Why did I stay sober for this?

Never again, my friends.
I'm not even talking about Bluetooth; we'll get to him in a minute. Right at this second I'm talking about never, ever again relying on campus-run activities on a Friday night or the people who like to go to campus-run activities on a Friday night for a fun Friday night.
It doesn't fucking work.

Okay, picture this: the state fair with all its long lines and corn dogs and fried pickles (no, really, get that specific image of a puke-smelling dill pickle all up in your head and nose and gag reflex) and crowd and longass lines, but without the rides or clear night air or one-man band that makes the experience awesomely chintzy.
We stood in line in the student union for cheap metal engravings, airbrush tattoos (not me for this one, thanks--am morally allergic to anything on my skin that makes me look stupid), and caricatures. Standing in line took fucking HOURS.

I've been practicing my shit-eating grin.

Hours in which I had to  listen to Suitemate and Clingy giggle over Bluetooth, who by the way was standing right there. He flirted hard with her, touching and hugging and joking about sex and basically pulling all his Stock Moves (they worked on me too, okay?) while she took in the attention like a cat, with a sort of arching-back smugness and almost purring but not quite. But wanting to.
Completely independent of any complications, Suitemate and Clingy are the two most annoying people I've ever stood in longass lines with.
It made me want to stab all three of them.
Clingy's twin sister I shall call Subdue. I didn't want to stab her. She seemed coolly low-key and willing to call anyone out on their ridiculousness.  Truly refreshing.

Mike was suppose to go too but he's sick now. Which was another thing Suitemate was bitching about all last night, only she tried to keep it secret and coded even though we all knew exactly who she was talking about.

Bluetooth did not ignore me. I made a well-placed American Psycho reference, he surreptitiously poked me once in awhile, we contemplated using his mustard/ketchup puddles for finger painting instead of corndog coating.
But I got so jealous I had to step outside and put my hot forehead on a cold railing for a few minutes. And at one point, I was lying down in the middle of the basement mail room twitching at the sound of Clingy and Bluetooth playing foozball in the game room next door. I didn't have to check my mail. It was midnight on a Friday, not a shouting distance of being open.
Jealous. Yeah.
I don't want to be his girlfriend. I kept repeating this to myself. Nope. Don't really like him all that much as a person. But dammit. DAMMIT. OW. Secret sex lives hurt, y'all. This was exactly why I was not planning to and still am not going to the movies with them tonight. Not that they want me there anyway.

I was angling to walk him to his car alone and possibly thus grab a makeout minute or two, but that didn't even happen. We all walked to Clingy's car in the garage and then she drove him to his street-parked car, dumping me and Suitemate off at our dorm on the way.
FUCK YOU GUYS AND THE MATCHMAKING SUV YOU RODE IN ON. CHRIST ON A CRACKER.

I was fuming when I got back into the dorm. Fuming. I flung myself down on the nearest lobby couch, grabbed a year-old copy of Us Weekly that I started ripping through without reading, and initiated a texting conversation with Bluetooth that started like this:

Me: Why did I stay sober for that?
His response was immediate: Fucked if I know. What a waste of a night.

HA! All of a sudden I was validated. Within twenty minutes, I learned that he thinks Suitemate is annoying, too. He's already fended off a girlfriend offer from Clingy but he still loves the attention.
Oh, my god. *takes deep breaths of fresh air* It's not about competing against another girl for his attention. It's about finding out he feels the same combination of bored and pissed off that I do and also had to hide it for four hour and now wants to bitch about it too. Eureka.

Is there a female equivalent of blue balls? Mauve clitoris, maybe?

