Maintain radio silence

S.B. Thursday is a nice guy. Really nice. Karaoke Joe is pretty nice, too. They both took me on perfectly lovely dates and paid me perfectly good compliments. In fact, S.B. Thursday actually sought me out the day after our first date to say "I forgot to tell you how lovely you looked last night." That's pretty exceptional attention. The horrible part is, I don't think I like either of them enough to continue dating them. And why is this? New Orleans Boy.

We had an unusually emotional talk last night; about all of my dithering and bad communication regarding New York, about my terrible relationship track record, about everything... Finally, after a lot of back and forth emotional see-sawing, I said "How do you feel about me?" New Orleans Boy has a way of overtalking his points, so his answer was "Well, I like you. I have deep feelings for you and I don't think that's wrong or bad. And it's, you know, surprising to me that I would find someone that I feel such...deep feelings about. You know, in such a short amount of time. I liked you -- very much, you see -- in a short period of time. And the feelings I have are very deep. And I like you. With deep feelings." Then he asked me how I felt about him and there it was...I could either pull the trigger on the "L" word or mimic his repetative style (which, everyone knows, is born out of fear and vulnerability). Long pause. Long pause in which it was possible to tell that we were both holding our breath. It seemed like the whole world was afraid to exhale and miss what was about to happen. Somewhere in Antarctica, a poor Naval ensign in charge of the radio communications at the base there picked up my errant cell phone signal and listened, his mouth agape. "What will she say?" the ensign likely thought, trying to warm his fingers on his thirteenth cup of hot cocoa as the frigid air stealthily crept in through the cracks in the corrugated aluminum radio building. "What on EARTH will she say?" What I said was "It's not something I want to say over the phone." Genius. I said "I love you" without saying "I love you."

So, he's coming into town at 8 tomorrow morning and we'll see what's what. This could be the beginning of a new life, or just another random mistake in my old one. Either way, I'm still holding my breath.

Hello? It's Opportunity. Anybody home? Hello?!

So, I always complain about how I can't go and visit New Orleans Boy because he's so far away (in New York, actually, despite his name) and then, this whole past week, I have been seeing flights from Chicago to New York for the absurd price of $163. I could afford that. I could afford that and still buy groceries. I could afford that and go see a movie. "But," I think to myself, "that's still $163 you could use to take a chunk out of your credit card debt." "Shut up!" I think back at myself, "Credit card debt is neo-patriotism! It's unAmerican to not be in debt." These conversations inside my head tend to go on for hours, which is why I wasted a good couple of days waffling about the trip before I told New Orleans Boy about it. Last night, he said "I'll pay half if it helps. Hell, I'll pay it all and you can pay me back whenever." Still, I sit here dithering.

Should I go? I'd have to see the Ex Who Says He Will Never Love Again if only to collect my nice dress pants from our former apartment. That would be painful, despite our rather amicable parting. I'd want to hug him, though, and then he'd think I wanted to get back together. I'd probably even smooch him a little, just to make him happy, and then I'd leave him to stay at New Orleans Boy's apartment, and then I'd have to explain to New Orleans Boy where I was and how I got those pants and the Ex WSHWNLA will call me and yell at me for leading him on when all I wanted to do was get my goddamn pants back. How did my life suddenly become a series of truly weird causes and events? When did my life turn into "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie"?

I'm waiting for New Orleans Boy to call and make the decision for me. He'll call, right? Because if he doesn't, I'll have to call him. If I call him, I'll probably wait until the last minute, which will probably make me late-ish for my business meeting at 7. If I'm lateish for my business meeting, then it will start late. If it starts late, we may not be done by the time Sweet Boy from Thursday comes to meet me at the same place at 7:30. If he sees me with my business meeting guy, he may assume that I'm out with him and he himself, S.B. Thursday, is just another nameless, faceless date. If he assumes that, well, then I'll probably not get taken to a movie like I had hoped and he may tell everyone in town that I'm a super whore. If he tells everyone in town I'm a super whore, then I'll get a lot of attention, but the wrong kind of attention and there are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl's complexion.

Opportunity? Go next door. We're too full of Worry here.

The comfort of a countertop

Yesterday evening found me calling New Orleans Boy, even though I had spoken with him at length the night before. Our initial conversation was pleasant, as it always is, until I mentioned the fracas with Shaun one too many times. There was a long pause. New Orleans Boy said "I am saying this because I have deep feelings for you and I care about you. I don't need to hear about that guy ever again." He then went on to tell me that, from my conversations with him, I seemed to be defining my every movement and experience based on my past relationships. My ex husband, my ex Bad News Boy, my ex-whatever. Hell, everyone reading this blog (all four of you, God bless!) probably thinks the same thing. I have heard this before, the last time from Shaun, himself: "Hey, just for me, don't talk about your past relationships anymore, OK? Let me just pretend you were a virgin before you met me." As he talked, I walked into my dark kitchen and crawled up on the counter by my stove. I seem to always do this when I feel like something isn't quite sitting right in my life.

