whoops

Sorry, but I can no longer bring myself to update this here blog. I’ve got too many relationship demons from the past 6 years that I don’t want to bring to light in a public forum, even if done anonymously. I’m going to take the time to sort them out on my own, and write about them only in my private journal. But thanks for reading, and remember to spit out your gum before making out with someone.

from the journals

In case any details of my past are hazy, I have a paper journal and a livejournal from which I can pull material. You really can’t do much better on this matter than directly quoting my 19-year-old self. We’re about to get through some pretty serious relationships and years of dating, plus the introduction of sex. So hold on to your hats, folks.

4/25/04:

“I’m so confused about guys right now. I’m not entirely crazy about either of the guys I’m seeing and my friends have taken sides. And sometimes I think I’m in love with my friend Gabe….I’m seriously willing to have a guy-free summer filled with work and friends. We’ll see if that ever comes to fruition, though.”

Are you wondering if I had a summer without boys and dating after my spring of being bored with Mr. Serious and Frat Boy? Do you think I suddenly reined in my shameless flirting and ability to get my mack on? If so, you grossly overestimate me.

Mr. Serious vs. Frat Boy

After Burger dropped me over Spring Break, I kept up my presence in the freshman year dating scene. I recently found a “crush list” from around that time that I contributed to along with two of my friends. It was buried in the back of my journal and I only recognized 3 of the 10 (!) names in my section. Who were these mysterious men that I held in such high regard?  Were there really that many guys in my stats class that I fawned over? Did I get googly-eyed over ever young gentleman who tossed me a frisbee? My memory fails me on this front, but at least I can still remember the “important” ones (and how to use SPSS).

Anyway, in April of that year I was going on dates/making out with/eating lunch with 2 different guys, Mr. Serious and Frat Boy. As one might imply from these monikers, one of them was indeed very serious. He was a pre-med biology major with a penchant for staying in and cuddling. The other was in fact in a fraternity. Better yet, he was from Texas  and had exciting stories about drinking in foreign countries. Being 18, I was charmed by both. But it was the end of the spring semester, and I was heading home for the summer to an existence of field parties and amusement parks. My heart wasn’t really in it, you know? I slept at Mr. Serious’s dorm (across campus and next to Burger’s dorm) on Fridays after riveting discussions on biology and a few makeout sessions. Then the next night, I’d be partying it up with Frat Boy (who I’m quite certain I never even kissed). It was a conflicted existence. My friends began to take sides. Some assured me that I was a much better match with Mr. Serious, while others wanted me to date Frat Boy (presumably so he could buy us booze). It seemed everyone had an opinion on the “issue” except me.

The situation finally came to a head in late April. Mr. Serious and I ate lunch in the all-you-can-eat dining hall and he told me in so many words that he wanted to “get serious” with me. I had to swallow my grilled cheese along with my shock and kindly explain “Well, I’m kind of dating someone else right now, too. And I’d like to keep seeing both of you.” I’ll let you all guess how well that was taken. We lost touch that summer and he ended up transferring to another college that was a better fit for him. As of writing this, I searched for him on facebook and found nothing. Then I googled him (in the name of blogging, of course). The only dirt I could find is that he is an Eagle Scout. How anticlimactic.

As for Frat Boy, he came over to my room to watch a movie and promptly hopped onto my bed with his shoes still on. Unfortunately for him, twin-sized beds and dirty shoes aren’t really good for putting the moves on a girl. I bid him farewell during finals week, and never saw him again. Last I heard, he dropped off, moved back to Texas then came back to college after I had left.

So there you have it, an end to the faceless masses of cute boys that composed my first year of university.

The Parade of Mistakes

So I have this special talent. Actually, it’s not really a talent and it’s not that special. It’s more of a matter of bad timing. But when I’m out and about, I generally run into people I know. Leisurely stroll, errand running, driving my car around town, you name it. I will bump into someone. And for whatever reason, it’s usually a former lover. College town, home town, current large city, even foreign countries. There was the time a few years ago that I was riding with a friend back to my home city on the highway and passed Junior in his Mom’s SUV, lip-synching with the windows down. I crouched down and escaped his notice. But this does not compare to the Parade of Mistakes.

Back to my freshman year of college. I was ambling toward the gym with a friend, which was a 15-minute walk from my dormitory. First, we ran into Ginger. I averted my gaze successfully. I then spotted my former Chemistry class crush on the way back to his dorm. Our study sessions had ended only in an enhanced learning of the material, much to my chagrin. We said hi and waved. Upon finally approaching the gym, my friend spotted someone familiar. “Effie, is that…..?” I looked at where she was gesturing. Who else was entering the gym but Burger? Of course. I put my headphones on and had the run of my life on a treadmill. My friend and I later dubbed this series of unfortunate men the “parade of mistakes”.

