February

Thank god I was out of town the next weekend for a change of scenery. Kissed a few boys, took a few numbers and promptly threw them out.

The next weekend I told Wingman we had to get out of our normal stomping grounds as I couldn’t take running into another rerun. Ventured downtown and we went to this Italian place where a lot of rich and famous people hang out. After getting hit on by a bunch of Arabs who I was half convinced were going to sell us into slavery and some old, married men, we decided we needed to change our scenery. Went a few other places, ended up with another number to add to the pile and eventually made it safely back to the lair - alone.

Well, I have hit a new low. For a couple of reasons. So, the third weekend in February after being out Friday night and having some guy grab my hand and put it on his dick… seriously, what about me screams hooker?? I am a smart, nice, attractive, funny, girl and it is insane that boys think they can behave this way. I didn’t even know this guy’s first name! My Wingman was talking to his friend and I was taking one for the team by talking to the others.

On Saturday night we went to a couple of places in DC and met some of Wingman’s friends at this one trendy spot. This is where we meet the next group of nightmares in my ever continuing life. So one is from CA (“art dealer”) and the other is in the military staying at Quantico for the time being. It was an enjoyable conversation, but we knew they were young, didn’t know how young, and we all took our leave to adventure out into the night. On a side note, later on I ran into “Mr. Saturday night” from before – that I completely blew off – and that was a total nightmare. Not even worth getting into the details. So much for venturing out of Arlington to avoid the repeats…

Well, I got art dealer’s name and number on Saturday night since he asked for mine and I don’t give it out. I knew he was flying out on Monday so the only opportunity to see him was Sunday. He had said he wanted to get together on Sunday and I found out on Sunday night, he actually went to where we were going to be Saturday night, but we had already left. Anyway, I called him and we agreed to meet up for drinks around 8pm.

I convinced Wingman to join me and he had invited two of his friends. So we all had a great conversation and hanging out and around 10:30pm my Wingman decides to leave since she had to get up very early for work travel. I decide to stay because the art dealer wants to hang out and chat and take me up to his room (oh come on I wasn’t born yesterday!) and show me the view as there was a nice view of the White House. Plus I know he wants to kiss me and a couple of drinks later I want to kiss him too. So, again, enjoyable time, we are kissing and touching – of course nothing too naughty because I'm just not going there.

We are talking at the same time and it comes around to age. He says he is 22, which of course makes me want to crawl in a hole and die, but again, men have being pulling this shit for years so WTF? So I eventually reveal my age and I am telling you, as soon as I did he could not get me out of there fast enough. First, it was “you are so gorgeous”, “I am so into you”, asking me all these questions about life, books, thoughts, career, etc., but damn. As soon as I said how old I was he gave me this bullshit about how that makes me even sexier and that he couldn’t handle it and that he couldn’t continue on, started putting on his shoes, got my shoes to put on, and made it clear it was time to go. Seriously, made me feel like shit. Walked me out to my car, gave me a quick kiss and gave me this bullshit about how it was really nice meeting me. Jesus Christ. I am not prone to crying especially over someone I don’t even know, but I could not have felt lower.

Between him, and birthday boy, and the married men, I feel like an empty shell. Like I am just this pretty girl that guys just use when the whim strikes them. It is really getting so difficult to be nice to people when you get shit on time and time again for one reason or another. I just may be one bad date away from bitter and I so don’t want to be "that guy". At this moment, as it is 1:30am and this just happened, I really want to curl in a ball and cry. I can’t and I won’t, but I so don’t want to be one of those people that are so jaded and cynical because life – basically this type of crap I am dealing with – just makes you so damn bitter. And I hate it, but it fucking does.

January 2005

Second weekend of January ’05 – So Wingman and I are out at a sports bar because it is the football playoffs and that is where the men are after all. I personally don’t like the place, but I took one for the team. So I spy this guy (we’ll call him “coach”) at the beginning of the night and we are checking each other out, playing the game, and hours later at the end of the night, we are dancing and kissing on the dance floor. So hot. Coach comes back to the lair. More kissing – and let me mention he has whiskers that are like sandpaper on my face for which it takes my face over two weeks to recover! – and some fooling around above the equator of course. Then coach says to me “I want to tell you something. I want to give you an orgasm. No strings attached.” Is he kidding me? In a perfect world that would be amazing, but we know men. It’s total bullshit. There are always strings. It’s a ploy to get the pants off and get you that much closer to getting him off. Are there women that delusional to think that men do these things as a selfless act? Apparently men think there are… Got his number. Called him once afterwards. One of the most boring conversations I have ever had in my life so he had “to die” in my world.

