Friday, January 27, 2006

One Hurdle Cleared

I got the second interview for Chase. They just called and told me that it's next Wednesday morning, February 1, when I'm supposed to be totally out of this apartment, so that should be interesting. I don't think my dad is going to be able to help me move this weekend because he's playing a gig, so I would have to wait until next Monday or Tuesday during the day. Then I have to recover and get ready for the interview at 10:30A Wednesday morning. Nothing's ever easy. It's all good though. No matter the circumstances, I will have my suit on, I will be there next Wednesday, and I will do my best to wow the suits at Chase. Period.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

The Ron Mexico Disguise Generator

And let it be known that all of my future hotel endeavors will be executed under the guise of Kurt Nigeria.

http://www.gorillamask.net/ronmexico/

Insane In The Brain

A couple of things had me nervous this morning as I prepared to go to this interview for a job with J.P. Morgan Chase. I was already anxious just because of the job interview, but then last night "Torrie" called while I was in class, and I didn't hear the message, so I have no idea what she could possibly want. I'm shocked she didn't burn my cell phone number. Then I had to buy a new ink cartridge for my printer or else give a really shitty copy of my resume to Chase. That worked out, thankfully; I imagined getting all the way home and realizing that I had the wrong cartridge, but I got the right one and inserted it correctly. But all the frustration and nervousness did result in one screw-up: I made myself a bowl of cereal and started pouring soda pop into the bowl before realizing what the fuck I was doing. So now I'm shaving my head and getting ready to go, hoping that I don't spit or curse during the interview. Can I push aside my insanity, pull off one good interview and finally get a good job, or am I doomed to working at Amoco for the rest of my life? Stay tuned.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Regression

Crazy week. Monday I went to O'Hare Airport and met a sweet woman who visited Chicago all the way from Europe. She was going to meet a guy from the internet group that I was a member of (actually the same group I met "Torrie" in), but that didn't work out. Apparently the guy wasn't trying to hide his interest in meeting others as well. So she made the trip anyway just to see America, and she stayed over in Chicago Monday before spending a couple of weeks in Houston with friends of her family. She was everything I can't find in American women--genuinely nice, not looking to take advantage of anyone, thinks highly of me despite the weight...of course she wasn't coming to meet me, she was coming to meet some asshole, so in that respect she's just like American women. But she was very grateful that I came to meet her because she didn't think that many guys who were not going to knock boots with her would have done that, and she's probably right. But she has chatted with me through IM many many times telling me to keep my head up, and she is a true sweetheart, so I had no problem meeting her. It was my pleasure. Tuesday I started school, but for the second day I came up to the school expecting to get my bus pass and was told to come back. So Wednesday I went up there at 8A because if I didn't get my pass Wednesday, I would have had to go through student services to get it mailed to me, and that may have taken a couple of weeks. I was pissed because I had a job fair at 11A on the near west side, and since they started doing passes at 10A, I had to hope that they got around to me in time for me to get out of there and make the job fair in time. And believe me, with all of the bitching and moaning that I do when things don't go my way, when I got out of there with my pass, made it to the train stop just as the train was arriving, and made it to the job fair at 10:55A, I made sure to thank whatever force was responsible for me threading the needle and pulling that stunt off. The fair seemed to go well, there were more construction and warehouse jobs there than anything, but there were some office jobs as well. The woman in charge announced right off the bat that they would look at everyone's form/resume and decide who could be interviewed for potential jobs that day and who would have to come back some other time, and I was interviewed that day. I think it went well. On my way to classes that very night, J.P. Morgan Chase called me on my cell phone and told me to come in for an interview for a data processing job next Thursday, so those of you reading who don't hate me (all three of you), wish me luck. Then yesterday was the funeral for one of my grandmother's brothers, the one who owned the house I grew up in, and because our household had zero income with me, my sick mother, my grandmother who didn't work and later became sick thanks to lung cancer, and her deceased sister's daughter who had Down's Syndrome, who knows where we would have lived if not for the man I called Uncle T.C. So I felt I had to go pay my respects. Then I went to class, and let's just say that it was a little hard to concentrate after attending a funeral.

So now I'm home all weekend, or at least I don't plan to leave the house. And I now have to face the current situation, one that I have not wanted to think about, but I have no choice. In perhaps as little as a week, I have to regress and move back with my family. I couldn't get to sleep for four hours last night mostly sweating that predicament. It totally goes against everything I'm trying to do with myself mentally, trying to gain self-esteem and confidence. Hard to do when you gotta move back in with your folks at the age of 30. I'm supposed to be a grown-up. This ain't what grown-ups do. It's bad enough not having a car or a job. Soon, I'm not going to have a pot to piss in. I'm moving with my family even if I get a job in the next week or two because it would take at least a month for me to save some money from the job to be able to get my own crib again. But I would definitely get out after I save that money, so I won't be there very long, hopefully. It's just pathetic that I have to do this at all. I haven't made the move yet, and already I'm not dealing with it well. The first time I have to use the bathroom and can't because someone else is in there, I will have to strongly fight the urge to dig an outhouse in the back yard on the spot because I am not used to waiting on anything. This year may be my most challenging yet, because it may serve to be my most humbling. Character building, those who don't have to go through this shit may call it.