My “special talent” continues to this day and will assuredly follow me to my next destination. Who knows which former lovers, ex-boyfriends, and crushes of yesteryear I’ll run into next?

Burger the sophomore

It was Valentine’s Day Eve, freshman year of college. I borrowed a “going-out top” from my roommate and headed off to some off-campus party, presumably thrown by the older friend of a hallmate or someone else with a tenuous connection. I sure don’t remember now. As I sipped on my “jungle juice”, I was approached by a dark and handsome guy who vaguely resembled Ron Livingston (better known as the character ‘Burger’ on Sex and the City to my female friends, and as Peter Gibbons from Office Space to many others ). We flirted and danced, exchanged numbers, then parted ways. I spent the next evening, Valentine’s Day proper, at a small gathering where people played spin the bottle and took their clothes off. Needless to say, it was a little overwhelming to my virginal 18-year-old self. Fortunately, Burger called me at some point.

We hung out the next weekend, then an increasing amount in February and March. I started sleeping over in his dorm room across campus more frequently. My twice-weekly walks of shame were 20 minutes uphill in dubious weather, complete with morning-after hair and mascara streaks around my eyes. If this was the kind of story that I’d tell to my future grandkids, I would get to complain that I “walked for miles in the snow uphill” but I’m pretty sure you don’t tell your grandchildren about such matters. Unless they took place with Grandpa.

I started to really like Burger. He was that necessary combo of cute/smart/funny, but I hadn’t yet discovered he was lacking an inner warmth and kindness. We didn’t have “the talk”, better known as the DTR or “define the relationship” before we left for Spring Break, but I figured we would be on track to keep seeing each other through the end of the semester. And who knows? Maybe a little summer rendezvous since we would “only” be 2 hours apart. I was hoping to make him my next official boyfriend and even engaged in oral sex to prove it. I certainly don’t condone fellatio or cunnilingus as a method to jump-start a relationship, but at the time it meant a lot to me and I thought we were going somewhere. I attempted to hang out with Burger our first week back from break.

He was busy. “Oh, that’s ok, maybe this weekend?” He gave me a vague affirmation and I set my sights on a dining hall dinner date that Friday. He never called. I called his cell phone and left a charming message that was neither too forward nor too weak. He was not signed onto AIM. I called his room phone # just once and it kept ringing. I backed off. I know when I’m being avoided. No need to keep dialing. I spent the rest of the weekend being mopey and hoping I wouldn’t run into Burger. I was lucky then, but not in the future.

First, there was the Parade of Mistakes, fodder for a forthcoming entry. I saw Burger again the following summer while I was studying abroad. It wasn’t some fantastical chance meeting in Paris or a shared gondola in Venice; rather, he was visiting a friend that was in my study abroad group. Oh. Then I ran into him yet again later that year at some club in another city. We just exchanged knowing glances and left it at that. This whole story falls into the “crushed ego” category rather than the “broken heart” one, so I suppose that’s somewhat of a triumph.

currently

While I continue to dredge up my stories from college, I still have several years to cover and it may take a while. I figured a little update about where my love life currently stands couldn’t hurt.

I’m sort of seeing someone but we’re  in between the stages of friends-with-benefits and boyfriend-girlfriend, and have been since we met in January. It’s long distance, but is about to be a shorter distance, then long again by the end of the summer. We’re not even friends on facebook, but are willing to travel hundreds of miles to see each other. He’s a decent guy but not really boyfriend material, and definitely not Future Husband material. He is, however, the only person I’ve slept with so far in 2010. I’m giving myself a high-five for pretending that my current dry spell is instead something resembling monogamy. But as my Twitter updates may reflect, I’m constantly on the prowl, at least in my head.

Do I think I’ve met my future husband yet? No. I have  jokingly given this nickname to one guy, but I met him in May 2009 and haven’t seen him in person since. I occasionally comment on his facebook status updates, but I haven’t even googled the guy. I’d categorize this as more of a long-distance crush that will hopefully fade due to the distance between our current East Coast cities. But you never know.

the grilled cheese incident

When I wasn’t busy getting gum stuck in my hair freshman year, I was sort of casually dating someone from back home, Amos. We met through mutual friends and I was immediately into him because he was well-spoken and insightful while maintaining killer abs. These are important qualities to 18-year-old females. I bummed rides back home several times in the fall semester, and we would hang out with or without my friends (one cuddly movie-watching experience got crashed by two of my guy friends). He even came to visit me during fall break (again, with friends).

I was a tad intimidated by the age difference (he was 4 years older) and otherwise still shaken by my disastrous rebound from Junior (thanks, Ginger), so we kept our clothes on. By Winter Break, my interest was waning, and I spent New Year’s party-hopping around my hometown with my best friend. We stopped by a party with that group of friends, and Amos and I didn’t share a New Year’s Kiss (if only I had known then that my future romantic NYE experiences would be either full of foreshadowing or generally ridiculous). We generally talked online less and less after I returned to college, until February 12.