When I was a little girl, I would spend quite a lot of time at my grandparents' apartment. They lived in a two bedroom unit in a building on Main Street of my horribly tiny home town, their front windows looking out on the street, their back windows looking out on the wild river falls below the mill dam. Grandpa was a retired baker/cook/restauranteur/jack of all trades and, though he typically had a slightly abrasive manner to people in general, he demonstrated every day that he thought the sun rose and set according to my whim. Grandpa and I would spend entire days together, trading insults, fishing and hucking rocks into the river. Grandma tried to connect with me, too, but she talked in the language of the girl I hadn't yet become: "Come over here and try on this lipstick! Let me do your hair. Why don't you try on this skirt? Just try it! You'd look so pretty!" I didn't want to be pretty. I wanted to huck rocks and call my Grandpa a crabby ol' rooster.

My young childhood was spent on the river below the dam. I never really understood why, when I'd announce over my bowl of Rice Krispies (they always had them there for me, even though they ate only Grape Nuts) that I wanted to sit on "My Rock" down by the riverside, my Grandpa would leap up and say "I'll go, too." It was only later, when I was a teenager, that my mother told me about two little girls in the 1930s who took off their shoes and went wading in the river below the falls only to get pulled out far into the river and under the waves. Grandpa was one of the first people on the scene, but despite his best efforts, was only able to reach one of the girls and only after she had already given up. He carried her body back to the very spot where "My Rock" was. He never really let go of her, I don't think. Yet, despite this fact, he knew that it would have been wrong to not let me splash in the river myself. He was the picture of perfect watchfulness. He let me have my fun, but he was always there in case I needed him.

Grandpa kept a juice glass filled with sticks of Juicy Fruit gum in a kitchen cabinet that I would have to climb a chair to get to. I'd go from the rickety kitchen chair to kneeling on the counter, to the cabinet and then would sit on the counter and happily chew my gum with cowlike satisfaction and much smacking. Grandpa always had to be nearby when I did that, too. He'd hold me by the waist as I climbed, then lean against the counter next to me until I was tired of sitting there and gently help me down. He knew that you have to let someone try something for themselves -- you had to let them climb or wade in the river or stretch up high to reach something -- but there was no rule saying you couldn't be right there next to them in case they fell.

So last night, I retreated to my countertop. I swung my legs and kicked the fridge as I listened to New Orleans Boy's exasperation with my determination to hold on to all that hurts me. And I wanted my Grandpa.

Friendship is love without its wings?

I stumbled across the above quote while looking for an adequate title for this entry and I am inclined to disagree with it for I happen to be blessed with a friendship whose wings are most certainly present and most certainly capable of lifting me above the melee of my so-called life.

Back in New York, when I first moved there, I was lonely, cold and nearly always broke. At one point, while looking through old letters in a melancholy exercise that I had hoped would lift me out of my perpetual feeling of friendlessness, I found the address of an ex boyfriend and his wife who, last I heard, were living in New York. Now, since this ex was the first person ever to have the gall to have broken up with ME (there has since been one more dreadful heathen of this ilk), he had long dropped off my "most favored nation" list, but I was desperate for human companionship. This desperation drove me out into the streets with my dog in an effort to find them.

I walked up First Avenue, telling myself it wasn't creepy to do a walk-by of their building because it was very near to the dog run at Carl Schurz park. The fact that my dog didn't seem to ever ENJOY the dog run didn't sway me from the belief that she needed to go there, if only to provide me with an excuse for a slight detour to peep at the names on the buzzers at this particular address. Suffice it to say, their names weren't on the building anymore and my dog spent the afternoon huddled against my legs as dogs with healthy senses of self-esteem bounded around us in doglike fervor. I went home, like my dog, defeated by the exuberence of the rest of the world.

Later, I emailed a friend whom I hadn't spoken to in a while, casually inquiring if he had heard where the Least Favored Ex and his wife had taken up residence. I got a reply back with an email address for LFE, promptly emailed and received a phone call in reply. The day before I flew home for Christmas, I got wasted over brunch with LFE and his lovely wife, whom I had always had a sort of bitter hatred for. After all, he didn't break up with HER, now, did he? As the afternoon wore on to evening and it became apparent that LFE would require scaffolding to remain upright, my love for these folks deepened. Pettiness seeped out of me (the first time THAT ever happened!) and I vowed to stay in touch.

