Irritating boy!

The reason I complain about not hearing from people I want to talk to is because it seems to work.
About ten minutes after I posted yesterday, Bluetooth answered my text and said he'd like to hang out more, too. Wherein we both mean "hang out = have sex" and we both know we both mean that. He added the possibility of a poker game, alcohol, and other people.
I can get behind that. I've always aspired to be more Hunter S. Thompson than Louisa May Alcott.

Breaking news (but no more bad puns).

The Good

• I'M GETTING PUBLISHED. Sorry for getting all caps lock shouty, but hot damn I got the best phone call of my life on the night of the 17th. Alligator Juniper is publishing the two short stories I sent them for their 2011 new writers contest. No victory lap around the campus game room like I did when I found out I landed last summer's internship, but that was only because this time I was at home and it was 11pm and I had to go tell my parents why I woke them up (answer: victory shout).
  They emailed me my Publishing Contract yesterday. I'm signing it, scanning it, sending it back today. I will be a published author before I graduate college, with eight whole contributors' copies that I've already mentally handed out (Mom and Dad, Mike, high school newspaper teacher, New York writing friend, North Carolina writing friend, guitar teacher, Stephen King, me).
  Major life goal: check. And the best part? It's awesome and doesn't have anything to do with boys.
  
  • And as a happy little footnote, I was in the middle of writing a superhero story when the science fiction magazine I submitted to six weeks ago emailed me a reminder that they're still accepting submissions and they liked my writing. Would I like to try again?
    Yes. Yes I would.
• Also good but having everything to do with boys was when Bluetooth told me, during a scattered texting conversation, he got me a Christmas present. Set aside the fact that I hope he's just using me for sex because that's what I'm using him for: aw. That's sweet. So I said I had something (small, non-fancy) for him, too, and then the next time I went to Kroger I stood in the home shit aisle debating whether a plain white candle in a plain glass holder would be considered manly enough to give a guy who said one of the reasons he loves living off campus is because he can light candles in his own damn room. I added a three-position lighter (vaguely suggestive, adds more to the pyromaniac angle) and called it good.
  "Trust your instincts--they're spot on."
• Kanye West's new album. It's amazing and doesn't remind me of BF at all. 
• I made three As, one B, and one B+ this semester.

The Bad

•  I have ten-hour days to look forward to for my print journalism senior semester that starts in a week and a half. We're running our own paper, five days a week, and I'm terrified.
• BF still won't talk to me. I understand; at this point I don't even think I've ever had anything legitimate to tell him since we broke up. But it's really depressing, especially when my dad says it's weird we're together almost three years and just cut off contact like we did. Like BF did. I know, Dad, and it makes me feel like a helpless bitch.
• Bluetooth hasn't texted or answered the two texts (both last night) I've sent him the past few days. Again my brain jumps before it looks all the fucking time, so I'm half convinced he's gone back to his ex or found other better sex and just doesn't want to tell me while my other half (generally the bottom half) keeps reminding me that he's used phrases such as "next time" and "sleep over" and "I can never have a one-night stand" (although that was more of a physical reference, I think) and we both have those goddamn Christmas gifts (unless he's lying about all that! shrieks my top half) to exchange. Maybe his phone broke.
  This is when I realize I've gone through this cycle at least twice in the past month and as long as I know and want to have sex with him, I will want to strangle him because of his uneven attention.
  Once again, the plan is to call him when I get back to campus. See if he wants what I do. Make and eat enchiladas and strawberry pie with or without him, regardless of outcome. 
• I'm worried about my friends.

The Weird

• I had a wet dream about my hot Greek reporting professor last night. It involved volunteering to go on assignment with him somewhere we had to wear asbestos suits, and cunnilingus. I'm not sure in what order.
  ...Yeah, that's been the weirdest part of break so far. Not as weird as my first wet dream, which was about Bill Clinton and woke me up with a wedgie so far up my ass I thought could taste cotton.

