Both sides now.

Today, I spent the last twenty minutes of the workday (no I don't get paid and yes it's for school but dammit, it's a workday) putting my reporting skills to good use by Facebook stalking a guy I've randomly run into four times since early December:

1. Met him on the night I went to hear my guitar teacher's band with Bluetooth. He's the guy with whom I shouted "Sweet Child O' Mine" over the expensive cover band.
2. He recognized me when I went to see the free student union movie last Thursday. We both got there really early. I was wearing the same purple sweater, he said hi, and my brain did that thing where it goes "hm I think maybe yes oh yeah hi!" in rapid clicks of recognition.
3. He was in one of the student film thingies in the running for last Friday's finale. I saw him there in his mock trial suit because that's where he was headed right afterward.
4. This morning at the Statehouse I saw him as I was picking my coins and cell phone and j-school DSL out of one of those dog bowls they put through the metal detector in the lobby. We were both working, and we both smiled and exchanged pleasantries. He looks nice in a suit. 

Facebooked the friend we both have in common --> looked up the school's mock trial team --> got his full name --> found him on Facebook using cross-references --> sent a friend request referencing our coincidental meetings to identify myself. Also used a smiley at the end. Friend request accepted.
He might even be single.
AND HE LIKES TOP GEAR. SCORE. Can I call this one Hamster?

Mike called Suitemate and told her he just wants to be friends.
The three of us went to see The King's Speech this evening. He drove us in his old white Cutlass that shudders every time he revvs it. I sat in back but I got to hold his sword the whole time because it was back there too.
That sounds really dirty the more I say it: "I got to hold his sword."
But they argued. Like, for real. As in, he would start teasing her and she'd get defensive and all of a sudden it'd turn into a real argument. "Kids, don't make me turn this [student union, field trip] around." I actually SAID that MORE THAN ONCE.
She froze him out the whole way home so I blathered on about my possible article on our city's public transportation and made Mike talk about the science and engineering career fair until we got back and she hugged him and I punched him on the shoulder and then a few minutes later he texted me to ask if he should call her tonight or tomorrow and I told him to get it over with and ten minutes after that she came into the computer lab and cried on my shoulder and he texted me about how that was done, then and she sobbed about wanting her mother and having a dual pity party with Clingy and ice cream and chick flicks this weekend.
Hugs, people. Lots and lots of hugs.

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.

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.
 

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.

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.

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.

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."

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!

An epic of epic epicness.

Warning: Tale of anger, depression, and stupid boys coming up. If you've heard it a million times before (you have), I would look elsewhere for original entertainment.

Thursday night: we went to see Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. I have class in the j-school until 6:30pm, after which I hike to the student union to inhale dinner before the 7pm student DJ meeting. After that I trot downstairs and found Mike and Suitemate just finishing their own dinner, so I join them. We laugh a lot, mostly at each other. He's easy to embarrass; I'm prone to absurdity. Both of those make us crack up. Suitemate looks mystified a lot of the time, but that's sort of her default setting (She's smart, I swear she is--she's a biomedical engineer, for fuck's sake, but she acts so goddamn oblivious).

At the movie: Suitemate, Mike, me, then an empty seat at the end of our row for Bluetooth who said he was coming after a mandatory jazz concert attendance. Scott Pilgrim starts, and it's awesome--I love the music and how it's illustrated and how the video game touches give the story a sense of epicness that new, complicated romances always feel like when they're happening to you. Michael Cera is still Michael Cera, but it works here.
Bluetooth sneaks in and sits down in the dark a few minutes after the opening credits. I smile at being in the middle of an adorable Comp Sci geek sandwich.