My uncle's house is not an option anymore, because they were going to shoehorn me into a very small room in the basement since my old bedroom is taken now, and I have better options as far as size goes: My aunt's basement, or maybe my own pad, a basement in a building that my aunt owns, but I'm avoiding that option because she tells me that there's no shower or bath in that place (I would have to go upstairs and bug the neighbors to get clean, and that doesn't sound fun at all). My aunt lives on the west side, so the only benefit from going there would be potentially seeing "Grace" more since she lives close to the area, but Grace and I have been so busy, we don't talk much anyway, so I don't know what that future holds. That shouldn't be a concern anyway. The reason I had not considered my aunt's house before is because my aunt can be overbearing as far as her beliefs are concerned. My uncle may be an asshole, but he would stay out of my business. My aunt will give me crap every time I'm out late or don't come home that night, or just go meet someone, for that matter, and Sunday mornings would be spent telling her 325 times that I don't want to go to church with her. And I may have to rent storage space for my porn collection and a P.O. box just to handle the Playboy subscription. But hey, grown-ups have their own place to live. They don't have to worry about that stuff. I do. I had an ad on craigslist.org begging for an understanding roommate who would realize that I haven't a dime to my name right now but would hold up my end of things eventually when I became employed. I got many responses, but I decided that if I was going to be in a living situation where I don't have any privacy and I can't have phone sex or fuck anyway, I might as well be with family and not have to pay as much or worry about trust issues or my potential roommate's sweatsock fetish that he forgot to tell me about before I moved in. So that's where I stand right now. I feel sick about it, but that's where my life is right now, and I would risk falling back into my rut of beating myself up and feeling like the future is hopeless if I dwell on it too much, so I'll stop now. All I can say is, come on Chase, give me the data processing gig ASAP.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

The Saga Of Shelley

Okay, that's two days I've showed up at my college around noon to get my U-Pass, the bus pass that every student at a City College of Chicago can receive when they enroll for a semester of 12 credit hours or more, and that's two days that many others and I have been turned away because they gave out tickets earlier and ran out, even though nowhere on the 57, 923 signs around the building displaying the hours that one can get a U-Pass does it say anything about arriving before the earliest hour displayed so that you can get a fucking ticket. Yeah, I'm a little pissed. I considered barging through the doors and demanding to get my pass since I was, you know, actually there during the hours that they ask people to come get a U-Pass. The only reason I would consider something so rude is because it seems like something "Shelley" would do, because she believes that the world owes her anything she wants, or at least she acts like it. So since I have an hour and a half to kill before my first class, and I'm very pissed off, it seems like a perfect time to write about the woman who singlehandedly made me vow to never hand over all that I am to a woman ever again, the Dyke Princess herself, Shelley.

Shelley posted an ad on craigslist.org saying that she was "now taking applications" for men who wanted to be her lover. They had to be confident men who liked bigger women and would have patience and realize that she was rather inexperienced with men but that once she felt comfortable she would be "...open to anything." I came on strong with some response about how she better not be a hooker because her location was the Loop, and the women I saw putting out ads who were in the Loop usually were call girls. She assured me that she wasn't, and she said that I had her attention. So, I continued with the confident, aggressive tone of my e-mails. I could only laugh when she asked if, being a black guy, I had a problem hooking up with a white woman; she actually asked if I had ever been with one before. Her name on her e-mail account was that of a famous character in Chicago movie history, but I didn't know that wasn't her real name until she told me. So it was obvious that she was in love with Chicago and that she was doing all she could to take it in and live it up, as if she was Carrie on Sex And The City. Soon we talked on the phone, and she told me some things about herself that were eye-raising right off the bat. She said that she writes an online lesbian dating advice column. She said that she didn't have much experience with men because she was a lesbian for ten years. The last couple of years, she was in an off-on relationship with a black guy in her hometown of Kansas City. She said that she wouldn't call that relationship dead, that they were still friends and that she still cared deeply for him, but that she was looking for someone to be with while she was here in Chicago going to school. Her mean, angry demeanor had not been shown yet, and neither had my meek, introverted style. We were going to meet for drinks the night of Game 4 of the World Series, but with the White Sox poised to clinch, we thought it best to wait until the next night. She wanted someone who could host because she was living with three roommates, so I invited her to my danger zone of an apartment, and because I was working at CEDA during the day and watching and celebrating the Sox at night, I did not make time to thoroughly clean the place. As a result, my first impression to her was that of a slob, and I'm sure that didn't help what I perceived to be the main problem between us, that she didn't like or respect me. I honestly don't think she would have used me the way she did if I was the strong, aggressive type of guy she thought I would be.

