Paging Mr. Hyde

I decided to move back to the city. I’ll be moved back by September 1, once Ellen finds us an apartment and we sign the lease. This, of course, complicates things with Z. He is 100% supportive, he says, of my move, and I believe him. I just wonder, then, why I’m the one freaking out. I’m getting clingier, and when he had to change our plans to help out one of his friends I threw my first tantrum and we got into our first fight. I was drunk, he was not, and a flurry of mean text messages were exchanged. Now he’s a little sore, and I’m trying to get him to see me so I can apologize. I am an idiot.

This entry is not interesting to anyone but me. I just wish I didn’t do stuff like this. But I suppose everyone does. Do they? Who knows.

I guess a dirtier, sexier entry will come later. But this is how I feel today.

Losing game

Sometimes I
really think I’m going crazy.
It takes almost nothing
to trip
me
up.

I know I’m not ready
for love
or even like
when I’m kept tossing
and turning
thinking about losing
and hating what’s going.

I guess I wanted to feel
and touch and
remember what
this
felt
like

once.

I don’t know if you’re it
But it doesn’t matter
because I’m not able
right now
I’m not stable
I’m not really here.

Mood swung.

Z meets me in the bar where I sit with my friends, watching another friend play acoustic guitar up on stage. I’ve been drinking Diet Coke. I swirl two straws in the giant plastic cup and listen to my friends talk about other friends and laugh about things we did while drunk. I’m tired, and I feel a bit off in a way I know well but can’t quite describe. Z smiles with his perfect teeth, then laughs at something someone says, and his brown eyes look bright and almost green in the setting sunlight. He looks at me a lot, says ‘hey’ and asks me how I’m doing. We talk and I can’t help but slip away into that place I go sometimes, where I’m not quite sure how to act or what to say or how to prove I’m happy and nothing is wrong (I think I am, I think nothing is).

But something is, and I don’t know what to say. I hate being her, this girl with the intimacy issues. I’m reeling, trying not to freak out about the fact that he could throw me away at any second.

He’s too sweet to me and keeps asking if I’m okay (I hate being this). He knows I’m not okay once I sort of whisper I’m nervous sex might have changed things. Even though I know, sort of, that him even being here, with his arm wrapped around me, means it didn’t. But still he drives us to a park down the street, near where his grandma lives. Once we’re there, away from the bar, I inexplicably unwind. I’m able to talk and debate politics and laugh and knock him over on accident on the swings. One of the swing chains hits him in the face, and he stumbles, laughing.

When girls cause injuries to boys it’s always very awkward.

“I was trying to be cute,” I’ll say, thinking about how I shouldn’t have said that — shouldn’t have admitted I was trying much of anything — and laughing nervously.
But he’s still laughing, hard, repeating what I said and then kissing me on the cheek.

I guess it was okay to say it. The business of this — relationships and falling for someone — you forget how awkward all of it is in the beginning.

I always forget what it feels like to feel someone out.

We lay on the grass. I’m laying on my stomach and smoking a cigarette, watching it burn between my fingers, thinking about things I want to say but things I probably don’t need to say. We joke and then there’s silence. Lighting bugs and the swing set remind me of those days in high school when I was a virgin, still moody, on playgrounds with boys who could never quite figure me out. Even when I didn’t have the sex problem I had the trust problem. The closeness problem.

I’ve been doing this for years. So much changes and I’m pissed the things I want to change the most always stay the same.

But then there’s Z. I flop over on my back and consider the stars, and the corniness of this whole scenario isn’t lost on me. I catch him looking at me with that sort of open tenderness I’ve seen in certain sets of eyes laid on me before. And I ask him “what?” and he says “nothing” and we both know that’s kind of the furthest thing from the truth. He’s as wide open as a reaching palm. And I’m a fist trying to unclench.

Boyfriend material?

I made it three weeks before having sex with Z. Funny how that’s a long time, nowadays. Everyone I told acted like I was holding out for years. In other news, I feel okay about it. I don’t think it changed anything, and we decided afterward to only see each other. That would make him my boyfriend. Right?

I guess, though, there’s always this little insecure part of me that wonders, now that he’s had it, is he going to back away? Will the dates stop? Will the cuddling stop? Will the, “I really like you’s” and the “You’re amazings” become few and far between?

Just because I decided to have sex with him?

He’s a great guy, and I believe that he likes me, but I’ve been burned enough times that it’s hard for me to not wait for the other shoe to drop. The “I’m not looking for a relationship” phone call, or a lack of phone calls at all. I get scared, and I don’t want to ask for reassurance or confirmation. I just want to trust the fact that I’m the kind of girl he could like. I think I am. Right?