Lights up: we wander out, I lose my glasses in the theater, Bluetooth found them, we all talk about our vision problems, we talk more, I wonder if Bluetooth is slightly racist, but he likes The Boondocks. I love that show. I show him the voice mail icon on my phone and tell him that's him but I still can't get to it; he says, "...I never left you a voice mail. Sorry."
Inside, I wither into a fetal-position-shaped crumbly ball of shame.
We group-walk Mike back to his car, which is named Minerva. I've had the letter I wrote shoved into my pocket this whole time; I give it to him and tell him it's writing crap to read at home.
Bluetooth walks me and Suitemate back to dorm; I give him the downstairs non-signed-in tour, Suitemate goes upstairs, I'm still wired so I walk him to the car in front of the Earth Wind and Fire building (not the actual name, but close enough that everyone calls it that). He asks what I'm doing this weekend. My answer spazzes out. I attempt to apologize and say I don't know, which is not a perfect effort but he says okay, he'll get in touch and maybe we could do something Friday night. I don't know what I want to do. I don't know if I want to do something with him. I just--don't--know and my brain freezes and I smile at him and refuse his offer for a ride back (it's two and a half blocks of a street I know like the back pattern of BF's freckles and oh that's an unfortunate thought to have) and he hugs me, for a long time, until the glasses I've parked on top of my head start to bend and I have to untangle them and we break apart. He calls my phone to leave a voice mail so I can check my voice mail and finally get that fucking thing off my mind; it works.

A few things: his fly was unzipped. The fly on his really old jeans that was topped with a dust-speckled Honors College polo (oh Brother), all wrapped up in an old Northface puffy jacket that was leaking stuffing from one shoulder and VELCRO shoes. And he had his cellphone--his goddamn smartphone--clipped to his belt. When did it become fashionable to make your belt look like a python whose last meal isn't quite done yet?
I like geeks and geek style, but they need to realize that cell phones are becoming smaller for the sole purpose of being easier to store in pockets.

Friday: As I'm walking to my first class, I get into a text message conversation with Mike. He's read my letter. Can we talk/write? Yes, let's phone talk after our morning classes. Countdown to 12:15pm begins.
"I'm okay. How're you?"
"Really nervous."
"Yeah. Me, too."
Upshot is, it's Jesus's fault.
Atheist me and Christian Mike have vastly different expectations and morals for a dating relationship, which works out great for a friendship that doesn't involve planning any sort of life together for any amount of time.
I knew this. It was what I was expecting. Not what I was hoping for, but what I was expecting. What I wasn't expecting was how lonely it would make me feel (a lot).
We're still friends. Campus best friends, as he put it, albeit with an extra two or three servings of awkward sauce that I'm not prepaired to face until after Thanksgiving.

I always fucking take it. Every fucking time I give a guy a note explaining my squishy feelings for them, it ends in "Um, wow. I didn't know you felt this way, and, uh, you're such a good friend that I hate to..." You'd think I'd learn my fucking lesson by now, right? No. Reckless Writing Dumbass triumphs over reason every. single. time and has since 7th grade. I'd like to think feelings have grown more sophisticated, skins thickened, but no.

So then I spend the rest of Friday waiting to see if Bluetooth will contact me in some way that I will receive and be able to respond to; he text messages me about 6:30pm and says there's not much going on and he's cleaning his room. What do I have planned. Nothing except dinner and TV, I say truthfully. Quiet evening in. Silence from him. Real exciting, I know, I joke. Silence for another hour, until I can't take it and ask if he would like to hang out or would cleaning take all night?
No, he said, cleaning won't take all night, but he has to write a management science paper. Sorry.

BULL. SHIT. I haven't dated in 3 years and even I know that NO ONE has to write a SCHOOL PAPER on a FRIDAY NIGHT. Fuck you. You owe me $5.98 for the pint of ice cream and diet Coke I thought really hard about getting that night and then decided to get for Saturday lunch, however much I can spend at the thrift store Saturday afternoon, and for however much it costs to produce The Soup, the Fashion Police, and the hour and a half of Avatar I made it through before deciding to drag my sorry weeping ass and broken ego upstairs to bed while remembering what BF's shoulder felt like and how nobody else in the entire universe has a shoulder that feels exactly like his.

And that's what's happend so far this weekend.

You got your cherry bomb.

I swear I take good notes in sociology.

We're all going to the movie tonight. This means it's move-making time, for all of us.


"Rusty, I can't go to jail. I have serious food allergies."

Counseling appointment 2

Talking to a Student Health counselor makes me wonder when the hell I became mature about handling my emotions. It was the second-most depressed I've been about the breakup because I had to talk about it. I let it out, all over the rest of Counselor Laura's Kleenex. It hurt. But apparently, it was a very well-adjusted hurt.