Third weekend of January ’05 on Saturday – Wingman and I are out another Saturday night. She is digging this guy, which has a friend and I try to tell her the guy she is hitting on is a L-O-S-E-R capital L exclamation point. But c’est la vie. You can’t control lust mixed with drunkenness although she picks up the clue phone by the end of the night. However, now I am stuck with his friend. He is not too bad, but no one I would ever go for. Another phone number to add to the growing collection… Mr. Saturday night…

The next night on Sunday – convinced Wingman to go out Sunday night even though she was hurting after one too many tequila shots the night before. Monday was the MLK holiday after all and the inauguration traffic was coming in! So we start off downtown at one of the politico hangouts thinking we might meet some interesting people – but no. The most interesting person was the bartender – and capital N capital O.

So, discouraged, we head back to our stomping grounds to see if we can find some action. To my dismay, she is dragging me back to the sports bar I hate, but at this point I have given up on meeting anyone interesting and decided Wingman and I were going to have fun amongst ourselves, which definitely isn’t too difficult.

Well, I have been wrong before and I am sure I’ll be wrong again.

So I go to the bathroom and on my return get grabbed by some guy who says it is his birthday, wants a birthday kiss and that he just got back to the states this morning after 4 ½ months. I have to check my driver’s license to make sure I wasn’t born yesterday… But he proves it to me by showing me the birth date on his license so he gets a peck on the cheek. That is when I step back to realize how cute he actually is. Obviously a borderline nightmare considering the approach, but as I am in the “dating like a man” phase – jimmy crack corn.

Later that night back at “Birthday boy’s” apartment, we talked and laughed and got down to the kissing and north of the equator fooling around. So he says to me at one point “I want to give you an orgasm. I want you to make you feel good.” So I’m thinking – this is the second time in 8 days I have heard this… Did I miss a memo? Did all of the men get together, have a meeting and decide that this was the line that got women to take their pants off and was almost guaranteed to end in sex?? Seriously, are you kidding? Note to any men that are reading this – we think you are ridiculous when you say things like this, we want to laugh in your face, the story will be told over and over to our friends and who knows who else (case in point).

Despite this, in an unprecedented move I spend the night at birthday boy’s apartment. Note: I am not a fan of spending the night with men unless I feel comfortable with them. Even IF there is sex I want them out right afterward. Usually I am thinking of some way to get them out (“I have an early day” is a timeless classic) if I have the home team advantage or on the rare occasion I am at their place I am screaming “I want to go home!” in my head and plotting some way to make my escape. However, as persuasive and as sexy as the birthday boy was, I kept the pants on… at least that night and into the early afternoon. My second unprecedented move that I even stayed that long.

So the next Friday, I was supposed to go out with Mr. Saturday night (from when I was taking one for the team) that Friday night, but I called him Friday afternoon and cancelled. I was battling this sore throat/cold thing Thurs & Fri and didn't want to push it and get really sick. I also finally called Birthday boy (since I, of course, took his number and had really been meaning to call him) after I got home from work on Friday. He was going to a party then out at ~10pm in DC and asked if I wanted to meet up with him later. As much as I did - sadly this one intrigues me and no good can come of it - I said I would probably be too settled in by that time to do much of anything. So I got into my PJs, put my hair in a ponytail and pulled my hair back in a headband to clean my face and settle in for the evening.

9:15pm the phone rings. It's Birthday boy (BB) and I'm still in PJs, ponytail and headband. He says he decided not to go out after all and wanted to know if I would like to come over to hang out and drink some wine. How could I say no??? He’s so fucking sexy!