Months went by, and I saw them sporadically. As the time went by, LFE's wife and I became the best of friends. She is the kind of person who makes every moment spent with her shine. She listens without judgement, a trick she must have had to perfect in order to live with the constant barrage of LFE's incessant repeating of himself. Honestly, who do YOU know who tells you the same story three times in rapid succession? She has a warped, brilliant mind and is, to me, the epitome of the word "lovely." She's magic. And I'm lucky enough to know her.

I mention all of this because I got a present from her yesterday. She had painted a beautiful face in oranges and reds, embedded flower petals in the paint and added a verse from a particularly apt poem. It was the best gift I have ever received and it made me cry. I am far away from a friend whose support was all I had at some times in my dark New York life. I regret that I am not there to support her as she struggles with her own issues of career and family and love. I regret that I cannot shine for her the way she shone for me; shedding light onto a path I did not know existed.

My wonderful, wicked, silly and lovely friend! I'll forever remember one experience as indicative of the surreal and sublime nature of our friendship: We walked through a cemetary near her house in the thick sunshine of a fall morning, laughing and talking about our lives. The cemetary is so large that one can hardly ever expect to see another live human as you walk through it, but see one, we did. We passed by, hushing our laughter momentarily in case he was there to mourn. As we walked on, my friend kept looking back over her shoulder in the direction we came. Finally, I asked her what was going on. "Dude," she replied, "That guy is looking at us and whacking off onto a gravestone. Oh well. You gotta do something, right?"

Bump-n-grind

On Saturday, following drinks with the Ex Who Prevailed, I had to participate in a burlesque show. HAD to because I auditioned for them, they asked me to be a part of the show and I said yes. So, I knew exactly what I was getting in to, but I was still freaked out beyond all sense and reason. I wasn't even taking my clothes off like the other women, so what the hell was I so scared about? The E.W.P. brought a friend to see the show, and it was kind of a perfect capper to our girl power evening.

The big news, though, comes in the Boy Department. On Friday, I went out with a guy who shall henceforth be known as Karaoke Joe. He had a gift certificate to a restaurant and took me out before my show that evening. Post show, Sweet Boy from Thursday (who happened to be in the show on Friday) and Karaoke Joe accompany me to a bar where they proceed to subtlely play human bumper cars to grab my attention. I wound up focusing all of my energy on a conversation with a girl friend of mine who stopped by to marvel at the spectacle. It was interesting, to say the least. At the end of the evening, I kissed Karaoke Joe, while Sweet Boy waited on the corner. K.J. very undiplomatically said "Hey, I need to say goodnight to her alone, all right?" which S.B. took very well. Then, S.B. rode all the way up to my house on the #22 bus, walked me inside and kissed me, too. Hey, after last week, it was a JOY to have two nice guys pay attention to me.

Friday was also the former B.N.B.'s last show with us as he took his E.W.P.'s advice and will likely be quitting our company tomorrow. I held myself together very well, all things considered, and only wound up hitting him once. On the ass, really hard.

The Game of Life

I walked to meet my date last night and ran in to him as he exited a convenience store next to the restaurant. He had obviously just purchased minty gum and was frantically chewing it, which I found sweet. In that one moment, he showed me more courtesy than Shaun ever had. It was cute. A little bit precious, but cute.

We had a lovely sushi dinner, and I unexpectedly got loopy from one Cosmopolitan. Working the chopsticks was a total exercise in humility for me, post-Cosmo. We talked a lot, despite the noise of the restaurant, and then went to a bar to have drinks which I, frankly, did not need as my speech was already a little slushy.

At the bar, we talked more, being that he is a pleasant conversationalist, and we played board games. We even sang the Hamm's Beer theme together. "From the land of sky blue waters, wa-aters! Hamm's, the beer refreshing, Hamm's." To end the evening, we played a game of Life. Unlike my real life, I had a well-paying career and never seemed to be out of money. I quickly acquired a child, its pink peg body firmly ensconced in my green plastic car. I kept landing on spaces like "Buy a boat," or "Go on vacation to Europe" or "Take a class in CPR". If my real life were outlined in orange spaces on cardboard, the messages would be more akin to "Forget to call your mother," "Donate money to charity to exponge your conscience from the lie you told your boss," or "Date yet another ridiculous man." We both ended the game with over a million dollars and I actually wound up winning the Nobel Prize. So there I was, at the end of the game, rich, accomplished and with a girl child. I put the game away before I stopped to wonder when I'd ever have that in my real, non board game life.