Tonight I'm getting squiffy off a single-serving bottle of shitty wine from Wal-Mart. It's a combination celebration/trying to forget and move on ritual.

Three years.

"I don't know if I've been changed for the better
Because I knew you
I have been changed
For good."
--Wicked. A quote from our musical on our day.

I have not cried yet. I don't plan to.

Also: dude has usurped Festivus. Unsuccessfully thanks to the US Postal Service, it sounds like.
Get the fuck off my Seinfeld.

It's a Festivus miracle.

Winter break starts for me in about four hours. One more shower, one more room sweep, and one more exam to go. I will be far away from here by the time they kick everyone out on the 14th. I will be far away from the couch on which I got my first kiss on the December 14 three years ago.

Mike--fuck, man, keep your self-destructive impulses scary so you don't act on them. I don't normally recommend this but live for your God if it helps.

Happy holidays.

The sad thing is I'm so damn happy.

"We have plenty of time to listen to Jimmy Buffet when we're old and sad."
--Greek



Which is why I shook my hips and hair and shoulders and knees to this song last night, after explaining who Eric Clapton is (!) to Bluetooth but before yelling along with "Sweet Child O' Mine" with my guitar teacher to mock the band that was currently playing. Which all happened before I got laid.

I only still call him my guitar teacher because it feels weird that we're friends now. I adored him in high school and looked up to him as only a freshman girl can to a senior boy who is nice to her and teachers her how to improvise on the blues pattern scales. That's how it was through college, too, until he graduated and suddenly we're on even footing. I'm rapidly catching up, closing the gap to where he's stayed in life the last few years, and we're all getting fat and depressed and more dependent on alcohol but there's still the music. After all the changes we've both been through separately, we're still actually fond of each other.
Huh.

Despite the fact that Bluetooth had a paper to write and I needed to get into the library science computer lab at 9am the next morning, he drove me back to his apartment with him and took me to the roof where we looked at stars (such a surprising amount of them up there) and pulled a couple flash poppers he had still packaged in his car.
We went inside and downstairs and into his room and spooned during the three minute intro to an episode of The Office before the opening credits came on and he declared intermission and we started making out and he asked in very delicate terms about my birth control situation. I mentioned the condom I had in my purse. He wanted to know if I was sure. I said yes, and we made good use of it.
It felt different. It felt better, because it felt more. We fucked in the blue light of his computer monitor on his (covered) foam mattress, and it was exactly where I wanted to be doing exactly what I wanted to do at the exact moment I wanted to do it.
He's wider and shorter and slower. He wanted to keep the covers over us. He said he never comes the first time with a new person; neither one of us came but oh, it felt good.
It has taken me so long and so many tries to realize that sex can feel amazing even if no one comes, to just feel the pure physical joy of it all as the point.
He said next time I should bring some extra clothes so I can stay over. He said that twice, the next time stay over part. I halfway wanted to but, schoolwork.

Today he sent me a text message saying "Thanks for last night," with a smiley. I sent back "You, too," because really, what a lovely evening.

I should maybe mention that I received this text message while walking across campus wearing a cape I got to borrow because I let Mike's friend borrow my Psych 101 notes and then lent him money to fill his student card so he could make copies on the library machine. This was after I finished my library science final project in the computer lab they keep so cold I leave not sure if I still have toes but before I walked downtown to get pizza with Mike for dinner while halfway expecting BF to walk in on us and come to the wrong conclusions as we talked about how uncomfortable my stance on sex makes Mike. And Led Zepplin. We talked about Led Zepplin, too.

I just feel...complete. I don't think I've ever felt complete.

Best non-sexual conversation of last night:
"He has a digital lyric book! Do you know how expensive those things are?"
"Do you know how popular that song is?"
"I mean, I know the lyrics and I don't even like it!"
"My point exactly!"
Best non-sexual moment of last night: hearing the first band jam on the Top Gear theme song for ten minutes.

Results.