Shelley waited for me outside the Red Line train stop two blocks from my apartment, but she was wearing a black coat and had a scowl on her face like someone had just knocked her upside the head or something. She told me to look for a trench coat but didn't say what color, and for some reason I was looking for a tan or brown coat because that's what my brain thinks when I hear "trench coat." And the one picture of her face that she sent was of her smiling, so silly me thought that she looked like that all the time. (I have rarely seen her smile since.) Add to that the fact that she's not tall, and I actually walked right past her and into the train station looking for a smiling brunette in a brown or tan coat. I came back out, looked at her weird, and stammered, "Shelley?" She didn't seem happy at that. So I don't know what her first impression of me physically was, but she did nothing for me. She was short, her ass was huge, and she had that scowl that looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there. It would have been different if she was smiling and happy to see me. She has a great smile. Unfortunately, I don't bring it out because I'm not the aggressive hardcore nigga she was hoping I would be. She knew that I don't drink, so she actually brought along her own mini bottle of white zinfandel, which was another thing that bothered me. She didn't even want to get to know me, she wanted to loosen up so she could get laid immediately. Once she got over the shock of my messy place, she saw a wrestling book that I had lying around, and she got excited as she told me that her father was a famous wrestler. So with that as a background, after she lost interest in an erotic R-rated Gina Gershon movie I popped in, we wound up watching part of an ECW DVD I have. Somewhere along the way I got up the nerve to kiss her, but on our way to the bedroom, here's the list of things she complained about: The chair she was sitting in while I was kissing her was uncomfortable, the floor on her way to my bathroom was too messy, I didn't prepare the bedroom and put some music on while she was in the john (because I didn't know if she was coming back to watch more of the DVD or what), and once we got in the bedroom, the bed was uncomfortable and I didn't move fast enough to take off her shirt and bra. (And the only two compliments were that I was a good kisser and that my bathroom was clean, but the bathroom comment was an insult because it suggested that she expected shit on the walls and scum in the bathtub due to how messy the rest of the joint was. But I guess I deserved that.) Now, if a man can't get excited after all that scolding, then he must not have a pulse, right?! My head was hurting at that point. After I gave her an orgasm with my fingers (and got scolded because my nails were too long), I tried to give her the real thing, but the combination of her fat, my fat, and the angle we were attempting resulted in no penetration after close to a full minute. She then asked if I was wearing a condom, and because my previous lovers couldn't get pregnant and swore they were clean, I had been going bareback since high school. So I had to run to the living room and open the box of condoms I had bought a year ago in preparation to visit "Jane" in Kentucky before she canceled. The combination of the pressure to perform for a new lover, all of Shelley's cutting comments, being in the dark, and not having applied a rubber in over a decade made my dick start to get softer as I tried to put it on, so I asked Shelley to give me a hand, literally. Her response: "Oh no, you're gonna have to give yourself a hand." It was as if my cock was toxic and she didn't want to touch the damn thing. That was the last straw; my erection went completely away, and for the first time as an adult, I had a woman lying naked in a bed waiting for me to fuck her, and I couldn't.

Shelley came back two days later on a Saturday, but she claimed to be extremely tired from running around shopping and went straight to my bedroom to take a nap. When I tried to cozy up to her, she reminded me that I had a paper to write for a class and basically kicked me out of my own bed. I let her sleep for an hour and a half, did the paper, came back in the room, and got up the guts to kiss her, strip her, and finger her again. She then became the first woman I've ever been with to complain about her orgasm. She said she came so hard that it gave her a headache. With that looming over me in addition to the events of the first night she was with me, when she told me to keep going, I realized that I couldn't, because I wasn't at all aroused. I didn't even bother taking my pants off this time. We watched a movie, then she left. That was the last time she ever came to--or in--my apartment. She explained later that I had to grow some balls and step to her if I wanted her to come back because she was tired of being there when others are down and encouraging everybody in her life. "Right now, the cheerleader needs a cheerleader," is how she put it.

This is where Shelley basically decided that I would be good for nothing other than entertaining her and paying for whatever she wanted, and it's 100% my fault for letting it happen. She stopped pretending that she wanted to be intimate with me. Once, I commented that I had not had a real kiss from her since she came to my apartment, and she got upset because: "I don't have to sit on your lap and shove my tongue down your throat to show you that I like you." In other words, she didn't have any desire to give me a real kiss. We would go out to dinner and I would pay every single time. She claimed that she couldn't even put anything on a credit card or write a check because her credit was so bad, she couldn't get a card or a bank account. She said that she was having trouble finding work because she was afraid of a background check, which would turn up something bad in her past. At least four times she gave me this line about a friend who works at Sprint having a job interview lined up for her in some suburb, but she needed $20 from me to take the CTA and Metra to this interview. The interview never happened; it was always canceled by the manager of the store because new personnel had come in since the last time, and they didn't know who she was, so they blew her off. Sometimes she didn't even make up a story. She just said that she was broke and needed money. She would usually make the comment that she felt like a whore always asking me for money. But she never stopped asking. I resisted the temptation to tell her that she couldn't be a whore as far as I'm concerned because whores actually fuck their clients, but she could respond that she was lying there waiting for me to fuck her and I couldn't. She knew a lot about whores, as it turns out; she claims that her lesbian lover and she used to run a brothel. She wasn't a working girl herself, she says. But she sure knew how to turn on the sympathy when she needed money. That one-week stint she had at my job at CEDA as a file clerk was lined up before she met me; she had been talking to Smart Resources about a gig before I ever came into her life. But once she got let go from that, she seemed to lose all interest in finding work and started concentrating on what she said was the only way she could stay in school and keep living in Chicago, her big score on me, the wimpy nice guy who couldn't say no: She asked me to co-sign a student loan for her.