(Incidentally, "Kleenex" is one of my favorite words to spell.)

Now I'm trying to comb out weekend plans, all of which seem to involve a movie and the delicate dance of early-stage undergraduate mating rituals:

1. Scott Pilgrim Versus the World: Mike is going to see that this weekend, dammit. Maybe even all three times it shows at the student union. He really likes that movie. I mean, yeah. 
2. Suitemate is going, too.
3. Bluetooth's going as well, because I'm going.
4. Mike and Suitemate have decided on tomorrow night. Can I go at that time?
5. Yes, after class and the radio station DJ meeting. Will Bluetooth be back in time to go then?
6. I don't know. I'm still waiting for a text message reply. If he can't, that means he might want to do something Friday night. With me. Just me. 
7. That's a suddenly terrifying thought. But Bluetooth hasn't replied yet.

Right now I feel like staying in and watching The Soup (oh hi Joel McHale) on Friday. 

Recipe for my first weekend up here alone.

Preparation:
1. Decide to not go home a second weekend in a row, especially with Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks so close on my and each other's asses.
2. Hope really hard that my roommate's open suitcase means she's going home so I don't have to explain why I'm still here instead of BF's condo.
3. Eat dried chicken (wonder why everybody who cooks thinks the breast is so great) and polite conversation during the j-school scholarship luncheon.
4. Walk to Food Lion, guiltily check for BF's car, stay paranoid of him and/or how it gets completely dark by 6pm now while you buy food and hike back.

Not pictured: my dignity.

Ingredients:
1 box Hamburger Helper
vague approximation of vegetables
1 12-pack diet cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper
1 good movie at the student union
1 Pastafarians talk
1 good friend (male)
1 cockblocking suitemate who probably doesn't know what "cockblocking" means
depression, lonliness, giddyness
1 call to parents laced with reassurances
2-3 servings of masturbation
1 low-neck sweater
1 sociology paper (5-7 pages)
1 journalism paper (5-7 pages)
1 library science homework assignment

Steps:
Combine Hamburger Helper, vegetables, 1 can diet Dr. Pepper. Consume at regular-ish intervals when needed by hunger. If nausea occures, try more diet Dr. Pepper.
Put on low-cut sweater (be sure to avoid makeup, tight jeans, visible bra, or shiny things near boobs). Go to movie with good (male) friend, cockblocking suite mate, and about 50 other people they both know somehow. Hate cockblocking suite mate when she wants to sit next to me; hate male friend when he agrees and takes his comfortable bulk away from anywhere I could possible brush up against it during the movie. Concentrate on how conflicted Leonardo in a suit is a fine sight and not on how much I have to pee.
Afterward, stand around with everybody first outside, then in the Cheap and Fast and Good sub shop down the street, talking (does not have to be about nerdy things, but it helps). Officially meet Bluetooth and notice eye contact from him by making my own eye contact.
When things break up at approximately 1:45am, don't walk male friend to his car but instead help Bluetooth find the bluetooth headset he dropped somewhere in the parking lot. Marvel at how useful the concept of "triangulation" is. Find headset by almost stepping on it; get hug and reassurance that headset is for listening to podcasts and not "looking like a douche while talking on the phone." Accept two-second ride back to dorm because by now I can't remember if I have toes or if the cold snapped them off.
Take Bluetooth's business card. Scribble my own name-number-email on back of another. Be slightly stunned at how easy that was and how much fun you just had with people who are actual friends. Realize this sort of thing is exactly what you've been missing from your Friday nights.
Bake journalism paper in intervals until done.
Call parents to let them know depression and lonliness have been used sparingly.
Go to Pastafarians talk. Let stand overnight.
Bake sociology paper until done. Suddenly remember library science assignment--pan fry that sucker to a reasonably consistent finish. Wonder if watching The Amazing Race would be too traumatic.

The sprinklers come on at 4am.

Tuesday night I couldn't sleep. At all. It didn't even feel like my eyes were glued open against my will  or anything. I was just wide awake.
I didn't fight it for once. My roommate was up late to study but even she threw in the towel at about 2:30am, so I made a nest in the study room.

