The next few days of packing, then driving to Idaho, were agony. My folks were being the wonderful people they are and helping me with the packing and moving, which I appreciated from the bottom of my heart, but being with them, in the state I was in at the time, was about the last place I wanted to be. All I wanted to do was sit there and think about Alex, and the time we'd spent together, and the things I wanted to talk with him about and tell him about and share with him. Instead, my mind was being pulled away from that to focus on all the unpleasant realities and chores that go with a long-distance move. And my folks were there, helping me out, bless them, and I couldn't zone out to the happy Alex-place in my head, not without telling them why I was acting so out to lunch - and I couldn't do that. They would think that I'd lost my mind - which, given the intensity of what I felt regarding Alex after knowing him for such a brief period of time, was not a totally ungrounded thought, even though I knew that wasn't the case. I didn't want to worry them, which I probably would, this behavior being so unlike me, and I didn't want to hear what negative things they might silently - and justifiably, in their minds - think about the entire thing if I tried to explain it to them. There wasn't really any time to pull away and call Alex, and I didn't have the e-mail access to write him then and there. Wanting so desperately to be in touch with him when I couldn't was awful, to say the least. And as bad as I felt, I figured Alex had to feel worse, since he, I think, was the more unsure of the two of us at the time we parted, and I hated the thought of how he must feel not hearing from me, even knowing the reason why, given with the moving situation.

After about five days of not being able to be in contact with Alex, we got to Idaho, and my folks helped me get my stuff unloaded. My phone service wasn't due to be put in for several days, and the local libraries were closed by the time we rolled in, but I set up my laptop, borrowed a phone line from my landlords who lived above me, waited for them to go to bed, then jerry-rigged my modem to dial my account in Louisiana long-distance and bill it to my phone card. The latter required considerable work on my part, since I am absolutely not a computer guru. Finally, finally, finally, after what seemed an eternity, I managed to dial up to my account and send Alex the letter I'd written and been waiting to send. I got back one of the best letters I've ever received.

It's now been about four months, multiple e-mails, gawd only knows how many phone calls, and several flights back south to see Alex. At the moment, I'm sitting in his apartment here in Houston typing out the last paragraphs to my version of this story. Would I have believed that I'd be here, doing this, six months ago? Hell no. But here I am, and from my vantage point, clear as I can see, there's no end to this story - only very happy continuations.

We drove back to Houston from New Braunfels the next day, and when we got there, I asked Alex if he'd mind if I came up to his apartment. My shoulders were still sore from driving in the day before, and I wanted a backrub. Then I wanted a nap. I hadn't slept much in the past few days, and I wanted to make sure I was safe before I hit the road back to Shreveport. That was all fine and good with him, so we headed on up. The only problem was that Alex still owed me a backrub and I didn't get much of a nap. We kept on talking, picking up right where we'd left off the night before, and talking, and curling up with each other, and then, by god, it was getting on toward the next day, we were still awake, and I still hadn't left. More to the point, I didn't want to leave. In fact, I was wondering quite literally how I was going to tear myself away to head home, back to Shreveport.

I wasn't even going to think about Idaho and the fact that in another two days I would be gone from Shreveport for good. That was a subject that we had both avoided bringing up - I guess neither of us wanted to break the spell and the mood of that day by contemplating a future where the probability of our staying connected was slim. But I can only turn off my nit-picking brain for so long, and a little before midnight, I remember turning toward Alex and saying something like, What is this? We decided to prolong the answering of that question until the next day. . . in another ten minutes. The clock turned over, and a little while later, Alex asked, "So what are we going to do?" I was quiet for a few minutes, trying to think of how to put my answer. My gut reaction was pretty clear: I cannot walk away from this.

Forget Idaho, and the demands of my upcoming residency, and the extraordinarily long odds of anything working out between us in the long run, and any other more rational line of thought. That was how I felt, logical or not. I thought a while more, and then came out and said just that: I cannot walk away from this. Let Alex take that as he would. And while I call my gut reaction illogical and irrational - because, on the surface of things, it screams such - again, I'd call this another one of those rare situations where my overly-analytical brain was somehow able to step back and shut up and recognize that whatever the negative odds seemed to be, and however the obvious facts seemed to line up against this, there was something else going on that would not let my conscious brain simply chalk up all of this to insanity and toss it by the wayside. Oddly enough, I don't remember the details of what he answered at the time. I just remember being comforted by the fact that he seemed to fell the same way I did. That was enough for me to go to sleep on, however brief that sleep was bound to be by this point.