PS. Mike called me Thursday while I was eating dinner at the student union; he was wondering if I wanted to grab dinner at the student union. I told him come on over and I'll be back right after I take a post-gym shower; then I persuaded him to actually attend the radio station interest meeting he had been thinking about, and after that he found me in the theater right before the movie started (I was going to enjoy Robert Downey Jr. on my own time, thanks) and said, "I'm going to the next meeting." Hook line and sinker, thank you.
I'm happy that I have my friend back.
"We should use Google Docs to schedule our social lives. It'd make everything so much easier."
"No, no: Google Calendar. It automatically updates."
Your nerd is showing, sir, and it's adorable.

CAD

Apparently, in Bluetooth's world, this does not stand for "computer-aided drafting" and is not code for "I'm trying to let you down easily by making it seem like I have too much homework to be social tonight even though it's Friday." Apparently, I know too many engineers.

Oops. But I asked, and NOW I KNOW. HA.

Further bulletins as events warrent.

Univited.

Apparently I'm like crack to Bluetooth and as such would interfere with Suitemate's appointed job of figuring out how he likes Clingy at the free movie Saturday night. Suitemate said it, not him.
Let me explain:

Once upon a time, a girl I'll call Clingy wanted to know what a boy I'll call Bluetooth thought of her. There had been vague talk between the two of them about starting along the path of young love, but he became distant and inconsistent in his enthusiasm (here measured by instances of contact and hanging out in the traditional, non-euphamistic original meaning). She then called upon her young loyalist known here as Suitemate to gather a group together for an outing, including Bluetooth without telling him Clingy would be going. It worked. He agreed.

They're going to the Saturday night movie and Suitemate's suppose to figure out how Bluetooth feels based on how he acts for two hours in the dark in the same group as Clingy.
I have been uninvited.

Several things (just let me put aside the instinct that I have been played, too, so I can at least pretend to be objective):

• This is a bad idea.
• Who thought this was a good way to figure anything out besides the exact amount of awkward those stupid little theater seats can hold for two hours?
• Seriously. Suitemate told me to not come because I distract Bluetooth. I am clinging to my objectivity as hard as possible when I say that maybe the fact that another girl distracts him is a sign that he is not entirely interested in the first girl. 
• Nobody knows what Bluetooth is thinking. Bluetooth doesn't know what Bluetooth is thinking. Don't try to interpret because it will be wrong. It's not a boy thing; it's a human thing. 

*hands over objectivity*

• I wonder if Bluetooth thinks I'm going. I wonder if that's the reason he's going. It's not like he's telling me anything anymore, either.
• You know what's depressed me the most over the past 10 days or so? Feeling like my friend (Mike) and my sex (Bluetooth) have both been yanked away from me just when I started getting the most comfort from them. I want them back, goddammit. 
• I was almost over the sex part, too, until Suitemate told me all about this plan.
• This is a really, really bad idea.

I'm going to the student movie fest on they're having on Friday. Suitemate (and, presumably, Mike et al) doesn't want to go. There's a chance Bluetooth will be there. He might've made one of the student movies. (See last sentence of first non-objective bullet point.) 
Of course I care. I wish I didn't but I do. But he'll be there or he won't be there and I'll get laid or get over it either way. Right now it's making my head hurt and my soul itch really badly.
I'm hanging out with Katie Saturday. Dear fuck I need a drink and a place to bury my cell phone and sit on my hands for the next week.
 

Wanker.

Bluetooth sent me this text message at 11:30 this morning, while I was buried in practicum learning something useful about condensing news stories for SMS:

Thanks for the offer. :-) I "handled" it myself.

Take it away, Rage.

DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING for TWENTY HOURS while I'm DEPRESSED and LONELY and WONDERING WHEN THE FUCK I'LL EVER GET TO CUDDLE ON A CHEST AGAIN OH GOD WHY--ahem. *mops up face* AND THEN TELL ME HOW GREAT MISS PALM AND HER FIVE SISTERS TREATED YOU.
Also, GET A BETTER PUN FOR MASTURBATION. YOU LACK ORIGINALITY.

To be fair, he did say he was trying to get work done at the same time. You did what you could without being a clingy hussy about it.

