A wee respite

My dearies,

I hope your 2012 has started with a bang! Mine has--both the good and the bad kind. I filled my heart with a visit to Montreal, and am currently wanderlusting on the west coast. But yesterday I got the other kind of bang. It came in the form of me logging into His Facebook, which caused a total downward spiral. I hate myself for it. Needless to say the past 24 hours have been quite an emotional rollercoaster, filled with emotional emails back and forth, a loving Skype conversation, and tentative plans to see each other in the summer. The subtitle of this blog--the rollercoaster that is life after him--is ringing quite true (and loudly and annoyingly in my ears).

So much to share with all of you lovelies, but please be patient with me just a lil' while longer, while I gather my thoughts and the strength to write without tearing up. I think I know what'll do the trick: I'm hoping to continue to fill my heart on this week-long visit with my best friend in Vancouver, then retreat for four days in an artist's loft in Seattle, then re-toxify with good friends in sunny San Francisco for another week. All that, I'm telling myself, will cure my worries and my overactive imagination, which conspired against me to keep me up all night long (despite my superior ability to sleep soundly under any conditions) and made me want to hurl at the sight of food.

Love.
Me 

The numbers game

I don't know what possessed me to give out my number to an Usher look-alike last night, but I did. After refusing no less than four times, I just felt super bad for the guy ("Do you have a pen? I'll at least give you MY number!").  Not to mention that his friends were watching. So I punched in my number and got outta there.

Bad move. Let's tally the damage in the past less-than-24-hours: 

1. A phone call (which I did not pick up), shortly before 3:00 a.m. the night that I met him (and too long after I gave him my number for it to be one of those, "So you have my number too" sort of calls)
2. A text at 3:00 a.m.: "Good nights princess" (which I did not respond to)****Men, please heed this advice: don't call a female who is over 7 years old a princess--unless of course she is actually a veritable princess.
3. A text a minute later "Is my Joel usher" (which I also did not respond to) [Yes, he actually said that. He introduced himself to me as Usher. As should be expected, I laughed in his face. This did not, apparently, deter him.]
4. A phone call (which I again did not pick up) at noon today.
5. And finally a follow up text, which, out of courtesy, I finally responded to, initiating the following exchange.

Usher [8:30 p.m.]: Hey How are you [Rollercoastess]

Me [9:08 p.m.] Hi joel. I'm good, but overloaded with work. It was nice meeting you, but like i said i'm not interested in dating. I'm sure i'll see you out, and it would be nice to dance, but i'm not looking for anything more. Take care.
Usher [9:26 p.m.] Thank you're a beautiful girl but I can be your friends

Me [9:28 p.m.] Glad to hear that. Just wanted to be clear. Thanks and take care.

Usher [9:33 p.m.] Thank you for talking with me

Usher [9:35 p.m.] [Rollercoastess] and you a very petty

Usher [9:36 p.m.] Woman

Okay, so English isn't his first language, but we'll forgive him that. I do hope he meant that I'm pretty and not petty, though. I guess I'll find out next time I see him.

I shared the text exchange with a super duper awesome lady friend, and here's her super duper awesome response:

Maybe you just remind him of someone he once knew

Or maybe he's just tryin' to make love up in the club

Or maybe he just wants to leave the one he's with

To fake Usher's credit, he's not as bad as this dude, whose cringe-worthy 1605-word letter to a date that stopped answering his calls made its way into Jezebel today. Nor is he as bad as either of these two desperate, emotionally unstable psychos (at least she's drunk, but the dude...what's his excuse?).

Gittin' some

Boys and girls, it's time I get laid.

I'm sitting in the library, trying hard to concentrate on my work, and all I can think about is mounting Salsa Instructor. It didn't help my cause that yesterday we talked about other people having sex. It especially didn't help when he was acting out the motions (oh myyyyy!).

It's been four months. And four days. (Yes, that also happens to be my breakup anniversary. Hush now.) The point is that it's been loonnngggg enough.

That said, I'm still at the stage where I'm selective about the men I will bone. (It's only a matter of time before I throw that strategy aside and just bang the first male that says hello.) But for now, I do have some criteria. Those criteria are: You're hot. You're over 25. You're somewhat interesting. Preferably, you can move your hips. Umm, that's it.

Salsa Instructor happens to fulfill all of those criteria, as well as a bonus one: he's not looking for a relationship. In his case, this is because he's already in one. Now before you start calling me a home wrecker, allow me to clarify: I don't plan on banging him. I just want to...really badly.

You'd think that plenty of other people fulfill those criteria, but I'm not so convinced. Criterion 1 (hotness)--and especially criterion 1 in combination with criterion 3 (interestingness)--is difficult to find around these parts.

What this boils down to is the following: I'm cursed to not getting any work done because I spend all day thinking about getting my freak nasty on. It shall be an interesting finals season indeed!

Cheater cheater pumpkin eater!

Where did we leave off? Oh, right, I had just gotten back to Midwestern City from Chicago and figured that I wouldn't be kissing anyone for a while. Two days later, I was making babies on the dance floor with my salsa instructor, then exploring his oral cavity (mouth, people, mouth!), then learning that he has a live-in girlfriend.