Slip and Slide

So Z and I have gotten into the habit of making the 45-minute journey to each other’s homes. Until last night, things had been relatively nonsexual, basically due to the fact that one or both of us tends to have too much to drink when we meet up. And neither of us really want, to put it bluntly, to fuck things up by fucking.

So it was interesting to be fully, soberly aware of tongues and lips and necks when we started kissing last night. And it felt so hot to feel almost ticklish at the touch of his hand sliding into my underwear — I thought it sweet that he didn’t know if it was okay to go there yet, and I almost grew impatient. All of that self-consciousness that comes with being in a new relationship is there, although I’m trying to get over it. So I put his hands where I needed them to go (he didn’t need much help) and really, truly tried to turn my brain off. I wanted to feel, not think, and I think I did better than okay this first time around.

It’s not like I’ve never done any of this before. I’ve done a lot of it before. And I find it unnerving that I’ve been willing to screw the brains out of people I like about a fraction as much as Z. But when it comes to him, I feel like what I’m starting to hold onto is too precious to give up with something forced or shallow.

Swimming

I spent two days on Match.cm before deleting my profile. The main problem is that I recognized about three people I knew, and that was just weird — one of the guys I’d actually been on a date with before (we’d met in a bar, natch), and it was the most excruciating four hours of my life. We went for sushi and wound up watching “Wolf” at my house, because it was one of those free crappy movies on OnDemand. Anyway, when he messaged me on Match, I knew I was probably in the wrong place. Actually, I think I’m just in the wrong place when it comes to geography — if I were back in Chicago, living in a bigger city with more prospects, I think it would be a different story.

And, weirdly enough, I might have met someone. Well, not met, but reconsidered someone I’ve known for about a month. Remember the bigoted jerk I made out with in Indianapolis last month? Well, Z is his friend, someone I actually ended up enjoying more by the end of the trip than anyone else I’d spent it with. We ran into each other last weekend and I, shot through with courage by a couple vodka tonics, confessed I had thought about him since then, and maybe we could hang out sometime?

He smiled, told me the move was “ballsy,” and we did end up hanging out with a few of my friends the next night. We haven’t kissed yet. We’ve just hugged hello and goodbye, admitted a mutual crush on the other and talked on the phone. Actual talking! Not texting (although there’s a little of that) or e-mailing! How revolutionary.

I suppose it’s more friendship than anything, which feels awesome to me. Taking it slow feels absolutely how things SHOULD feel when you are learning about someone you could like.
And I could get this all wrong. He could turn out to be incredibly immature, or nothing special or a slew of other horrible adjectives I tend to convince myself are good for me.

But I’ve given nothing up yet. So far, I’ve got that going for me.

Good sex, gone.

One of my good friends, Mel, was just over at my house. We smoked cigarettes and talked about how to meet men in our area of the state, which is pretty limited to rednecks and hillrats. She and I are two college-educated, cute and fun girls who have had the worst luck since moving here for work.

Now, I’m not saying the problem is me. Maybe it is. I can be sort of demanding, emotionally distant, overly aggressive and just plan insane. But I know at my core I’m a cool girl. And, let it be said, I am awesome in the sack — and I HATE it when people say that, but I think it’s true for me.

This is just a half-drunken rant (I happened to be drinking some sort of vanilla-bean flavored ale while chain smoking Ultra Lights), but I have not had good sex with someone I felt a connection with in over a year, and it’s driving me nuts. It’s a dry spell like I’ve never known. It’s sort of like starvation from the type of intimacy I used to find almost too easily.

It’s not like I’ve been celibate, though. In fact, far from it. I’ve racked up a fair number of unworthy lovers in the 13 months I’ve been home, at a higher rate than I’m comfortable with. Men like me, I’m not going to lie. Or at least they do when I’m shiny and clean and slightly tipsy, smiling in their faces like the most classy bar slut they’ve ever seen. When we wake up there is that mutual disgust I don’t even need to go into right now. That’s when I lose interest, or he loses interest, but usually we go on few dates just to save face. It’s a horrible waste of time and money in the face of $4 gas.

Anyway, back to my original, beer-driven complaint: Is it my stage of life, is it me or is it my location that’s to blame for this total lack of finding anything like a connection? I have about had it with this shit. I’m sick of this, honestly. It’s all so predictable.

… Where’s my beer?

Shock of love, part one.

I’m a pretty firm believer that you only fall in love head-first once. Unless you’ve got some weird personality disorder, perpetual immaturity or obvious issues with the opposite sex, people just aren’t capable of opening up that completely, that unabashedly, after being stripped clean by their first love.

Anthony is his name. I won’t use a pseudonym, since I’m not really capable of making up a name for someone so important to me. We were both 18 when it happened. How we met is sort of strange, complicated and fitting when you explain our relationship over the long-term:

Ant and I are from the same town, but went to different high schools and didn’t know of each other. While he holed up in dorm rooms and cafeteria corners at Indiana University, I was clinking glasses and grasping the arms of strangers in easy-carding Loyola Chicago bars. One of my friends, Nate, ended up moving into the same dorm as Ant. Nate ended up becoming fast friends with him and his circle of high-school-turned-college friends, including a guy named Matt.

