50-1?!?

No, I did not pick the horse that went off at 50-1 odds and won the 131st running of the Kentucky Derby. I didn't even come close to picking him. Usually I take a handful of horses, since there are twenty of them running in the Derby, and put a little money on each of them, reserving the most money of course for my official pick. But this year the line to make a bet was so long--about a 45-minute wait, and this was several hours before the Derby was to be run--that I decided to make whatever bets I was going to make and not get back in line again. And since I didn't already figure what horses I wanted to make bets on besides my pick, Afleet Alex, I just put down $20 to win, place, and show on my pick, and said fuck all the other horses. One thing I knew I wasn't going to do was put any money on the favorite, Bellamy Road. I just felt that Bellamy was a fluke horse, and sure enough, he finished seventh.

But the horse that won, Giacomo, was a total shock. When I look at the program right now, sitting here at home four days after the race, the only thing I see about Giacomo that would have led me to think that he had any kind of chance is that he was a good closer in his previous races. Not to say that he was winning those races--he only won once in seven lifetime races--but he did show a knack for making up ground late in those races. These were races where other Derby horses were winning, so of course one would overlook Giacomo because he wasn't winning, but make no mistake, Giacomo made up ground late in those races to take second place a couple of times and third place a couple of times. And boy did he make up ground in the Derby. For those that didn't see the race or highlights, Giacomo was in 11th place at the top of the stretch, which is about a quarter mile from the finish line. He just picked off horses one by one and finally stuck his neck in front at the end, beating a 72-1 shot, Closing Argument, and my pick Afleet Alex. Afleet Alex, by the way, led with about 1/8th of a mile left, but he just didn't have enough left to hold on. Killed me too, cause I thought I was going to pick the Derby winner for the second year in a row. But I still had fun. Got to see some boobies from the drunk coeds that start flashing in the infield about midday at every Derby, and even got a couple of pics. I don't think I'm going back without some beads, though. Most of the women flashing want beads in return, like they're at Mardi Gras, and when you have nothing to offer like me, you just feel pathetic. There was one girl flashing everyone who gave her beads and she just didn't care, and she looked right at me with my camera in hand and waited for me to give her some beads. All I could do is look at her and lie and say, "I'm all out baby, but if I had some I'd give them all to you!" She just giggled and went on to the next guy. I won't let that happen next year.

I have to thank my friend Cassandra for going with me, even though she doesn't read my blog. She knew I had an empty hotel room and I would be miserable if I had to make this trip all by myself, so she went with me, and I enjoyed her company. We ran into the usual glitches here and there involved in travel, stupid drivers, crazy people at the car rental place trying to sell us everything under the sun while neglecting what we actually paid for, a crappy hotel room (Howard Johnson Express/Airport...extremely NOT recommended), and we even almost got into a fistfight. What happened was we saw a flyer in the hotel lobby advertising a family team of three that would shuttle anyone to the Derby or anywhere else in the area for an optional donation, and going to the Derby using that service was fine, because we left a little later than most other people. The races for the day at Churchill Downs started about 11A Eastern, so a lot of people went then, but we didn't go until close to 1P. But going back after the Derby, we called the lady who drove us that morning, and she said that one of the other two cars driven by her family would get us at the same corner that she dropped us at. The traffic was of course unreal, and as a result it was a half-hour before that same lady finally showed up. Since she was actually talking to Cassandra on her cell phone when she pulled up, we assumed that she was there for us, but others were also waiting for her at the same corner, including some drunk white guys in their 30s, and when we got to the door of the van first, one of the guys grabbed Cassandra and said "Oh no you don't! We've been waiting forever!" Cassandra snatched her arm away and correctly explained that we called for this van, but apparently so did this group, and several others as well. The same guy then opened the passenger door as if he were about to climb in anyway, but made the smart decision to back away when he saw me approaching. That was actually very funny, how belligerent and mad he was at first but then how calm he was when he saw a huge black man walking towards him, and I'm sure I didn't look very jolly, because I had just been standing for a half-hour after walking around the Derby for several hours. Cassandra and I agreed to let a few others in the van with us, and we would all eventually be dropped at our destinations. Drunk Guy was not among those we let into the van. The poor girl driving was so shaken, she called one of the other drivers and said that she wasn't answering the phone anymore the rest of the night. So next year it's either drive to the Derby and pay for parking, or find a different shuttle service, a plain old taxi perhaps.

