This is the story of my first love, how we got together, and how poorly I reacted to everything that happened between us. I'll call her "Giselle."
This is a perfect day for me to talk about Giselle, because today, May 14, is her 27th birthday. So I get to talk about the epitome of a stubborn Taurus, for no matter how many times I insulted her and called her a whore or a slut for no reason, she stayed by my side for three years. Why would I continue to berate someone that was obviously down for me all that time or else she would have left? Because that's how low my self-esteem was back then. I thought, if she spends this much time with me, what happens when she meets real men? She must really get busy with them. Of course, I didn't take into account her many physical maladies that made her arguably the least attractive girl in high school and made almost every other guy except me shrink away in horror. But I did worry because her self-esteem was very low as well, and if she had a chance to upgrade to a better boyfriend, I couldn't see a reason why she wouldn't. And as we all know, guys fuck anything.
Here is her list of physical problems, just to get it out of the way and paint the picture of her: First, she was very fat, something I really couldn't focus on since I was also very fat, but still...she was about 5'9", 220 lbs. when I first met her in late 1992. She had gained about 50 lbs. by the time we broke up three years later. And it wasn't the sexy, juicy kind of fat that a lot of women have. She did not carry it well at all. It was mostly in the belly and ass, not a round Bonita Applebum ass either, but a large, wide rump that beeped when she backed up like a garbage truck. Sometimes during sex she would try to ride the top, and my chest would literally start hurting like I was having a heart attack trying to support all that weight on me. One minor thing about her that other people could notice: These hideous brown spots on her front teeth that looked like she had been eating shit or something chocolate. They didn't go away ever, and she did brush, but these stains just stayed there at all times. Her explanation: Something about a botched dental exam that she didn't have the money to fix. Something more major that other people could notice: Her feet stuck out in opposite directions when she walked, and combined with her weight, she couldn't avoid looking like a waddling duck every time she went anywhere. Her explanation: Her ankles had been broken so many times over the years from general clumsiness that they just healed that way. The most major thing that other people could notice: Her one eye. Yes, she had a glass eye, her left one, and it was obvious because she couldn't keep it straight, so it was always looking at something else when she was trying to look at you. It even rolled back in her head once during sex, so that when she smiled and told me she loved me afterwards, all I saw in the left eye socket was white. I'm shocked that I didn't throw up. Her explanation: Something about her father fighting in Vietnam and catching Agent Orange and passing it on to her once he came back and conceived her, and she had to have her eye removed when she was two years old or risk losing both eyes by letting it progress. Other things that others didn't notice: A huge scar underneath her belly button (knifed in a gang fight, which totally went against her personality, although she did live in the Rockwell Gardens projects); one breast being slightly smaller than the other; a very sick habit of picking her nose and then putting the results in her mouth; and a story about having been raped a year before she met me that I didn't quite believe because she still lived in the same place that it happened, the aforementioned Rockwell Gardens, even though she had family that she could have gone to live with. Then again, being raped would explain why she came after me...she wanted to get a dick of her own choosing inside of her as soon as possible to get over that experience, and I was the ugliest dick in the school, so there was less chance of me turning her down.
So here's how our initial meeting came about: I was a junior in October 1992, never had sex, never had a date, thinking I would be a virgin forever. Giselle was a sophomore. We had a mutual friend, "Sherry," a cute Asian chick that I had the hots for. During the tryouts for the theater department's attempt at a production of Les Miserables, I was sitting near Sherry because I didn't know anyone else in the room since I didn't hang with the theater crowd. It was there that Sherry introduced me to Giselle, but it wasn't a fireworks, love-at-first-sight situation. My initial thoughts were, "She's ugly...big ass though." And that was it. I totally forgot about her and went back to flirting with Sherry and some white girl that had an early case of jungle fever. Apparently Giselle really liked what she saw of me for some reason, because a few days later a common male friend of ours gave me a piece of notebook paper with her name at the top, and the entire body of the letter consisted of the lyrics to the song "If Only You Knew" by Patti LaBelle. Naturally, I thought someone was playing a joke on me, since I had never had a girl express any interest in me. That first time I met Giselle was so underwhelming to me that I didn't recognize at all the name on the letter. I had no clue who gave me the note. And while I kept the letter and kinda floated for the next few days at the thought of having a secret admirer, I still thought it might be a joke since whoever this person was had not approached me to claim ownership of the letter.
Giselle sent another note a week later saying how much she liked me, but because again she was not stepping to me to claim responsibility, I shook it off as a prank. I didn't even suspect Giselle; after all, we were going to the same rehearsals for Les Miserables every day, and she never said a word to me. But one day after winning a small amount of money from a classmate in a sports bet, I invited Sherry out to lunch, totally intending to make a move on her. And during a lunch where I was going to tell Sherry how much I liked her, she put a stop to all that by telling me who my "secret admirer" was, and when she described her as the girl she introduced me to at Les Miserables tryouts, I was shocked. Like I said, we had plenty of opportunities to talk in the weeks since the tryouts, but she didn't approach me, and I honestly wasn't interested, so I didn't approach her. Turns out she was very, very shy, maybe even more than I always have been.
The next move was now on me, since I knew who she was and she was basically waiting for me to respond to her notes. I arranged to meet her in the lunchroom, and I arrived confident since I knew who I was looking for and I knew she had the hots for me. I no longer thought it was a prank, because it had gone too far for anyone to keep a prank like that going and because there were too many people that were friends of hers coming up to me and confirming her attraction to me. She wasn't as confident, however. I found her literally curled up under a lunch table, nervous and shaking but smiling as she always did. I helped her up off the floor, we made some small talk, and we agreed to go to a movie a week later after school on a half-day. We hung out and talked between classes for the next week, and those times along with rehearsals were the only times we could talk because she said that her family didn't have a phone. So we really didn't have a conversation longer than ten minutes until our first date. That's when she told me about the rape and the gang fight and the ankles and all that.
That first date was actually very cute, because I had no experience with women, so I didn't really know how to treat her. On the bus to the theater at Ford City Mall (which was a good hour plus away from our school on the bus, but we chose there just because the movie Malcolm X was playing there at 3:00P as a matinee and it would only cost us $3.50 each), I didn't sit next to her because, well, she wasn't my girlfriend so I didn't know if she wanted me to sit next to her. She sat next to me once she saw that I was as nervous as she was. Once we got to the theater, I loosened up a little because it was dark, and I put my arm around her. During a slow part where Malcolm visited Mecca, she curled into my arm to the point where her face was right there if I turned to her side. It would be an obvious invitation for intimacy to a normal guy, so of course I turned the other way. She then said the fateful words, "I get the feeling you want to kiss me." I smiled at her and turned the other way again. About thirty seconds later, something flashed through my mind along the lines of, "If I try to kiss her, I don't think she'll refuse me. She just might actually want me to kiss her." So I said out loud, "What the hell," and turned and kissed her. The funny part is that since I had never kissed anyone before, I expected to peck her on the lips and go back to the movie. Instead, she met me with nothing but tongue, and instinctively I responded. We later watched the movie again on tape and timed how long our kiss was with a stopwatch. It was about six minutes, nonstop.
Now, at this point we were a cute little story, two shy people finding each other and growing as a couple, and I wanted to keep it going at a slower pace, really getting to know each other. But Giselle did not want to go slow. She had an agenda to be lovers quickly, and as a result I never learned to trust her because I didn't have time to get to know her or figure out what she was about. This first date was on December 10, and we talked on the phone once a week after the date because she said she was at a laundromat pay phone. I remember this conversation because she asked about the way I was introducing her to my friends. I was referring to her as my "friend," and she was not happy. She wanted to be known as my girlfriend, and since we were swapping spit every day after school, that wasn't an unreasonable request, but I simply didn't know her well enough to grant that title naturally. She was almost still like a stranger to me. She also told me during this talk that she wanted me to tell her that I loved her, and that was not going to happen. But that showed where her mindset was. She was looking to find love, and I was her choice to give it to her.
My birthday is December 22, but Giselle couldn't see me because she was working, but the next day she came to my house for the first time. It was Christmas break, so there was no school. She was only supposed to drop by, then we would go to a movie. We never did go to the movie. Once we got into my bedroom and figured out that my elderly grandmother wasn't concerned about me and my first girlfriend being alone in my bedroom, all hell broke loose. Of course, it took some coaxing on her part. I kissed down to her cleavage several times before going back to her neck, and finally she got frustrated and said, "I'm not stopping you." That was my first taste of a woman's breast. She waited until her hose was around her knees before telling me that she was on the rag, but I was so horny by that point that I didn't care. So my first taste of poon was also my earning of the old Red Wings. And because I wanted to do a good job, I was down there for a good half-hour before Giselle grabbed my head, looked me in the eyes and said, "Make love to me." And make love I did, for about two minutes before it started feeling too good, then it was over.