At my bus stop, I hugged sushi boy and almost missed my bus because of it. I ran for the door, hollering back "Call me! I owe you dinner!" My flip flops must have made me look ridiculous running, and my skirt probably flipped up and showed my underpants at least once.

Today, I got an apology email from Shaun. I realized that I don't have to forgive him to get on with my life. Nor will I. He's got a lot of learning to do and this time the lesson is, sometimes it don't matter if you're sorry. Sometimes, you can't undo your hurts. Spin the wheel, move your piece and hope you don't land on the space that says "You fucked up big time. Game over."

Hooker shoes

When I got divorced, my lovely friend Emily called me up one night and said "Put on your hooker shoes, girl, we are going OUT!"

There is a lot of goodness that can come out of rampant bad behavior, I have found. At six feet and change in my platform sandals with my boobs hoisted up under my chin, dancing to a cover band playing the very best of Winger, I felt pretty good again. I felt a million miles away from huddling in the spare bedroom, clutching a baseball bat in desperate fear of the ex. And, though I wasn't quite a million miles away, I was at least headed down the road. So, when I hang out with Shaun's ex on Saturday, I plan to bring glittery makeup and a pair of Lucite heels for her to wear. She lost two years to this ass. Thank god I only lost two months.

Last night, I had a long and gorgeous conversation with New Orleans Boy (I will refrain from calling him NOB because that ain't right) that concluded with him saying "I can't seem to make myself hang up. It just gets harder and harder to do." That was sweet. He may be coming to Chicago for a month to stay as sort of a trial-run to see if he'd like to live here. That's a scary thing, but also pretty exciting. After I talked to him for the second time, I remember hanging up the phone and saying "I'm going to MARRY this guy!" Maybe, maybe not. We'll see. That's all we can do, right?

Tonight, I have a date with a sweet guy who's taking me out for sushi. He may prove to be a little too sweet, but we shall see. Tomorrow I have a date with another guy, who is sweet to me, but has apparently broken at least one girl's heart along the way. Saturday, though, is the date I'm looking most forward to: the one that involves hooker shoes and gin drinks.

Let's all get better by being a little bad.

Miss Celie

Bad News Boy is bad news no more.

Hands shaking, I sat at Grizzly's Lounge last night, waiting for BNB's ALLEGED ex to come and talk to me. I smoked a lot and sucked back a Jameson's a little quicker than is typically advised while waiting. She came in, this weird apologetic, hopeful look on her face which I can only assume mirrored mine. Awkward pause. Then, we hugged. An hour or so of drinking and talking brought out the fact that BNB (his name is Shaun. Shaun Himmerick. And he is an ass) lied to both of us. He told me that he had broken up with her, and he told her that he had no involvement with me. There were so many lies, I can't even begin to number them, but one example I'll share is the Gordian knot of falsehood that is this past weekend:

He tells me he'll likely be flying in to Chicago Friday night, although it's possible he will fly in Saturday morning. I ask him when he flew in and he said Saturday morning, giving very detailed descriptions of his flights and the ensuing airport hassle. His ex tells me he got in Friday and spent the night with her. He called me on Saturday and, when I didn't answer the phone, he spent the night at the ex's place. Sunday, the ex couldn't spend time with him, so he came over to my place and fucked me. Twice. He told her he never left the office.

Three Jameson's has a tendency to get my blood up, and when the ex suggested that we go to the show he had that night and interrupt it with a litany of accusations, I just said "Game ON, motherfucker!" When we got to the theater, he was no longer there. Undaunted, I suggested she call him and see if he was at home. She left a message and he called back almost immediately, as we were speeding up Lakeshore and I was weaving my keys into the spaces between my fingers.

When we got to his condo, he buzzed us right in and the ex stood outside his door and said "We are BOTH here, you asshole. Do you want to do this here or outside?" He came downstairs (in a moment of juvenile glee, I ran through mud and tracked it up his stairs, grinding it in as hard as I could) and we lit into him hardcore. I made him look me in the eye and tell me that he lied. I told him that he had to make amends, but I did so in a line stolen from "The Color Purple": "Until you do right by me, everything you touch gonna crumble." His roommate came home in the middle of the tirade and slunk upstairs. At the last moment, as my righteous fury began to cool, I said to his ex "Say, do you have anything in the apartment that you need to get?" He didn't want us to come up because he was afraid we'd smash his shit, which is ridiculous and totally devoid of respect. She got her stuff and I went to get the condoms in the bottom drawer of his nightstand, but they weren't there. He apparently had hidden them in the computer room.

If nothing else, I got to say some shit I will probably never get to say again ("If it takes me down, too, I swear I will ruin you.") and I think I made a new friend. Look for our website soon at www.cheatingshaun.com.

