Then, a couple weeks ago, I asked my Best Guy Friend if he
wanted to go to dinner at this particular bar, for old times sake. He actually
had been the one to originally point out Bartender to me, and at the time I
declared him “not my type.” Now, basically every man I’m attracted to looks
like him: short-ish, lean muscular body, dark hair, beautiful eyes. Best Guy Friend knows what I want before I do.
We arrive at the bar and, sure enough, he’s working. I catch
his eye and smile. I thought it would be awkward for us to see one another again,
and I had mentally prepared myself. But he looks genuinely pleased. He gives me
a cute, playful little wave and asks how I’m doing. He catches my eye several
times throughout the night as my friend and I eat dinner. I wonder if he thinks
we’re dating. I can’t decide if this is the message I want to send or not. We
leave at a reasonable time and Bartender looks, dare I say, a little disappointed to see me
go.
The moment we leave, I want to text him. He looked so hot
and I want to see if I can weasel my way back into his good graces. I’m
starting to think maybe he was actually seeing someone back then, that he
wasn’t lying to me after all. He looked thrilled to see me—a quality I don’t
usually associate with this person who keeps his emotions pretty bottled. I
text him, “It was good to see your face,” which I think is flirty and neutral
all at the same time. He doesn’t write back that night, and I don’t care as
much as I might have last time around.
The next day, I’m still hanging with Best Guy Friend (we
have sexless adult sleepovers; our friends always want to know if we bang—we don't, he’s like my brother), when I hear back from Bartender. He says,
“Good to see you too. You look like you’re doing well.” Polite and
decidedly non-flirty. But he did add a second sentence when one would suffice. My friend tells me, if I want to fuck him, I should put sex on the
table. He tells me to write the following, and so of course I do: “Yep. Not getting laid
enough but besides that doing good.” I squeal as I press Send. I don’t expect
to hear anything back. Within minutes, I do. “Lol. Maybe we can figure
something out on that end.” I’m so excited I could do cartwheels. I scream and
throw my arms around Best Guy Friend. He smiles at me, “You’re welcome.”
I don’t hear from Bartender the whole week. Which is fine.
I’m busy too, and I have my period, and I figure I’m the one that needs to have
sex so I’m going to have to be the one to orchestrate it—it’s always been this
way with us anyway, I’ve always wanted it more. Friday night, it’s Halloween and I decide instead of getting dressed up as a slutty version of something,
going out and getting trashed, that I’ll stay in with Best Guy Friend and watch
scary movies, drink beer, and eat pizza & candy. We watch the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (terrible), the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake (better), and
The Conjuring (fucking terrifying).
We order two large pizzas from Papa John’s, eat peanut M&Ms, Fun Size
Mounds and Snickers, and drink Hefeweizen. It’s a great night. The Conjuring gives me nightmares, but
it’s worth it. We sleep in the same bed (we always do), and no we don’t have
sex, or even spoon (as my roommate specifically wants to know when I return
home).
The next day, I’m horny as fuck (unrelated to my adult
sleepover), and decide I need to have sex tonight. I don’t think Bartender is
working, so I figure tonight is the night to attempt this fuck buddy orchestration.
Best Guy Friend encourages me to wait until three to set it up. We take the dog
on a long walk around the neighborhood in the deliciously crisp Fall-ish
weather. We have a long debate/argument involving Feminism and Law of Attraction
and the viral video of the woman walking for ten hours through New York City and getting catcalled 100 times. We get in the hot tub and talk about 2014 and
how it has planted a lot of seeds we’re looking forward to harvesting in 2015.
By two, I can’t wait any longer. Based on my mood, which is more
desperate/needy than flirty/fuck me, Best Guy Friend helps me formulate the
following text: “You still down to help me out with that little problem I’m
having?” I press Send and wait. Best Guy Friend and I end our extended date and
I head home. I feel very unmotivated and decide to take the day off, not do any
work and just chillax with myself. It’s easier said than done in the state I’m
in. I keep checking my phone every five minutes, wanting desperately to hear back
from him. I stalk him on Facebook and see that he’s “Active." Meaning
he got my text and ignored it. I knew that anyway, but now it’s been confirmed. At
five, as the sun is already beginning to set, I decide to take a walk around
the reservoir by my house. I need some fresh air. I text Best Guy Friend,
“Still haven’t heard from the little fucker,” with an angry emoticon.
