Staring at third
By Todd Foltz

My best friend called me recently, nearly panicked.

A 24-year-old who has had her bachelor's degree in elementary education for less than a year, Olivia has made a lot of transitions since graduation. For one thing, she decided against teaching and turned down several decent-paying jobs with no other options lined up. Instead, she chose to move to the city where her boyfriend of a year was in engineering school. She planned to develop that relationship and find a job there.

In the year since then, she took a job as director of a day care and lost it after five months when the owners decided they couldn't afford her. But within a few weeks she was back at work, this time at a substance abuse treatment center, a job that made her decide to get her master's degree and become a counselor. After a few months at the treatment center, she even decided to quit drinking herself.

Not long out of a stage of life in which the toughest choices often were what to wear out at night, Olivia made a lot of difficult decisions in a short amount of time. No amount of pop quizzes or writing-intensive college courses could have prepared her for these choices. She reached into her soul and groped about until she found the resolve to make the correct decisions.

I know her well, and I doubt she had to grope for long.

She probably had to move several piles of clutter around, but she didn't have to look hard at all for reserves of strength.

But none of those choices scared her more than the one she made this month, when she decided to let her boyfriend move into her apartment.

"This will either make us or break us," she confided in a trembling voice.

"Ugh," I responded sagely.

Living together. Even if society now accepts it, it's still a big, big step.

If, on any given date, getting to third base means getting naked but not having sex, then on a relationship level, it's moving in together. For a lot of people these days ­ and not just twentysomethings ­ living with someone is just the next logical step from seeing someone exclusively. Many people I know have cohabited after just three or four months. Not surprisingly, those relationships didn't work out.

But of the 10 weddings I've been in during the past two years, all 10 couples had lived together for at least a year before finally making their parents happy. For those couples, moving in together wasn't so much a practice run at marriage as it was the most economical approach to life. One rent payment is better than two.

Of course, I complemented Olivia on deciding to increase her commitment to the person she loved. But it's a good thing she couldn't see me as we talked. For one thing, I was naked. But for another, I was shuddering at the idea of actually living with a significant other. I've never done it, never wanted to and never even contemplated it.

Not that I haven't had my opportunities.

I've had a couple, including one in college and one just recently, when I moved from Missouri to Florida and left behind a girlfriend who had asked both in roundabout and more straightforward ways if she could come with me.

Unfortunately, Olivia knows me all too well. As I shoveled accolades upon her decision like a groom cleaning a horse stall, she began to laugh. "This, coming from someone who's afraid of commitment," she said.

Offended that she knew me so well, I spluttered indignantly. I would have been quite elegant had I not stammered so much as well.

I've always considered myself commitment friendly. After all, I've never cheated on a girlfriend, by deed or even by thought. Somewhat codependent, I've always been the relationship fixer, the sensitive pony-tailed guy. What could be more loyal than that, I demanded.

"How long did your longest relationship last?" Olivia asked.

"Two years, three months, two weeks and five days," I responded proudly. "Plus messing around for another six months after we broke up."

"And how long ago did that relationship end?"

"Five years." My voice faltered.

"And what's the longest you've dated someone since then?"

Obviously Olivia was missing the point. Size, as they say, doesn't matter. It's depth of feeling that counts, not length of love. If the people I've dated tend to stay in my life for an average of only three months, it's not my fault. I'm usually not the one to break up, anyway.

I may love little, but I love well, dang it.

Which, of course, brings me back to my girlfriend, Tonya. The 1,100 miles separating us does little to hurt the sweet feelings I have for her. I swell when I think of her mop of red hair, and a grin splits my face when I think of the floppy overalls she always wears and their veneer of plaster and clay from the sculptures and pottery she loves to make. We've been apart now for four months ­ four weeks longer than we dated ­ but we still talk on the phone and send each other love letters and cassette tapes of our tender feelings.

She was in my heart and in my thoughts. What did it matter if she couldn't be in my bed for a while?

So it shocked me when she told me the other night that she wasn't happy. She said she needs someone to actually hold her and talk to her in person, not someone who has to write to her about those things. We had planned for her to move here in a year and a half, after she graduates from college. Resigning myself to an unfortunate celibacy, I contented myself with the knowledge that some day, eventually, Tonya and I would be reunited.

But no matter how much she made me laugh and how sexy or safe she made me feel, I couldn't bring myself to ask her to follow me to Florida. I tried to avoid the issue, and when she forced it, I made jokes. I already have a roommate who leaves the toilet seat up, I said. What would I do with another?

She didn't laugh.

She's only 21, I told myself. I didn't know what I wanted when I was 21, so how could she really know that she wants me now? I compromised with her initially, agreeing to her moving down after college. Privately, I figured she would forget about me within a few months.

But she hasn't.

And slowly I've begun to believe her when she says she loves me. And just as slowly, I fear, she's begun to tire of the trees and lakes and roads and miles and walls that separate us. The biggest wall ­ mine ­ may be collapsing, but it may be too late.

As I watch my last close, single friend reach third base with the man she loves, I feel stranded on second yet again. And I wonder if, through sheer, paralysing fear, I haven't blown it again.

Todd Foltz wants you to know that this column is a work of fiction. Any similarity between characters and people who actually breathe is unintentional and unintended. He's also got a plot of land out by the Okefenokee...

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