Mike's roommate once asked if I ever get Joan Cusack. I get her "You fucking asshole!" deleted scene in High Fidelity, yes.

"It takes a dirty mind to run a clean paper."

A note on fuck buddy manners.

My RAGE: LET ME OUT!

My rationality: Oh, come on. Are you seriously this bad at handling boredom?

RAGE: AND MIND FUCKERY. DON'T FORGET THE MIND FUCKERY.

Rationality: Okay. And the mind fuckery. But still. It's not that big of a deal, you don't want to be in a relationship, and who cares if--

RAGE: DON'T RESPOND TO A PSEUDO-CASUAL TEXT FROM ME BY SAYING YOU'RE HORNY AS HELL AND THEN NOT RESPOND AFTER I SAY LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT HELP WITH THAT.

Rationality: ...You know, I think you're right.

RAGE: DAMN RIGHT I AM!

Rationality: He's not really worth your bad blood pressure, but--

RAGE: CAN I?

Rationality: Fine. Go.

RAGE: RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!!!
*explodes*

Rationality: We need to make more friends.

I want my mother.

Oh, Suitemate. I take it back. You're as confused as I am about almost exactly the same people.
I want my mother, too.

My dog wants to help.

Here's what we discovered after talking about Suitemate's confusing date with Mike during which he gave no signs or explicit outward expressions about how he feels about her:

• Guys don't know what to do with us and we don't know what to do with them.
• ...Yeah. That's it. 
• Fuck no I didn't tell her how involved I am or was with Bluetooth. Our thesis stands alone plenty well fine thank you without additional evidence and judgey judgment judging my sexual morals around here. 
• But seriously, I understand, Suitemate.
• NO, RANDOM PERSON I SORT OF KNOW IN THE COMPUTER LAB, I DON'T WANT TO EXPLAIN WHY I BROKE UP WITH MY BOYFRIEND.

My decoder ring's in the shop.

"Please don't call and embarrass me this time. Please?" Oh God. I HAVE become that aunt.

They're down there again.
Mike and Suitemate have once again commandeered the dorm common room for an entire afternoon/evening of movies on his laptop and the dorm couch. They're going to end it with a field trip to an actual movie theater to go see True Grit. I have not been invited.
*runs to check cell phone*
No. Nothing.
I understand. I do. Suitemate is in love with Mike. Mike is sort of aware of this. He wants to figure out how he feels about her. That can't happen if I'm sitting there making vulgar jokes between them (but what other jokes are there to make?).
It still hurts my feelings in an automatic sort of way that I would pay a lot less attention to if my Katie wasn't sick and my Bluetooth would text me about anything besides the frozen cherry cheesecake he was going to dethaw last night.
That's the only communication he's sent me for a week. I hoped it would morph into "hey let's have sexytime" from him. It hasn't. It won't, and I'm not going to beg. But silence kills me so very fucking slowly, bleeds me out over 12 hours. I won't fully give up until I go to sleep tonight.

This is why I don't want a relationship. Even just arranging for sex and watching other people try to start dating is making me angsty.

And, Fellow J-school Practicum Seniors, I like you guys and I want to stay a chum-tastic group and everything but I don't want to think about our work on Saturday. Can we joke about it on a Monday through Friday basis, with the possibility of getting drunk together after five days of shared torture?

Current voices in my head: Nora Ephron and Carrie Fisher. I've been reading their essays and memoir, respectively.

Robots (Live).

I couldn't do it.
The robotics team met in the machine shop tonight, aka the first night they've probably started anything visually interesting. I grabbed my camera and safety glasses and stood on the street corner and stared into the universe until I finally convinced myself to at least walk over there and then I saw the lights on and BF's car and one of the student's mom through the glass door sitting reading her paperback as usual and I couldn't do it.
I couldn't walk in there when he hasn't talked to me since Election Day and I couldn't walk into His Place on a boring Wednesday night any more than I could walk into it with a slick layer of Bluetooth sex clinging to my last night's clothes.
The robots are his. They've always been his, and I couldn't do it.