Anyway, we slept for a little bit, then got up and attempted to get me out the door expediently, as I had an obscene amount of packing still left to do and an ever-telescopingly small amount of time to do it in. That didn't exactly work. We couldn't leave dangling any longer the fact of my imminent move to Idaho. We were talking, and I don't remember exactly how it came up, but I distinctly remember Alex saying, "At the risk of being obsessed, I could move to Idaho." I was absolutely staggered. Truth be told, if I looked deep enough into Camille's ideal perfect (and wholly unrealistic) world to see what I was really wanting to happen, that was precisely what I was wishing for but didn't dare to hope for - for multiple reasons. The sheer unlikelihood of something like that happening, in real life, to me, was one thing. The probability, or rather, the lack thereof, of Alex's being able to find work in Idaho was another thing.

The biggest thing was that I absolutely did not want this from Alex if there was going to be a net self-sacrifice on his part by moving to Idaho. I don't do that myself, and I don't expect that or want it from anyone else - particularly not from any romantic partner, and I wasn't sure of exactly what was running through Alex's head when he made that suggestion. But yet again, some higher order of logic in my brain superceded the usual doubts about someone's motives and left me able to trust that Alex meant it and meant it for the right reasons. And as blown away as I was by his offer, some part of my brain was not surprised; this was where the events of the last 24 hours had all been heading, and I think some part of me likewise knew that from the start. I don't remember exactly what I said back to Alex, just something in the affirmative, I think, something indicating how happily blown away I was by the prospect of his moving to Idaho.

I finally dragged myself out the door of his apartment; how, I don't know. Those last few minutes with Alex then are a blur. I remember that he seemed sad and not overly optimistic - not like I could blame him. I was just trying as hard as I could to block from my mind for as long as I could all the lonely feelings that I knew were going to invade it with my imminent separation from Alex. That being said, strange as it sounds, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that things were going to work between us, despite everything stacked up against us. I remember I said to him, when he was standing there looking about as miserable as I felt, "I'm taking you with me to Idaho" - and I meant it. Not literally, not physically at the time, but in terms of taking with me, inside of me, what I felt for him, the connection between us, and my commitment to doing what I could to help this work, I meant that 100%. No doubts.

We got ready for bed, and I was remembering his offer to sleep on the floor. In the interest of both fairness and wanting to be close to him, I didn't feel that was necessary. To that end, I think I said something like, Look, I'm not about to sleep on the floor when there's a double bed, and I sure as hell don't expect you to, either, if I'm not willing to do that, so don't worry about that. Of course, being the weenie that I am, I conveniently neglected to mention the wanting-to-be-close part. Well, actually, not total weenie-dom on my part. I wasn't sure what was going in his head at that point, and I didn't want him to worry about the possibility of unwanted advances if he shared a bed with me. Fortunately, he seemed to have no objections to the shared bed. Whew! The small bit of encouragement I felt was dashed when he - in retrospect, no doubt being the gentleman again and not wanting to make me uncomfortable - stretched out on the outside of the covers, instead of underneath them, where I was. Ack.

Being on opposite sides of the blanket was going to make it a little more difficult to curl up with him without some more, ah, definitive action on my part. Hmm. Not sure I wanted to risk making things more awkward if his intentions were different from mine. And things were a little… well… awkward. Every time one of us would turn over and inevitably bump into the other in the limited confines of the double bed, we would apologize and scoot back to our own side.

Looking back on this, I have to laugh. Why were we being so careful not to possibly offend or make uncomfortable the other if we weren't concerned about what the other person thought and felt? As ludicrously obvious as that thought seems now it was hidden then.

