I was hanging out in an indoor space briefly with my longtime friend, Lila Johnson, among a few other people. Suddenly a girl appeared outside, walking on foot, like she had just came around the corner of an adjacent building. It was a bit strange because I had the experience of her being both unfamiliar and familiar at the same time, and had a deeper belief of something like knowing it was going to be a special ‘thing’ between us. On the surface level, I did not know this girl on first glance, but she somewhat resembled a girl who I had a crush on in high school, who went with me to Senior Prom– tall, slender, long straight blond hair, a model’s physique. She obviously knew who I was, or at least played it that way. Because I had this deeper sense about it, I just got up and left my conversation with Lila, like this new girl drew all of my attention and focus and that couldn’t be denied.

When we greeted each other there were the very common casual phrases like “Hello. How are you?” etc, but since I had this deeper anticipation about it being ‘more’ I also said a few things that would ordinarily have indicated more mutual familiarity than was actually there in the strict objective sense: “Looking beautiful, of course.” Then I got a little bit more ‘handsy’ than I would otherwise in this context. On releasing from the initial hug I slid my hand around her torso and held it softly over her solar plexus area. She was wearing a white shirt, BTW, then I said “And in great shape, obviously.” These pleasing physical elements seemed to give confirmation to that hidden belief — which maybe was just a hope that I tried to make more real by assuming things were more in alignment than they actually were.

Then we began walking down a gentle slope along the sidewalk, just talking casually. I do not recall the words prior; perhaps it was in reference to the election, but she suddenly said “I dunno… I just worry that the Republicans will try to take away my freedom.” That was a pretty curious statement, since it was contrary to my existing beliefs, but I wanted to make sure I did a little processing and/or internal accounting before responding. I thought it was perhaps one of those things where someone could hold a very different perspective that was still completely reasonable, so I tried to imagine how one might arrive there standing on some different ground, perhaps. My ordinary tack would be that the Democrat’s platform is actually more anti-freedom than the Republican’s: more taxes, more bureaucracy, more regulation, more burden on high-productive people to support lower-productivity people by limiting choices in terms of health care, education, housing, etc etc, but I didn’t want to assume so much so soon. I tried to imagine a situation where someone might enjoy more freedom under a Democrat platform; the only thoughts that came to mind were perhaps the freedom for performing a late-term abortion and/or a situation where things she imagined she might want to pursue in life did not seem immediately affordable or achievable, so she believed that a system under a Democrat administration would secure an entitlement to these things if/when she ever fancied to pursue them in future. Maybe she just possessed a ‘lack’ mentality.

Before I could consolidate my thoughts and offer a response about any of it, we suddenly arrived in a nice restaurant that I believe was a steakhouse. I was just rolling with it at that point; I assumed we were about to have a special dinner date together, but then it went sideways. As we were greeted by a restaurant staff guy, a really tall dude with messy hair and a two weeks of stubble, probably in his mid-30s, he handed my ‘date’ a red apron, stood between us with his back to me, and started barking orders at her. She put it on and started getting busy doing the various tasks. I just paused to try to discern whether she had been suddenly coerced into something or was actually showing up for her regular shift. It became obvious when she kept working and I was offered a table for myself alone. I just remember then explaining the story to my mom and others later on, trying to make light of it but express my sense of disappointment when it had gone from something that appeared promising but obviously became something like a ploy to generate business for her employer. I laughed at it in a way, saying “No, buying a $30 steak for myself is not how I CURE the disappointment of a date trying to sell me out.”

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