A few weeks ago, I had the weekend to end all weekends (until this one, when it is my birthday, and I plan to be drunk for a week). I met my Pilot in the bar, and promptly (read: after 5 minutes) stuck my tongue down his throat, texted my friends, and whisked him off to a dvdbang.
I like to keep things classy.
We were…watching a movie….when he pulled away from me. “I want to date you,” he said. I laughed and kept kissing him. He pulled away again. “No really. You’re too good for a one night stand.”
“Stop with the bullshit,” I said. “Just have some fun.”
Later, afterwards, we were….I cringe to say it….cuddling, and talking. I KNOW. He brought it up again. “Really,” he said. “I would like to take you out on a date.” I sighed. “You don’t believe me?” he said.
“No. You picked me up in a bar, and we had some fun in a dvdbang.”
“Well, I really want to take you out for dinner.”
Listen, I said: I like sex. I don’t need sex to be tied to a relationship. “But women – ” Bullshit. I like sex – I’m not stupid. You don’t need to say any of this to get me into bed: I’m here already. At least I’m honest about my one night stands.
He shook his head angrily. “You don’t understand,” he said.
And maybe I didn’t. I gave him my number. “Prove me wrong,” I said as I got into a cab. And before I got back out again, he’d texted me.
Maybe he will call me again. Maybe he does want to take me out, for real. And maybe, if he does, I’ll even say yes.
But I like my cynicism – it keeps me warm and safe.
* my apologies for my blatant misrepresentation of and insensitivy to those who are actually developmentally challenged. I would rather spend my time with them than with the people this post is about.
The other night I went to a bar. Somehow, every asshole male with an over-inflated sense of self -entitlement and was ALSO at the same bar that night. Somehow, they all wanted a piece. It was like a competition, a fashion show, and they all brought out their best self-entitled behavior to model for me!
LIKE I’D BE IMPRESSED.
Asshole #1! is a man I’ve been working with for eight months. Our staff room functions largely like a high school cafeteria, and there is always somebody sitting at the wrong table. With that in mind, I try to approach any situation with an aim to keep the drama, conflict, and outright hostility out of the way. So when #1! kissed me the first time, I assumed he was just being drunken and silly. I laughed it off. The second time, I firmly took a step backwards, but didn’t tell him off because a) drama! and b) he was to drunk to understand, and I didn’t have the patience to drag it out until he sobered up. The third time, I was starting to get pissed off. This is not a man who has feelings for me. He does not secretly wish to date me. I have not rejected dates or broken his heart. I am, however, ignored until he wants to be made out with (passive voice chosen intentionally) every few weeks. Fuck off, #1.
Ok, you’re saying. A few unwanted kisses. A little bit of unprofessional behaviour, some discomfort at work. Doesn’t really sound like there were any olympics going on, even if kiss 2 and 3 happened on the same night.
Asshole #2! is a man I also have to work with (I’d like to point out that the necessity to work with someone immediately increases the stakes when embarking on assholery). I met him just a few days before and I need to work with him in the cafeteria/staffroom for four more months. He’s also married, but left his wife in his home country for the year. I agreed to dance with him. I did not agree to be fondled, felt up, made out with. I did not agree to have his tongue in my mouth. And I did not agree to be made to feel uncomfortable when, instead of telling him to fuck off, I quietly refused to dance with him again. I’ve already been made to feel uncomfortable on the dance floor, I am in the awkward position of either being gossiped about or causing gossip to happen to someone who just arrived, and I really really don’t need to justify my refusal to dance. What the hell was I supposed to be – a sex toy until his wife showed up? You don’t develop feelings for someone that are worth breaking up a marriage for in 3 days, so…..THE HELL?
Perhaps I need to rethink the priority list – #1 – telling men who cross boundaries to fuck off. #2 – avoiding discomfort at work. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
Asshole #3! is a man I met at the bar. We danced, we kissed a little, and then we went our separate ways. It was fun, but we’re talking 15 minutes of fun here, not a relationship. A little perspective would be nice, here. He chased me out to ask for my number, and when he told the story later (to MY FRIENDS), he said that my demanding that he be polite to me and then kissing him and agreeing to give him my number was my ‘bitching him out and ruining his night’. He didn’t call me. I didn’t hunt him down. Clearly, neither of us were that interested. So when I showed up at the bar two weeks later, with my friends, and saw him with his friends, throwing myself at him wasn’t the first thing I thought of. He came to talk to me, and we made small talk (remember: we’ve never had a conversation!) and then he asked me if I remembered him.
“Yep!” I said.