I finally got around to eating my feelings.

Excerpt from email I sent to Jenna at about 12:30am yesterday morning:

Gah, I'm crawling out of my fucking skin. I can't take this. I want to grab Mike's face and yell "DO YOU LIKE ME AS MORE THAN A FRIEND, YES OR NO?" and make him say one or the other so I can KNOW.
That doesn't mean we have to do anything about it. I just want to know how to interpret all this shit that may or may not mean anything different now that we're both single and that is at present the mental equivalent of banging my head against the desk.
I asked him to go see Inception at the RuHo on Friday, because it's free and we see the good ones when we can and I thought the walk back to his car (a shitty white Cutlass that always takes two or three turnovers to actually start--oh, God. I'm mythologizing his car. MAYDAY, Jenna.) I could ask him exactly that. He said "Maybe. Can I get back to you?" Sometimes he goes home for the weekend; maybe he was freaked out by Thursday. WHAT DOES IT MEAN??
But I can't even ask, however innocuous I want to sound, because it will always sound like I'm gunning for him. And now he's invited my suite mate, whom it turns out we both know (and I hate. There. I said it. I hate her. She has no sense of social clues whatsoever, and every time I use our shared bathroom I can hear her yapping loudly about nothing). I found out through the suite mate.
I. don't. want. to care. This feels like detox sounds, all twitchy and anxious and meanwhile I can barely look at BF's Facebook feed because it sounds so cheerful and it makes me feel like an awful person but I want to know he's as unhappy as I am so I can recognize that we actually MEANT something to each other once upon a week ago.

FUCK FUCK FUCK *bambambam*
*Breathe*

Things got better. After I decided to just stay up all night, after I finished off a jar of ranch dip with Food Lion brand tortilla chips, after I read about Mr. Rochester's secret lunatic wife (and really, how easy does the damn fool give up the ghost, as it were, after he's just straight up asked?), I did get sleepy, so I eased into my dark quiet dorm room and bed and slept for about four hours.

Yesterday I was euphoric for a couple hours in the afternoon. Yeah. Euphoric. I said it. On the way to Pysch 101 the world seemed kind and full of possibilities. I was also listening to the Killers' Hot Fuss and rediscovering why I still love that album.

This is/was my first relationship. I should mention that. I've stopped hanging out with people--friends--before but not with someone I've loved and been best friends with and know how his morning face looks for three years. Oh.

Letters I won't send.

To BF:
I'm sorry I called you again last night. It was just to let you know that I gave your camera to the front desk of your brother's workplace on Friday so they could give it to him Monday so he could give it to you...whenever the hell he said he would. Per the instructions in your letter you left for me at the front desk of my dorm.
Which annoyed the hell out of me, by the way. Is a Facebook message really so much more fucking trouble than manually writing something in pen when you type 90% of the time and had to actually travel further than the far edge of your futon to deliver the damn letter in person at a place that is still clogged with memories of, well everything? Was it really so fucking much easier to give a letter to a person so they had to flag me down instead of just hitting send your own damn self? We don't even have to be friends for you to send me a Facebook message. Embrace cyberdistance and leave my parasympathetic nervous system alone!
Ahem. You will note that everything's in there, and that I deliberately avoided Brother. I'll miss his snarkiness (I fondly recall snickering when his fake shanking turned into real sucker punches when you made a bad joke. Which was often.), his Lego catalog, and the victories of making him laugh. I won't miss feeling like I'm performing every time I talk to him.
You're a good guy, and I just want to make sure you understand immediately what I'm trying to say. I'm impatient. You know this. I want to be understood, not in an existential sense (although bonus points if that is managed), but in a clear communication sense. You know this. The way you talk around things drives me up the batshitting wall. YES or NO or I UNDERSTAND do wonders to my nerves at strategic times.
But I guess you don't really need to know that anymore, do you? No.
From:
Your ex-girlfriend who has been avoiding that label all week but needs to slap herself in the face with it until she gets use to it