I learned something about myself as well. I knew that I had the self-control to be in a room with a woman and not try to get busy with her, because I had to go through that with a woman I dated years ago who slept with me several times but never had sex with me. But at that time I had only been with one woman in my whole life, my high school girlfriend, so patience was something I had a lot of back then. I didn't know how much patience I would have now that I was used to knocking boots in hotels. But everything worked out okay. We even slept in the same bed, but because it was a king, we never touched each other the whole weekend. I didn't make any moves because if I was rejected the whole trip would have been ruined. Cassandra needed a little break, and we've always gotten along great, and I asked her, so she decided to go. And that was that. Sex was not part of the equation, and that was not only fine with me, but a little bit of a relief that our friendship was not going to be tested by introducing intimacy into it. Hell, maybe I won't try to have sex with anyone anytime soon. Maybe I'll throw myself into my schoolwork this summer, get a job, and figure out the next direction I want to go in my life before I worry about pussy again. At least that would be the mature thing to do.

It was just me and Cassandra all weekend, because "Ronnie" decided once I got a roommate and wouldn't be having him and his girlfriend in my room that he didn't have the money to make the trip. He actually uttered the statement that he needed to save money to get ready to go to school, and I almost laughed in his face because he hasn't ever in my presence mentioned going to school to get an actual degree. He has this certificate from a broadcasting school, and he thought that would be good enough to get him a sports broadcasting job even though his voice is so high he sounds like a girl. Needless to say he hasn't had much luck. So now that I'm in a real school he all of a sudden has to save money to go. Pathetic. He won't admit it, but hell, he got the idea of broadcasting from me. I used to play him my demo tapes from a radio class that I was in during a summer project at Columbia College, and he never once mentioned anything about being interested in broadcasting. Then we stopped talking for about a year and a half between the spring of 2001 and the winter of 2002, and all of a sudden, he had a certificate from the Illinois School of Broadcasting in Lombard, IL. And yes, I have heard him tell people that he has a broadcasting "degree," although he wouldn't admit to that either. I stopped talking to him just because of this childish rivalry that we have, and honestly I don't know why I talk to him to this day. We're so competitive that the reason we got back together in 2002 after so long was to go bowling, and trust me, he and I don't go bowling to have fun, we go to beat each other. But he can't beat me. He doesn't have the skill, and if he did, we'd bowl together a lot because then he could show off, but we haven't bowled in over a year. So if you ever thought men couldn't be as catty and vindictive as women, ask Cassandra. She saw me and Ronnie go back and forth on the phone all day Friday while we were on our way to Louisville. He chided me about leaving town so late, although we tried to leave earlier but circumstances wouldn't let us, he chided me about making a Derby pick before I looked at a program, he called once just to ask if it was raining on us yet because there were some sprinkles in the air, and he kept calling me to laugh at how far away we were from Louisville as it got darker. If my phone battery had not run out of juice Saturday, I would've had to hear him tell me how he knew that 50-1 shot had a good chance to win. How do I know he would have said that? Because he did say that Monday when he finally got a hold of me. What a guy, huh?

So anyway, at least the long-awaited Derby trip is done and now I can calm down, finish off the last few weeks of this school semester, get the 13 credits I will earn once the grades are final, and move on from there. I still don't know what I'm going to do this summer, as far as will I stay in this apartment or move with my family or strike out on my own in a new area, but I'm going to stay calm and make all my decisions with a new peace of mind. There was something very peaceful about spending a weekend with a woman that I wasn't trying to impress or get into her pants. I even managed to forget about hearing the very sad news before I left that "Sarah" apparently tried to commit suicide and was given shock treatment as a result, leaving her with a very foggy memory. "She probably wouldn't even remember you at all," Ronnie told me. He'd like that, since I was with Sarah last year and he was with her daughter. It would be just another way for him to say, "I made the right pick, and you didn't. You lost." But I don't care. I still had a great time with Sarah and I'd still make the same choice. We can't always do everything perfectly. We just have to do what feels right to us at the time.