Giselle proclaimed that she loved me basically every day after that, but I didn't start returning the expression until about three weeks later, and that wasn't because of love, it was because I was sick of seeing the hurt look on her face when she would tell me that she loved me and I would not respond in kind. So in a way she brought on my distrust of her, because if we would have grown into our relationship like I wanted to, I could have learned to love her eventually. I mean, I did like her personality, always sunny and happy and a little quirky. And I did admire her, because she was a great student, ambitious and intelligent and not at all a product of her environment, which is why I couldn't believe that she was ever involved in gangs. I just had my own issues with trust. Since I had never been with a girl, no dates, no nothing, and now all of a sudden here's someone claiming that she loves me and thinks the world of me and she kinda came out of nowhere...I just had a very hard time dealing with that. Combine that with her spending every Saturday at my house fucking me and blowing me, then spending all day Sunday at home doing homework and leaving me all alone, and I started to create reasons in my mind why Giselle was with me. She would have time to be with other guys on Sundays if she was with me on Saturdays, I figured. Never mind why she would be with me in the first place if she could find other guys. This mistrust built with the hurried way she was going about things, and after about a three-month honeymoon period, I couldn't hold in my feelings anymore. It basically became a contest to see how much I could hurt her before she had enough and went away, and then I could say to myself, "See? She wasn't true to me after all, she's not with me anymore." But she wouldn't go away. No matter what hurtful things I dreamed up about her, she simply wouldn't abandon me.
And being abandoned was what my fears were really all about. Giselle made the comment one day, and I dismissed it at the time, but of course now I realize that she was right on the money. She said that I was so afraid of her leaving because my mother died suddenly when I was ten years old, and I was scared that she would suddenly leave as well. It was so true. I was simply trying to drive Giselle away before I really did fall in love with her, because I was afraid of losing her once I did fall in love with her. And as much pain as I put Giselle through trying to insult her by calling her a slut and a whore, it was very painful for me too. Every night when I tried to go to sleep, I couldn't. I had images of Giselle sucking some thug's cock in those projects she lived in. I had thoughts of her being forced into turning tricks, stemming from her claims of being raped, but then I saw how much she loved sex when she was with me, and I didn't know what I was doing, so I figured she would really love it with guys who knew how to fuck. I was basically torturing myself coming up with situations where Giselle was spending time with men much better at sex than me. No matter how much she told me she was true to me, I refused to believe it, because to believe it would mean to believe in her, which exposed me to the possibility of being abandoned by someone I love again, and it would mean to believe in myself, to believe that I was good enough to make the woman I was with happy, which just seemed impossible to me.
There's not a whole lot much more to the story. We kept going around in that circle for three years, where we'd be happy for a few days or a week, then she would do something minor like say she would find a pay phone and call but she didn't, or tell me she would be at my house at noon but not come until 1P or 2P, and I would blow it way out of proportion and accuse her of being a slut, and we'd argue, and she'd cry, and I'd apologize, and we'd have makeup sex, and she'd leave and I'd stay up for hours wondering if she was going home like she said she was or if she was going to have sex with a real man, and I'd be so worked up by the time I saw her again that another session of me calling her a whore would take place, and we'd go around in that circle again. There were two pregnancies within that three years, and both resulted in abortions at my insistence. Not only did I not believe they were mine (of course they were mine) but I had never held a job before, and I didn't think there was any way we could support a child, plus I really cared what my family thought of me and I had never been in any real trouble, so I simply didn't want them to know that I was stupid enough to have knocked Giselle up with all the birth control methods we could have used. My grandmother died in 1994, so this second pregnancy occurred when I was living with my uncle and his family in February 1995 when I was 19. He found out about that pregnancy because Giselle and I were so mad at each other that we weren't actually speaking to each other, we were writing notes back and forth while we sat in my bedroom. When we left the room, my uncle found one of the notes on my floor, and it referenced Giselle's pregnancy. He was very disappointed, but he loaned me the money to cover the abortion, and we haven't spoken about it ever since. But no one in my family knows about the first pregnancy and abortion, in the summer of 1993 when we were still in high school, and they never will know.
The end came after we got back together after the second abortion and dated the rest of the year 1995. I had a job, so she would borrow money from me often, and in pretty big sums, but even that couldn't stop her from getting tired of me not supporting her and not trusting her, and after an argument over something so minor that I forget what, we separated for a week in December. We'd done that before, but when she called after a week, I didn't agree to get back together this time. Why? Because I was tired. I was tired of staying up at night worrying about where she was and who she was doing. I was tired of being in a relationship period, I wasn't mature enough to just enjoy Giselle's company and not stress about whether she was true to me. And, truth be told, I saw some women at my new job at CBOE, like "Yasmine" and a few others, who seemed to be into me, and I wanted a full shot at them without feeling like I was cheating on Giselle. But how could I trust them if I couldn't trust Giselle after three years? It wasn't about trust, it was about finding new lovers and getting into as many women as I could in order to boost my self-esteem. So that was it. Giselle called a couple of times after we broke up just to see how I was doing, but once I made it clear that I wasn't worrying about her and that I was dating others, she moved on.
We didn't speak or see each other again for six years. We would have never seen each other again had I not been a member of Classmates.com and she had not joined in December 2001. I e-mailed her just wondering how she was doing. She wrote back excited about hearing from me. We e-mailed back and forth for a month, during which time I learned that she graduated from college, had a son, and was engaged to some guy that wasn't the father of her child. I knew exactly what his name was because when she called me from "her cell phone," his name came up in my caller ID. Despite that, and despite their wedding day being set for Friday, February 15, 2002, she claimed one night while talking to me that she still loved me, and we set up a meeting in my apartment just to catch up and see each other again. She looked the same, except much bigger and without those brown spots on her teeth. She now weighed in at about 340 lbs. But one thing had not changed: She still couldn't keep her hands off me. We kissed that day, then she came back the next week and we made love. She told me that she was breaking her engagement and that we would find a place together and raise her son and everything would work out fine. I took Valentine's Day, Thursday, February 14, off work to spend with her. The Monday before, she called to say that she had something important to talk about, but she didn't want to tell me over the phone. She wanted to come by that night to tell me, but at that time it was past 11P and she decided it was too late so she'd see me the next day. That was the last time I heard from her. She stopped answering "her cell phone," she didn't show up on Valentine's Day, and I haven't seen her since. I was crushed that whole weekend. I couldn't believe that, knowing my fear of abandonment and knowing our history, Giselle would do that to me. She called a month and a half later and left a message asking me to read an e-mail she left, but all the e-mail said was that she'd be calling later and would it be okay to talk. I wrote back to never call me again after pulling the shit that she pulled unless she was going to explain herself. She wrote back saying that she would do just that in her next e-mail, but her next e-mail wasn't until another two months later, and it didn't explain anything. All that e-mail said was that she had just gone through a bad situation and could I lend her an ear? I was still so steaming mad that I totally ignored her request, and that's the last I heard from her at all.
I suppose one could say that I got what I deserved after treating her the way I did. While I don't feel bad brushing her off after she totally abandoned me, I can understand why she still had animosity towards me. I don't completely understand why she took the angle of reuniting with me, knocking boots with me again, and then leaving me instead of just telling me how much I hurt her in the past. Maybe she wanted me one last time before she went and married this other guy. Maybe she really was going to dump this guy for me, but he physically intimidated her into staying with him. Maybe at the last minute she finally realized what I'd been telling her all those years, which is she can do much better than me. Whatever the case may be, at least I did let her know how sorry I was for treating her like shit. At least I was able to see my first love again. Long before our little reuniting I had a very strong feeling that I would see Giselle again in my lifetime, and I actually have a very strong feeling that I'll see her yet again. And at least I was able to see and hear her passion for me again, because none of my other lovers have been as crazy about me in or out of bed as Giselle was. When I'm feeling really down, I still think about the way she made me feel any time I was with her. She was down for me. She loved me more than anyone else I've ever been with. I still don't know why, but I don't question it anymore.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
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!
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!
Saturday, April 23, 2005
"Looking for someone who can compliment me..."