Things only got worse when the lack of output from the ailing air-conditioner in our room resolved the opposite-sides-of-the-blanket dilemma for me - I was sweating, and there was a clear reason for me to kick off the covers. Now every time we failed to stay on our respective sides of the bed, there was no longer the wall of separation of the blanket. After a while, the whole trying-not-to-bump-into-each-other thing started to drive me bananas, both in terms of the prospect of getting any restful sleep and/or the consolation of touch, and in sheer desperation, I was finally driven to do something, as things could go on like that all night. After we'd bumped into each other and apologized for about the thousandth time, I said something on the order of, "Look, for godsake, don't worry about bumping into me, it's a double bed, and neither of us are midgets." At this point, I recall turning over and flopping face down on my pillow with my arm brushed up against Alex's, thinking, well, he can take that as he wants, either interest, or my really not giving a damn about the bumping against each other in bed, and if it's not the former, then I've already made my point about the small bed.

For what seemed like most of the night, we were both moving closer to the other, but in such tiny baby steps, it was as thought each of us was absolutely terrified of fucking things up, misinterpreting the other's intentions and making asses of ourselves, or putting the other person off. Which, in point of fact, I was - terrified, that is. I guess Alex was, too, at least to some degree, because I think every move we made to literally put ourselves one small increment closer to the other was done in such a way that the interpretation was left wide open. Blame it on the happenstance collisions that occur when two rather tall and big people share a double bed, right? I wasn't edging closer to Alex, I was just turning over onto my side. We weren't leaning one up against the other for any reason other than the size of the bed, really, and how we happened to bump up against one another in sleep. Alex's arm just sort of fell across me when he rolled over. It was all just the product of movement during sleep and the tight sleeping quarters. I laugh, simply because any fool fly on the wall would have seen the obvious that evidently neither of us could see at the time. Meanwhile, though, both of us being who we are, and not being the type to easily let our guard down, things had to go their inevitable slow route. I finally couldn't stand it anymore, despite the fear that I had that made what I was doing feel like jumping off a cliff. We'd somehow rolled up against each other, me on my back, Alex on his side, with his hand on my hip. I took the leap, and rolled over and put my arm around him in a way that was clearly not accidental, not knowing what he would think. To my profound and utter relief, he put his arm around me and pulled me close.

We lay like that for some time. It felt good, comfortable. What I'd thought curling up with Alex might be like. But not, in some ways. I guess in my head, when I turned over toward Alex and put my arm across him, I knew there was no turning back, I was going to "make my desires known," so to speak, and by god, I was going to kiss the guy if it was the last thing I did. When I could get my courage up. Whenever that might be. I remember lying there, literally unable to breathe while contemplating the situation, and wondering how I was going to get the guts to do what I needed to do - I just don't kiss guys very easily. And what if I was reading all this wrong, and he didn't want this as much as I did? What if I was wrong? I couldn't stand to have him know how I felt if he didn't feel it back. As it was, I didn't see how he wouldn't be able to tell that something was up. I couldn't take a deep breath without shaking by then, and we were holding each other so close, how could he miss that? I remember thinking, God, if he would just meet me halfway, I could do this, but I can't do this alone, I need him to help me, god, if he would just meet me halfway. . . All this time, we were kind of shifting closer to each other, my face pressed up in his neck, our faces closer to each other, getting about as close as we could get to a kiss without actually doing that. And I was still scared. And then he bent his face down to mine, I moved mine to meet his, and BAM! The kiss happened. The kiss happened, and it still blows my mind when I think about it, because I've just never had something like that happen before the way it happened with Alex. I couldn't fully describe it then, and I can't now, as much as I'll try. It was like something in me met something in him, some mix of feeling and thought and spirit, some intensity in him that matched the same thing in me, and things just exploded. I've never felt that in a kiss, that kind of a connection with the other person. And certainly not with someone I'd just barely met. I still can't explain it. Well, yeah, I can, sort of. There was something there that was right, fundamentally right on some deep level, something I could trust, and my gut knew it, even if my brain hadn't totally pieced it together. That was another thing about that kiss and that night. I'm normally the kind of person that thinks and analyzes everything to death before I do it. If I had thought about this all, it never would have happened. Never. But it was like once, just this once, my brain obeyed some higher order of logic, and stopping analyzing it all and stepped back and let what needed to happen simply happen.

I don't remember much of the details on the drive to New Braunfels, except that we talked pretty much all the way up on a variety of things. We got to New Braunfels and found a hotel. . . and a situation that made me wonder. The clerk at the desk asked us how many beds? I said two. I really didn't care that much - at that point I wasn't really opposed to one - but I didn't know what Alex thought on the matter, and I didn't want him worrying about having to fend off some overly aggressive chick. Alex said one. One bed was cheaper. I thought about it and said "okay."