Dear Mike,
I won't tell you how many times I've checked my cell phone for text messages even when I haven't heard the obnoxious unmistakable chime that doesn't mean anything else. It's embarrassing.
I won't tell you how your smell reminds me of my grandma's kitchen. You might take that as an insult (it's not; it just means you smell clean).
I won't tell you that you're the only live friend who's asked me how I'm doing. You might find that needy.
I will say thank you and DAMN IT, MAN, TELL ME I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO FELT THAT LAST THURSDAY and I'm going crazy trying to save you from being a rebound guy. You're too good for that. I like you too much for that.
I don't want to think about this anymore. Want to see a movie that will require all of our attention? It's free and really interesting.
--Your friend

Hey, Katie,
YES, I will come celebrate your birthday with you. Holy Zadie Smith YES. I want to learn how to party.
It should piss me off that you haven't responded at all when I told you about last Tuesday, but by now I really appreciate an excuse to have non-selfish, non-confusing fun.
And maybe you can demonstrate what tastes best with vodka.
Love,
Mel

Twitchy Freshman:
Just go away.

Goodnight, Michael, I'm going home.

My first social outing since Tuesday was inadvertently stumbling into my college's homecoming street celebration, which is called Cockfest 2010. (Our mascot is the gamecock. An angry chicken.) I meandered through said Cockfest to meet a celibate-until-marriage guy friend I find attractive.

I don't believe in the universe molding things just for little shitty ol' me, but that was an amusing train of thought.

I took Mike to dinner because he paid the last time we ate since I had forgotten all my off-campus money. Here's what happened, pulled from an email I sent Jenna this morning:

Ah, Mike. The evangelical Christian with pretty eyelashes, geeky tendencies (Star Wars is like a third wheel with us; always there and hanging out and saying stuff at random times), a warm low voice and laugh unless he's excited (then they sort of vault up the register), and love for Sarah Palin. Two of those things I disagree with. But we're a lot alike otherwise and we have great conversations, and and and. And last night we were sitting on the hood of his car and he gave me a sideways hug (hug count is up to four for this breakup) and we just sat there for a minute, me leaning on his shoulder ("You're really comfortable." "Yeah, I get that a lot." "Yeah?" "No, not really."). Our heads leaned together and we turned to look at each other before he said he should probably get home. The whole evening I had tried subtly invading his space, which didn't work, and then suddenly this.
My onion breath from dinner kept things in the friend zone. I'm glad. I went away breathless and in need of a good yank. That's not unusual, and I know exactly how to take care of it.
Last week, he sent me a text message that said, "My stats professor mentioned you in class today. He said he'd see me in front of Firehouse, walking with a beautiful girl."
Yeah. That was confusing. I left it alone (except for a thanks and some blushing to myself). I refuse to decode the subtext, because it will just make me more crazy. I don't want a boyfriend now. I want to make out with a guy who is saving 99% of all sexual acts for after he's married. When he broke up with his girlfriend (like eight or nine months ago), he talked about how he's not going to make the mistake of kissing someone strictly for lust anymore. This has been going on for the past 14 months, ever since we met in Technical Writing.

On a side note, I love the rhythm of that last clause: WALKing with a BEAUtiful GIRL.

"Good night, Melanie."
"Good night, Michael."

I like that I now seem to be able to separate what my body, heart, and head all want. Body can lust and heart can ache and head's just like, "All right, guys, take the weekend off. I know it's been hard for you both."

So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going home. Dad's coming to pick me up right after my last class. The ride home might be filled with awkward talks that may or may not involve God (please no), or it might just be filled with Johnny Winter.

I'm not going home for the comfort of my parents. That's more effective from a distance. I'm going home for my dog sleeping on my bum and for my copy of Zadie Smith's On Beauty and TV that's not two flights down and usually taken by somebody studying anyway. I'm going home for peace that doesn't crystallize into crushing isolation. That'll be soon enough next weekend. Note to self: make more friends before next Friday.

When I told Mike that, he looked surprised and said, "Well, you don't have to be alone, do you?" Um. No...no of course not. He said, "I could hang out with you," which made me want to ask exactly how he passes his weekend nights up here.

Don't make this more difficult. Push through.

*Note: the D60 is on its way to its rightful owner. Its journey will take all weekend, so I'll explain Monday.