The following is from a personal ads board online. It was posted today by "Karen," the woman who broke my heart last year:
"I am looking for someone who is strong emotionally and mentally. Someone who can take care of themselves but also enjoys when their woman does things for them. Someone who can support themselves and takes pride in the work they do. Someone caring and supportive and not afraid to show their feelings. Someone who knows how to communicate and likes to be social. Someone who is open minded and nonjudgemental. If this sounds like you email me so we can talk.
**Specifics**
Age Range: 32-38 yrs. old (could be a little flexible)
Race: Open but partial to African American
Appearance: Open but once again partial to men who are NOT thin and are bald
NON Smokers ONLY
**************************************************
About me....I am divorced, 32, white, No kids, live in Milwaukee, 200 pounds (thick)
Your pic gets mine"
So there you have it. She lied about the other garbage that she does when she posted her ad in September 2003, when she caught me, and now she's at it again. This is the same board that I met her on, and it's also the same board where, using a different name and profile, she advertised for her bi BBW swingers club that she thought I would never find out about. After I got over the initial shock of seeing her posting a personal ad again on the same board, I had to laugh at the content. Doesn't she seem so innocent and such an upstanding citizen? Isn't it noble of her to want "someone who is open minded and nonjudgemental"? Until you realize that she wants someone "nonjudgemental" so that when she does tell him that she's a slut who fucks strangers for kicks, instead of reacting angrily like I did, he will say, "That's ok honey. I understand. I won't judge you for lying to me and whoring around. I still love you." I'm sure that's what she would have loved for me to say to her. And because I cared for her so strongly, I almost did say that.
I have no idea how I'm going to handle the rest of this weekend knowing that the whore whose actions landed me in a psych ward for a week is advertising herself yet again. I realize that it's my fault for continuing to visit that singles website, and I realize that I wasn't visiting that site looking for a date myself; I kept going back there specifically looking to see if she would have the balls to come back there again. She did. I can't explain why I kept going back. I guess it's something where I felt like I was keeping tabs on someone I loved but couldn't contact, since she refused to answer my phone calls the last time I tried to talk to her, last summer. Since her swingers site is no longer at the web address that it was before, and since the bbwphotography.com website where she got those pics taken no longer exists, I thought going back to the site where we met would be the only way to keep track of her. But why do I have the need to keep track of her? Maybe I'm obsessed. I admit it. Maybe I am obsessed with Karen and will continue to be for a long long time. I don't know. All I know is I feel very empty right now knowing that she will have a boatload of big black men at her beck and call, and there ain't no way that I could be one of them because she won't let me back in her life now that I know the truth about her. And of course I wouldn't want to be back in her life now knowing what kind of person she is, but the part of me that still loves her wants to be there more than anything else in the world, and that part of me is screaming in agony right now.
"I am looking for someone who is strong emotionally and mentally. Someone who can take care of themselves but also enjoys when their woman does things for them. Someone who can support themselves and takes pride in the work they do. Someone caring and supportive and not afraid to show their feelings. Someone who knows how to communicate and likes to be social. Someone who is open minded and nonjudgemental. If this sounds like you email me so we can talk.
**Specifics**
Age Range: 32-38 yrs. old (could be a little flexible)
Race: Open but partial to African American
Appearance: Open but once again partial to men who are NOT thin and are bald
NON Smokers ONLY
**************************************************
About me....I am divorced, 32, white, No kids, live in Milwaukee, 200 pounds (thick)
Your pic gets mine"
So there you have it. She lied about the other garbage that she does when she posted her ad in September 2003, when she caught me, and now she's at it again. This is the same board that I met her on, and it's also the same board where, using a different name and profile, she advertised for her bi BBW swingers club that she thought I would never find out about. After I got over the initial shock of seeing her posting a personal ad again on the same board, I had to laugh at the content. Doesn't she seem so innocent and such an upstanding citizen? Isn't it noble of her to want "someone who is open minded and nonjudgemental"? Until you realize that she wants someone "nonjudgemental" so that when she does tell him that she's a slut who fucks strangers for kicks, instead of reacting angrily like I did, he will say, "That's ok honey. I understand. I won't judge you for lying to me and whoring around. I still love you." I'm sure that's what she would have loved for me to say to her. And because I cared for her so strongly, I almost did say that.
I have no idea how I'm going to handle the rest of this weekend knowing that the whore whose actions landed me in a psych ward for a week is advertising herself yet again. I realize that it's my fault for continuing to visit that singles website, and I realize that I wasn't visiting that site looking for a date myself; I kept going back there specifically looking to see if she would have the balls to come back there again. She did. I can't explain why I kept going back. I guess it's something where I felt like I was keeping tabs on someone I loved but couldn't contact, since she refused to answer my phone calls the last time I tried to talk to her, last summer. Since her swingers site is no longer at the web address that it was before, and since the bbwphotography.com website where she got those pics taken no longer exists, I thought going back to the site where we met would be the only way to keep track of her. But why do I have the need to keep track of her? Maybe I'm obsessed. I admit it. Maybe I am obsessed with Karen and will continue to be for a long long time. I don't know. All I know is I feel very empty right now knowing that she will have a boatload of big black men at her beck and call, and there ain't no way that I could be one of them because she won't let me back in her life now that I know the truth about her. And of course I wouldn't want to be back in her life now knowing what kind of person she is, but the part of me that still loves her wants to be there more than anything else in the world, and that part of me is screaming in agony right now.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Floating
The metaphor for how I feel when I tell people about the level of loneliness I go through on a daily basis is that I feel like I'm floating through the atmosphere, not grounded at all and not having a home or base, just out there among the stars, nonexistent to all other beings. Here are the most recent events to help contribute to that feeling:
1. Not that I have a lot of male friends (three), but every one of them has a girlfriend, and it makes me want to vomit. Not that they aren't good guys and don't deserve a woman, but shit, how many times am I going to be in a situation where I'm having dinner with a friend and his girl is there snuggling with him and I'm just sitting across the table twiddling my thumbs? What a helpless, frustrating feeling it is to hang out with a friend and his girlfriend without a date of my own. I went through it twice in the last couple of weeks. I went out three weekends ago to my friend "Drew's" house and on Sunday morning at a restaurant for brunch it was Drew, his girlfriend, my best friend "Ronnie," his new girlfriend who he had known at the time for a week, and my lonely ass just sitting there. Not fun. And Drew's girlfriend is barely an adult, so she's asking all these personal questions trying to figure out what's wrong, but she's not old enough to realize that what's wrong is I'm not attractive and not rich, simple as that. Then the weekend that "Jacob" was here for his big-money baseball fantasy draft, he and his girlfriend and I went out to dinner with some friends of his. This dinner always took place when he visited town, but with just us guys. Now there's a woman there. I tried to invite a female friend to join me because I was feeling so inadequate, but of course the friend wasn't able to. I was diplomatic in these situations, but the reality is, there aren't many things more uncomfortable than being around the same guys that I used to bitch with about how much we hated women, and now there they are with a woman, and I'm all alone, so somewhere along the way they stopped having a problem dealing with women. I on the other hand still don't have a clue.
2. "Torrie" still refuses to keep in touch with me or inform me about her plans to join me at the Kentucky Derby the weekend of May 7. I haven't heard from her in several weeks. I tried to call her recently and left a voice mail, but her response was in text message and said that she had no time to talk to me because her two nephews are both in the hospital and her work schedule and the hospital visits are taking up all her time. It would have taken her less time to call me and tell me that, but just like when she tried to dump me via e-mail, it takes guts to speak to me live, and apparently she has none. But it's all my fault, because she tried to dump me but I laid a guilt trip on her and she rescinded. So she basically tried to tell me in so many words that I am not a priority in her life, and I didn't listen because I was too wrapped up in the drama of being abandoned again. But what's worse, being abandoned or being told that you're not being abandoned and being abandoned anyway? And people wonder why I feel like I'm from another planet. All this time that Torrie is spending between family and work is of course understandable, but it doesn't explain why there hasn't been one time where she calls before she goes to bed for the night and says: "Boy, things are really crazy right now. I haven't had time to think hardly. But I just wanted to say that you're on my mind and I want to thank you for hanging in there and being there for me. It's something that I'm not taking for granted, and I really do appreciate it. Well, I'm tired, so I'm turning in. Take care honey, and thanks again."
Nope, too busy to do that.