“Well, why didn’t you come to talk to me?” he said.
“Well, you didn’t call me,” I shrugged.
“I guess you don’t want to hear my REASONS, huh?” he said.
“Uh, not particularly.” Could he not understand that I just didn’t care? He stormed away, stormed back again.
“We just kissed,” he lectured. “That doesn’t mean anything. What exactly do you want?” Uh, I want to be left alone by men who aren’t interested in me, who I am not interested in, and who somehow want me to still feed their ego by being all over them after they don’t call me. I don’t need to have my evening hijacked by some egotistical asshole who gives me lectures at the bar because he’s feeling neglected. What exactly did I owe him?
Asshole #4! is a man that I have spoken to for a collective 4 minutes over 6 months. The second 2 minutes occurred at this bar, where I reminded him of my name and where he had seen me before. Then we both turned away. I began talking to another man, he began talking to…someone. Next thing I knew, he had grabbed me and was dragging me away from my conversation.
“Hey, what are you doing?” he said. I guess he saw my face, because then he said, “What the fuck’s your problem?”
“You,” I said. “You are my problem.”
“Why the fuck am I your problem?” he yelled.
“Because you’re grabbing me,” I said, pulling my arm away. Up his hands went in the air, defensively.
“SORRY!” he said. Like maybe I’d done something wrong in asking him not to touch me. Like maybe I’d requested something completely unreasonable by wanting to decide which part of the bar I was in by myself. If he was my boyfriend, I’d have broken up with him on the spot, but he didn’t even have that excuse for stopping a conversation with another man. I don’t know this man. We are not friends. We’ve never had a relationship.
By the end of the night, battered and exhausted, I went home and called my mother, who told me that ‘girls who drink are unattractive’ and that I ‘must be driving all the good men away’.
ouch.
Well, I bit the bullet. I e-mailed the boy and asked him out. I said, in very clear language, that I had a really good time and that I’d like to see him again.
Some backstory: last week, against my better judgement, I went to the bar. Then, I met a boy, had sex, stayed up until five am, and didn’t get enough sleep before work.
At 4am, I was in his apartment. I came downstairs to see that he was wearing clothes (a massive shift in the balance of power, that) and checking his e-mail.
“Well, I guess I’ll go home,” I said.
He turned around. “Ok.”
What do you mean, ok? I thought. Can’t you tell that I want to stay? What’s wrong with you?
Boy: still taking me at face value.
Me: So I guess I’m being kicked out. Fine.
What have we learned? I have a university education. I’m a grown-up. I’m financially independent. I’m living quite successfully in a foreign country where I don’t know the language. I still can’t communicate in a functional manner.
Fast forward: I e-mailed him. It’s been six days since I didn’t sleep over.
I can hear you saying, “But, you’re a theatre major! Aren’t you trained to be passive aggressive? To make things more complicated than they need to be? To create drama where there was none before?!”
Yes. Yes I am. I am very, very good at all of the above (but, surprisingly, not the top of my class). I AM BREAKING FREE.
But if this bites me in the ass……I’m reverting.
“Wait!” he shouted as I left the bar. I turned around. He was running out the door after me.
I drank slightly more that night than I usually do. I definitely indulged myself.
“You’re going to leave without saying goodbye?”
Yeah, I was leaving without saying goodbye. We danced before going back to our friends. I didn’t even know the guys’ name (not that I hadn’t asked – but the music was loud and I only said ‘pardon’ three times before nodding).
“Hey! Give me your number!”
I turned around. “Give me your number, PLEASE!” I said.
My friends, holding the elevator open for me, lost it.
I don’t know what’s worse: that a strange man kissed me in a bar, or that it was more action than I’ve gotten in months.
I amuse myself by watching really terrible tv.
And I have taken, recently, to watching the Craig Ferguson show.
I don’t even like these talk shows. Leno, Letterman, Ferguson (all on one after the other) – I watch them, but I don’t think they’re funny. I think I watch them for the feeling of scorn, and smugness, I can’t have the during the day when I’m working with small children. You can’t snort and roll your eyes at a twelve-year-old you’re being paid to teach, but you CAN snort at Letterman. And I do. Frequently.
Don’t judge me.
Anyway, I really don’t like the Craig Ferguson Show, regardless of a certain charming, disarming smile that Craig (we’re on a first-name basis) occasionally displays. A charming, disarming boyish smile that reminds me of the boy. the boy I’ve not heard from, or of, in months. The one I accidentally liked. The boy who I also don’t really like, but I want him to smile like that at me, anyway.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell me that I’m a bottle of medicinal sherry and a couple of cats away from sheer lunacy.