R.I.P. Part 2

"Torrie" will not be going to the Kentucky Derby with me. The half-sister that died earlier this year had two sons with heart conditions, and one of them went into cardiac arrest and died. I am speechless at the streak of bad luck that Torrie and her family have endured this year, and my condolences go out to them.

I was about to give in and go to the Derby with my friend "Ronnie" and his girlfriend and share my hotel room with them, but apparently my good friend Cassandra is going to go with me. She's had a lot of drama lately, a breakup with a long-time boyfriend, a situation in Florida that she had to personally attend to this past weekend, but she still insists that we will rent a car and go together. I think she needs the break from her current surroundings, and I also think that she got sick of hearing me complain about having no one to go with me and is taking pity on me. I don' t think it's a hook-up situation. She has told me how "attractive" I am and how she loves my intelligence, but she had a boyfriend the entire time I knew her, two years now, so she could tell me those things without worrying about me taking her seriously and making a move. And since we have gone out together before and I haven't done anything inappropriate, I think she trusts me enough to know that I'm not going to force myself on her and she can enjoy the trip and relax. I expected her to reconsider when I told her that the time spent between races at Churchill Downs during the Derby is used by drunk coeds to show their tits for beads like it's Mardi Gras, but she says she will enjoy herself regardless. It's ironic that Cassandra is one of the few women I know that is not bisexual and would not enjoy that aspect of the Derby, but she will be going anyway. "Sarah" is very bi, and she couldn't get enough of the topless women last year. Hell, she got more pics of them than I did. And I would love to be going with Sarah again, because we had an absolute blast last year, but alas, Sarah and I haven't spoken to each other since New Year's, and I have a feeling that we may never see each other again.

I was part of the group of Chicago bloggers invited by Sunshyn to attend a get-together at Dave and Buster's last Friday, but I backed out at the last minute because I thought that Sunshyn would be the only person I knew, and I don't deal with meeting new people very well, which is why I will never have another date outside of the internet again. But it turns out that I would have recognized someone else that was there: Keisha, who I went to high school with. I was pleasantly surprised to see her pic when I looked at Sunshyn's album of the event. I distinctly remember Keisha. There were a lot of bitches in high school that thought they were better than everyone else, especially me, being fat and unattractive. But Keisha was very very cool with me and everyone else. What a small world, now she's writing a blog, just like me, and we are connected through Sunshyn, who did not go to school with either of us. Go figure. But now I can make the next bloggers meeting and actually know a couple of people there instead of standing in a group of strangers and shining my social ineptitude on the masses.

Thinking about high school reminds me of my very first girlfriend, the first and last black woman I had sex with, "Giselle," and how many high school classmates probably only remember me because of the large, homely girl with one eye that I was walking around school holding hands with my entire senior year. Now that sounds like a story for the "My History" file. I'll tell you about that when I come back from the Derby.

Speaking of the Derby, I haven't looked at the official program yet, but my unofficial pick before I look at all the data is Afleet Alex. Just wanted to post that so if he wins and I claim it when I come back, there won't be calls of "BULLSHIT!" Afleet Alex won a top Derby prep race, the Arkansas Derby, by eight lengths, and he was a highly regarded horse before some recent bad races, so I'm hoping to get a good price by picking him. I'm not the best person to go to concerning horse racing, but I know a little about it. And I picked Smarty Jones last year. I was very proud of that. In fact, Sarah bought a plush toy horse at a Wal-Mart the day before the Derby last year in Edinburgh, IN (where we were staying because as I have mentioned before it is absolutely impossible to get a room for Derby weekend in Louisville unless you have an extra grand or two lying around or you reserve the room a year in advance like I did this year), and after Smarty Jones won and we got back to the hotel she named the toy horse Smarty Ed, after Edinburgh. *sigh* Sometimes I miss that crazy old woman so much. The Derby is for the best 3-year-old horses overall. The Friday before the Derby at Churchill Downs is the Kentucky Oaks, which is for the best 3-year-old girl horses. I wanted to get to Louisville early this year and go to the Oaks, because I've never been, and bet a horse named Summerly. But she didn't do so well in her last prep race before the Oaks, and on top of that, it looks like Cassandra will not be able to get Friday off work, so I wouldn't be able to attend unless I pulled a "Runaway Bride" (can you believe that shit?? I'm not for beating women, but sometimes...) and abandoned Cass and went on my own. And I'm not doing that, not after all the bitching and moaning I've been doing about not having anyone to go with.