So I get pseudo directions and of course got lost near his place because I am geographically challenged, called BB for him to try to get me found again, my cell phone dies while we are on the phone, his phone # is in my dead cell phone so I can't pull over and tell him to meet me somewhere, I have the vaguest directions EVER to his place - not even the name of his complex (don't know what I was thinking!?!)... so after driving around and around I finally say f-this - I am going home. So I get back on the beltway heading home, got off again, and circled back to try once again because I really wanted to see him. I even pulled over and pulled out a map! WTF? I haven't made THIS MUCH effort for ANY guy since the one who broke my heart....

Needless to say, I got there over an hour later when it should have taken me 15 minutes. The sex was so amazing it was worth it. True to form I left at 4am.

BB and I had talked about getting together on Wednesday after this dinner thing he had. At 9:30pm I gave up, got into PJs and had just finished brushing my teeth when the phone rang. Another thing that is important to understand is that I don’t like to go out during the week. I’m normally exhausted after work, I have to get up early and if I am going to go out it needs to be earlier on in the evening. So surprise of all surprises – I went. I also have to say BB is going to be a successful negotiator in life as he was actually able to convince me to get out of my PJs at 9:30pm when I had a huge presentation at 9am the next morning and come over and spend the night. We fucked against the wall in the entrance hallway before I even took my coat off. Then we continued on for the next hour and a half. Not to mention him waking me up at 2:30am to fuck again. The gods are smiling on me because it is hot and it’s fucking good.

Talked to Mr. Saturday night the next night and he asked if we were still on for the weekend. So, I’m thinking “did I lose my mind? I’m sorry, did we have plans?” What the hell makes men assume that we are going to hang out with them without explicitly making plans just because we hooked up? So he gets a little pissy with me, but I could really care less. My weekends are for meeting new men not dealing with reruns. Now he must “die”.

So, on the last Saturday of January, Wingman and I are hitting the town. Not only do we run into Mr. Saturday night’s L-O-S-E-R friend and other friends, but one of those other “friends” would not stop hitting on me. Some things in life are so amusing to me. Such as how can people refer to men as “dogs”? Dogs are at least loyal… Anyway, Wingman and I decide enough is enough and it is time to go home, but I lost her somewhere around the coat check. So I waited and waited by the door for Wingman, but finally gave up after a series of inane conversations with random people. She ended up being downstairs on the couch by the coat check (I obviously completely missed her) talking to “coach” – the guy I hooked up with a couple of weeks ago that destroyed my face with his whiskers. Me thinks we are going to have to find new places to hang out….

And so it begins...

About 10 months ago the love of my life broke my heart for which I will never be the same again. It took me about six months to even think about dating again, and once I decided to, I decided I was going to date like a man. Basically without feeling.

So in a nutshell, I find it amusing being a 30-something single gal after being off the dating scene for almost a decade. I come across too many funny stories while out there and while I can regale my married friends with these anecdotes, it’s too much to keep to myself.

It seems a shame to briefly backtrack on some of these stories, but they crack me up too much to pass up, but after that I’ll just move forward on the weekend adventures.

… and so it begins....

So back at the end of August ‘04, a married male friend of mine and I were going out to happy hour on a Friday to catch up. He, in turn, decided to invite one of his friends. Not realizing it was going to be a social hour I invited my girlfriend – my “Wingman” – to come along too. I have to admit I was so not attracted to my friend’s contribution to the party at all – Mr. Balding-bordering-on-comb-over (even though he had a Schwarzenegger body circa 1976… and DAMN). Honestly, I would not have given him the time of day had he not been with my friend. When my friend introduced him to me, the sun was shining off of his bald head through the thinning hair blinding me and in my head was this uncontrollable laughter and I had to concentrate on not vocalizing that laughter. Why is it men hang on to scraps… who do they think they are kidding?! A-N-Y-W-A-Y, after four or five beers he started to look good to me, not to mention the sun had set, so I decided to take him home to the lair. Funny how that happens…

So get this… He is trying to get my shirt off and I’m fighting it because I don’t want to be “that guy” or in this case “that girl”. Even though at this point it’s been SIX MONTHS since I had sex and I’m dying over here. So he literally says – and I tell you this while still stifling a laugh – “c’mon baby, skin on skin. It feels so natural” to convince me to take off my shirt. Skin on skin?? I mean seriously – is this guy f’real? Are you kidding me? Were men always this big of a nightmare or have I been out of the pool so long that I don’t remember…

He ended up not being as big of a nightmare as he first came off and we hung out until December which is when I decided I needed something new.