'I really didn't really know what he had in mind when he made that offer, if he was thinking of something else in addition to simply cutting expenses. But I figured that a guy who'd volunteered to sleep on the floor would be a gentleman about respecting my wishes, on the off chance that he might be interested in something that I wasn't, whether we were in the same bed or not. I'm not generally this laid-back about accepting invitations to share a guy's bed, but I have a good instinct for this kind of thing, and I really didn't think with Alex that I'd be putting myself in harm's way. Hell, if I didn't trust him, I wouldn't have accepted his offer of driving me to New Braunfels, much less sharing a room with him.

We made our way upstairs to the room, and I was just wiped. Evidently Alex was too, 'cause he was stretched out on top of the bed for a nap practically before I could set my stuff down. Hmm. I'd forgotten that double beds were so small. So much for sprawling across the bed while taking my nap - didn't want to invade his space or anything. I crawled onto the bed to go to sleep and made sure I stayed on my half of it. I remember talking to him and almost literally falling asleep mid-sentence, I was so tired. I was vaguely aware that he was watching me sleep, but was out before I could think much more about it. I also remember half-waking at some point, feeling him laying close by but not touching, and wishing I could lean back against him, just for the comfort of touch, of affection. Just that. I'm not like that with most people, but Alex seemed like one of those rare few whom I could be comfortable with. I don't remember consciously thinking that at the time, though; I just remember wanting to be close to him, wanting the touch. And, of course, being too much the chickenshit to come out and say that, or do anything about it. Argh.

We got up in a bit and met Cathy and John for dinner. Hole-in-the-wall barbecue, yum. I don't exactly remember what the four of us talked about, except I do recall Alex at one point talking about his writing. I always find it fascinating to hear what people who do some kind of creative work - in the sense of actually creating something new and original, be it music, art, writing - have to say about it and the whole process of making something from nothing, so I was curious, both about that and Alex himself. At that point, I was still in the process of sizing him up and figuring out exactly what I thought about him. I do know that somewhere in that conversation, the thought that settled out of the murk swirling around in my brain was that were he to want to kiss me, I would be quite amenable to that. I really wasn't thinking much beyond that, just that I liked him enough to act on the feeling, and if nothing happened beyond that, well, I could still enjoy kissing the guy for what it was worth. I say "if nothing happened"; truly, there wasn't much of an "if" in my mind. I didn't expect things to go anywhere. In retrospect, I should have known better. I don't kiss people easily or casually. The fact that I was considering even that with him should have tipped me off.

The four of us finally met up with Kev and Callie at the bar for the Dead End Angels show. Alex wound up sitting across the table from me, as opposed to next to me, and I remember feeling a bit disappointed. But the show was damned good, and I didn't dwell on that. There was one point there when the band played Alejandro Escoveda's "Last to Know," and I remember twisting around to look at him. I'd liked the song from the first I'd heard it, and I'd learned from out e-mails that it was one of his favorites as well, which I'd found interesting, given the subject matter - "We fall in love and it's never funny, and we're the last, the very last, to know." I'm not sure why I looked back at him, or if he even noticed. I just know that I did that. The other funny thing I recall from our time at the bar was a conversation I had with Callie and Cathy. It was just we three girls, I don't know where the guys had gotten to, and Cathy was worrying aloud about my sharing a room with Alex. Was I sure I was comfortable with that, and if I wasn't, did I want to share hers and John's room? I opened my mouth to speak, and Callie beat me to the punchline, saying something to the effect that I was a big girl, and that Alex was a good guy, and Cathy needn't particularly worry. For some reason that amused me. Apparently, whatever I was thinking about liking Alex wasn't evident to her or to Callie. Well, maybe Callie, I don't know. She doesn't miss much. In any case, I reassured Cathy that I was okay with sharing a room with Alex, though I don't think she was convinced of that and was still worried about me.