I was about to leave my dorm room to enjoy some grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner with my friends when he IM’ed me (this was a time of AOL Instant Messenger, pre-gchat or facebook chat or whatever college kids use these days). This wasn’t a casual, pointless conversation that I could easily brush off; he wanted to have a dating post-mortem. I was stuck. My roommate waited for a while, but then she had to move on with the group. He included such gems as “I think you liked dating me because of the distance, both physical and emotional.” For someone who I hadn’t seen naked, this seemed a bit heavy. I held it together in the hopes that we would let me go if I listened politely for long enough. After what seemed like an eternity, I said goodbye, signed off, and high-tailed it to the dining hall. If you know me, you know not to come between me and food. You also know not to put your feet on my bed if your shoes are still on, but that’s a story for later in the year.

Jan Levinson on inappropriate men

This is a deleted scene from The Office episode ‘Cocktails’ that I always found funny (and dare I say relevant?) Thanks to OfficeQuotes.net.

Jan: I am attracted to weird, wrong men. I dated a violent karate instructor and then an unemployed fireman. Life has been complicated. I’ve made some decisions that I’m not proud of; my marriage, being overly litigious with my family. I orgasm fairly easily. Michael was kind of like my dirty secret, you know, having sex with him, oh I was just turned on by my own degradation. Um, why, anyway, I was told by somebody recently that I respect that I’m old enough to have a mature relationship, and that’s what this whole evening is about and I have high hopes.

Bonus from the episode itself:

Jan: I am taking a calculated risk. What’s the upside? I overcome my nausea, fall deeply in love, babies, normalcy, no more self loathing. Downside? I, uh, date Michael Scott publicly and collapse in on myself like a dying star.

Gummy

I’ll keep this one short. Gummy and I met at a party fall semester freshman year when a guy friend brought him along.  We danced and drank, then took the bus back to campus with my extended group of friends. I offered him half of my last piece of Orbit gum, since I could tell a makeout was on the horizon. Back in my dorm, people started crowding into our room to watch Animal House. Someone took my bed, so we slid into my roommate’s vacant lower bunk. It was dark and we thought we were being sly while everyone else watched John Belushi, so we started quietly, slowly making out. Then something wasn’t right.

His gum was in my hair. I tried not to freak out, but the alcohol sure wasn’t helping. We ducked into the bathroom and one of my guy friends (who had incidentally asked me out on a date earlier that week) followed. The three of us set up an assembly line in the bathroom, attempting to shampoo out the spearmint Orbit from my hair without having to cut it. Sadly, scissors were needed. By this point, the other 7 people in my room knew what was up. Unsurprisingly, the gum was a moodkiller and we didn’t touch each other again or exchange numbers.

The aftermath: Gummy and I saw each other fairly often during the rest of our college careers but never could really look at each other in the eye. I couldn’t chew the spearmint flavor of Orbit for a solid year after the incident. Until a friend hooked up with him sophomore year, he was in fact referred to as Gummy by our circle of friends. Also, I didn’t see Animal House in its entirety until junior year.

Ginger and Me

Ginger is the reason I will never date, kiss, or otherwise be attracted to another redhead. We met during the orientation period of our freshman year at college, a time fraught with drinking, making new friends, and not yet having any classes to skip. While I was near the end with Junior, I met Ginger during some evening orientation event. We hit it off as friends, then began hanging out since he lived in my building. This was also my first and last case of dormcest (the act of hooking up with someone who lives in your dorm). Things started off nicely; he walked around campus with me, talking about academics and life, and commiserating with my recent breakup. Then things got weird.

He wanted to see me every night. He tried to attend every party that I went to with my friends. He stole display vegetables and fruit from the dining hall. He showed other freshman males how to do their laundry, then collected the dryer lint because it was good to start fires with (I have the Boy Scouts to thank for teaching him that tip). He was a really aggressive kisser, then became just generally aggressive.

I broke it off after only 3 weeks of hanging out, with even less of that time actually spent “dating” or making out in his dorm room. He did not take it well, as one might surmise from the above warning signs. He tracked me down at some party, where I loudly told him off by the keg, then left in a mix of tears and fury. One night while drinking (ok, “pregaming”)  in our room with some of the guys from downstairs, he knocked. We, being the mature group of 18-year-olds that we were, decided to ignore him. He kept knocking, louder and louder, until we all became fearful that he would call the RA. He made some sorry pleas, then shortly afterward desisted from following me. I still saw him collecting dryer lint from time to time, but that’s why dormcest is so bad. You’re stuck living in the same building as them even when the ~romance is over.

He started dating another girl in our dorm who looked eerily like me, then moved on to her best friend (also in our dorm). Sophomore year, he pulled a knife on her when she tried to break up with him, then got arrested after she called the cops. And that’s, fortunately, the last I heard of Ginger.