Wild Card

Yesterday, the discussion with Bad News Boy ended in a cessation of recent activities. Having not fully committed myself to the situation emotionally, I wasn't terribly undone by the decision (which he made in conjunction with his therapist...what kind of authentic Bad News Boy has a therapist?). Basically, it drove me to go for a run and do a few hill repeats, whispering "Fuck you, Bad News" to myself each time I crested the hill. After five summitings, I felt pretty good. Then, on my run home, I got a call from a different boy, who will be taking me out for sushi on Thursday. So friggin THERE, BNB.

Today, I opened my email only to find an email from his ex, the one I said unkind things about in an earlier post. I was expecting a "Die, bitch, die" email, only to be greeted with an eloquent and positive missive about how poorly BNB treated us both. Long story short, he lied to us both, out of "emotional confusion." I know he basically thinks of himself as a good person, but what's that line from "The Talented Mr. Ripley"? Oh yeah: "Well, whatever you do, however terrible, however hurtful, it all makes sense, doesn't it, in your head. You never meet anybody that thinks they're a bad person."

The Ex and I are going out for drinks tonight. I'm buying. And I'm also going to give her one free hit, should she so desire, as long as it's not in the face. I do have a date on Thursday, after all, and I have to look my best.

Here we go, 'round again...

I did a remarkably sensible thing just now. Last night, fully determined to give B.N.B. the old what for, I caved and wound up giggling as I kissed his neck from the back of his motorcycle. It's a sad, sorry state of affairs when a rotten attitude and horrible track record with women combined with just the RIGHT kind of smile can turn me into an amoeba. And by amoeba, I mean spineless and full of gelatinous crap. But just now, as B.N.B. was trying to weasel out of a promised "date" by saying his schedule was screwed up and he was still screwed up (his words: "screwed") about the breakup with his ex-whose-upper-arms-look-like-Virginia-hams-complete-with-crosshatching, I said "Hey, you need to talk to me more, or I'm not going to give you any more of my time."

In two weeks' time, if he decides to go on being a maverick, a rebel, a devil-may-care kind of fella and ignore my request, I will likely be one of two places: on a horrible date with a guy whose sweetness quotient could decimate the diabetic population of Chicago, or weeping on the floor of my (terribly cute) apartment, listening to Tori Amos and drinking cheap vodka from the bottle I keep in my closet behind my bridesmaid's dresses.

Who said sex is easy?

The Winter of my Discontent

It's amazing how little it takes for me to either be happy or unhappy. B.N.B. was out of town for a week, and I had hoped to see him last evening, though I knew there was a distinct possibility that the evening would end with me, too drunk to manage the bus system, walking home with a broken shoe. That, in fact, is exactly what DID happen. Now, I'm wallowing in a lovely quagmire of self-loathing, hating my new skirt, hating my new haircut, hating the sunny day outside and waiting for him to call. I am WAITING FOR A MAN TO CALL ME. I gave that up for Lent when I was like 18, so what in the hell am I doing? I know, too, that when the phone rings, my exaggerated startle response will cause me to explode with anxious twitching. I know, further, that when the phone finally DOES ring, it will likely not be him. So. That leaves me where, exactly?

In Chicago. On my own.

That was fine a month and a half ago. I made plans to fill my time with "new to the city" activities and fun. But since B.N.B. entered the picture, I've been totally and completely focused on how to spend more time with him at the expense of my self esteem.

What I will wind up doing today is going shopping with my meager funds as everything in every store reminds me of the fact that I want to be with him and he is most definitely not with me. "Oh, that's a really swell set of Cephalon pots! God, I wish he'd call." "I could totally use those flip-flops. I am nothing if he does not call." I will likely call a few friends, just to prove to myself that I'm not totally alone in this world, but will then be depressed by the fact that all of these friends likely have something to hang their self worth on other than doomed relationships. I'll call New Orleans boy and tell him how much I miss him, and feel gratified by a wonderful conversation, but at the end of the day, I will still be alone. I will go and see a show, laugh, make small talk with my friends at the theater, and go home alone. I will put on Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" and cry as I brush my teeth, alone. In the chill middle of the night, I will decide my afghan isn't enough of a covering and crawl under my sheets and coverlet, alone. I will wake up alone. I will have to find a way to be okay with that.

Celebrate

It's my birthday. I demand to be given a pony.