Unless there's other last-minute news, this will be it for me until after the Derby. Wish me luck!

My History (2nd In A Series)

This is the story of a relationship I had with a woman I met online. I'll call her "Sarah."

I saw Sarah's profile when I was bored and surfing a singles website one Saturday. This was in late 2003, when I was feeling so worried about where the relationship between me and Karen was headed that I went looking for someone else. No, I had not found out about Karen's other life yet, but there was just something not right about her. A long-distance relationship can work, but it's very hard when there's no phone calls or contact between the two parties, except for every other weekend, and that's only for a few hours sometimes. It's no excuse for me looking for something else, but that was my reasoning, and I'm not sorry.

Sarah's profile said that her hobbies were "sex, sex, sex," and she had pictures that sure made it seem like that was all she thought about. Finally, I thought, someone desperate enough to perhaps fuck me. And she was in the state, another plus. Her pics were very blunt, she had both her breasts in her hands in one pic and was holding them up on display, and another pic had her nipples being pinched by clothespins. For some reason the pics made my dick instantly hard, and that's exactly what I told her in my first e-mail to her. I guess I've always been attracted to women who have no inhibitions about their body. That certainly described Sarah. We flirted through e-mail for a few weeks, then she let me see her on her webcam, and her lack of inhibition continued as she would often set the webcam on the floor and proceed to show me everything about her. And I mean everything.

Soon we were talking on the phone, very suggestively of course, and despite me having had sex with Karen at this point, I decided to invite Sarah up to my apartment. This was a four-hour drive for her, so I was feeling very good about things, seeing that she had talked to me and still wanted to meet me. She would tell me in the days leading up to her coming here exactly what she planned to do to me when she got here. I couldn't wait. Finally, on a Tuesday, she met me outside my apartment after I got off work. I had the next day off, in case things worked out well. And work out well they did: Twenty minutes after we met, Sarah was between my legs adjacent from me, giving me oral sex...and swallowing every single drop. She even brought a bag of sex toys with her to continue the fun as long as she wanted. No doubt about it, Sarah knew exactly what she liked and what she wanted to do, and I was loving it.

Sarah visited several more times, including on my birthday, December 22nd, when she helped me wrap Karen's Christmas gifts in between sessions of fucking me. It was a perfect scenario for me. Sarah loved having sex with me, she was disease-free and unable to get pregnant, she loved giving me oral sex, and she was insatiable in bed. There was honestly no reason I could find to stop seeing her, Karen be damned. She was even fun outside the bedroom. Sarah had a small-town personality to her, having been born in Kentucky and living in the relatively small Springfield, IL, and it was a refreshing change from the arrogant bitches I worked with in the city of Chicago. She really seemed to be enjoying life, and I was enjoying it more and more every time I saw her.

In fact, I was enjoying it too much. Once the new year came and plans intensified between me and Karen for me to move to Milwaukee with her, I started withdrawing from Sarah because I wanted to make it easier on myself when I left the area and stopped seeing her. We had not spoken in several weeks when that Friday came that I discovered Karen's swingers website. After calling my best friend and expressing my shock, I called Sarah, but got no answer from her cell phone. Then I talked to Sarah's daughter online, desperately looking for someone to talk to. She let Sarah know that I needed to talk to her ASAP. Sarah called that evening, I told her the story, and she drove the four hours the next morning to my apartment and spent the entire weekend with me, consoling me, fucking me, going to a comedy club with me to get my mind off things, and going bowling with me so someone could be there with me when I broke the news to my uncle, who was a teammate on my bowling team. I will never forget Sarah being there for me that weekend, dropping everything to come up here and make sure I wasn't alone. Who knows what I would've done if I didn't have her there with me.