3. And with Torrie apparently unavailable for Kentucky Derby weekend, it means that I have had a hotel room reserved in Louisville for an entire calendar year and now that the time is here, I will be going to share that room with...wait for it...absolutely nobody. I originally reserved it right after I came back home from the Derby last year, because it's so hard to get a room in Louisville for Derby weekend, and because I had so much fun with "Sarah" that I just knew we'd still be together at this time next year and we would love to go back. Of course, Sarah and I are no longer, but think about what I have to offer: A two-night weekend in Louisville for an event that over 150,000 people attend live every year, and even if you weren't into horses, a two-night weekend with a young, virile black man, no holds barred, for free. Now think about the 492 trillion websites on Yahoo and such promoting dating black men and how many women are members of these sites. And not one of these women want to take advantage of this with me. Not the women in Louisville, not the women here in Chicago, not anywhere in between can you find a woman willing to make this trip with me. How fucking pathetic is that? Oh, and it gets better: Ronnie, knowing that I have an empty room and knowing how hard it is to find a room anywhere near Louisville for Derby weekend because, after all, he's the person that took me to the Derby the first time I went two years ago, now wants to take that room for him and his new girlfriend and split the costs with me. In the words of an ex-lover when she asked me what I was thinking standing over her with my dick hanging out and I responded that, duh, I wanted to put my cock in her mouth: "That's not gonna happen." There ain't no way I'm spending Derby weekend watching any guy and girl cuddling all over each other and I don't have anyone to cuddle with. Even if I had someone, it wouldn't happen because, duh, I'd want the room to be empty for me and my lady. And Ronnie has done a lot for me over the years, driving me here and there because I don't have a car, helping me move a couple of times, but plain and simple, if he wants a hotel room in Louisville for Derby weekend, he needs to reserve one well in advance, just like I did. I'll spend the whole weekend alone before I share a room with a couple. Period.
4. I got up the courage to ask someone out on a date for the first time in years. Yes, a real live person, not a profile on an internet dating site. She laughed and said no, of course. In the many weeks that we have talked casually during class, I've never heard a reference to any kind of social life, and when I asked her Monday what she did over the weekend, she said "Nothing, just rented movies with my family." I followed up by asking if she'd want to go see a movie this weekend. She giggled and said, "No thank you, I've got plans." Now, I'm not going to say that there's no way that this person that has never mentioned a social life does not have plans this weekend. She may be going to a relative's birthday party or something. But here's my point: She now knows that I want to go out with her. If she wanted to go out with me, would she not suggest going somwhere at a different time than this weekend? Sometime when she doesn't have plans? But there was no follow-up of the sort from her, just a laugh and a rejection when I dared mention that she could see a movie with me. A few people have told me to ask her whether she was free to see a movie with me some other time. Those people apparently don't feel the humiliating sting of rejection very often. How many ways am I supposed to ask this girl to go out with me before I realize that she doesn't want to go out with me? I could paint her into a corner and find out when she's not busy and say, "A-ha! There is a point in time that you could use to go out with me." But now she has to come up with a different excuse, and that's not comfortable for her or for me. I tried, she shot me down, that should be the end. If I keep coming at her even after being rejected, that's just pitiful. I have a little pride, not much, but a little.
So that's where I stand mentally, just kinda floating around wondering when I became so different from other human beings. Oh, and there's a shot of anger thrown in too: I was reading posts on the message board where I met "Karen," and she's still posting there. I had to read her talking about how proud she is to be a fat girl and how she accepts herself. I resisted the urge to bust her out by posting: "But how proud are you to be a bisexual BBW swinger, and how proud are you that you don't tell your boyfriends about it until they find your secret website, and even then you don't explain yourself, you just ignore them like they don't exist???" I'm coming to grips with the fact that I may go the rest of my life wanting nothing more than to turn her upside down and pour bleach into her cunt. Some things just can't be smoothed over, no matter how much counseling or time I receive.
1. Not that I have a lot of male friends (three), but every one of them has a girlfriend, and it makes me want to vomit. Not that they aren't good guys and don't deserve a woman, but shit, how many times am I going to be in a situation where I'm having dinner with a friend and his girl is there snuggling with him and I'm just sitting across the table twiddling my thumbs? What a helpless, frustrating feeling it is to hang out with a friend and his girlfriend without a date of my own. I went through it twice in the last couple of weeks. I went out three weekends ago to my friend "Drew's" house and on Sunday morning at a restaurant for brunch it was Drew, his girlfriend, my best friend "Ronnie," his new girlfriend who he had known at the time for a week, and my lonely ass just sitting there. Not fun. And Drew's girlfriend is barely an adult, so she's asking all these personal questions trying to figure out what's wrong, but she's not old enough to realize that what's wrong is I'm not attractive and not rich, simple as that. Then the weekend that "Jacob" was here for his big-money baseball fantasy draft, he and his girlfriend and I went out to dinner with some friends of his. This dinner always took place when he visited town, but with just us guys. Now there's a woman there. I tried to invite a female friend to join me because I was feeling so inadequate, but of course the friend wasn't able to. I was diplomatic in these situations, but the reality is, there aren't many things more uncomfortable than being around the same guys that I used to bitch with about how much we hated women, and now there they are with a woman, and I'm all alone, so somewhere along the way they stopped having a problem dealing with women. I on the other hand still don't have a clue.
2. "Torrie" still refuses to keep in touch with me or inform me about her plans to join me at the Kentucky Derby the weekend of May 7. I haven't heard from her in several weeks. I tried to call her recently and left a voice mail, but her response was in text message and said that she had no time to talk to me because her two nephews are both in the hospital and her work schedule and the hospital visits are taking up all her time. It would have taken her less time to call me and tell me that, but just like when she tried to dump me via e-mail, it takes guts to speak to me live, and apparently she has none. But it's all my fault, because she tried to dump me but I laid a guilt trip on her and she rescinded. So she basically tried to tell me in so many words that I am not a priority in her life, and I didn't listen because I was too wrapped up in the drama of being abandoned again. But what's worse, being abandoned or being told that you're not being abandoned and being abandoned anyway? And people wonder why I feel like I'm from another planet. All this time that Torrie is spending between family and work is of course understandable, but it doesn't explain why there hasn't been one time where she calls before she goes to bed for the night and says: "Boy, things are really crazy right now. I haven't had time to think hardly. But I just wanted to say that you're on my mind and I want to thank you for hanging in there and being there for me. It's something that I'm not taking for granted, and I really do appreciate it. Well, I'm tired, so I'm turning in. Take care honey, and thanks again."
Nope, too busy to do that.
3. And with Torrie apparently unavailable for Kentucky Derby weekend, it means that I have had a hotel room reserved in Louisville for an entire calendar year and now that the time is here, I will be going to share that room with...wait for it...absolutely nobody. I originally reserved it right after I came back home from the Derby last year, because it's so hard to get a room in Louisville for Derby weekend, and because I had so much fun with "Sarah" that I just knew we'd still be together at this time next year and we would love to go back. Of course, Sarah and I are no longer, but think about what I have to offer: A two-night weekend in Louisville for an event that over 150,000 people attend live every year, and even if you weren't into horses, a two-night weekend with a young, virile black man, no holds barred, for free. Now think about the 492 trillion websites on Yahoo and such promoting dating black men and how many women are members of these sites. And not one of these women want to take advantage of this with me. Not the women in Louisville, not the women here in Chicago, not anywhere in between can you find a woman willing to make this trip with me. How fucking pathetic is that? Oh, and it gets better: Ronnie, knowing that I have an empty room and knowing how hard it is to find a room anywhere near Louisville for Derby weekend because, after all, he's the person that took me to the Derby the first time I went two years ago, now wants to take that room for him and his new girlfriend and split the costs with me. In the words of an ex-lover when she asked me what I was thinking standing over her with my dick hanging out and I responded that, duh, I wanted to put my cock in her mouth: "That's not gonna happen." There ain't no way I'm spending Derby weekend watching any guy and girl cuddling all over each other and I don't have anyone to cuddle with. Even if I had someone, it wouldn't happen because, duh, I'd want the room to be empty for me and my lady. And Ronnie has done a lot for me over the years, driving me here and there because I don't have a car, helping me move a couple of times, but plain and simple, if he wants a hotel room in Louisville for Derby weekend, he needs to reserve one well in advance, just like I did. I'll spend the whole weekend alone before I share a room with a couple. Period.