Shelley had argued with me a couple of times at this point, berating me for not looking happy enough when I was with her, even though she seemed downright disgusted to be with me. Once, we met at a Borders, and I walked ahead of her going down the escalator, and she exploded, telling me that I didn't respect her and the fact that she was "bleeding like a cow," as she eloquently put it, but stuck around downtown to meet me anyway. When I e-mailed her later asking what she wanted from me, she responded, "Nothing. It's obvious you don't want to live life because you're too busy rolling in your own shit." I left her alone and didn't write or call, and wasn't ever going to again after that comment, but she called me four days later apologizing and saying that we should move on because we were both assholes that day. I forgave and hoped that she would start treating me better. Then I remembered that I had told her that I received the tickets for the play Chicago that I bought for her birthday, November 29, and that's why she had to make up with me. So there was always something in it for her when she saw me or called me or said she was sorry for the way she treated me. I saw all this, but I didn't care. That's how bad I wanted a woman in my life. She was at the height of her manipulative skills when she told me she needed me to co-sign the student loan for her. She invited me to her apartment, told me to bring food for her, and broke down while telling me that she can't stay in Chicago if I don't do this for her. "I'm taking a chance on dating you, so please take a chance on me," she said. Then we watched The Godfather, and she cuddled up to me on her couch, put my hand on her breast, and gave me a real kiss for the first and last time since the weekend that we met. How could I say no? Well, I really wanted to, but after spending Thanksgiving weekend trying to figure out the right way to tell her no, I decided that I couldn't tell her no. I didn't want to send a woman willing to sleep with me away, even if it was clear that I couldn't trust her. On the day at her apartment that she asked me for the loan, I asked her what was so bad in her past that she couldn't get the loan or a credit card or a bank account. She said that it was check fraud. I still said yes. She told me many times that she and this guy in Kansas City may get back together someday. I still said yes. No matter how she treated me or what warning signs I saw, I said yes to basically anything Shelley asked me to do. That's how bad I wanted a woman in my life. Several days after I signed the paperwork came the day where I met her, paid for lunch, listened to her say that she was going to invite that guy in Kansas City to stay at her apartment over the Christmas holiday because he needs to get away from his drama at home (after telling me that men can't stay overnight at the apartment because it's a deluxe dorm with dorm rules like no men overnight and no alcohol), and then decide that she was tired and wanted to go home. I told her to go ahead because she got what she wanted from me--a free lunch. She called me a bastard, I stormed off, and I thought that was it. Nope. She called and gave me five seconds to apologize, and of course I did. She couldn't just let me go at that point: The loan paperwork was still in progress and not yet finalized.

Then came the night that changed everything. Shelley claimed to not have a computer in her apartment, but rather, she used the common computer room on the first floor of her building. I don't know what she was doing up at 1:30 in the morning, or if they even let you use those computers at that time of day, but she frantically called me saying that the student loan company had sent her a message in an attachment and that she could not open it on the particular computer she was using. But instead of e-mailing me the attachment as I expected she would, when I turned my computer on, she gave me her e-mail password and let me go in and look at the attachment, which didn't say anything of importance, as it turned out. The e-mail account was different from the one she used to e-mail me, and I fought the urge to see what was in her e-mail and if the password would work on her other account as well. But curiosity got the best of me, and I checked both e-mail accounts one morning and found evidence that she was still corresponding with someone else who responded to her ad, apparently trying to settle on dates that they both had free so that they could finally meet. Ironically, I arranged that trip to see "Torrie" again the weekend after the argument where I told Shelley that she got what she wanted from me, the free lunch. But once Torrie saw my blog and told me off, I canceled the trip, and accepted Shelley's invitation to a drag queen show at her school and dinner at a fancy sushi restaurant, which I paid for of course. Shelley was going to meet this guy that weekend because I had told her that I wouldn't be around, but once I canceled, she had to frantically e-mail him and tell him that she had to cancel with him. So the deceit and trickery was pretty thick between both of us.

On my birthday, Shelley told me to wait at the movie theater for her to arrive at 7P. This was the same day that she received the first installment of her student loan, so I anticipated her paying for the movie and dinner, which she didn't. What she did instead was splurge on a fancy Pulsar watch as my present, which she says is valued at around $200. She put all of her stuff in the seat between us during the movie, saying that she always does that because she's a big girl and she likes her space. (Remember, she didn't mind being close to me on her couch the day that she asked for the loan.) I thought she was happy to see me when she got to the theater because she got her money or because she knew I would be surprised by the gift or because we were going drinking after the movie. "Nothing can wipe the smile off my face today," she said. But when I checked her e-mail again the next morning, I saw that she was happy because she had met someone at 5P either on my birthday or the day before. I don't remember if this was the same guy with whom she wrote suggestive e-mails back and forth that at one point had her saying how horny she was, the guy asking what was on her mind, and her responding: "My mouth your dick." (Remember, she never touched my dick, much less expressed interest in sucking it.) I don't remember if this was the same guy to whom she sent topless pics of herself. (She never sent anything like that to me.) I don't remember if this was the guy to whom she expressed her love of being tit-fucked: "Makes me cum instantly," she told him. (Never mentioned anything like that to me.) Basically, she was fucking several other guys, or at least leading them to believe that she wanted to fuck them, while she was dating me and pretending that she liked me. It was the way that my life has gone that made me check that e-mail account the morning after she gave me such a great gift and we had such a great time drinking and eating and living life. Simply put: I knew that it couldn't be that perfect.