Leaving the bar with Alex to go back to the hotel felt. . . weird. The others in the group, Kev and Callie, John and Cathy, were leaving in pairs to go back to their respective rooms, the appropriate couple thing to do. And then there were Alex and I, walking off to get in his car and drive back to our room, like all the other couples. . . except that we weren't, really. It felt sort of like kids trying to play grown-up. Once we got to the hotel, things felt stranger still. Another sign that should have tipped me off. If we were just two friends crashing in the same bed, why the big deal? As I've said, sharing sleeping quarters with the opposite sex isn't something that throws me, and I absolutely wasn't worried about Alex trying to push me into doing anything of a more-than-friendly nature that I didn't want to do. Again, if I were worried about that, I'd not have agreed to share a room with him. And besides, at this point, I was pretty well unopposed to the thought of curling up with him - literally sleeping with him, if you will.

When I got back to S'port, I sent out my usual post-float-trip e-mail, telling all that I'd had a damned good time and thanking everyone for helping to make it so much fun. Those reasons for doing so were totally legitimate. However, I must confess that in addition to that, I was sort of fishing. I was kind of curious to see if Alex in particular would respond back to the e-mail. A nice low-risk set-up for me - if Alex wanted to e-mail me back, I'd given him an excuse, and if not, I guessed I'd have to pursue this getting-to-know-him-better a bit more aggressively. At that point, I still don't think I had any Camille-and-Alex ideas - it was all quite literally about getting to know him. As a friend. At least I thought so then. Now I wonder.

Anyway, Alex responded back to the e-mail, which was cool. More significant than that was his post on the float trip. I wasn't certain, but given the number of times my name was mentioned in that thing, and the positive light in which it was mentioned, I thought I was seeing definite signs of interest. We did some more e-mailing back and forth, and somewhere during these two weeks post-float-trip, I determined that I was going to New Braunfels to hear the Dead End Angels play the weekend of June 7th. I would be moving to Idaho on the 10th, and by god, I was going to hear the guys play one last time. Once again, I sent out a mass e-mail to the Houston crowd. . . I think Alex was the first to bite on it. Later on, Cathy sent out an e-mail looking at hotels in the area and commenting that what was available was not cheap. I'm the sort of person who is quite capable of sharing sleeping quarters with members of the opposite sex and having nothing happen, and I'm cheap. Alex seemed like a decent guy, someone I could safely share a room with, and I did want to get to know him better - platonically, if nothing else at that point. While I was trying to think of how to ask him what he thought of that option, he beat me to the punchline and e-mailed me to ask me what I thought about sharing a room. Whew! Great minds think along the same lines. He was quite the gentleman, even offering to sleep on the floor if necessary. I figured that we'd get two beds, and if push came to shove and there was only one, we were both adults, and surely we could negotiate something so no one would have to sleep on the floor. I e-mailed him in the affirmative.

I don't recall at what point I sent out the e-mail begging for the ride from Houston to New Braunfels. I was already driving in four hours from Shreveport, I would soon have major time on the road with the drive to Idaho, and I didn't want to drive any more than I had to. Both Cathy and John, and Alex, volunteered to chauffeur me to New Braunfels. I seriously considered taking the trip in Cathy's Mini, but thought about the legroom (or lack thereof) in the backseat and decided to take Alex up on his offer. Besides, as I kept saying to myself, Alex is an interesting guy, why not spend a little more time with him?

Anyway, again per usual, I was running late on the drive to Houston. I'd been up late packing and had overslept. I woke up, looked at the clock, cursed, and called Alex to let him know I was going to be late, and did he mind waiting? Fortunately, he did not. I got to Houston about two hours after I'd planned and found Alex's apartment, and we took off. I should add that he hugged me hello. Cool.

Kevin does this annual float trip to Oklahoma over Memorial Day weekend. I'd gone the year before, had a marvelous time, and was coming back for a second helping. I knew Alex was coming up with Kev and Callie, and I thought that would be pretty cool. I'd read a fair chunk of his blog, and he seemed like a pretty neat dude. Besides, he was single, and it would be nice not to be the only single person on the float trip, as I probably would be otherwise. Not that I was really planning anything, but still. After a while, being single in couple-land gets to be a pain in the ass sometimes.