4. I got up the courage to ask someone out on a date for the first time in years. Yes, a real live person, not a profile on an internet dating site. She laughed and said no, of course. In the many weeks that we have talked casually during class, I've never heard a reference to any kind of social life, and when I asked her Monday what she did over the weekend, she said "Nothing, just rented movies with my family." I followed up by asking if she'd want to go see a movie this weekend. She giggled and said, "No thank you, I've got plans." Now, I'm not going to say that there's no way that this person that has never mentioned a social life does not have plans this weekend. She may be going to a relative's birthday party or something. But here's my point: She now knows that I want to go out with her. If she wanted to go out with me, would she not suggest going somwhere at a different time than this weekend? Sometime when she doesn't have plans? But there was no follow-up of the sort from her, just a laugh and a rejection when I dared mention that she could see a movie with me. A few people have told me to ask her whether she was free to see a movie with me some other time. Those people apparently don't feel the humiliating sting of rejection very often. How many ways am I supposed to ask this girl to go out with me before I realize that she doesn't want to go out with me? I could paint her into a corner and find out when she's not busy and say, "A-ha! There is a point in time that you could use to go out with me." But now she has to come up with a different excuse, and that's not comfortable for her or for me. I tried, she shot me down, that should be the end. If I keep coming at her even after being rejected, that's just pitiful. I have a little pride, not much, but a little.
So that's where I stand mentally, just kinda floating around wondering when I became so different from other human beings. Oh, and there's a shot of anger thrown in too: I was reading posts on the message board where I met "Karen," and she's still posting there. I had to read her talking about how proud she is to be a fat girl and how she accepts herself. I resisted the urge to bust her out by posting: "But how proud are you to be a bisexual BBW swinger, and how proud are you that you don't tell your boyfriends about it until they find your secret website, and even then you don't explain yourself, you just ignore them like they don't exist???" I'm coming to grips with the fact that I may go the rest of my life wanting nothing more than to turn her upside down and pour bleach into her cunt. Some things just can't be smoothed over, no matter how much counseling or time I receive.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Doing What I Enjoy
You know, a lot of people have given me the advice over the years to help ease the loneliness of waiting for that one woman that understands me to come along to just do the things that I enjoy doing, and who knows, maybe I'll meet that special someone while I'm doing it. That would be impossible. I can't meet anyone while burying my nose in box scores looking up statistics to help out my fantasy baseball teams. But it's what I enjoy. I have always loved baseball anyway, the coming of the warm weather here in Chicago being a sure sign of baseball season and making it the time of year that I most look forward to. But I got into fantasy baseball about six or seven years ago, and watching the game has become a more and more intense exercise for me with every passing year. (Fantasy baseball for those that aren't familiar is simply picking real players off real baseball teams and adding their statistics throughout the season and sorting them into categories and taking those results and pitting them against the stats of nine or ten other nerds who have drafted their favorite players and seeing who has the better stats at the end of the season. Not for math haters.) Isolating myself in my tiny apartment, I have become more and more immersed in picking the players who have shown promise in past seasons or in the minor leagues and studying their progress throughout the season. It's sad and lonely, but it's what I enjoy.
Theoretically I can make money off fantasy baseball. There are many many leagues where you pay an entry fee and win a large percentage of the proceeds at the end of the year. But I'm only in two pay leagues, and neither of those are expensive, about $20 each to enter. My friend "Jacob" is in a big-money league, with an entry fee of about $500 and a first prize of about $4,000. With such loot on the line, he enlists my help in studying players and scouting newcomers, and if he ever makes money, I'll get a piece of it. This league is so important that in order to participate in the annual auction draft, I just cut class Tuesday because the draft was in the evening at the AON Building downtown. Imagine fifteen very serious and intense baseball geeks hunkering down in a conference room for five hours nominating players and bidding real money for them. Not pretty, but it's what we enjoy. We even call our annual draft night "The Greatest Night In Sports." No women are allowed, unless one felt confident enough to buy her own team, but if I may be a sexist pig here, I can't see a chick being that much into baseball that she could compete with us. We will all convene again on July 31 for TradeFest, where those in contention for the league title trade their young future stars for guys that can help their team now. And July 31 is the "trade deadline," meaning no more trades can be made during the season after that date, so it's a very important event.
Can you feel the geekiness flowing through your veins???
It's addictive though, kinda like gambling. I can't tell you how big of a rush it is to draft a kid that no one has heard of, but you saw his trend of hitting more homers in the minor leagues year after year and you recognize that he's obviously becoming a better power hitter each year, and now he's going to start the season in the major leagues, so you figure if he gets any playing time he'll show that improving power and wind up putting up big numbers for you. (I just lost most of you I know.) Basically, it's like scouting. Lots of old wrinkled guys get paid lots of money to go to high schools and colleges all over the country and watch kids hit and pitch and try to pick out which of those kids have the natural talent and ability to one day be an impact player. Anyone can pick the huge kids hitting the ball everywhere, or the thick-legged pitcher throwing 95 MPH fastballs. The real scouts have to look at the other kids and see who might one day wind up a good player even though they might not be so great right now. Well, I don't have the privilege to go around the country scouting minor league players, so I have to rely on their numbers from the years they have played in the minors. And there's a tremendous amount of pride in discovering that kid that has never played in the majors and puts up great numbers in his rookie year. You can say "Hey! No one saw that coming...except me!"
So that's where my attention and energy will be devoted for the next seven months. Of course I have eight weeks left in this school semester, but I almost feel like I'm not in school anymore. I feel like nothing else is going on except baseball. On my desk next to my computer sits three or four baseball newspapers. My schoolbooks are somewhere around here. Whatever. "Torrie" has called once in the last two weeks. Whatever. The Kentucky Derby is in a month, and as excited as I am about that, you know the first thing I will be doing when I come back the Sunday night after the Derby? Firing up the computer and checking on how my six internet fantasy teams and how Jacob's big-money team did those two days that I was gone.
Hey, beats crying over not being able to get a date.
Theoretically I can make money off fantasy baseball. There are many many leagues where you pay an entry fee and win a large percentage of the proceeds at the end of the year. But I'm only in two pay leagues, and neither of those are expensive, about $20 each to enter. My friend "Jacob" is in a big-money league, with an entry fee of about $500 and a first prize of about $4,000. With such loot on the line, he enlists my help in studying players and scouting newcomers, and if he ever makes money, I'll get a piece of it. This league is so important that in order to participate in the annual auction draft, I just cut class Tuesday because the draft was in the evening at the AON Building downtown. Imagine fifteen very serious and intense baseball geeks hunkering down in a conference room for five hours nominating players and bidding real money for them. Not pretty, but it's what we enjoy. We even call our annual draft night "The Greatest Night In Sports." No women are allowed, unless one felt confident enough to buy her own team, but if I may be a sexist pig here, I can't see a chick being that much into baseball that she could compete with us. We will all convene again on July 31 for TradeFest, where those in contention for the league title trade their young future stars for guys that can help their team now. And July 31 is the "trade deadline," meaning no more trades can be made during the season after that date, so it's a very important event.
Can you feel the geekiness flowing through your veins???
It's addictive though, kinda like gambling. I can't tell you how big of a rush it is to draft a kid that no one has heard of, but you saw his trend of hitting more homers in the minor leagues year after year and you recognize that he's obviously becoming a better power hitter each year, and now he's going to start the season in the major leagues, so you figure if he gets any playing time he'll show that improving power and wind up putting up big numbers for you. (I just lost most of you I know.) Basically, it's like scouting. Lots of old wrinkled guys get paid lots of money to go to high schools and colleges all over the country and watch kids hit and pitch and try to pick out which of those kids have the natural talent and ability to one day be an impact player. Anyone can pick the huge kids hitting the ball everywhere, or the thick-legged pitcher throwing 95 MPH fastballs. The real scouts have to look at the other kids and see who might one day wind up a good player even though they might not be so great right now. Well, I don't have the privilege to go around the country scouting minor league players, so I have to rely on their numbers from the years they have played in the minors. And there's a tremendous amount of pride in discovering that kid that has never played in the majors and puts up great numbers in his rookie year. You can say "Hey! No one saw that coming...except me!"
So that's where my attention and energy will be devoted for the next seven months. Of course I have eight weeks left in this school semester, but I almost feel like I'm not in school anymore. I feel like nothing else is going on except baseball. On my desk next to my computer sits three or four baseball newspapers. My schoolbooks are somewhere around here. Whatever. "Torrie" has called once in the last two weeks. Whatever. The Kentucky Derby is in a month, and as excited as I am about that, you know the first thing I will be doing when I come back the Sunday night after the Derby? Firing up the computer and checking on how my six internet fantasy teams and how Jacob's big-money team did those two days that I was gone.