But it was the light that I needed to see. I had to realize that I was only being used by her because I was allowing myself to be used by her. And after spending Christmas weekend having that familiar feeling of being punched in the gut that I had after "Karen" and her bisexual swingers group...and "Sarah" and her leaving me because I didn't humiliate her enough...and "Jane" canceling meeting me after a month of phone sex and "I love you"s...and Torrie dumping me after I arranged to fly to her yet again even though she never came to see me, I finally figured out probably the most important thing: No matter how much of myself I give, I still don't own anyone. Shelley NEVER promised me that she would fuck me and only me. Shelley NEVER said that we were anything more than just two people dating. Shelley NEVER said that we were dating exclusively. As much as I wanted to get mad at her, I had to arrive at a place where I could just let it go, because she's not mine and she can fuck whomever she wants to fuck. I knew from the moment I responded to her ad that I wasn't exactly what she wanted. She wanted a confident guy to take control of her and make her his slut for however long the sex session would last, five minutes, three hours, whatever. She never wanted meek, shy little me, but I tried to be something I'm not. And although I will pay a heavy price for the rest of my life once she defaults on that loan, I came to the conclusion that no matter what I do for a woman, I cannot buy her loyalty, her love, her life. I'm not the owner of Shelley. She can do whatever she wants, and I can do whatever I want. I can't ever give all of myself to someone again, because that leaves me with nothing for myself. This is not what my mother gave me life to do, put it on a platter and give it to any fat white chick who shows me a little attention. I get it now, finally. It's my life. I don't owe anybody anything. I need to do exactly what I want to do at all times, because no one else will do it for me. I can still be the nice guy, because that's my genuine nature. But I cannot give and give and give unless I meet someone willing to give back, and until then, I have to do what's best for Dre.

As for Shelley, she called several days ago to borrow my suit jacket because it goes with the outfit she wants to wear to a friend's bachelor party. It's crazy, but I still have work to do on saying no. At first I said yes, then I remembered that I'm going to a funeral Thursday, so I told her I would get it to her after that, then I told her that I would be with my family after the funeral so I couldn't get it to her after all. That would be the second time I didn't give her something that I told her I would, the first being that night in my bed. But it's okay. I didn't have any trouble in bed giving "Grace" whatever she wanted a week and a half ago, because she's not a using, conniving, manipulative bitch. We all get what we deserve in life.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Getting Dumped Is Becoming A Habit For Me

"You're not going to write a big, angry blog about this, are you?" asked "Shelley" as she told me over the phone last night that she doesn't have time to see me anymore. "No," I told her. And I told the truth--this is not a big angry blog entry. It's a short mournful entry, and it's a precursor to a longer, more detailed entry at a later date when I'm ready to reveal all of the elements of our "relationship." It's a doozy, and it really was the last straw as far as making me realize that I can either allow everyone to walk all over me for the rest of my life or I can enjoy life while I have it and let everything else fall into place. I had not heard from Shelley for two weeks while she was supposedly in Michigan with her roommate's family. And I didn't give a fuck. Let's just say that I know that she spends some of her free time sucking and fucking other guys, and once I found that out, it was a slap in the face. I was doing the usual shit that I do when I'm seeing a woman--giving her everything I have, taking whatever abuse or neglect that she gave me and being understanding, being faithful (unless I feel abandoned and alone, which is how I felt the other two times I cheated)--and this time with Shelley, it was rock bottom. When I say I gave her everything, I gave her everything, but because I'm not a debonair wine connoisseur who shoves my cock down her throat, she never respected me. But she couldn't throw me away like she wanted to because I paid for everything, and she wasn't used to the treatment. Then she made her big score, and now my financial future is fucked, all because I wanted to make her happy. What was her big score? I'll talk about it in a future post, after I've gotten over the fact that she has nude pictures of herself and so many fetishes and ways that she gets off, and I, the guy she was dating for the last three months, never knew about any of that until I discovered those things on my own. "When you want something, you gotta take it," she explained to me last night as she told me how much of a turn-off it was that I didn't attack her and grab her and throw her on my bed and try to kiss her even though she told me that she felt cheap when I tried to kiss her because she didn't have to "shove her tongue down my throat" to show that she liked me. Bottom line: I was never what she was looking for and I was never what she wanted, because, repeat after me:

WOMEN DON'T WANT NICE GUYS, THEY WANT ASSHOLES.

And she is why I am a free man today, why I am doing whatever I want to do from now on, why I am dating whomever I choose to date and not handing my heart over on a silver platter ever again, why I am living for the moment from now on. Or, as one of her favorite lines from the musical Rent goes, "No day like today." I may be a little mad at her now, but I am a damn good man, and it's her loss that she didn't treat me better, but in the end, I have a whole new outlook as a result of my time with her. Someday when I'm bailing her out of jail, perhaps I will thank her for that.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Just Flew Home, Boy Are My Arms Tired

Well, that was a fun weekend I just had. I had already been planning to fly to Wisconsin to visit a friend, getting the plane tickets over a month ago. The other three times I flew as an adult were all last year to go to Minnesota to screw "Torrie," so this was to be the first trip I made where I wasn't going to get laid. Normal people fly places for reasons other than to get laid, so I was proud of myself for doing that.

Ironically, I almost missed my Saturday flight because I was busy Friday night getting laid.