There now, was that so difficult?
"Done. Let's go."
Two minutes into a phone call and hot damn, Bluetooth will go with me to see and hear my guitar teacher's band tomorrow night.
"Would you believe that my phone died and I lost my charger and then today I saw your message and I was like, crap?"
NOW WAIT JUST A GODDAMN MINUTE HERE MR.SHIEKY PANTS.

Okay, I don't care enough to believe Bluetooth or not. I just wanted an excuse to use my new favorite quote in the history of the internet. Thanks, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books! You are giving me such good excuses to not study for my Theories of Mass Communications exam.
The caps are theirs, by the way. I think it adds that special umph.

Revisions.

All right. FINE.
I'm actually going to call Bluetooth this evening. Get this goddamn thing over with. I want to know.
My former guitar teacher's band is playing downtown tomorrow night. I want to go. It's as good excuse to call as any I can come up with by Friday--better, even, as there will be more than 12 hours to plan to "hang out" if both of us so want.



Random male caller during my radio show yesterday: "I adore your taste in music."
My good man, you are too generous. No, seriously, about 25% of what I put on air is blindly chosen from cover art and song names, based off station reviews that are wildly misleading depending on who's doing the reviewing.
But I try, so thank you.

Spiral of silence.

As my phone stays silent but my depression lessens (much more sleep + less PMS?), I've decided on a couple things to do/remember/chant through my nose and shout through my mouth this next week.
Exam Week Resolutions Because New Year's is Too Cliched and Broad:

•  I will not call, text, email, or Facebook Bluetooth. He never responded last night. Not even an "Am still sick *sneezes plague into phone*", "Bitch please," or non-sequitor. Any of those would prevent me from hating him a little. Now I hate him a little. I deleted his shit from my phone.
  A comment of his on his own Facebook page: "If you look in the YouTube comments, there is at least three marriage proposels." There ARE. THERE ARE THREE.
• However, if I don't hear from him by this coming Friday late dinner time, I will call him (CALL, not write/type and send/hand over something he can ignore for however long he wants) and make sure we both understand what we want from each other. When this conversation ends, I will either get laid or tear up his business card and move on.
• I will not care what people think of me.
• I will not shame myself for feeling frustrated over a guy. I will not chastise myself for feeling "all girly" about not knowing why a guy stops talking to me for no apparent reason. I will acknowledge this frustration (*ACKNOWLEDGE ACKNOWLEDGE.*) and why it bothers me (I don't know what the fuck I did or did not do). I will acknowledge that maybe he's not doing this on purpose, maybe he doesn't know this frustrates me so much, or maybe he's not worth my time. Yeah.
• I will only use the rest of my Benadryl pills to get to sleep the nights before my exams if I need them and not as a general sleeping aide. 
• I will get out of this dorm at least once a day besides the five seconds in the morning when I go to the student union to get a cherry Coke Zero. 
• I will wear jeans, undergarmets, and a new shirt each day, even if they're the same ill-fitting secondhand man's jeans, pink bra, and variations on layers of t-shirt, hoodie, and pea coat. Sweatpants equal giving up.
• I will not go downtown exclusively to walk pass my ex's condo lot. I will try my utmost to minimize my time and not get raped or mugged if I do go downtown after sunset.
• I will not go on Facebook more than an hour a day. I will not watch any more online back episodes of Greek. I will be allowed to watch the new season one episode at a time when they start in January. 
• I will brush my teeeth twice a day, wear my retainers every night, brush my hair every morning, and shave every week. See point about clothes.
• I will invent a new recipe by using my leftovers and the dorm stovetop tonight: macaroni quesidillas. They will be delicious and possibly go well with chocolate milk.
• I will not call my ex. (Have been good at that lately, as in I can't remember the last time I caved and called.)
• I will clean that goddamn bathroom. It's getting disgusting. 
• I will go down and watch Elf with the rest of the dorm tonight.

There you have it. Time to go to CVS for...something. Cleaning supplies? Couple of laps around the shampoo? Dinner additions? Maybe dinner additions.