This began a serious relationship between Sarah and me. Sarah became sort of my rescuer, the person who was there for me in my worst moment, my best friend, lover, and the only thing I had in my life to hold on to. This may have been a lot for a promiscuous woman such as herself to take on, but she did. She visited on most of her two-day breaks from her job, driving up here sometimes right after work at 10PM, arriving at my apartment at 1AM or 2AM and staying until the morning she had to return to work two days later. She would drive me to my job in the morning and then take off for Springfield, only having a brief rest period until she started work at 2PM. We told each other that we loved each other, but I would preface it by saying that it wasn't the same type of love I had for Karen. It was the love and appreciation I had for someone who was always there for me, whereas the love I had for Karen was the be-my-wife-and-mother-of-my-children type. I wasn't sure if Sarah resented that, but she did make it clear that she wasn't expecting to be in love with anyone ever again, and she was being a good girl and not sleeping around especially for me. Of course, after what I had just been through, I had to reason to trust her, but I wanted to.

Sarah told me the weekend that she came here after my breakup with Karen that she would be there for me and do anything for me, and I immediately jumped on the occasion to ask her if she would let me move to Springfield with her. She said yes. I spent a weekend down there with her getting a feel for her apartment and the town, and I liked the quiet atmosphere. I was looking forward to going there and starting over, just like I was looking forward to moving to Milwaukee and starting over. But I didn't intend to be in a monogamous relationship with Sarah. I never had that in my mind when I met her, or after we slept together, or at any point. And as a result, the beginning of the end of our relationship came when her 22-year-old daughter, "Elaine," started flirting with me. Elaine was engaged, but she didn't let that stop her from giving me a big hug when I met her and Sarah on my first trip to Springfield and later pecking me goodbye on the lips in front of Sarah. I honestly didn't think Sarah would have a problem with me sleeping with her daughter, especially considering I wouldn't be the first man to have had them both. But on the Monday after Sarah and I returned from a weekend in Louisville at the Kentucky Derby, where we had a wonderful time and seemed to be as together as ever before, Elaine's flirting became heavier, and when I chatted with Elaine on the computer the day after the Kentucky Derby trip, Sarah's irritation was palpable. A joke I made about Elaine having a dick (no, she didn't, just some bad joke by me) turned into Elaine actually typing in the words, "No I don't have a dick, but I have a pussy. It's wet for you." And when Sarah saw this, well, it was time to talk.

Sarah informed me that whatever relationship we were supposed to have, casual, serious, whatever, she would not feel comfortable with me starting to see her daughter when I'm supposed to be moving in with her soon. I understood, and put the brakes on anything physical happening between me and Elaine. But a convergence of events would tear at the fabric of that agreement between me and Sarah. Elaine was supposed to come visit friends near Chicago that Thursday and made plans to come see me, just as friends. On Tuesday, Sarah returned to Springfield. When Thursday came, Elaine's fiance found out about her plans to see me and expressed his outrage. Elaine then called in tears and told me that she was not coming to see me. The next day, Elaine informed me that a man that Sarah had a long sexual history with was staying at Sarah's house, and the smell of alcohol was in the air. Sarah claimed to have quit drinking. What's worse, Sarah stayed up past midnight one night with me telling me how she kept telling this same man to leave her alone, that she wasn't interested in seeing him anymore, but that he kept calling and she didn't know what to do. Among my advice was to ignore him or to call the police. Not among my advice was to let the fucker into her house and get drunk with him for two days, right after she spent a great weekend in Louisville with me. But I really didn't mind if she fucked him. My problem was with her telling me how special our relationship was and how she didn't want me to see her daughter, but it was okay for her to see this guy, whom she admitted was nothing more than a fuckbuddy.