Hell with my other weekend plans.

I loved your class, Dr. T.

This entry is also called YOU People Figure It Out; I've Got Editors to Deal With. With Which to Deal. Whatever. I Don't Care Who Goes to the Free Movie.

On a sidenote...you know, I really don't have it in me right now.
I want ice cream. In celebration of tangible proof that my diaphragm works. Gross? No. Life-affirming. And across the street, so I will need a jacket.

"It's like we're spelunking instead of reporting." I helped Procrastination Guy file his bio copy correctly in Word today. It's probably the most competant I'll feel all semester.

Girl talk.

This is what I've been afraid of the most: this aimless bored loneliness. I don't know what to do with it, it makes me miss BF, and both feelings depress me. It's so fucking quiet around here, which makes me think everyone else is riding out the same long-weekend stupor, and maybe it's just something I'll have to get use to, and hell, the best defense BF brought to this feeling was a better cable package and comfortable shoulders. Which should not be trivialized.



I know at the very least that Suitemate is also bored and lonely, because she's told me.
She's also moaned about Mike to me, which was slightly uncomfortable because part of her uncertainty about him stems from the fact that when the three of us hang out, he and I don't give her much of a chance to talk.
"You two have known each other so much longer," she says. "So you have so much more to talk about."
Er, yeah. Let's go with that.
And not the part of me that is a terrible human being and revels in the fact of being more outrageous and quick-witted and interesting and better at flirting. No. Let's keep that part of me squished into a tiny ball and shoved into this blog for safekeeping.
She's trying to figure out whether he likes her romantically or not, and it's driving her crazy. 

Also uncomfortably amusing: overhearing Clingy Virgin (who did indeed meet us for the movie) wondering out loud if she and Bluetooth (who did not) are boyfriend and girlfriend after one date.
*suppresses panic and overconfidence and eye twitch all at the same time*
...Oh, honey.
*stop it woman!*
Can I at least tell her that he came inside me less than 24 hours before she asked us that?
NO. *smacks back of head*
Here's the deal. All I want from Bluetooth is sex and the occasional general socializing that goes along with it on Friday nights. I'll stop when he finds a significant other. He will grant me the same priviledge. We've talked about this, and frankly it's the most mature conversation I've had about relationships.
But I can't help but sit in the dark movie theater actively keeping my mouth shut while feeling Mike's warm elbow overfill the armrest beside me and mentally track the clusterfuck we've all gotten ourselves into. It's so very human and messy and unstable that it's bound to all make us hate each other eventually. Am I the only one who knows this? Can I be a milder form of the Joker and just let the anarchy ride itself out? It's got plenty of its own momentum.

Mike: "You'd be the kind of aunt who warps young minds."
Me: "Yes! Endless candy and R-rated movies for all!"





"Goddamit Anakin, fall into the lava already!"

May be a lover but you ain't no dancer.

The maiden voyage of my vagina deflector shield seems to have gone well.
I s'ppose I should explain.

But not before telling you that Mike is in this very building, right below my feet, in the dorm's common room waiting on my Suitemate to go back downstairs dressed in a warm jacket over her dress and tights. Oh and he's calling me (on my cell phone, although it'd be almost as easy to call up the stairwell).
[several meddling minutes later]
They're off to dinner. They did watch a couple movies in the common room this afternoon; I set off walking to Food Lion for groceries at exactly 2pm so I wouldn't be able to make good on my intense craving to live-blog their date through the dividing curtain in the seminar room right next door. (No, I don't have a working laptop, but I like legal pads and ballpoints better anyway...)
That took all of 45 minutes, including the part where I tried to remember if there's a reason I haven't had Tuna Helper for ten years (overruled by my boredom of ground beef and non-enthusiasm to put together anything real for tomorrow), so when I got back I listened at the common room door and then opened it really slightly because I didn't hear anything. I shut the door just as quickly when I saw the back of both their heads next to each other on one of the couches.
I was invited to dinner, but I ate the Food of the God of Saturday: boxed macaroni and cheese with mushrooms added, kettle corn popcorn, diet Dr. Pepper with half a hard lemonade added. Also because I love watching my suitemate try to navigate her nerves and my weird sense of humor and insistence that Mike is adorable. She's kind of bad at it.
I'm thinking that Mike has no clue she wants this to be a date, but that might be the bitter/impish (it changes) cynic in me.

But then, Impish Cynic got to dance and get laid last night, at the radio station's first O.G. dance party of the year, so that part of me might still be all romantical at the moment.
"That's where I first saw you, sitting with [BF]." That's Bluetooth pointing at a corner of the bar in the Tavern and remembering me after what has got to be at least a damn year.
Last night was an orgy of movement and immature wisecracks, basically, sprinkled with sub-par dance beats (which disappointed me so much; or have I just grown old since the last one?), real or imagined disapproval from people who know BF as I saw them watch me dirty dance with Clingy Hands McBluetooth, and admiration of his roommate's dance floor conquests.
I wore my Geek Boner outfit: short blue plaid skirt (with pantyhose, people, it's 35 degrees F outside), Star Wars t-shirt, Converse All-Star hightops, and that, at least, felt awesome.
When we got back to his apartment, I spread my spermicide onto my diaphragm and got it in firmly enough to let Bluetooth realize his dream of feeling me without a sheath of rubber between us for the first time. He thanked me in these lunge-y little whispers before and after. Dude, we didn't solve world peace or anything. The 95% success rate of combined spermicide and diaphragm and the student health gynocologist, not you, convinced me. But, uh, you're welcome.
I didn't feel a difference, but I'm counting that as a good thing because it means everything stayed tightly sealed.
He whispered my name while he was inside me. I don't know why I found that odd--well, maybe I assume people drift into fantasy when they're having sex but that kept us on the real side of things.
On the non-sex real side of things, I should sleep on the outside of beds I share because I will have to get up to pee and either brake my ankle trying to climb around the other person or wake them up if I sleep on the inside.

Now we're all suppose to go see the free 9pm movie at the student union, but Bluetooth may not go because Suitemate is trying to set him up with a friend of hers who is a "clingy virgin," according to his own research. Oy vey, such the human interest pieces we have around here.

My grin-busting excitement at getting published cannot be broken, even by this, because there are still people out there who who actually care about important things.

Photos make it real.

Do you know what this is, my friends?

AWESOMENESS ON WAX is an acceptable answer, yes.

It's a Queen album on vinyl. From Mike.
Of course I've already taken the shrink wrap off--how the fuck else am I going to practice dueting with Freddy Mercury?--but it was also new yesterday late afternoon until we and my Suitemates (both of them) met up to watch the snowday movie at the student union and before we went in Mike handed me a bag that had what I thought was a calendar in it.
But when I saw what it really was, I jumped up and hugged him. I caught AIR with that hug, that's how good the boy done.
I'm extremely touched that he remembered I love Queen and my cheap but very serviceable turntable. He seemed to like High Fidelity, too; I gave him my copy (and my copy of Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal) and he and his roommate watched it last night and I know this because we had a Barry quote war a couple hours later over text messaging.

Halfway into walking him to his car, he taught me how to box step. He put our arms in the proper positions and we stamped out a foot pattern in the icy snow.

Suitemate last night in a requested one-on-one conference: "Are you interested in Mike?"
I'm interested in the fact that hanging out with him always makes me happy.
Me: "Nah, we're just good friends. ...Are you interested in him?"
Suitemate: "Um, yeah."
AH HA. I KNEW IT. I told her to ask him out on a date her own focking self. Bluntness works, one way or the other, and more importantly it saves everyone else (me) from--
UPDATE: She and he are going to watch a movie in the dorm common room Saturday at 2pm. Nobody else has been invited by either party, so cue the eyebrow wiggling. Heh.
I am actually excited about this. Either they'll find happiness in each other, or the awkwardness will be fascinating.

Stay on target. STAY ON TARGET.

"You know he doesn't have a TV in his room, right?"
"But I heard that Death Star scene like ten times last night--oh! Oh my God!"



Greek, thanks to you, I will now be using Star Wars for all my sex metaphors.

The future of my futures.

On the future that could have been:
I can't help thinking that if I hadn't broken up with BF, I'd still have access to hot shower water.
On the very near future:
"Hey, Miss Insomnia, are you insomnia'd now?"
On my future career:
Apparently a short story about a suicidal superhero is heavy stuff. But do they like it?

On my other future career:
Maybe they'll delay the governor inuaguration, too. This is South Carolina; NOBODY can handle snow even when it doesn't stick, and this shit's been hanging out since Sunday.
No, I don't have anything better to do than sit on my student email and refresh it for a couple hours to see what my terrifyingly competent professor (so described because it's also terrifying how competent he expects us to be) comes up with in the way of online meetings and/or "Guys, just read the syllabus and schedule. That should bring you up to date. Fresh batteries for your interviewing recorders tomorrow and fresh buttons for your interview pants, okay?"
Except watch the new episode of Greek, but I can do both at the same time.

On the future of this blog: I plan on tracking my breakup rehab, bouts of lonley bored depression, and sex life here until I get into a new Relationship. Capital R, see, to denote the smushy romantic connection the thought of which currently makes me gag and reach for a drink. I am not ready to join those ranks again. I won't be for...well, fuck knows when but it'll be awhile. 
Other people being together are so cute, though.

Random tangent time!
JAZZ MUSIC. I grasp onto you as something my ex loves but I have no idea why. I don't understand. I can't tell you apart, except when you're ragtime and then you're awesome but then you're not really jazz anymore. Otherwise, you're elevator music that makes me wonder how such a sophisticated type of music with such a complicated chord system and theoretical underpinnings can be so damn boring.
BF, together we were probably the whitest couple on the planet, but thank you for also loving hiphop (let's be honest, you had me at The Grey Album) and helping me avoid Journey as much as possible to keep my blood pressure down.

Do the day and let the day do you.

Question: Was the absolutely drivemeupthefuckingwall effort it took to not sleep in my own bed for my first night back up here worth it?
Answer from 24 hours ago: Yes! Dammit, the only reason I want to get up here more than ten seconds before classes start is to get laid! And to buy books, because I have to read most of one of them before Monday. But mostly to get laid!
Answer from 12 hours ago: I renounce text messaging and all the ways it supports--nay, promotes--passive-aggressiveness.
Answer now: Yeah, mostly. Nursing one drink while meeting new people and watching them was interesting in a very "Oh, so this is what normal people my age do" way (I should start a Normal Book). Good sex was good (I came from tongue rather than hand for the first time, and it was diluted yet longer). I have incentive to be nice until after the radio show's dance party next Friday.
But I ended up wanting to sleep in my own bed (I didn't. It was 4:35am; I pulled through). Tonight will be quiet, and for once I'll be glad.

I want diet caffeine and my own hairbrush, NOW.

My impatience, grown large and flailing from three weeks at home, is out of my system.
I missed BF a fuckton over break.
I don't care what it all means, because I'm tired of caring. Not in a depressed weary way, but in an "Okay, so that's all right then" way.
PS. Bluetooth, stop trying to convince the straight girl to kiss me. Yes, she's hot. Yes, I would very much like her to confirm my 99% certainty that I'm bisexual. But no, she doesn't want to kiss any girl except her best friend. I am not her best friend; appreciate her front and back with me and move on.