I think I figured it out.
On Sundays I watch a show called ‘Man Vs Wild’, and something’s been bugging me about it. Something was reminding me of something and I didn’t know what.
I think I figured it out.
When he’s grunting, lifting something heavy or climbing up a sheer rock face or hauling himself out of a hole, the grunting and heavy breathing sound exactly like my most recent ex did when he was having sex with me.
I promise he was more sexy than he sounds, but now I don’t really think I can watch that show anymore.
i recently had sex with no kissing.
i’ve always considered kissing very important – the most important part, even, of sex. i’d much rather have bad sex than bad kissing. i’ve even stopped when the kissing was bad, made my excuses, and refused to go any further.
good kissing is a skill. it’s a hard one to learn, an even harder one to teach, and damn near impossible to find.
and i recently had sex with no kissing.
i couldn’t kiss anyone – health reasons got in the way of my night. but boy decided to come over anyway. yes, the one night stand. a one night stand that is now a two night stand.
don’t JUDGE me.
all stupid decisions aside, when he rang my doorbell at 5:30am, i got out of bed, answered the door in my underwear, and let him in. and had some of the best sex i’ve had, without kissing. this shocked me. this amazed me. awed me, you could even say. i was not expecting this to be good.
the last time this happened, the boy in question decided to kiss me anyway. he waited an agonizing 5 minutes. i was expecting the same thing this time.
but he didn’t. not once either time we had sex. not when he showed up. not before we went to sleep. not when he got up, or when he left my apartment.
somehow it ended up being very intimate, which is weird, for two reasons: the first being, of course, that casual, one night stand sex is rarely intimate, even if it’s the second one night stand. and the second being that kissing is the most intimate, sometimes the only intimate, part of sex.
and now i have a wildly inappropriate definitely unrequited crush. and under the circumstances, a third one night stand would be very unwise indeed.
the question is, knowing that, will i answer the door next time?
whelp, two of my co-workers saw me bringing home a bottle of wine after work today. it’s going to take me a month to convince them that a) i am not teaching hungover tomorrow and b) i’m not a sad, lonely acloholic with cats. lots of cats.
listen. a glass of wine with dinner after a long and stressful day is CIVILISED, people. it’s not like i’m drinking it from the bottle at noon in front of Oprah on a workday.
they don’t know that i’m drinking it from a mug (i don’t have wine glasses yet. don’t JUDGE), or that i’m watching downloaded episodes of weeds on my laptop with a tub of ice cream, a bottle of coke, and a tube of grossly overpriced pringles, or that i’m on the second day of my period and as far into my depression as the drugs will let me go.
or that i’m getting crumbs in my bed and i’m far too lazy to do anything about it before i go to sleep.
i know. i KNOW. this is my own fault. there was no reason to have the period, except for my own goddamn hypochondria. i decided that in light of the fact that buying a pregnancy test is very difficult in korea, at least if you don’t know the language and don’t know where to look, that going through a week of hell to make doubly (triply!) sure i wasn’t pregnant was a good idea.
i do this every time, you know. its actually a pretty good thing i don’t get laid that often.
especially given how well it went last time.
ok, so i went out with a bunch of people i don’t know/just met. we went to a few bars, we played a few highly inappropriate drinking games, the like of which i was sure i’d grown out of in first year, and we went to a noraebang*. by the time we stumbled home, carrying cans of beer down the street, the sun was coming up and we stopped to get breakfast. beer and scrambled eggs go really well together at 8am.
well, one of them came home with me. i hate it when that happens! and he…well, he tried to fist me, shoved a finger up my ass so quickly and roughly i nearly cried, passed out under me, fell asleep naked and standing up against my door, and spent the rest of the night sleeping on my bathroom floor because he liked how cold the floor was.
when he sobered up he was quite lovely, actually, despite the fact that he was american, 32, and ‘pretty sure he had broken up with his girlfriend’. not that a girlfriend is any of my business, but: a girlfriend is none of my business. don’t tell me. you’re leaving in the morning.
then he spent the whole day and we…cuddled. which…i don’t…do.
ever.
he was supposed to be kicked out as soon as he was conscious.
and THAT is the magical night that led to this magical night, and i’ll be crampy and depressed and sleeping in chip crumbs for days.
because i am just neurotic enough, not only to like the bumbling idiots instead of the suave charmers, but to not then trust the safety measures i use, and willingly put myself through the very hell they are supposed to help me avoid.
i hid the rest of the wine in the freezer.
*noraebang – private singing rooms. drunken karaoke without an audience. amazing.