I was livid. I didn't even want her daughter for a good reason other than she wanted to fuck me, and I never turn down a woman that actually wants to fuck me. It was just the principle of her asking me to respect what we had, then disrespecting it herself. She admitted he was there with her when I called, but claimed that they weren't doing anything together, which I would never believe because of how much she told me she didn't want anything to do with the guy anymore. Why else would she decide to let him back into her life if not to fuck her? That's all he could do, according to her. I angrily threw insults and accusations at her until...wait for it...this nigger grabs the phone and tells me that they really weren't doing anything together and that he's such a morally upstanding person that he wouldn't lie to me, even though he had a girlfriend he was stepping out on at the time. I felt like the biggest fool in the world that night, and honestly, for the rest of the summer, because I knew she had fucked him but didn't have the concrete proof. I wondered why I had to always meet these types of women, that lie and cheat and have no respect for me, until I realized: Hey, I was lying and cheating on Karen when I started seeing Sarah in the first place.

At that point I decided to accept whatever happened because I deserved it for being such a dick that I slept with Sarah despite dating Karen. So for the rest of the summer, I backed off and let Sarah be, and we went out when she could make it here to Chicago and enjoyed ourselves, and still had plans for me to move down there when my job let me go. The last time we went out, I thought I really did a good job of trying to make her happy. I bought concert tickets for an artist that she really liked, but she had her teenage son for the summer and didn't want to leave him alone in her Springfield apartment, so I rented a hotel room for two nights and had them both up here as my guests. We enjoyed the concert, then went out to dinner the next night. I thought everything was going well.

So, of course, because this is me we're talking about, it all came apart soon after. I had always known that Sarah was bisexual and into BDSM. Well, she started asserting herself more and being more confrontational after discovering a BDSM club in her area where she met other people who enjoy that lifestyle. She had always felt that she was weird and felt alone because of her love of pain, but with this group of people, she was no longer alone, and she gained the confidence to tell me that my loving and caring ways weren't what got her off. Soon after, she went to Milwaukee for a weekend to visit a man who was a foster brother for a brief time during her childhood, when she went from foster home to foster home. When I talked to her that Saturday afternoon, she couldn't stop talking about this guy's wife and how "sweet her pussy is." She didn't call me at all that night, the first night since we became serious that she didn't call. I didn't sleep at all that night. I knew that she was fucking this woman, and probably the man, too. The next day when I asked her what she was doing the night before, she expressed shock that I would think that she would fuck her foster brother. I asked, "So all weekend you haven't done anything sexual with anyone?" Her response: "Well, I ate his wife out. Twice." I asked if she thought this was cheating on me. She said no, because it was with a woman. I vehemently disagreed, and the next weekend, after a week of arguing, she dumped me, claiming that she just didn't want me moving in with her because she needed her space. When I offered to do anything to stay with her, she showed just how much she wanted to get rid of me by describing in detail a night she had spent with a man she met in this BDSM club. Electric shock, nipple clamps, ripping her pubic hair out by the roots, making her sleep all night naked on a cold kitchen floor, making her go to the bathroom on newspaper in the corner...and at the end of all this she said, "And I loved every minute of it. I got off on it. I love to be humiliated. Is that the type of woman you want to be in love with?" And because I didn't want to lose her, I told her that I would accept her in any way she wanted, bruised, battered, whatever. I told her that I understood what she wanted, and I didn't care. She said, "You don't understand me. You never will understand me."

Most people would love to meet someone that would accept them under any conditions. Sarah? She came to my apartment two days later, picked up her personal belongings, and left. I cried pretty hard that weekend. She said she did too, but why? She was getting exactly what she wanted. She was dumping me. She was ridding herself of the albatross of a monogamous relationship, which she never wanted because that's not what got her off. She would be free to fuck anyone she wanted, the man she claimed she wanted to get rid of, her foster brother's wife, her foster brother, her daughter, whoever.

And I was all alone. Again.