand it) only happens if someone has blocked you, not if they delete their account.

Could he have blocked me?

It was an anxious half hour on the shuttle until I could get to work and call him from my work phone. (I actually had to look up how to do that, it's been so long.) I got the same message, which implies that the issue is on his end. What's the next step? I have an address and a place of work. He's not scheduled to work until tomorrow, so I guess I wait until the afternoon and call. If I can't reach him that way, I guess I send a letter to the address?

It's all so weird, I just have to hope it's a dumb failure of technology (and a failure on his part to anticipate this by, say, writing my number down somewhere or looking up my work profile--he knows my full name and workplace--and contacting me there). I even wondered if one of the apparent spam texts I get on a daily basis could have been him; I blocked two local numbers in quick succession last night but when I looked in my phone I couldn't find them.

I'm kind of alternating between being annoyed and hurt. It would not be the first time a man told me all the right things and then ended up abruptly breaking things off. It wouldn't even be the second.

Things are moving fast with Mississippi Boy.

A week ago, he came to campus and we talked through our horrible time that night. My ego still isn't entirely mollified, but I'm willing to forgive and move on.

Thursday was Bear Happy Hour at SoFo again. The original plan was for Clint to pick him up on the way home from work and drop us both there together, but he got an unexpected summons from his boss. I could hardly tell him "don't go", but it made for a pretty shitty first hour at the bar. My other friends I was hoping to meet up with just wanted to get dinner together afterwards and the few folks I knew there were pretty frosty.

Things perked up when an old friend from the bear gaming group came by. His boyfriend was chatting with someone and he wanted to give them space. I'll admit to feeling some envy when I saw them kissing in front of me. By the time MB appeared, I was a bit in my cups and enjoying myself.

Dinner was at Vincent, an Andersonville restaurant I've always liked but haven't patronised in a while. The boy and I split the cassoulet, which was delish, and I ended up feeling so magnanimous that I bought not only treated him but both my pals as well, one of whom was BB. They both gave him a thumbs up.

He was working the next two days, but Sunday he came by again. I was exhausted from a long day on Saturday--a wine-tasting, then an opera, then dancing, and finally a backroom bar--and basically spent the day in bed waiting for him to get off work. We went so late, neither of us willing to call it a night, that I ultimately had to call in the next day.

Last night he made me dinner. Clint let him in and I came home to find him taking a call on the porch and everything pre-prepped in little bags on the counter. I took him downstairs for a very fun time and then stood by the ready as he browned chicken, sauteed vegetables, and otherwise transformed ingredients into to food. We managed to part before midnight this time, but neither of us slept all that well afterwards.

So, okay, that's what's happened, but how do you feel about it all? As you might expect, it's complicated.

Obviously, I'm thinking of Monshu a lot. After all, he was the last person to cook for me like this. Plus the meet-up to work through things was very, very reminiscent of the kind of work I used to do with him. But more than those echoes, he's still my gold standard for a relationship and I can't help but use my memories of how it felt with him to gauge where I'm at. At one point, as I was lying there pondering what I considered the relationship possibilities to be, I told myself outright, "You're not going to find another Monshu." It was a call to me to adjust my expectations: Yes, you might not feel overwhelmingly devoted to him, but that doesn't mean this isn't worth giving a go.

Another strange echo occurred on Saturday night, when I ran into someone who I'd been crushed out on two-and-a-half years ago and never entirely gotten over. On Monday, I was looking through photos on my phone where a snap I'd taken of him outside Big Chicks sat juxtaposed to the new boy and I felt a shudder of emotion. I still feel regret at never truly getting to shoot my shot with him; part of me held out hope that the opportunity might still exist, and pursuing this feels like closing that off (all though of course it isn't).

In the same way, there's a certain accumulating FOMO. I'm really enjoying my second Year of Whoring and though I'm absolutely loving every evening we spend together, it's one where I can't be sampling the wares of another hot man. I'm already wondering if I should be informing some of my regulars of the situation so they don't feel like I'm ignoring them for no reason. It's forcing me to face questions about what I want from sex and why and what tradeoffs I'm willing to make.

Naturally, I haven't really felt ready to raise any of these issues with him. Maybe I don't need to; they really are mine to figure out. We just need to decide how open we want our relationship to be and then it's up to me to sort out how other men fit in those other men. At this point, there still are no parameters. We're taking everything day-by-day and not putting a label on it. (When I need to describe the situation, I say, "I'm seeing someone" or "We're dating".)

A friend told me to "enjoy the crush times" and that's what I'm committed to doing. Nothing else feels like these heady early days and I'm almost wondering if we should see each other less in order to stretch them out a bit more. There's still no need to discuss explicitly what we are to each other beyond two guys who like hanging out, swapping music, and fucking.