Feats of Strength

I didn't sleep last night, at all. I've been awake for about (got up at 9am Friday, now it's 4pm Saturday so that's 24+3 hours to noon+4 more=) 31 hours straight. It probably has something to do with the two liters of diet Dr Pepper I drank between 6:30pm yesterday and 7:30am today, but those last two glasses were pure resignation.
After everything settled down last night (which was already early this morning), my brain went in every direction at once and would not shut off. It's still doing that. I laid down, turned off my light, closed my eyes, and waited. Got up to pee, laid back down, closed my eyes, waited, turned my light back on, read a little, turned my light back off, laid back down, closed my eyes. Waited. Nothing--well, no. Everything.
I gave up about 4:30am, turned my desk lamp on for good, finished Wishin' and Hopin' (Wally Lamb's Italian-American parochial school version of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which is a good thing), started George Singleton's Novel. Watch the sky gradually turn bluer and bluer until it was daylight again. Worried about my brain.

Being alone lets me indulge in my eccentricities. But this insomnia is getting ridiculous. 

My lunch was a cheap box of macaroni and cheese mixed with salsa and canned mushrooms.

That's a crappy short story but a good table mat.

Dad called right when I poured the noodles in to boil and we talked for exactly seven and a half minutes, which makes for good noodles and happy parents alike.
Dinner might be identical or it might be the rest of the quesidillas.

...Really? I'm posting about food that took like five minutes of effort to make? It's all come to that? Shit cheese and save the cracker.
This is all to cover up how much I want to go to Bar I Like Downtown tonight and party with one of the radio DJs who does the party DJ thing, too. But I'm scared of getting mugged or raped if I go by myself. It's been happening over there a lot lately. But if I don't get out of this dorm at least once today, I'm never going to sleep again, I can just feel it. But I just texted Bluetooth to see if he'd go with me but he hasn't answered yet but it doesn't start until 10pm but maybe he's actually sick but maybe I need to study some more and not fall asleep at Bar I Like Downtown and not care. I'm so close.

Geek stamp.

Tonight was...frustrating. 
I made apple chicken quesidillas by hiking to Food Lion after my last normal college class ever; chopping up two apples, an onion, a little bit of a tomato, and a can of corn while baking chicken legs; dumping everything into buttered tortillas and gluing everything together with cheese and a hot skillet; and skittering into different clothes and red lipstick and my badass shoes at the last second.
I'd like to say I can play the sexy domestic hostess without any effort, but it took most of like three hours and upper arm strength I will never have.

And yes, those are my skeleton plates.

It was for the potluck dinner me and Suitemate and Mike and a couple of their other friends had in the dorm where Suitemate and I live.
Bluetooth couldn't come. He had a headache.

Pros of the Evening (optimistic thinking!):

• I do like cooking. I love how it's like playing music; there are written instructions, but those are more suggestions that you make your own. And I'm better at cooking than I am playing the piano. That didn't use to be true.
• Got to hang out with Mike. It was a little awkward until one of us made us both laugh. Then we were back in our comfort zone. That is where we'll always be. Minor sigh, but it's for the best.
• Good food. Quesidillas turned out AWESOME, thanks much, and so did Suitemate's apple crisp (yellow cake mix + margarine for the crust. Must remember.) and her friend's meatballs. 
• This photo. I got to play with Mike's sword.

That's my battle sneer.

I knighted him, too, in the back parking lot, before we talked about superhero movies but after he burst out laughing at something and exclaimed, "I love you, Melanie, you're awesome" in the same way he exclaimed he loved Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, it's awesome.

