I am being set up tonight. At a bar I will meet a friend of a friend and we will both hope that we do for each other, but we may not. Or we may for an hour, but then one will say the wrong thing and a small timid flame will be snuffed out. Or we will not trip over our tongues and we will kiss good night and we will talk and dream and later make love. All possibilities. And there are more.

How strange how many things besides what is desired may happen. How strange is this mystery of chemistry, that two people brought together by their desire to meet another in their hearts could still leave unsatisfied, found wanting, and finding want.

I have been actively not thinking of this, pushing it out of mind because the higher hopes rise the harder the fall. But as the hours slip away between now and then my hopes are climbing and my thoughts are turning to this meeting. I have washed my hair and shaved my legs and plucked my eyebrows and cleaned my room and tried to distract myself with reading. But these things must come out, I suppose.

And because of where he comes from, I worry that he will be too conservative, that even if things go well I will hide parts of myself from him - or worse, tear them off. And then hurt both myself and him with this dishonesty. But this is too far away now to worry about - these worries a symptom of high hopes. I will do my reading. I will learn, and think, and dwell on other matters. Because I have now put these thoughts out.