Hey, beats crying over not being able to get a date.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Spring Break Fun
Woo hoo, I can't stop having fun on my spring break. My left foot is in immense pain, so I haven't moved very much since Thursday, when I had my last class before spring break. I've left the house once since, Saturday night to hobble across the street to get some pop and nachos. My foot pain started with an apparent gout outbreak a few weeks ago, and the stiffness in the joint of my big toe has not gone away. And now because of the overcompensating I've had to do, the left side of my left foot has one long inflamed tendon running through it, and my right ankle is sprained. So even if "Torrie" had called me and asked me to come see her this week, as much as I'd want to, I don't think I could do it. It took me forever to limp to the store Saturday night, and I'm not feeling much better than I was then. I am icing the foot right now, trying to get well enough to keep an appointment with my psychiatrist today. I've been saving my Celebrex for the right time as well, popping one this morning and planning to pop another before I leave. But other than today, I don't see myself leaving the house this entire week, not that I go anywhere when healthy, but I did at least want to visit my family this week. Somehow it's different when I'm trapped because of health issues. I imagine myself going out, doing what normal singles do, going to the club, enjoying myself, hanging out with friends, making new friends. But darn it, I just can't do those things cause of this doggone foot. But once it gets healthy, what will I be doing? Watching baseball by myself, sulking, Googling my ex-girlfriends, sulking, wondering will I die unmarried with no kids, sulking...did I mention brooding and sulking? Hmm, guess that's why I'm going to a psychiatrist.
Monday, March 14, 2005
Reprieve?
"Torrie" and I have chatted a couple of times this weekend. According to her, she dumped me only because she assumed that I wouldn't want to wait for her to get her life straightened out once she told me that she wouldn't be coming to Chicago anytime soon. She apologized for assuming that I would be like other men in her past and abandon her when she wasn't able to devote her time to them. I apologized for assuming that she was looking for an excuse to dump me because she had found a warm body in her town and didn't need this long-distance thing anymore. The sons of her deceased stepsister have developed a blood disorder, and they are flying to California next weekend to try to find alternative treatments because they haven't been able to help the boys there in Minnesota. She had been spending a lot of time with the boys and that situation, but had never explained that to me; it answers the question I had when I read her kiss-off letter of what kind of "family matters" she had that she thought would stand in the way of us spending time together. We agreed that I once again would come up there to visit during my spring break next week if she got good news in California this weekend. I also dropped the hint that I may want to move up there permanently to avoid this scenario, since nothing, no work, no woman, no purpose, is keeping me in Chicago other than laziness. She seemed in favor of that. So perhaps this was all an instance of miscommunication and Torrie and I are going to seriously work on being there for each other despite the distance. One can only hope. Stay tuned.
Friday, March 11, 2005
"u r a nce guy huh"
This is a conversation I had Thursday night with a woman who sent me an IM. We had never met or chatted before, but it started when she saw my name in a member listing on a Yahoo group and decided to IM me out of the clear blue. I lost that first message she sent me, but this picks up with my immediate response asking her where she found me, since I am a member of over twenty Yahoo groups. Except for a couple of meaningless lines that I deleted, this is totally unedited.
dredog1221 (11:20:57 PM): which group would that be?
pandoras_obsession (11:21:07 PM): hugetits
dredog1221 (11:21:48 PM): i see...sure i'd love to chat, real nice pic on your profile...where in Chicago are you?
pandoras_obsession (11:21:54 PM): ns
pandoras_obsession (11:21:59 PM): near lincoln
dredog1221 (11:22:14 PM): really? i'm five blocks from Wrigley Field
pandoras_obsession (11:22:35 PM): kewl
pandoras_obsession (11:22:39 PM): u r very close
pandoras_obsession (11:22:48 PM): only a coupel of stops on the red
dredog1221 (11:23:36 PM): yep...sounds like maybe we should get together sometime being so close huh?
pandoras_obsession (11:23:54 PM): yeah
dredog1221 (11:24:19 PM): so what's your stats, height weight and whatnot?
pandoras_obsession (11:24:29 PM): lol
pandoras_obsession (11:25:33 PM): i am 44dd, 5'4 and have no ideal waht i really weight but i would fall in to the BBw I know however that means i have hips and ass which u can see in the im picture
dredog1221 (11:25:49 PM): indeed
dredog1221 (11:26:01 PM): why did u laugh? did i say something funny?
pandoras_obsession (11:26:16 PM): u just jumped to the point
pandoras_obsession (11:26:24 PM): caught me off gueard
dredog1221 (11:27:09 PM): well i'd love to get to know you as a person, i just like to imagine what i'm working with
pandoras_obsession (11:27:23 PM): k
pandoras_obsession (11:27:28 PM): so then what r u stats
dredog1221 (11:28:03 PM): i'm 6'1", about 350, 7 inches, uncircumcised and very thick
dredog1221 (11:29:09 PM): sometimes i wonder if i'm big enough when it comes to cock size, seems like these chicks want 9 or more, but i haven't had any complaints
pandoras_obsession (11:29:27 PM): i use to about 10
dredog1221 (11:30:36 PM): well nothing makes me happier than making the woman i'm with cum, so i'm willing and able to do whatever it takes to satisfy you, even if i'm a little small for you
pandoras_obsession (11:30:52 PM): that is cute
dredog1221 (11:32:43 PM): i've been with 5 women in my life, and they all complimented me a lot, so i think i'm good at what i do, whether it's oral or straight fucking or whatever
dredog1221 (11:33:15 PM): and they liked my shaved head, it's a turn on for some reason, lol
pandoras_obsession (11:33:38 PM): for most women a bald head is
dredog1221 (11:34:28 PM): so since i'm apparently lacking in the dick department, what would you want me to do to get you off if we got together?
pandoras_obsession (11:34:54 PM): lol...well now that u have put it that way
dredog1221 (11:36:08 PM): i mean i just feel like i would be inadequate if you're used to 10 inches...so i'd want to do what it takes to make it worth your while to meet me, i don't want to waste your time
pandoras_obsession (11:36:34 PM): sometimes it about other things then size
dredog1221 (11:36:58 PM): well i'm glad to hear that...like what?
pandoras_obsession (11:37:09 PM): personilaty
pandoras_obsession (11:37:15 PM): willing to play with new things
pandoras_obsession (11:37:24 PM): what porn i am watching
pandoras_obsession (11:37:31 PM): is there other people there
pandoras_obsession (11:37:39 PM): other women who r bi there
pandoras_obsession (11:37:42 PM): there is lots of things
dredog1221 (11:38:18 PM): are you ok with one on one? i don't do sex in front of others, i want to focus and concentrate on you
dredog1221 (11:38:37 PM): unless it was other women, which i've never done but would be interested
pandoras_obsession (11:38:44 PM): i am okay with one on one
pandoras_obsession (11:38:49 PM): but i explore to
pandoras_obsession (11:38:55 PM): and i a somewaht of a showoff
dredog1221 (11:39:07 PM): i can tell from your pics
dredog1221 (11:39:37 PM): if i were a woman with beautiful tits like yours i'd show them off too
pandoras_obsession (11:39:46 PM): lol
dredog1221 (11:40:02 PM): are you still in school?
pandoras_obsession (11:40:10 PM): yes
dredog1221 (11:42:19 PM): what are you going for?
pandoras_obsession (11:43:10 PM): pol sc
dredog1221 (11:43:43 PM): ooh, future senator perhaps?