Cons of This Evening (embracing my inner cynic! It's my true nature that I can let fly freely now that I don't have to work around BF's unfailing cheerfulness):

• I hate chopping things into tiny pieces. It took longer than anything else, and it gave me a blister. That might've been my shitty knife.
• Had to hang out with Suitemate the whole time I was hanging out with Mike. That's how it's been EVER SINCE she figured out we all know each other. She wants to do everything with BOTH of us. I'm not in love with him, I promise, but I am definitely in hate with having to explain our random shit to her and then listen to her unfunny jokey interpretations. I want my best campus friend back, dammit. 
• I didn't really like the other people. I talked with the boys about Star Wars purity (George Lucus only made THREE MOVIES, dammit. The prequels NEVER HAPPENED.) and one's bar tending job. To be fair, that's how it usually goes, and I'm okay with that.
• Suitemate took that picture. She was with us the whole time in the parking lot. Parking lot discussions with Mike are my favorite. 
• I started my period today. Although I'm happier than usual about this, it and exam schedules mean I probably won't get any before winter break. Another pro, though--this also means I have time to get my diaphragm prescription filled so I can continue my double-protected ways. 

If I ever actually need it. 

"But then I'm a scumbag."
"Ah! But a scumbag with dignity."

We're going to be classy as shit, and maybe take a group picture.

In chronological order, I present my last 36 hours or so:

Seeing Brother yesterday shook me up, a lot. I didn't even realize it was him until he was gone. Distinctive Dr. B waved and smiled at me, so I waved and smiled back (what else can you do at a guy who teaches a class about Motown Divas and the Men Who Ruined Them? With that as a legitimate class title?) and thought nothing of the brown-haired hoodied person on his other side until I glanced at their backs and realized holy shit. That was Brother.
I stopped at stared at the air. They don't look alike except around the eyes and the bridges of their noses. But that's the closest live spotting to anyone who I could even begin to mistake as BF in a month.
It was bad. It made me high-step it to Psych lecture, breathing through my mouth like a winded horse.

"The card was going to be Dr. B making a fist and saying Merry damn Christmas. I thought it was genius."

After Psych, I almost literally ran into Bluetooth. Oh thank fuck he's actually damn cute in the sunlight. I ran back and punched him in the back of his big puffy jacket and walked away, all without taking my headphones off. I spent the rest of the day worrying he would take the punch as hostile and not high-spirited (Tough Actin' Tenactin, that's the nickname I was going for).

Brian the biofeedback counselor I saw looked like the opposite of the flowy, vaguely hippie women counselors I've seen up there. He was literally button-up, sweater vest and tie and angles. He said that he doesn't concentrate so much on the breathing part of biofeedback but more on the meditation part. After slouching in the armchair (hey, he said keep my eyes closed) with the heart rate clip hanging off my right earlobe and breathing inthroughmynose, ouththroughmymouth for what seemed like ever, I couldn't tell you the difference from the first breathing-centrtic appointment I had. It worked the same, too. Except when I thought about sex. That jacks up the competing nervous systems, apparently.
Brian said meditation's about accepting your emotions. Accept the fact that I'm insecure and want everybody's approval. And stressed. But mostly the first two.
"Welcome to the club."
It does make me feel better. I am insecure and want everybody's approval. Hear me roar.

OH MY GOD SUITEMATE SHUT THE FUCK UP. See? If I didn't want everybody's approval, I would have shouted that in her face last night when she came in our room and started yapping about what to wear tomorrow like it actually MATTERS if she's wearing a dress or jeans when a group of college kids are getting together without adults to tell them whether to dress business casual or not.
I'm wearing a skirt because I want to show off my badass heels and possibly get laid. I'd actually prefer if the rest of you bitches looked tore up from the floor up--for comparison purposes, you understand--but that just makes me, you guessed it, insecure. I'm regretting even hinting that I might wear something other than jeans, because that meant you spent twenty fucking minutes in my room bothering my studying roommate (okay, she didn't care. BUT I CARE IN HER PLACE.) and me by asking about outfits in your untrained violin voice.
That's what she sounds like, especially when she's excited (all the time): one of those beginner violin classes where the little kids can't do anything except scrape away the screetchies.

Humph. HUMPH I SAY. Today I was suppose to meet Katie for lunch because she can't come tomorrow because her boyfriend is taking her to see the Nutcracker...in some city that is not here. I don't know where. But she couldn't make it to campus on time, of which I was secretly glad because, and here's me being honest again, I'm a hermit and wanted to read while still letting Katie know I love her. Mission accomplished.