So skip forward to December ‘04… I have to say that I want to stay a realist about relationships and not become too cynical, but within a one week period of time I have two married men and one sort of, kind of not really engaged man try to get with me. First one was when I was out of town for work and a married man that I have known through work for about a year and a half shows up at my hotel room at 1am after a work related party and wants to get naked. Huh?! We have never been anything, but casual friends with the common thread being work. A group of us were to get together that evening so I had left him a message earlier with the number to the hotel along with the room number for when he rang back, to see if he was still going to go. NOTHING implied anything more then “let’s all hang out”.

Second one is where Wingman and I are out the Friday after I got back from that trip (otherwise known as 20 hours after the first incident) and these two guys come up and start talking to us. So we chat, he buys me drinks, we go dancing, he starts kissing me, and as the night wears on Wingman and I decide to take the two of them back to the lair. So we do A LOT of kissing any some fooling around above the equator. Then I find out he is a decade younger then me (buzz kill), which I justify as men have been doing it for centuries so who cares. I have the uncanny ability to justify almost anything! So anyway, he thinks he is going to do the horizontal mambo – for the record I am all about hooking up and kissing and maybe a little under the shirt action – but that is where it ends. So he is trying and saying things like – I could really fall for you, you are so beautiful, I could see us being together for the next 40 years… (does he think I fell off the turnip truck yesterday?!). So I convince him it isn’t going to happen and we fall asleep.

The next morning, Mr. Young buck asks for my phone number, but I tell him no – I don’t give it out, however, I will take his. To interrupt I have this steadfast rule about never, ever giving out my phone number. If a guy asks me for mine, I tell him no, but I’ll take his. The reason is twofold. One, I don’t want my phone number out there nor have people I have no interest in have it. Two, I think it is bullshit when guys ask for a girl’s number and never call so I decided to go on the offensive and take the power away from them. If you really break it down it is all about power and decided if they want my number that badly, they will accept giving me theirs… So he gives me his phone number and he and his pal are on their way. I wait the standard 48-72 hours to call him, and when I do, he answers and says “I’ll call you right back” *click*. Okay. Whatever. About two minutes later I get a call from him and this chick is screaming in the background “fucking bitch, fucking slut, whore…” etc. and I’m like WTF? So he proceeds to tell me how he “forgot” to tell me how he had a fiancée and that he admitted to her how he cheated on her. Then he proceeds to profusely apologize to me. Being practically a zygote he obviously has no clue. He was Mr. Right Now for the night and meant nothing. Then we hang up. Five minutes later, phone rings. His number. Again – WTF? So I answer. It’s the Young buck. He begins to apologize again and again about how they had previously broken up and… I’m thinking – buddy, I could so care less. Not like I am picking out china patterns or anything. You were the Saturday night equivalent of John Doe. Then he seriously proceeds to ask for advice on how to handle the situation with the girl. And I’m thinking – what world am I living in?? Are you kidding me? You are asking the girl you hooked up with 60 hours ago what you should do to handle cheating on your ex-girlfriend who seems to consider she-is-your-fiancée-when-it-is-convenient-to-do-so. I immediately got off the phone.

You’d think the story would end there, but the VERY NEXT NIGHT he calls me again to try to explain they are broken up and she keeps changing the rules. This clown obviously has no idea how much I don’t care. To top it all off, at the end of the conversation he asks me out. I immediately block his number. The ocean is swimming – who needs this shit.

So the third was an email from a guy that I finished dating four years ago that is currently married. The email goes on to say how much he stills thinks about me, that I have made a lasting impression on him that never goes away, that he still sees my face, smells my body, and laughs at the funny things that I used to say. Closing the email with that I will always have a part of his heart, that he misses me, he hopes that we can see each other really soon and that he will always love me.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s flattering, but what the fuck is up with the universe?