The walk cheers me up and I stop at my favorite coffee shop
for a cappuccino. I’m enjoying the Fall-ish weather and my new sweater from
Grandma. Almost finished with my walk, I decide to go see Birdman tonight and, on a whim, I text the Hot Guy I fucked at my party, inviting him along. Regardless of the fact that I haven’t seen him since,
he’s made zero effort to reach out, and even ignored my last text, I still
think there’s a chance he’ll respond. He’s a movie buff after all and this
might be exactly what he wants to do on a Saturday evening. Even if he’s not
interested in me romantically, I feel we could be friends. I don't hear from
him either. I decide to text someone I know will respond, because my
ego needs a little stroking. I text the Music Manager from my party—the
one I made out with and then ditched for Hot Guy. I ask if he wants to go see the movie with me. Nothing. I take a bath
and listen to Dido and feel sorry for myself. I’m fully prepared to go see Birdman by myself. Fuck it. I’m a grown ass woman. But my roommate says she’ll
come with me, so we have a lady date instead. Which is lovely and overdue, and
fuck these men anyway.
Later that night, I hear back from Music Manager who says
he’s been away from his phone, but with more notice he totally would have come
with me. He says we should hang soon. Still haven’t heard from Bartender or Hot
Guy. Typical. The two guys I want most are MIA. I had told Best
Guy Friend that if I didn’t hear from Bartender, I would hit up the little
Jewish Man I met on OKCupid. At this point, I’m too disheartened to pursue even the easy lay.
On Sunday, I wake up still feeling shitty about the whole
situation. I take my phone off Airplane mode and really hope I’ve heard from
either one of these boys. Nope. I understand with Hot Guy, he’s doing the Fade Away. He never gave me any indication he was interested at all, and the Fade
Away is a move I’m familiar with. But that’s no excuse for Bartender. He was
the one who fucking planted the hope of a booty call in my head in the first
place. I don’t understand. Even if he's just busy, at least fucking text me back goddammit. I decide to leave my phone on Airplane mode for the
whole day so I won’t be tempted to check it every five seconds, and whereas
leaving it off should be a relief, it proves tortuous. I go to a yoga class,
make myself a healthy lunch, eat some Fun Size candy leftover from Halloween, watch the first episode
of the depressing new British TV show Happy Valley, and fall asleep for a couple hours in the middle of the day. At
four PM, I can’t take it any longer, and the clock has fallen back so the sun
will set in an hour. I decide to walk around the reservoir, again, and I call
Best Guy Friend on my way.
I complain about the rejection, about my bruised ego. He
tells me it’s probably not as simple as Bartender not liking me anymore. “Life
is never simple,” he says. He tells me I have no idea what he’s going through,
so I need to stop speculating about it. “He probably got your text and he was
in the middle of something, and he didn’t know how to respond, and then he put
it down and forgot about it.” This I don’t understand—guys’ ability to just forget
about girls like this. As my roommate says, “They’re goldfish. They swim around
their little bowl and they’re like ‘ooh a castle,’ and they just keep swimming
and when they come around again: ‘ooh a castle.’” I wish I could be a fucking
goldfish. It’s a lot of work to be a woman.
All of the young single women I know do this. And it’s not that we
have nothing else going on in our lives—we have jobs and career ambitions, and
hobbies, and friends, and a lot of shit to do. But we still find the time and
energy to obsess over some fucking guy who probably isn’t even worth our time. In
fact, I find that my smartest, most ambitious girlfriends are even more likely
to do this. Maybe it’s that we know what we want and we go for it, whether it
be sex or career. And we don’t give up until we get it. And it’s just
frustrating when what you want is another person because you can’t control how
they respond to your wanting, and the resistance they put up makes you work
even harder to get it. And the energy of that probably pushes them away even
more.