pandoras_obsession (11:43:49 PM): maybr
pandoras_obsession (11:45:02 PM): how old r u btw
dredog1221 (11:45:09 PM): 29
pandoras_obsession (11:45:34 PM): u r a nce guy huh
dredog1221 (11:47:13 PM): yes i am definitely a nice guy, i don't know if that's a turnoff or not but i treat the woman i am with like a queen, i'm not rich by any means but i can promise i will always appreciate you and make you feel good when i'm around
pandoras_obsession (11:47:37 PM): that is really sweet
pandoras_obsession (11:48:18 PM): but in all honestly and all fairness so not what i am lookign for...i just want a playmate in chicago i have a bf but he lives in mobile
dredog1221 (11:49:45 PM): i see, well i'm not going to try to steal you from him but just telling you that i'm not gonna screw you and throw you aside like you're nothing, i'm going to do you right if you let me and treat you with respect
dredog1221 (11:50:14 PM): i can be a playmate no problem, i'm not dating anyone so i can be whatever you want me to be
pandoras_obsession (11:51:24 PM): lol...i jsut would not feel right knowing that you are one of the few nice guys out there...its a moral thing for me...guys who r jerks is no pro because i can dish as much as them but nice guys are to be treated well so that they can do right
dredog1221 (11:52:36 PM): i understand...the problem is i don't meet anybody that treats me well, so me and my nice self is sitting here all alone while the jerks never go to bed alone
pandoras_obsession (11:52:57 PM): i understand ur point but
pandoras_obsession (11:53:07 PM): one day u will find a nice gurl to be with
pandoras_obsession (11:53:44 PM): and ti will be if carnally knowledge of me is kept out of that...u just r too nice for me to corput
pandoras_obsession (11:54:29 PM): i have a thing of being able to turn people out and i dont want to do that to nice guys
pandoras_obsession (11:54:37 PM): nice gurls maybe but not nice guys
dredog1221 (11:54:45 PM): well you wouldn't corrupt me honey, believe me i've done a lot of dirty things in bed
pandoras_obsession (11:55:27 PM): trust me i corput some of the jerks
pandoras_obsession (11:55:37 PM): but i am on way to bed i have to get up in the mornign
dredog1221 (11:56:06 PM): ok well if you ever want to play i am here waiting
pandoras_obsession (11:56:15 PM): k
So to summarize...a young woman found my profile and sought me out for no-strings-attached fun, but once she found out that I am A NICE GUY, she lost interest. I swear I wanted to cry. I don't know what the fuck to do anymore. I refuse to turn into a jerk because jerks hurt the ones they are with, and I don't want to hurt anyone. Just the opposite, I want to be the one to turn to when a lady is sick and tired of being hurt and wants to be treated right. But I can't do that when I treat the women I'm with well and get dumped anyway, and I can't do that when I threaten any woman that wants to hook up with me with that horrible, digusting trait I have, the trait of caring, and they run away as if I told them I wanted to shoot them. And no one has the answer for the problem I posed to her, which is: If the jerks are getting laid every night because women don't want to mess around with the nice guys, then how do the nice guys ever get any company? And exactly when the fuck did being a nice guy become a BAD thing?
If my head wasn't already spinning, it is now. At this rate, I'm never going to have another lover again. Unless I offer to smack some girl around or something.
dredog1221 (11:20:57 PM): which group would that be?
pandoras_obsession (11:21:07 PM): hugetits
dredog1221 (11:21:48 PM): i see...sure i'd love to chat, real nice pic on your profile...where in Chicago are you?
pandoras_obsession (11:21:54 PM): ns
pandoras_obsession (11:21:59 PM): near lincoln
dredog1221 (11:22:14 PM): really? i'm five blocks from Wrigley Field
pandoras_obsession (11:22:35 PM): kewl
pandoras_obsession (11:22:39 PM): u r very close
pandoras_obsession (11:22:48 PM): only a coupel of stops on the red
dredog1221 (11:23:36 PM): yep...sounds like maybe we should get together sometime being so close huh?
pandoras_obsession (11:23:54 PM): yeah
dredog1221 (11:24:19 PM): so what's your stats, height weight and whatnot?
pandoras_obsession (11:24:29 PM): lol
pandoras_obsession (11:25:33 PM): i am 44dd, 5'4 and have no ideal waht i really weight but i would fall in to the BBw I know however that means i have hips and ass which u can see in the im picture
dredog1221 (11:25:49 PM): indeed
dredog1221 (11:26:01 PM): why did u laugh? did i say something funny?
pandoras_obsession (11:26:16 PM): u just jumped to the point
pandoras_obsession (11:26:24 PM): caught me off gueard
dredog1221 (11:27:09 PM): well i'd love to get to know you as a person, i just like to imagine what i'm working with
pandoras_obsession (11:27:23 PM): k
pandoras_obsession (11:27:28 PM): so then what r u stats
dredog1221 (11:28:03 PM): i'm 6'1", about 350, 7 inches, uncircumcised and very thick
dredog1221 (11:29:09 PM): sometimes i wonder if i'm big enough when it comes to cock size, seems like these chicks want 9 or more, but i haven't had any complaints
pandoras_obsession (11:29:27 PM): i use to about 10
dredog1221 (11:30:36 PM): well nothing makes me happier than making the woman i'm with cum, so i'm willing and able to do whatever it takes to satisfy you, even if i'm a little small for you
pandoras_obsession (11:30:52 PM): that is cute
dredog1221 (11:32:43 PM): i've been with 5 women in my life, and they all complimented me a lot, so i think i'm good at what i do, whether it's oral or straight fucking or whatever
dredog1221 (11:33:15 PM): and they liked my shaved head, it's a turn on for some reason, lol
pandoras_obsession (11:33:38 PM): for most women a bald head is
dredog1221 (11:34:28 PM): so since i'm apparently lacking in the dick department, what would you want me to do to get you off if we got together?
pandoras_obsession (11:34:54 PM): lol...well now that u have put it that way
dredog1221 (11:36:08 PM): i mean i just feel like i would be inadequate if you're used to 10 inches...so i'd want to do what it takes to make it worth your while to meet me, i don't want to waste your time
pandoras_obsession (11:36:34 PM): sometimes it about other things then size
dredog1221 (11:36:58 PM): well i'm glad to hear that...like what?
pandoras_obsession (11:37:09 PM): personilaty
pandoras_obsession (11:37:15 PM): willing to play with new things
pandoras_obsession (11:37:24 PM): what porn i am watching
pandoras_obsession (11:37:31 PM): is there other people there
pandoras_obsession (11:37:39 PM): other women who r bi there
pandoras_obsession (11:37:42 PM): there is lots of things
dredog1221 (11:38:18 PM): are you ok with one on one? i don't do sex in front of others, i want to focus and concentrate on you
dredog1221 (11:38:37 PM): unless it was other women, which i've never done but would be interested
pandoras_obsession (11:38:44 PM): i am okay with one on one
pandoras_obsession (11:38:49 PM): but i explore to
pandoras_obsession (11:38:55 PM): and i a somewaht of a showoff
dredog1221 (11:39:07 PM): i can tell from your pics
dredog1221 (11:39:37 PM): if i were a woman with beautiful tits like yours i'd show them off too
pandoras_obsession (11:39:46 PM): lol
dredog1221 (11:40:02 PM): are you still in school?
pandoras_obsession (11:40:10 PM): yes
dredog1221 (11:42:19 PM): what are you going for?
pandoras_obsession (11:43:10 PM): pol sc
dredog1221 (11:43:43 PM): ooh, future senator perhaps?
pandoras_obsession (11:43:49 PM): maybr
pandoras_obsession (11:45:02 PM): how old r u btw
dredog1221 (11:45:09 PM): 29
pandoras_obsession (11:45:34 PM): u r a nce guy huh
dredog1221 (11:47:13 PM): yes i am definitely a nice guy, i don't know if that's a turnoff or not but i treat the woman i am with like a queen, i'm not rich by any means but i can promise i will always appreciate you and make you feel good when i'm around
pandoras_obsession (11:47:37 PM): that is really sweet
pandoras_obsession (11:48:18 PM): but in all honestly and all fairness so not what i am lookign for...i just want a playmate in chicago i have a bf but he lives in mobile
dredog1221 (11:49:45 PM): i see, well i'm not going to try to steal you from him but just telling you that i'm not gonna screw you and throw you aside like you're nothing, i'm going to do you right if you let me and treat you with respect
dredog1221 (11:50:14 PM): i can be a playmate no problem, i'm not dating anyone so i can be whatever you want me to be
pandoras_obsession (11:51:24 PM): lol...i jsut would not feel right knowing that you are one of the few nice guys out there...its a moral thing for me...guys who r jerks is no pro because i can dish as much as them but nice guys are to be treated well so that they can do right
dredog1221 (11:52:36 PM): i understand...the problem is i don't meet anybody that treats me well, so me and my nice self is sitting here all alone while the jerks never go to bed alone
pandoras_obsession (11:52:57 PM): i understand ur point but
pandoras_obsession (11:53:07 PM): one day u will find a nice gurl to be with
pandoras_obsession (11:53:44 PM): and ti will be if carnally knowledge of me is kept out of that...u just r too nice for me to corput
pandoras_obsession (11:54:29 PM): i have a thing of being able to turn people out and i dont want to do that to nice guys
pandoras_obsession (11:54:37 PM): nice gurls maybe but not nice guys
dredog1221 (11:54:45 PM): well you wouldn't corrupt me honey, believe me i've done a lot of dirty things in bed
pandoras_obsession (11:55:27 PM): trust me i corput some of the jerks
pandoras_obsession (11:55:37 PM): but i am on way to bed i have to get up in the mornign
dredog1221 (11:56:06 PM): ok well if you ever want to play i am here waiting
pandoras_obsession (11:56:15 PM): k
So to summarize...a young woman found my profile and sought me out for no-strings-attached fun, but once she found out that I am A NICE GUY, she lost interest. I swear I wanted to cry. I don't know what the fuck to do anymore. I refuse to turn into a jerk because jerks hurt the ones they are with, and I don't want to hurt anyone. Just the opposite, I want to be the one to turn to when a lady is sick and tired of being hurt and wants to be treated right. But I can't do that when I treat the women I'm with well and get dumped anyway, and I can't do that when I threaten any woman that wants to hook up with me with that horrible, digusting trait I have, the trait of caring, and they run away as if I told them I wanted to shoot them. And no one has the answer for the problem I posed to her, which is: If the jerks are getting laid every night because women don't want to mess around with the nice guys, then how do the nice guys ever get any company? And exactly when the fuck did being a nice guy become a BAD thing?