Nate ended up giving my Instant Messenger screen name to Matt because Nate thought Matt and I would be a good match. So, Matt and I casually chatted between classes while I was five hours away in Chicago. Ant got my screen name from Matt, because he, too, was curious about this girl Nate kept talking about. Ant and I ended up talking online more often as Matt and I did. I started to come home early from parties or leave late for class to catch him at his computer.

Fast forward, Ant asks Matt if he doesn’t mind if he, instead, goes after me. Matt gives his blessing, we all meet face-to-face over the Thanksgiving of 2003.

After this, I am a goner.

Ant and I immediately begin to fall in love.

That first weekend, I saw him twice. The first meeting was a whirlwind of hello’s, fast talking and nervous laughter. I remember exactly what I was wearing but can’t for the life of me remember much about Ant. Over the next few months I’d note his curly hair, his round, open face and these brown eyes that left me weak-kneed, bathing in the most tender, earnest gaze I’ll ever know. But that first night, my eyes were wild and unfocused, belonging to a ravenously open-hearted girl who needed a love like him.

We didn’t see each other until the next month, Christmas break. That’s when we exchanged homemade Christmas presents, mix CD’s and “I love yous.” Yeah, we were moving fast, but I don’t think either of us had ever met someone who we were able to talk for hours with, or laugh as loud with.

You never realize until after it’s over that you were just indulging each other, but at the time we didn’t know any better. As I said before, I was a goner, well on my way to the sort of heartbreak, accompanied by the sort of shock I’m not sure many people quite understand. If you don’t believe me, you’ll figure out why later. I just don’t have the energy to tell you now.

A very bad one-night stand

Let me tell you one little thing I’ve learned about one-night stands: If you want one bad enough — and you don’t have three eyes or a cleft lip — you can make it happen. I consider them some form of recreational drug I can’t say I take often, or even seldom, but when I do, it just feels groping around in a college dorm room all over again.

Guys in bars pretty much go to said bars to graze, horny beasts in white striped shirts that smell of Burberry or Sean John. And, oops, girls in bars are probably there to play the boyfriend game. It’s almost a cruel trick of nature: Thanks to loose morals, text messaging and a total lack of social navigation skills in this new world, we’re all in the same place wanting different things out of the night. I’m not saying all girls want to find a boyfriend when they go out, but I really rarely hear one of my friends say, ‘I just want to find a piece of ass.’ And they’re pretty slutty.

As a girl who is somewhere in between a boyfriend hunter and an ethical slut, I like to be in my ’sweet spot’ when out drinking. I like to be witty, charming and cute … hopefully just a mildly more confident version of the person I am while sober. I do not like to be bombed, drunk dialing my parents and dropping my cell phone in the toilet … it just doesn’t send out a ‘take me home to Mom!!!!’ vibe.

But that’s what usually happens. And that’s when the trouble begins.

I end up in strip clubs or in the lairs of 30-year-old men with aquariums in their living rooms. I end up spilling into cabs with my friends, accompanied by strangers whose names we repeat over and over in order not to call them something ridiculously off the mark. I end up around drugs and bad people, strippers and cheating husbands. The world of drunks is marked by one sick culture, but it’s a very happening social calendar.

The last one night stand I hopefully ever have saw me being horribly, horribly cruel. If the worse thing you can do to a man is damage his pride while he’s trying to seduce you, well, I gutted him from nose to navel:

Me: Okay! I’m bored
Strange Ass: What?!
Me: I’m bored. I don’t want to do this. You’re jackhammering.
Strange Ass: WHAT?! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU JUST SAID THAT!
Me: I’m sorry. What was I supposed to do? Just lie there?
Strange Ass: Oh … well, I guess you have a point. At least you spoke up …
Me: Yup. Sorry. Night!

The gods are merciful. When I woke up, my conquest was long gone.

What I’m trying to say is that over the years, the drinking culture has somewhat impossibly shot my standards up. It’s just that feeling of having done this all before, and when you can take sex with people you don’t like or respect at face value, it’s pretty much worth nothing at all.

But don’t get me wrong. I don’t feel one way or the other when I hear about my friends notching up their bedposts, because I know once upon a time that was me. And who says, one night, it won’t still be me? Eh, passing judgment in these situations is silly. What bothers me, I guess, is the seemingly universal feeling that girls shouldn’t do what a lot of us do all the time, i.e. get it on with no strings attached.

And if I do end up, again, in a situation where I hook up with someone I don’t know that well or respect (and I probably will), whatever. They only have to last one night.