Mashers, et al

On Friday, after my show, I went to a bar to wait for B.N.B. to be done with work and -- surprise, surprise -- met another gentleman, several years my elder, who wanted to convey important relationship advice to me. This gentleman was only 52 (a relative youngster in the pantheon of my aged gentlemen callers) and was super crazy skinny. We talked about divorce and of taking care of one's parents and of a lot of things when B.N.B. strode in and said (while watching a baseball game on a TV just over my head) that he had to make a brief stop-in at a party and then he would pick me up at my house. He kissed me, which was only the second time he's ever done that in public (I don't count my alley as being "public" because the only people who saw that were a couple of trash pickers and it's not like we have a ton of mutual friends that they would blab to) and then left. Skinny Slightly Old Guy witnessed all of this, turned to me and said "Oh, no. No you don't! Don't you lose yourself over HIM." I wanted to launch into the "It's complicated..." talk, but I have just given up on trying to rationalize my involvement with B.N.B. When I left the bar, S.S.O.G. hugged me tighter than I would have thought his frail arms were capable of, and whispered "Not that guy, OK? Not HIM." I think I may have been a little teary when I left.

True to his word, B.N.B. did pick me up, which caused me to have to leave a lovely telephone conversation with New Orleans Boy earlier than I would have liked to. On the phone, N.O. Boy is practically perfect. In person, though, I missed the spark of insta-passion. Still, I felt bad when the doorbell rang and I had to say "Whoops! I have to go! My company is here." Company? I guess that's what B.N.B IS, right? He's not my boyfriend, he's not my husband, he's not committed to anything, so he's just around to keep me company sometimes. Ick. We wound up at the Saddest Little Bar in the World, listening once again to Kenny Rogers and overhearing tasty little bits of conversation from the bartender (like "Things all changed when Tina got murdered."). He stayed over that night. I guess some people would feel lucky for that.

Saturday, B.N.B. and I both went out for drinks after a show with some friends from the theater. I did everything possible to put a little distance in between B.N.B. and I. It amused me a little that, whenever I had been away from him for too long, he would find an excuse to come over and have a conversation with someone standing next to me. He likes me more than he's willing to admit, but he may just hurt me terribly instead of ever admitting it. There were plenty of boys there competing for my attention, which was fantastically flattering. I danced with one, had a meaningful conversation with another, smiled at a couple more and accepted drinks from yet another. Later, at a party after the bar, one tiny little 23-year-old made a very drunken fumbling attempt at trying to pick me up. It was cute. I didn't respond because I was afraid he would throw up in my purse. I went home with B.N.B. who was also at the purse-puking stage.

While engaged in a meaningful convversation with one of the non-masher boys, I told him about one of my favorite movies; "Summertime" with Katharine Hepburn. She talks about how, when she was younger, she was always the last girl at the dance and how, as an older woman, she has to remember to leave while the dance is still going on. That part always breaks my heart. I also love the line "You are like a hungry child who is given ravioli to eat, but you turn up your nose and say 'No! I want beefsteak!' Eat the ravioli, Janie!" Hell, I don't have beefsteak, but I ain't got no ravioli, either.

Bad News Boy and the Great Big Secret

I have been starting and deleting this entry all day. I got to work on time today, which was a miracle considering the fact that I stayed at Bad News Boy's house last night and was barely able to hold on to him due to fatigue during my Motorcycle Ride of Shame this morning. Moreover, I'm dressed fairly well, considering the effort it took to shower today. I am a triumph of the human will.

B.N.B. had a call from his ex at 4 in the morning a while ago, in which she began to list off the names of women whose telephone numbers he had stored in his cell phone which she had apparently surreptitiously checked. He called me the next day to warn me that she may call me and somehow trick me into admitting that I was "involved" with him. Trick nothing. Had she called, I would have said "Yeah, I'm fuckin him. And? AND? You got SOMETHIN TO SAY?!" Well, no, I probably wouldn't have, but it's nice to dream, eh? The point of that all is that he very strongly reiterated the fact that he is not interested in going out with her again. No more "I don't THINK so."

So, that's what I'm clinging to right now. This one, small, semantic bone that he threw me. Why does it matter at all? Because the Great Big Secret is that I am terrified of how much this Bad News means to me. So, I'll cling to whatever I can and hold on despite the fatigue. I am a triumph of the human will.

Diner

Yesterday, on my way in to work to check my email, I ran into an old man who has stopped me to talk outside a diner several times since I started my new job. I believe his name is Bob because every old man I meet (and I meet a lot...what does that say about me?) is named Bob. He has always asked me to stop in the diner for a cup of coffee and I've always made an excuse. Today, though, I went. Bob seemed happy to see me and promptly ordered me a cup of coffee that was more cream than coffee. Predictably, the questions about my singleness started almost immediately...

"You're not married? A pretty girl like you? You got a boyfriend?"