"Grace" became the sixth lover in my life Friday night, and it seems to back up my claims that women want assholes and not nice guys that she responded to a dirty, straightforward personal ad I put out for no other reason she says than to "put me in my place" and scold me for being so "vulgar." I had rented a room in the town that my friend "Jacob" lives for the trip I made to northern Wisconsin this past weekend because I didn't plan to stay in the humongous house that he, his girlfriend, and his mother live in because his sister asked me to come up as a surprise for his 30th birthday, which occurred last Friday, two weeks after my 30th birthday, and I didn't want to ruin the surprise by arranging to stay in his house. But I also didn't want to spend two days in a hotel room by myself. Just seemed like a waste, you know? So I put out a very direct online personal ad on several different sites saying that I would be in northern Wisconsin the weekend of January 7 and I was looking for a woman in the area who wanted to hook up, and Grace responded to the ad that I put on the site where I met "Karen," coincidentally. She said that she wasn't in Wisconsin, she actually was in the Chicago area, but she wanted to talk to me to let me know that I didn't have to be so vulgar when looking for some tail. So we chatted for several days last week as I explained to her that I am not the vulgar individual that my ad portrayed, but that since being a nice guy has gotten me shit on for 30 years, I was trying a new approach. She really liked the things that I said to her after I got to know her, you know, the usual respectful way that I treat a woman, telling her that I found her attractive, speaking to her adult to adult and not in the "Hey yo, bitch!" manner that I'm sure she was expecting when she contacted me. So, one could argue, she probably would have responded much better if I put out a straight-up respectful ad, and we wouldn't have had to go through the headache of me explaining to her that I'm not an asshole. Here's my point: I HAVE put many, many straight-up respectful ads out there, and I have several out there right now. I GET NO RESPONSES. Apparently I have to put out vulgar ads saying things like "You please me, I please you, we're both happy" and "Bonus points if you swallow" in order to get any responses from the women out there. Argue the opposite if you like, but this is the first woman I've hooked up with that responded to my personal ad, and it was a rude, disgusting ad. The other previous five internet women I met didn't respond to my sweet, heartfelt ads. Four of them had dirty, slutty ads out, and I found them because they seemed like they would fuck anything. And Torrie saw some sexual things that I talked about on a message board and sent me an IM. So as far as I'm concerned, the facts are out there--I don't get responses to my personal ads unless I come off as a misogynist prick. Therefore, women don't like nice guys, they like assholes, just as I've always figured.

In any event, Grace seemed pleasantly surprised at how nice I am, and after we chatted last Wednesday, she said that next time we talk, we should plan to meet. She works downtown but lives in Lombard, a western suburb, so I figured our first meeting would be lunch downtown or something. But Friday night, while I was doing laundry and preparing to fly the next day, she logged on and said that she was very bored and that all of her friends were busy. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she actually responded, "Ideally, get laid," which prompted me to put a couple of condoms in my wallet and hit the shower. She offered to drive here, but as anyone who knows me can attest, my place is a mess, and it's small, so instead I took the train to Oak Park and she met me out there. She's a jeans and sweater chick, but I actually prefer those, and she really is attractive for a big girl, with this cute, cherubic face that glows like an angel when she smiles. My definition of attractive is no makeup, pretty smile, and dresses respectfully so that the whole world doesn't know about the tattoos on her back or breast, and Grace fits all of those. She actually resembles Torrie physically, tall and juicy in all the right places, and she drinks and smokes, too. But I wasn't thinking of Torrie or "Shelley" or anyone else while I was with her. I was having a good time and enjoying myself, which is the only thing I'm interested in right now. I don't care who else Grace dates, I don't care that the reason she was alone Friday night was because her original date canceled, and when it came time for me to put the dick down, I didn't care if her teenage sons' bedrooms were on the floor above us. If she wanted to jam with the kids in the house, by God, I was ready to jam. Grace actually reminded me of "Sarah" in that her nerve endings were extremely sensitive. I've never been with someone who wanted to touch my skin so badly--we had four hours of foreplay before we actually fucked because she wrapped her legs around my leg and humped while we cuddled for like two of those hours as she cooed to me how good it felt to lie naked with a man. Then she showed why she really responded to a sexually explicit ad by biting my back and actually saying out loud that she wish she had another man fucking her while she was on top of me. Um, sorry baby, but I don't swing like that. She made up for that by ruining her sheets squirting all over the place, which was cool because I never made a chick do that before, and waking me the next morning with a fantastic blow job, then she drove me to the train, kissed me goodbye, and told me not to call her every day. I just had to laugh, but hey, last year I would have been hurt and rejected; this time, I thought about those plans to live with three of my last four lovers when all they wanted was sex, and how distant those memories felt compared to my new mindset of just having fun in every situation. Big difference.

I made it home, spent maybe an hour doing some puter stuff and packing my suitcase (not easy when your muscles are sore and stiff), and ran out to O'Hare, and I made it about 40 minutes before my flight, allowing me time to enjoy a Cinnabon and mentally applaud myself on my performance. Then I flew to Wausau, WI, home of the smallest airport I've ever seen. I was going to go to the other side of the airport to see if my carry-on bag had been placed somewhere else (since I had to tag it and give it to the crew for storage because that's how small the plane was, I couldn't take my little suitcase on wheels on the actual plane), and then I realized that there was no other side of the airport. Then Jacob met me, which was a surprise because I thought his sister or her husband was going to come out and pick me up and keep me as a surprise until I got to Jacob's house. That airport apparently is the closest major airport to his house, which was more than an hour away. The first NFL playoff game had just started when he picked me up, but by the time we got to the house, it was the 4th quarter. But it was a typical weekend with Jacob, staying up until 3A both nights playing video games, making my hands swollen, watching football, throwing darts...just hanging out, something I don't do anymore because I don't have any male friends at all. His girlfriend cooked breakfast and dinner for us, in between accusing me of cheating at darts, lol. Jacob had a couple of big surprises--MLB 2006 for PlayStation2 as a birthday present and a Tom & Jerry DVD as a Christmas present, because we used to sit on the phone watching Tom & Jerry when we were kids and rating each episode's violence factor. He said that our favorite is on this DVD collection--the one where Tom tries to fly but gets caught in midair and falls so hard that he splits a redwood tree down the middle with his crotch. Yep, we were big geeks. I was very pleasantly surprised by the gifts. Even Jacob's sister gave me a birthday card and a Best Buy gift card. My present for Jacob was more of a gag gift--his favorite football team is the Atlanta Falcons, and their quarterback Michael Vick was caught earlier this year trying to get herpes treatments secretively, and the pseudonym he tried to use so that he wouldn't be exposed was Ron Mexico, so I got him a Ron Mexico jersey. The look he gave me was priceless, like he wanted to put a cheese grater to my nuts or something. But it was a great weekend, just relaxing in a peaceful environment and enjoying the company of my best friend of 23 years and his family. I don't know when I'll be back up there, but I can't wait.

