friends without benefits

I am back in Buenos Aires and it is suddenly chilly, dark. Everything seems different. I forgot to bring my flip-flops back with me, and you know what? I don't even need them anymore. Sad. But I kind of like it more. The weather is more like San Francisco now, and it is more conducive to work and less to sunbathing and siesta-ing to escape the heat.

I went out yesterday with a boy I met online. A boy--just a wee lass of 24, although he's almost a foot taller than me. We met for lunch and then ended up spending the entire day together. I guess we just felt instantly comfortable together--in that zone of mutual non-threatening perception. After lunch we went to a flea market, had a coffee, walked about, drank some wine at my house, then went off to see a movie, followed by late-night grub. Aside from some young-kid cockiness--which I no longer find very charming--I liked him fine. More as a friend, I suppose, than anything else, but I don't know.

After that period of extreme sluttery that opened the new year, it's now been about...four months since I've had sex. You'd think that I would have entertained this option last night, but I was too tired to even think about fucking, which made me feel restrained and wise in one moment, and then just...old. It was definitely the "right" decision--if there ever is such a thing--but on the bus home, all I could think about was the last awesome guy that I never slept with, and it dawned on me with all certainty that the more I like a guy, the less likely it is that I will ever sleep with him.

Can someone please tell me what this is all about? It's not about loss of respect or fear of commitment. The moment I have the feeling--however fleeting--that this guy is totally acceptable boyfriend material, I lose all sexual interest in him. This seems to explain my solid posse of male friends, none of which I have slept with. The fact that half of them are gay is entirely incidental.

Tonight I am going out with him again, and I swear it's anyone's guess what is going to go on in the veins connecting my brain to my vagina. Booze makes these things much clearer.