Well, Bob, it's complicated. You see, I WAS married, back when I was really young...he was an ass and I left him, but all he can hold onto is a picture of me that's distorted and horrible. I remember him fondly, at times, despite the time he kicked in a door on me, despite the fact that he told me I was crazy, despite the fact that he said my friends didn't love me, despite the horrible daily assurances that I would be nothing without him. All he can see me as is "The Bitch who left me." I had to leave the state to escape the horrible, thudding pain of knowing he was nearby, just hating me. Since then, I've had a series of forgettable relationships, most of them primarily physical. Do I have a boyfriend, Bob? Well, that's also a hard question. If you spend all of your time thinking about the blue-green tattoo on someone's upper arm and how his voice rasped and caught as he screamed your name once, if you keep your nights and weekends free just so that you can casually say to him "I'm not doing anything right now, wanna come over?" when he calls, if your heart races when you see his name in your email inbox, does that mean he's your boyfriend? Bob, what if he says he never wants to get married? What do you do then? Do you call him your boyfriend then? What if you wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and crying because you don't know who in the wide world will stand by you when you're called home because your mother has forgotten where she lives and is wandering around town in her slippers or when your father's eyesight finally goes completely and he needs you to help him read his prescription bottles? What do you do when you're so desperately afraid that no one will care for you when you're going to have to care for others? Do you call him your boyfriend THEN, Bob? In the vain hope that he'll still be around when a call comes at 3am on a Tuesday from a stranger who says "It's about your mother..." Is he my boyfriend THEN?

What I said was "I'm seeing a couple of people."

I just wish one of those people I was seeing was me.

Lonely makes you stupid

Sometimes, my datebook has holes in it on a Saturday night, which is not a good thing. I am total crap at being on my own on a weekend. By the afternoon, I've already gone to a movie by myself and am mystified as to what to do in the evening hours. So, I start calling people. "Hey! What are you up to? Oh. Well, I sure want to see that spackle when it's done!" "'Sup my brotha...What you got going on tonight? God, I thought she was due NEXT month! If it's a girl, name her after me!" It is on a lonely, rainy Saturday night that my faith in a good and caring god is most likely to falter.

Last night, I wound up, pissed off after having seen "Fahrenheit 9/11" (a friend of mine is in Iraq now and I have another friend who will likely be going by summer's end), at the Lakeview Lounge, book in hand and pocket full of beer money. Alone. At a bar. I figure a woman has a limited number of times she can go to a bar alone before she turns into one of The Lost People. You know, the kind of people who sit at the end of a bar, waiting for you to make eye contact so that they can engage you in conversation. "Hey! HEY! Gotta light? I shouldn't smoke so much on account a my assmar. I have sciatica, too. My kids don't visit me. I once ate a 64 ounce steak on a bet. Does this boil look bad to you?" I forfieted one of those times last night and I'm a little sorry I did.

A man came up to me as I read my mystery novel to the dulcet tones of Nightwatch, the geriatric cover band, and said to me "Jew haff byootiful toessss." Um, thanks. Later, on the way back from the bathroom, a man stopped me and talked to me about jazz. I hate jazz. He gave me his phone number. I shook hands with him, which I took perverse pleasure in because there had been no paper towels in the ladies room and the handshake was quite moist, at best. Thankfully, one of my friends that I had called in a desperate panic prior to going to the Lakeview called back and invited me to a party. Full of hope and a sense of having dodged some kind of bullet, I lept out of my booth and out into the rain to wait.

The party was interesting. Walking through the apartment, I realized that there were three people there I had made out with. Two in the last month and one over two years ago. Weird. The over two years one wound up taking me home and coming in to see my terribly cute apartment. I flopped down on the bed, wanting just to sleep and he sat in my wing chair for a moment. "Hey, can I ask you an off-topic question?" (The topic we had been on was decor, incidentally) "Mmmnf," I responded as I started to slide off to sleep. "Wanna fool around?" I was awake again. "Um, I guess so," was my reply. So we kissed a little. A very little. I had remembered him as slightly boorish and terribly full of himself. It was less than a good time. Finally, he asked if we could make out more, and I said "Oh! What? I was asleep. Sorry." He took the hint and left, thank god.

Holes in schedules aren't so bad, I guess, when the alternative is making out with a boor who wants you to suck on his nipples just because he gave you a ride home. Now, I'm going to go to a movie by myself and then over to the Lakeview for a beer and a burger. Happy Independence, everyone!

Starfucker

Last night, I got a call from a guy whom I almost married in New Orleans. We were both there doing a gig for a conference of pharmaceutical reps (I still can't hear OutKast without remembering the wretched parody I had to do the pony to)and spent one afternoon together walking around Algeirs, LA, a free ferry ride across the Mississippi from the Harrah's casino. As we walked by the Town Hall in Algiers,a newly married couple came out, wearing matching white polos and khaki shorts. Somehow, we wound up on the second floor of the Town Hall, daring each other to go in to the marriage license room. I would have done it, too, if the jerk hadn't forgotten his wallet.