Now I'm back home and back to my daily routine of eating and looking online for work while watching old wrestling tapes. But it's already been a hell of a start to my new year. I really feel good about my new approach to dating and life in general. I may even be meeting someone else this weekend. No matter what, things are looking up, and I'm smiling and having fun...now I just have to remember to avoid sodium before flying so that I don't swell up like a balloon.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

One More Personal Education Tidbit

I forgot to add this in last night's post: I am no longer a straight "A" student. I got a B in Social Science 102. I cut a couple of classes around the time the White Sox were winning the World Series, but I turned in every paper due, got great scores on them, did OK on the midterm and final exam, and even did an extra-credit paper. But it wasn't meant to be. Guess this makes up for the "A" I got in Social Science 101 by making up the data for the major survey paper. C'est la vie, as Robbie Nevil once said.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

The Good Ol Days

There's the good ol' days of childhood for me, and there's the good ol' days of early adulthood before I moved out on my own on Halloween 1996, and they both tie in as I sit here. Either way, I'm longing for a time where adult responsibilities like rent and bills and employment were not concerns of mine like they are now. The childhood days are on my mind for no reason whatsoever. I found myself humming "All Night Long" by Lionel Richie in my head, and it reminded me of 1985, when I had a serious crush on Tangela Green, a little curly-haired black girl whose mother was friends with my dad at the time. Didn't know what that feeling was that I had in my heart when we were driving away from their house after a day of playing around, but I remember "All Night Long" playing in the car and a distinct yearning to go back to Tangy's house and play with her some more if I didn't do anything else ever again in my life. What can I say--I had a major thing for curly hair back then. Plus, Tangy was very nice to me, and as it is today, a female treating me like a human instead of something toxic has always made me feel a yearning to spend all my time and attention on her.

The good ol' days of early adulthood would be when I moved in with my uncle and started doing adult things for the first time, like dating and socializing. I was still very green--actually, I'm still green today--but I was happy to live a life while having a roof over my head and not having to worry about bills and such. I am very close to going back to those days. I officially gave my 30-day notice that I am leaving this apartment by February 1, and because I haven't found a job yet, the leading option by a wide margin is for me to go back with my uncle. There's a reason I moved out of his place eventually--a man's gotta have his space, so I'm not ruling out changing up and finding a place to live if I can find a permanent full-time gig within the next couple of weeks. I'm going downtown tomorrow to talk to yet another temp agency, and I'm e-mailing back and forth with a couple other employers trying to feel them out. But when I start attending college again in two weeks, I'm going to have to have a job firmly in place at that point, or else I'm going to let my uncle know that I will definitely be coming back. January 17 is the date that the spring semester starts, and it's a perfect point in time for me to decide exactly what's gonna happen. My uncle will need a couple of weeks to empty one of his sons' bedrooms for me, and I am not going job and apartment hunting and attending classes four nights a week, so if I don't have a job by then, it's adios to having my own place for quite a while because I'm not moving all the way there just to get up and move again in a month. It's the best thing I can do for myself, letting someone else worry about those adult problems while I study and earn a degree. I've resisted it all this time trying to keep my apartment in order to please the women or potential women in my life. But that's part of this new me that I'm trying to be--not worrying about doing what makes women happy and doing what's best for me. Believe me, I shook in horror last year at this time when CBOE fired me and I wondered how it would look if I chased after these internet hos while living with my folks. But right now, women are the last thing I need to worry about. It won't be easy to know that I can't host 3-day FuckFest weekends, but in my mind I am well aware that it shouldn't be a priority anyway. And hey, maybe I'll meet someone who wants to get to know me regardless of my living situation. What a wonderful scenario that would be.

A few personal education tidbits: It appears that this full-time schedule of classes for the upcoming semester costs more than the financial aid that I was supposed to receive covers. It looks like I owe $300 more. I'll have to talk to the school about it. Nothing is clear as far as this aid goes; all of the correspondence that I have received calls the aid an "estimated amount," so I don't know exactly how much money I should be bitching about. As for the classes, you can go back to last spring's semester and read about my adventures in English 102 with this faggot French-Haitian teacher who thought, with a few exceptions, that the entire room of students was beneath him and his standards, and you can go back to the fall semester of 2004 and read about the math teacher who was pleasant enough but had such a thick Hispanic accent that I found it nearly impossible to understand him. Well, I didn't care whose classes I signed up for when I made my upcoming schedule, just that it fit my preference of two night classes on Monday and Wednesday and two for Tuesday and Thursday. My creative writing class? Yep, Mr. Gay French-Haitian 2006. My statistics class? Yep, Mr. Incomprehensible. Should be very interesting to say the least. But really, I'm not going to care. It's 17 weeks, and I am so focused on completing this second half of my associates in the next year plus and moving on to my bachelors studies that I'm not going to let anything get in my way. Bother me and piss me off somedays, sure. But when that happens, I'll just have to break out my vinyl records and play some "All Night Long" and some Prince and drift off into the good ol' days for a while. That, or play some Madden and pretend that the New York Giants are really the Gay French-Haitians.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Taking The New Me For A Test Drive

