For a couple months, I was hedging my bets on Billy Bullfight and dating other people. I have no qualms admitting this because even though we all like to pay lip service to "love at first sight," everybody does this at one point or another. Every. Body.
OK now, don't take this to mean that I wasn't into him - I was - but the signals were a little mixed (which made me less than all-in), we were both in and out of state a few times during that dawning era (which made barely-yet-established commo protocols even patchier), and he lived a full hour's drive away (which sucked just enough, logistically, that I entertained the idea of it being a dealbreaker).
And, here's the honest truth, Billys:
Once you're a Susie of a certain age, you no longer have months and months to exclusively spend figuring out if things might work out with every damn Billy who crosses your path (because here's a spoiler: chances are, they won't). So, unless he's a particularly promising specimen, or you really want to end up an old maid who's collectively wasted years landing a string of consecutive little mini-relationships instead of casting a wide net and concurrently sorting through a little more bycatch in the hunt for your Big Fish, guess what? Until you have that Dreaded Talk, your brand new semi-swooning Susie is probably still playing it safe and continuing to fish until it's clear you're the one she wants to put in the creel and call it a day.
(All aboard! You? Yes? Oh, not you? Alrighty then, next!)
Enter Billy Board-Coach.
Billy Board-Coach was an online candidate who I'd actually started talking to before I ever stumbled across Billy Bullfight, but it took a while for the chatter to lead to a date. This was because Billy Board-Coach lived an hour and a half away from Billy City, in the mountain town of Billyridge.
Having grown up kicked around a foster-care system, he'd found his identity on a snowboard, ended up sponsored and featured in various "extreme gravity sports" type movies through his early twenties, and he'd since retired from the semi-pro circuit and founded a non-profit snow school for under-privileged kids. Yes: to make the world a little more fair, he now spent his workdays teaching little hoodlums how to land jumps and get air in the pipes; except in the summertime, when he spent all day every day showing little hoodlums how to skate bowls and vert ramps, all while presumably imparting some sort of positive male role model bullshit in their little shithead hearts.
(Overload. Explosion.)
So Billy Bullfight and I had seen each other a couple times, but even before that, Billy Board-Coach had been calling me on the regular, and we'd sometimes spent two hour blocks chatting about who-knows-what at a stretch. Communication, not Billy Bullfight's forte, was definitely not a shortcoming for Billy Board-Coach.
After our first meetup, it was clear Billy Board-Coach was into it - at least enough to invite me up to hit the slopes in Billyridge over a weekend, and to make the drive down to Billy City a few times during the following weeks. And, during those initial weeks, Billy Bullfight all but fell off the edge of the Earth while out gallivanting around Mexico with his family and traveling globally for friends' weddings and whatnot. I barely heard from him, which both disappointed me, but also gave me a very low-scruples green-light to keep answering Billy Board-Coach's calls.
(Me, approximately every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday morning.)
But of course, because nothing brings a Billy's underwhelming performance back up to snuff like the Sixth-Billy-Sense that he might not be tops on my list, Billy Bullfight then made a comeback and started pinging my radar with a frequency that grew in direct proportion to the amount of time I was shunting toward Billy Board-Coach. In fact, one evening while Billy Board-Coach and I were shooting Patrón and making fajitas in my kitchen, I actually was semi-drunk enough to field a 10-or-so-minute call from Billy Bullfight in Billy Board-Coach's presence.
Later in the week, bellied up to a bar with Billy Bullfight, texts from Billy Board-Coach rolled in to my phone so incessantly all evening that I sensed they were catching Billy Bullfight's attention and turned that noise off. Shit was starting to get confusing, not clarified at all by the facts that I really wanted Billy Bullfight's weight to shift, while at the same time Billy Board-Coach wasn't keeping his cards very close-hold: he wanted in on a real relationship. Decision-time was nigh.
Then, of course, came the crux.
Billy Board-Coach, out for brunch with me in Billy City one Sunday, reached for the bill and commented idly on our server's unique name: "Huh, I've never known another ____ except this chick I used to work with at my buddy's cookie shop."
Wait. At your what's what?
(Act normal act normal act normal act normFUCKING FUCK!)
- Billy Board-Coach lived 90 minutes away from me, and Billy Bullfight was another hour in the opposite direction.
- Billy Bullfight had lived in Billyridge formerly, for years. Where he'd owned his first cookie shop. Which he sold to move down the mountain and start another.
- There is only one cookie shop in Billyridge.
- Oh. God. DAMMIT.
Because I am a complete idiot, my first, stupidest reaction was to blurt out "No way, do you know [Billy Bullfight's real-world name]?"
He did. Not only that - they had been friends. They had been wingmen before Billy Bullfight had moved on from Billyridge.
So as that's settling into my shrieking psyche and I scramble to casually change the topic as fast as fucking possible, of course here it comes: oh, hey, how on earth did *I* know him, Billy Board-Coach wanted to know?
(I'm gonna need a cookie to sort this one out.)
Panicked, I bumbled through some dismissive thing about a friend of a friend or something, then sent Billy Board-Coach back up to altitude and immediately got online. I had to see just how bad it was. (Facebook, don't fail me now!)
It was bad. I won't go into too many details, but suffice to say, there was, on one Billy's account, a profile picture featuring him with the other Billy in question.
(Billy, I just LOVE that you have SO MANY friends!)
It was clearly time to cut somebody loose, and even though Billy Board-Coach was a lot of fun, he had to go. He knew too much already. I shoveled him back overboard as humanely as possible and later in the evening, sped to see Billy Bullfight, where I got The Dreaded Talk that very night.
And that was it. From then on we were in a relationship. I was a fisherwoman no more.
***
I still think about Billy Board-Coach occasionally, with a twinge of compunction for how quickly I threw him back and disappeared, especially in light of how poorly things ended with Billy Bullfight.
And I still occasionally entertain the idea of throwing out a line in his general direction, if for no other reason than to apologize and perhaps score some one-on-one snowboarding coaching.
But then I remember that I'm possibly the most unlucky angler I know, and I jettison that idea to sleep with the fishes.
(Yeah no shit, "when you least expect it!")