Also accomplished: ALL OF MY SCHOOLWORK EVER. No, not really. But everything for this semester. I presented my Theories of Mass Communications project (on commercial content in WWE shows--shut up. It was a tribute.) and got the fuck out of there. No more reporting class, which means no more hot Greek reporting professor with his hot Greek accent but also no more hauling around a slacker during group projects or swearing at unfamiliar multimedia software on an unfamiliar computer for six weeks or so.
I have exams, but in classes I'm doing well in. I have a final project, but it's not due until the 10th. Tomorrow, she is all mine.

Tonight was our last radio station DJ body meeting of the semester.

I've been waiting so long for an excuse to use this picture.

It was also my dorm's fall banquet. Guess which one I went to.
Hint: the fall banquet was always boring as hell even when I had BF to showpony me around to all the faculty associates and even when I had never seen him in a tie before. This year I would have to explain why he's not there. You see how well that went last night. Also, suitemate said she was definitely going. I won't be able to avoid her at tomorrow's party, so GIVE ME PEOPLE IN FANCY CLOTHES IN PEACE. THANK YOU.
The radio station meeting ended about an hour ago; since then, I've been holed up in the production studio listening to No Way Jose and then Beethoven on vinyl. I wanted to have an Epic Picks of Latest Show burning session, but apparently my CD drive is now nonexistent. Or it doesn't like Dinosaur Jr. (That better not be it.)
I'm hiding from the dorm people. The party will be ending at 9pm. I'm staying up here late enough to justify the "Yeah, I totally had this long-ass meeting...shucks and whatnot."
My rage is oddly non-confrontational.

Suddenly I'm exhausted. Bad sleep last night, presentation anxiety followed closely by counseling and the high/crash of dressing classy/realizing no one really cares has caught up with me.

Let's go on a living spree.

My counselor said I should reclaim my memories with BF as something that's part of me, something of a great time that's over but just a piece of my whole life. Sort of. I might be paraphrasing.

So I'm reclaiming Kanye West.
Memory: May 2008. BF's graduation. We wake up in his half-empty dorm room and rush to get decent to this song. I can't hear it without seeing the sunlight making the white walls glow around us as he dug in his closet for twenty minutes trying to find his dark pants (he didn't). I was so goddamn proud of him.

It was just getting past PG.

More random conversation bits from yesterday. My id answers in italics.

From a friend of mine who just got back from teaching English in Korea and was randomly visiting the student union before he leaves to go teach in Japan in a couple weeks:

"So I heard you dumped BF. Good for you."
Uh, thanks?
"You're too good for him."
I am? 
"I guess. I don't really know what to make of BF. He's just...BF."
Yeah, me either. You have been inside my parents' house, and now all we have in common is an ex-girlfriend.

I am a people with a Korean lesson now. 

From the former principal of my dorm, who loves BF and tolerates me because BF introduced me to them and the dorm:

"Maybe you'll get back together. It's happened once before!"
*punchsnap* FUCK OFF!

That made me so fucking angry.  Yes, in September of my sophomore year, I broke up with BF for three weeks because there was another pretty boy who wanted to kiss me and whom I wanted to kiss. It was a mistake, I made everybody including myself miserable, and I patched it up as soon as I could as well as I could.
I don't know how to make this look different. I don't know how to let people know I've grown into this decision and that it's serious and final. So instead I feel like punching an old man and breaking his cell phone so he can't make patronizing news reports to his wife while I'm standing there trying to be polite. RAGE.

At the end of a random texting conversation with Bluetooth:

Aw, and it was just getting past PG.
I don't want to talk about the non-PG parts of yourself that you shave. I don't shave there and I don't want to hear the experiences of people who do. GO TO BED.

No. The dirty talk is live-show only, folks.
Sometimes I feel like I'm handling this really well, with all the right expectations and everything, and then sometimes I feel like I'm botching it badly.