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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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. 

Carrier pidgeons

My rant from yesterday is rendered null and void by the cockblocking capacity of modern technologies.
What the fuck am I talking about?
I didn't know I had two messages from Bluetooth in two different media because my notification systems FAILED so hard I would throw them across the room if that were possible (and/or if it wouldn't mean buying a new phone).
I sent him an email independent of all that shit because I wanted to talk to him. Turns out he wants to talk to me, too. And has been trying.
Maybe we can use carrier pidgeons. He doesn't live far. Or maybe we can just use Mike as a human, delay-time telephone. Suitemate's already indavertantly become one between me and Mike; it works surprisingly well.

Sigh. Contact info has been changed to more reliable address. I hope.
I will be okay if none of this works out. I will not be okay if this ends with Bluetooth thinking I'm a bitch because I don't reply to him.