As is par for the course for me, I didn't leave in a timely manner, and I think I staggered into camp around 5 AM that Saturday, after a seven-hour drive that entailed my getting pulling over by the cops - three times. I pitched my tent and crashed. Next morning, I woke up 7:30ish and just could not get back to sleep. Argh. I stumbled out of my tent in search of coffee, and this was the state I met Alex in. I wasn't quite sure that the person I saw smoking was he, but I thought it was, and I remember pointing at him and saying, "Aren't you the one who quit smoking?" (Kev had linked to his website, exhorting us to offer encouragement, when Alex was trying to quit.) Not off to the best of starts.

I don't remember too much from that first day of the trip, 'cause I was just brain-dead from a lack of sleep. A few things stood out in my mind. Alex actually volunteered to help me steer the raft, meaning we actually had one-and-a-half sober people to do so (as opposed to just me). Nice. He was also the only guy of the four in the raft that actually washed their hands after, ah, irrigating the bushes at our lunch/pit stop. Whether this was his normal style, or just something he did after I made a huge point of bitching about not letting anyone share my chips if they didn't wash their hands, I don't know. Maybe he just wanted my chips to go with his sandwich. Regardless, he did actually wash his hands. More points. What else? Oh yeah, he was great with the two-year-old son of Micah and Gladys, another couple on the trip. Impressive. Especially for a single dude.

I really don't remember jack about that day other than that. Oh, yeah, I think I did notice somewhere in there that Alex had lovely blue eyes. Or was that the next day? Hmm. I didn't have an awful lot of neurons firing by then.

The next day, I was well-rested and ready to get back on the river, despite a rather chilly start to the morning. I couldn't be that close to the river and not float it, even if no one else wanted to join me - except for Alex. He apparently was up for trying new adventures, and I was glad to have someone to go with me to share the fun. We got out on the river, and again, I don't remember a lot of specific details. What I did notice was his attitude. We had several minor difficulties, including problems with the ice chest throwing us off-balance in the kayaks and several, ah, unintentional swims when we got a little too daring. Instead of getting all bent out of shape, Alex managed to come up laughing every time. Whoa. Big-time cool. And he also took me up on my offer to swap backrubs when we got back to camp. Excellent.

I should explain something about the backrubs. I'm a bit of a backrub junkie, and so I can and will con anyone I feel comfortable with to swap with me. . . especially if I've paddled 16 miles that day. There really were no lurid intentions here, despite Alex's being the only single guy on the trip. Really. I was in need of a backrub. And a little lonely. And in need of a friend. And Alex, as I've said before, did seem like a pretty cool guy. But it wasn't a set-up for anything else. Really. I wasn't dragging him off into the privacy of my tent. We were sitting at the campfire in front of everyone else when we did the backrub thing - fully clothed, might I add. (Well, one would probably assume so, if there were multiple other people around. But you never know.)

The rest of the night, again, there was not much in particular that stood out in my mind. I did remember the crowd around the fire getting onto the subject of (literally) sleeping with someone. I know I said something about it being a little impossible to sleep when you're wrapped up with another person. Even at the time, in my head, I was thinking, You know, I bet anything that stand on the matter is going to come back to bite me. I also recall Alex's saying something about how one figures these things out after a while. I'm not sure why that stuck in my head.

Anyway, was I thinking about the possibility of me and Alex at this point? I really don't think so. I was kind of getting vibes from him that he might be interested in me, but I wasn't sure. Generally speaking, unless someone smacks me over the head with a baseball bat, I'm pretty oblivious to the subtle signs of possible interest in me, and I wasn't quite sure if I was imagining things. And at that point, I think, I was still trying to size him up. I'd read a bit of his blog, and I liked what I'd seen of the person there behind the writing. Besides not being sure if he was interested in me, period, I was also trying to figure out if this was some dude desperate for a relationship (some bad past experiences make me a little paranoid) or this incredibly sincere somewhat shy guy who liked me and didn't know what to do about it. And besides, he lived in Houston. I lived in Shreveport, four hours away, and I was going to be moving to Idaho in two weeks. (I was a week shy of my MD and was about to start residency there.)

In any case, I figured that regardless of everything else, this would still be a guy I would want as a friend, someone whom I'd like to know better.

Anyway, the next day, Alex went back with Kev and Callie to Houston, and I drove back to Shreveport. He did give me good hug goodbye. Always a nice thing. I can't stand people who don't give real hugs.