I learned that lesson when I showed up to his house the next night for a lil pre-party before heading out for more dancing, and his girlfriend opened the door. His girlfriend who is in my salsa class--that he instructs--by the way. Yup. We did the whole, "Oh, hiiiiiii!' and hug thing, and all I could think about was, "Thank the good Lord in whom I don't believe that I brought a friend with me tonight!" There was only one other dude there except for The Couple, so I was thanking TGLIWIDB double! Time to act normal. I walked over to him and said my usual hello, noting the slightest look of nervousness on Salsa Instructor's face as we greeted each other with a hug and a heeyyyy.

A minute of small talk goes by, and I wander into the living room where there's some art on the wall. "Who's the artist?," I ask teasingly, since it's obviously an amateur. Girlfriend: "My kids. There's a picture of them over there." At this point I'm still not tuned into the fact that they are living together; after all, she was nowhere to be seen the night before when we were sipping cocktails at his place between party spots. I am, however, thinking, "Shit, dude, this is pretty goddamn serious if you have pictures ny her kids up on your wall!" 

We make our way over to the couch, and the four of us -- as in, me, my friend, Girlfriend, and random dude -- chat. Salsa Instructor is conspicuously absent. Keeping himself busy in the kitchen, he is. Those snacks that I brought over should not have taken that long to unpack, but whatever. He comes to serve the snacks, but right back out he goes to attend to nothing in the kitchen. He's there (out of sight) doing I don't know what.....for the next 45 minutes? hour? A long fucking time. 

In the meantime, I'm learning all sorts of things! They're going to Indonesia together in a couple of months, and guess what -- her kids are coming along, too! Aw, what a nice, big, happy family! 

WTF, dude? I mean, I'm not into the guy....although I do want to bone him. But I don't want to create enemies in this place where I moved just a year ago. And I'm wondering if he's told her, since she keeps making references to "The crazy night that you guys had last night!" "Yeah, it was fun!", I play along. Whatever.

More people show up. He enters the room, finally. He's at least acting normal. 

I get drunk. I don't mean to, but I do. I shit talk Girlfriend's dancing skills to my friend. I take off my jacket and prance around in a skimpy tank top with my zebra bra straps showing. I talk to him one-on-one a couple of times, and a couple of times Girlfriend comes over to interrupt. 

I don't want to have "a talk" with him. There's really no need. But I do want to communicate, "Dude, I got the message. You've got a girl. That's fine. We barely got to second base anyways. I'm not going to out you. And you better act the fuck cool and not turn awkward on me, because I intend to continue talking salsa lessons from you." I think I communicated that effectively. At least I hope I did.

So the night is a fun one. We end up staying at his place instead of going out to the place we had planned. My friend and I end up at another bar. I make out with another dude and we get yelled at by the bouncer to get out of the staircase. The next morning I put myself into self-imposed makeout slut rehab.

Oh, did I mention that since then all I can think about is sleeping with Salsa Instructor? Yeah. I want it. Badly.

Makeout slut

The first step is admitting that you have a problem, correct? Well, this last week I turned into a bit of a make out slut. Yesterday I entered a self-imposed rehab, and I'm happy to report that last night my tongue did NOT land in anyone's mouth. That was actually my goal for the night. No, I'm serious.

 It all started last weekend, when I road tripped it over to Chicago with some friends from Midwestern City to fete a friend's big and dirty 30. The weekend was a f*ing blast, though I felt less like a human when it was all over since I had seen less than an hour of daylight all weekend. We partied silly.

Friday night I had lost an earring that He had given me for my birthday just a few weeks ago. This was the day after we had a heated Skype-typing debate over an article that recently appeared in HuffPo. He wasn't in my good books. And so, when Dirty Thirty's Chicago friend started putting the moves on me, I rolled with it. And when another guy started doing the same, I rolled with that too. There was a bit of an altercation between the two groups, sure, but no black eyes the next day. The second dude --who was probably barely 21 but so goddamn cute I couldn't take it -- ambush-kissed me out of nowhere while I was asking him to chillax and not deal out black eyes, so that doesn't really count against me.

Chicago Boy and I had a hot and steamy make out session...well, three... in a mini-kitchen of a Veterans of War Club, on his roof (which I think had a great view of the Chicago skyline, though I didn't really get to take it in), in the staircase leading from the roof back to his apartment where all of our friends were, and again in his room, while he was asking me to stay over. Oh, I  guess that's four. But, boys and girls, I'm happy to report that I showed some self-constraint and did not stay the night. That made the taco breakfast that we ate at 3 p.m. the next day more digestible, I'm sure.

I haven't decided what I'm going to do with that. And by that, I mean him. I don't want to date the guy, though he seemed to be treading into that territory ("So, how often do you come into the city?" "You know, sometimes I visit [town close to where I live]"). I think I sent that message loudly and clearly in my text the next day: "Hey. Had fun this weekend. Thanks for showing me a good time. Will give you a ring next time I'm in the city. Take care." To that he wrote back "Had a good time too. Do let me know next time you're in Chicago. Don't hesitate to call or text. Hope to see you soon." We'll see where that goes. At least I have a place to stay when I'm in Chicago now. :-)

So that was nice. Even nicer was making out with my salsa instructor a couple of days later. And then going over to his place the next night for a little pre-party and being greeted at the door by his live-in girlfriend (whoops!). But that's a different story, for a different time...