I went to a bar with my dad for New Year's Eve. No, me and the old man didn't go bar-hopping--he is a drummer in a band. After contacting several different people for New Year's plans and not having any success, I was prepared to grab some sleep and stay home. But I remembered my dad inviting me out earlier in the week, and his band has been at some wild places the two or three times I've come out to see him before, but I've never joined in the wildness because I was so afraid of embarrassing myself. Not last night.

The place was called Murphy's, but I have no idea what town it was in. It was some Irish bar in a south suburb, so I fit right in with my White Sox jersey, and the only black person in there besides me and the other band members was a black girl who came with her white boyfriend of six years. But it was inclusive and fun; in fact, being the only black guy on the dance floor probably worked to my advantage, as I danced with several women, none of whom I had ever met. Now, that's a big deal to me. After I got home, I tried to remember a time when I danced with someone I didn't know. And I had never done that. Actually, I could run through all of the times I ever danced in public with someone and figure that out because that's how few times I've ever danced in public. And not only that, but the first time I danced, I actually approached someone and took her out on the floor! (Insert shocked gasps from the peanut gallery...) Yes, I found someone that I deemed approchable enough for me to ask to dance. Now, the reason mostly was because she was the biggest woman there, so I still have some work to do on self-esteem issues, such as choosing a dance partner or any other kind of partner because I legitimately want to be with her and not because she seems to be the least attractive woman in the vicinity. But it wasn't all because of her size--she was also easily the happiest, most spirited person there, flittering around the room all night talking to people she knew and didn't know, trying to cheer me up because I had the same sour look on my face that I usually have (my smile muscles actually are out of shape--no lie, when I try to smile, it hurts because those muscles are hardly used by me), giving me my first (and second through fifth or so) hug of the new year. It was funny, my very first impression when I saw her was not good. I thought she was ugly in the face. But as the night went on, she became more attractive because of her personality, and that's exactly what I have been trying to do--see people for who they are, not what they look like. I completely stunned myself when that happened. I had to ask myself, was this the same woman I turned my nose up at when I met her the first time? And it was, it's just that she shined with the joy and carelessness and freedom that I admire in a person and want for myself some day, and I found myself attracted to her. (No, it wasn't the booze talking--I had no booze, save for a glass of champagne at the midnight hour.)

Now, it was a good starting point for me to start to come out of my shell, because I probably will never meet any of those people again, so I could get on the floor and shake my ample rear without fear of embarrassing myself. Still lots of bugs to work out, though--I debated asking that woman to be my first New Year's kiss because I had no idea if kissing a stranger is cool in the normal world or if I would have to join one of "Karen's" swingers clubs to find someone willing to do that. I should have just either grabbed her head and done it at midnight, or at one of the many times I had a hold of her ass and tits while dancing, or just asked her if I could. But like I said, it was a starting point. Maybe next time, whenever next time I find myself dancing with a woman I've never met but who's willing to allow me to put my hands on her ass and tits. I also displayed my incompatibility with the tastes of everyone else, because when I was asked by the woman's sister-in-law to choose a song from the jukebox, she dissuaded me from picking a Kid Rock song before allowing me to play "Legs" by ZZ Top, which cleared the dance floor almost immediately. But I was okay. I have weird taste, I'm aware of it, but I'm not ashamed of it because it's part of who I am, and there's nothing wrong with who I am. Okay, maybe being so out of shape that my eyes burned from all the sweat flowing into my eyes is wrong, but hey, if the chick I'm grinding doesn't care, I don't care. But the biggest thing I have to work on is my self-image. Yes, I opened up and danced, but almost every comment I made was wrapped in self-mockery and deprecation. When I approached that woman to dance, I actually told her: "I can't dance at all, but I'll try to move with you out there." When she tried to talk to me afterwards, I huffed and puffed and said: "Whew, I'm not used to all this exercise." And when anyone asked if I was enjoying myself because I looked so depressed/tired, I explained how little sleep I had and how swollen my knees were from my temp job. I will someday learn to shut the fuck up and display a sense of self-worth that shows that not only can a woman dance with me, but that I deserve it. Because the next step is to meet someone that I would want to maybe see after the club closes for the night, or as my dad eloquently put it, "Why didn't you ask that woman if you could take her home?" And I can't get up the gumption to ask a stranger out if I can't stop making excuses for my dancing and my shyness and my weariness and my inferiority complex.

But that's a lesson for a later date. The point is, I went out for New Year's and had fun. I didn't have to find a chick online willing to let me fly to her and screw her, I didn't have to sit around waiting for someone to call me, and I didn't have to stay home and feel sorry for myself. I actually had fun. A different feeling for sure, but a feeling that I want to feel more and more. I hope everyone has a great New Year. Mine can't be worse than last year or the year before. I won't let it.