Despite this incredible amount of distraction and energy spent, we still manage to get
our shit done, and we’re a pretty accomplished bunch. It makes me crazy to think
how successful we could be if we didn’t get so distracted by dudes. For sure
we’d be running the world. Women are masters of multi-tasking after all.
Imagine if men focused this much on women, they’d never get anything done.
Best Guy Friend encourages me to lift some weights or
something, to get some testosterone in my system. I joke that I should just
start taking hormone injections. But I actually think this would be a great
product for women—a hormone to shut down this part of our brains that emotionally
attaches to the penis we fuck. Something that would allow us to treat sex more
like men. We have it, it’s fun, but it’s not so serious and if we don’t get it,
there are a hundred other things we could do that would interest us as much if
not more. “Sex is great and all, but if we don’t get it, we’ll just go and play
video games and that’s just as fun,” says Best Guy Friend. Really? Fucking video games?
My best friend Sadie was going through a similar torment a couple weeks ago where she was obsessing over this guy and this sequence of Lost in Translation texts sent between them. I encouraged her to "just say what you want" and "stop playing games." Not sure why I'm unequivocally incapable of taking my own medicine on this point. I guess I'll just blame biology.
On Monday, I decide I can't not say anything. So I text Bartender, "You failed at being my booty call this weekend." With a winky face emoticon so he knows this is to be read with a light tone and not interpreted as "I spent all weekend obsessing about you." Because that would be disturbing. He writes back right away: "Haha. I was just thinking about that while I was walking up my stairs. This weekend was crazy. What's your schedule like this week?" If only he had just said that on Saturday, I wouldn't have spent Sunday being a crazy person. If only he knew how crazy of a person I actually am. If only I would learn a lesson from this. If only.
Oh those pesky guys. A guy I'm seeing------wha'd'ya think THAT word means------told me straight out that "sometimes I just disappear. I'm M.I.A. I don't mean you couldn't find me in the usual places. I just go off the grid. I don't want contact with anyone."
ReplyDeleteOkaaaaaaay. Any chance you'd wanta talk about what sends you off the grid when it does? NO! he said. Waaaay emphatic. Talk about it??? God forbid. While I'm involved with this guy-----which may not be for long, BTW------I just find pleasure elsewhere. And then one day, he sticks his head up------like a ground hog. I've stopped trying to figure it out. I think we're just as crazy as men, but we tease it out into something that makes more sense. What I know for sure is, I've had to do A LOT of work on really liking myself without some dick. Though dicks are great, huh?
There's definitely a communication gap between men and women. In that we communicate in totally different ways. One thing I love about hanging with my ladies is that we fucking talk shit out. We look at all the angles, from all perspectives, we fix the problems of the world just sitting in our living room. Dudes tend to not be as big on lots of talking. And this seems to drive women crazy. Because we want to know! We want all the information so we can come to a reasonable conclusion. I don't think they realize how infuriating their lack of disclosure is for us. But alas, we cannot change them. So you're right, just gotta learn to love and be with ourselves. And not try to fill too many holes with that dick. Just the one.
ReplyDeleteRead this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2281891/Women-really-talk-men-13-000-words-day-precise.html
Came across it a few years ago, thought of it when I read you post here. A few weeks ago a woman I was seeing suggested a hike I'd never been on before. As we settled in, I started to enjoy the beauty around me and the presence of her company. Then she started talking. A lot. And I started to get annoyed and then I had to work hard to not get annoyed and still enjoy the scenery and respond when appropriate and then it became an internal battle to just get through this hike with my wits in check. I managed it and she was oblivious to my discomfort. Just chattered away and couldn't wait to do it again.
HA. This makes a lot of sense. Yet another example why men and women are fundamentally incompatible (just kidding...sort of). I'm always amused when I'm amongst a group of dudes because sometimes it feels like they interact like cavemen with like a series of grunts and then lots of silence, and yet they all seem to understand what's going on between them. Fascinating. And this would explain why I usually find conversations amongst my female friends to be more satisfying. Because we like to talk it out! And as a woman, there's nothing better than talking it out. Good to see science backs this up. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete