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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

Texting.

A text message conversation between Bluetooth (the initiator this time) and me last night while I was attempting to write a paper for my Theories of Mass Communications presentation that may or may not be today:

Bluetooth (6:47pm Monday): :-)
Me (6:48pm Monday): :-) to you too.
Bluetooth (7:18pm): :-P
Bluetooth (7:19pm): Ever watch peoples [sic] eyes, on a cold day when they've been standing outside then come to a warm room?
Me (7:20pm): Yeah. They sort of go "ahhhh."
Bluetooth (7:21pm): Very good :-P Most people wont [sic] notice that.
Me (7:22pm): I people watch a lot.

I will never understand people or their conversations.

My personal chain of communication methods from highest effort to lowest:
Phone call > text message (still require the more personal info of phone number rather than cyberspace addresses) > email = Facebook message > any other Facebook communication

Let It Bleed

I’m not much of a holiday person. Go ahead and give thanks, sure, but don’t make me say the blessing or eat turkey. Oh, dammit. Fine. Uncle Bruce? Tell me again why there’s no such thing as time, seeing as how it’s a human construct and everybody measures it relatively anyway. That’s a good one. Not as good as the one where you say everybody shouldn’t take everything so seriously, though—I actually believe you’re right there.

Can you tell me why everyone looks so small and grey this year? Including you. Good fuck, Mom’s right about you looking like House. Your head use to be too square, your face too clean-shaven, your body too stocky—not fat, mind you. You’ve never been fat. But now you’re scruffy-skinny. It’s weird and frightening. Stop aging and tell me again how you’ve been single since 1997 and don’t regret a minute of it. Tell me about being a happy cat guy down in Florida.

…Oh. Your cat died in May. Huh. I’m really sorry, man, he was a good one—

Want to hear about being a newly single (something about that word rubs me the wrong way, but it’s the best description; “independent” is too celebratory, “lonely” is too pathetic and only true in the deep dark part of my brain that died a little when I broke up with BF) undergraduate home for a long weekend of break from final projects and fuck buddy shenanigans? Okay.

Well, there’s not a hell of a lot to tell. I cried while looking at laptops on the Apple website. Dad thinks my next laptop should be a Mac, because I’m on the creative side of things.
BF is a Mac fanboy. For most of the time I knew him, he carted around a white plastic unibody Mac Book with those little dirty arcs worn in front of the keyboard by the heels of his typing hands. When it was stolen about a year and a half ago, he bought an aluminum unibody and named it Mr. West. After Kanye.
I was just looking at laptops and remembering the first time he had his dorm room to himself for the weekend while we were dating and we watched The American President with that Mac Book on our knees on his roommate’s futon and how I still have no idea how that movie ended because we got too busy making out, and I had to duck into the bathroom and sob for a bit to get a hold of myself. And hear, I’m tearing up again writing about it.
Those hand arcs just killed me. I took that plastic unibody to his college graduation for him. I can’t even remember why now.

I’ve talked to Mike, Bluetooth, and Suitemate through text messaging. I haven’t heard any of their voices all break. Bluetooth wanted to know if I have picture messaging. My thought process: Yes. *send* Oh fuck don’t send me a picture of your penis, dude. *receiving chime* …The den of your “island home” and a milkshake machine. *whew*

Suitemate on Facbook chat: Are you interested in [Bluetooth]? You totally don’t have to tell me, I realize it’s a personal question, etc etc etc.
Me: He seems nice, but I’m not looking for a relationship at all right now.
Truth. 

 I don’t want to deal with anybody else’s shit.
Right, Uncle Bruce? Right. Adios, ameba! I stole a Vega!