On the ferry ride back, we talked about weddings. Somewhere in the conversation, he mentioned that he had to go to a black tie wedding over the fourth of July weekend and, when pressed, admitted it was Tori Spelling's wedding. Justifiably delighted by the camp value and People Magazine-ish-ness of the situation, I responded, as I always do: "Shut UP!" Later, I got drunk, cut my foot, stepped in a dubious puddle on Bourbon Street and made out with him in my hotel room back at the Mariott.

So he called me last night, on the eve of his trip to LA to talk. He had been out to visit me in Chicago not too long ago and, despite the overwhealming romantic possibilities of our situation, it was less than earth shattering. He made provocative statements over the phone about any gentleman callers I might have and I could sense that he wanted me to say "There's only you, dear." I wish I had been able to indulge him, but I just couldn't.

We talked a little bit more about our lives and the wedding -- apparently guests are not allowed to bring cameras, camera phones OR guests to the nuptuals -- before I begged off to go to sleep. He called me at 6 this morning as he was boarding the plane because he said he wanted to hear my voice. Sometimes, I don't feel like I deserve that kind of sweetness.

On my refrigerator door, there's a picture of he and I, taken at the Spotted Cat jazz club minutes after I had finished reading his palm. On the floor of my living room is a present I bought for the Bad News Boy. In my heart, there's a big, horrible wondering if I'm ever going to give a damn about someone enough to keep them around for a while.

Trauma, Drama and Messin' With Urr Mamma

A boy, not the old iconoclast friend of Tuesday, was supposed to go out with me yesterday following a show he was doing. By way of explanation I should say that this boy is bad news. Terrible, awful news. The kind of news that makes you cry a little bit when you read it in the paper. He has three tattoos, rides his motorcycle without a helmet, has scars from where he's been stabbed, and has been forced to attend court-mandated anger management courses. The human equivalent of a convent full of infant nuns falling down a well and dying of anthrax. REALLY bad news.

Before the show, Bad News Boy calls and leaves me a message saying that the girlfriend he broke up with to fool around with me was going to be at his show and that he'd have to talk to her afterwards because he promised. Being completely self-absorbed, my first thought was "Why? You broke up with the bitch, didn't you?" I hate lingering break ups. I think they're just manifestations of some latent childish urge to get a spanking. It's like saying "I want you to hurt me more and longer!" Fuck that. That's what marriage is for.

So, I go to the show. I watch it, keenly aware that an upset woman with an unfortunate hair cut is sharing the row with me. After the show, I kept my eyes down and congratulated Bad News Boy in such a manner as to not mark me as The Other Woman. I waited outside as B.N.B. had explained his little talk would only be a few minutes long. Then, I saw him come out with her, bad haircut and all. He started his motorcycle. I lit a cigarette and tried not to watch. I made brief eye contact with him. He looked away and spat. He got on the motorcycle. She got on the motorcycle. I turned away and walked to a bar, not even looking as I heard the cycle's engine rev up and speed directly past me, the whine receeding down the street towards god knows what.

I sat at the bar, shaking without knowing I was or wanting to. I had a drink and refused to feel sorry for myself. Within five minutes of me walking in (and four minutes of me finishing my first drink), B.N.B walks in, solo. I told him I was pretty sure he wasn't going to show up as he seemed to have had his hands full on the way out of the theater. He said "But, I TOLD you I was going to spend time with you tonight" as if he was flabbergasted by my doubt. I wanted to explain to him the fact that he had stab wounds was a pretty clear indicator to me that he had done illogical things that had pissed people off a lot at least ONCE in his life. Stab wounds don't exactly say to a person "I am trustworthy!"

We wound up at an absolutely wretched hole of a bar (75 cent drafts!) near my house later in the evening, laughing and singing along with "The Gambler." At one point, I asked him if he wanted to get back together with his ex and he said "I don't think so." To misquote Kenny Rogers..."The night got deathly quiet and my face lost all expression. I said 'If you're gonna play the game, boy, you better learn to play it right.' " Just when I was starting to actively CARE about another person, a sterling reason to put up walls just waltzed in and smacked me on the bottom.

In the morning after a night my neighbors will surely complain about (hell, if you can't posess the WHOLE man, take what you can of him, right?), he left. I locked the door behind him and crawled back to bed. I held my breath, face pressed into my pillow and waited until I heard it...the whine of his motorcycle, going directly past me to god knows what.