If my head wasn't already spinning, it is now. At this rate, I'm never going to have another lover again. Unless I offer to smack some girl around or something.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Alone Again...Naturally
"Torrie" dumped me. She sent me an e-mail yesterday expressing frustration that our schedules would not allow us to see each other anytime soon and therefore it was "better to just end it." Two days ago everything was fine. My spring break from classes starts at the end of next week, and I offered to fly to Minneapolis again, but she insisted that she would get the time off from her job and come to see me here instead because she had not done so yet and I had already come there twice. But in the letter yesterday she told me that she had been rejected for that request for the time off because she had not been on the job long enough. How the hell she jumped from there to dumping me I don't know, but she cited family demands on her time as another factor even though we don't meet often enough for me to take time away from her family. My guess is she met someone else locally and didn't feel like giving any more effort to something that was so long-distance. In that sense I guess I can't blame her. It still sucks to get dumped though, especially when in my mind she was about to spend time here in my apartment with me and really start becoming a big part of my life. Silly me. When will I learn that no one wants to be a big part of my life?
Torrie spent the last part of her e-mail telling me how great of a guy I am, and how lucky some woman is going to be to have me because I have such a big heart. Can anybody tell me why my big heart keeps getting trampled every time I offer it to someone? Can anyone explain why I have treated every woman I've been with over the last two years like a queen, doing anything I can to please them and show them how much they mean to me, yet my bed is empty every single night? What does it take? I talked to three different people since yesterday, and they all had different versions of the same theme: I have to be happy with myself and not be worried about having someone else. My response: Isn't that pathetic? The notion that I have to be satisfied with myself because I'm so pathetic that I can't get anyone else to be satisfied with me? I'm sorry, but that's just sad. The thought of me walking around saying to myself, "La la la, I don't care if no one wants to be with me cause I'm okay with myself, happy happy joy joy," makes me want to cry. All I keep thinking is: I have a big heart, I'm a good guy, nothing makes me happier than to make the woman I'm with happy, and yet eventually they all lie to me or get sick of being treated well and leave. Pathetic. Oh, and I can't forget the theme of all these recent disappointments coming from women I met over the internet. Okay, I can definitely see the point of maybe the women I meet online aren't looking for what I'm looking for. But my response is, I went without a date for six years prior to "Karen," the first woman I ever dated from the internet. As crazy as these online women have turned out to be, if it wasn't for the internet, my last girlfriend would have been in high school eleven years ago. So I can't give up the internet as an option; I can't get a date otherwise.
Well, I'm off to school, where dozens of attractive women walk all around me as if I don't exist. I'm not about to disturb one of those women by begging for a date, and besides, my confidence ain't exactly high, and I don't need any more rejection. I've had about enough for this lifetime.
Torrie spent the last part of her e-mail telling me how great of a guy I am, and how lucky some woman is going to be to have me because I have such a big heart. Can anybody tell me why my big heart keeps getting trampled every time I offer it to someone? Can anyone explain why I have treated every woman I've been with over the last two years like a queen, doing anything I can to please them and show them how much they mean to me, yet my bed is empty every single night? What does it take? I talked to three different people since yesterday, and they all had different versions of the same theme: I have to be happy with myself and not be worried about having someone else. My response: Isn't that pathetic? The notion that I have to be satisfied with myself because I'm so pathetic that I can't get anyone else to be satisfied with me? I'm sorry, but that's just sad. The thought of me walking around saying to myself, "La la la, I don't care if no one wants to be with me cause I'm okay with myself, happy happy joy joy," makes me want to cry. All I keep thinking is: I have a big heart, I'm a good guy, nothing makes me happier than to make the woman I'm with happy, and yet eventually they all lie to me or get sick of being treated well and leave. Pathetic. Oh, and I can't forget the theme of all these recent disappointments coming from women I met over the internet. Okay, I can definitely see the point of maybe the women I meet online aren't looking for what I'm looking for. But my response is, I went without a date for six years prior to "Karen," the first woman I ever dated from the internet. As crazy as these online women have turned out to be, if it wasn't for the internet, my last girlfriend would have been in high school eleven years ago. So I can't give up the internet as an option; I can't get a date otherwise.
Well, I'm off to school, where dozens of attractive women walk all around me as if I don't exist. I'm not about to disturb one of those women by begging for a date, and besides, my confidence ain't exactly high, and I don't need any more rejection. I've had about enough for this lifetime.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
My History (3rd In A Series)
This is the story of my obsession with a woman I worked with for many years. I'll call her "Yasmine."
The first time I ever saw Yasmine was in the summer of 1995, after I moved to a busier part of the trading floor. I had been in this busier part for a few days when I started to notice a Latina woman who seemingly never smiled but still looked beautiful to me. She wore a green and white traders jacket and spent most of her day going up and down the ten steps to enter and exit this monstrous traders pit called the index. After watching from afar, I realized that she was not a trader, but rather an assistant to one of the traders inside the index. I don't know what we were talking about the first time I spoke to her, but I distinctly remember being so magnetically attracted to her that I kept scooting towards her in my chair as we spoke and she kept backing up on her feet, until eventually I had her cornered, as if I was about to pounce on her. And I didn't even realize I was doing this.
She wasn't one of those angry, non-smiling people, which I have been accused of being many times. Rather, she seemed to be very shy, which is one of my weaknesses. I can't get enough of a shy, humble woman, I guess partially because it makes me feel like she would be more receptive to the presence in her life of a good man and partially because my mom was shy and reserved. Whatever the case may be, I could not take my eyes off her. She never wore makeup, another weakness of mine, and she carried herself in a way that made it seem like she was just working as hard as she could and couldn't be bothered with anything that would get in her way. But that contrasted with her manner of speaking to me once I got up the balls to talk to her. Then she turned into that shy, introverted girl, never making direct eye contact with me for more than a second in all the many conversations we had. I could tell there was something in her past that made her wary of anyone's advances. She didn't seem to have many friends, male or female, and the few men that spoke to her would warn me not to charge too hard after her because she didn't seem to be interested in that kind of thing at all.
Never one to listen to others, I pursued Yasmine as hard as I could. Now, I'm introverted myself, so it's not like I was making improper advances or telling her how great I could sex her in bed, but I asked her out many, many times, while I was still with my high school girlfriend, while I was dating a different co-worker who knew how I felt about Yasmine, through every other crush I had on anyone in or outside of work, for about seven years. We never went out. That's a lot of rejection to take to keep going after the same woman, you may say. That's the thing. She NEVER rejected me. She would accept whatever date proposal I had, a movie, Chinese dinner, whatever I came up with, she said yes. Then when the day of the date came, she would nervously smile and apologize and tell me that something came up and she wouldn't be able to join me. Did she not know what she was doing to me? Did she not know that a big piece of my heart belonged to her, just because of the way she treated me, always acting like it was the happiest part of her day when she would see me, and that I was aching to give her all of me?
Oh, she knew, alright. I told her so to her face. I wrote her poems and cut the paper out in a heart shape and presented them to her. I bought her a bell--yes, a little ceramic bell--for Christmas one year, because that's exactly what she asked for. I bought her flowers on Valentine's Day after Valentine's Day. I devoted so much of my energy to her that I wasn't pursuing any other potential dates for most of the seven years that I knew her. Her responses to these gifts were the same: a kiss on the cheek, a big hug, expressions of gratitude, repeated assurances that she thought of me as a great friend and that we would one day be able to go out together, no excuses. But as for romance? Well, Yasmine kept telling me that she did not have any desire for that. She was divorced before she ever met me, and she used that as a crutch to tell me that she didn't want her heart scarred any more than it already had been. This only made me want her more, of course. She seemed to be saying that I had a shot with her once she got over her heartbreak; she had so many opportunities to tell me straight up that she didn't want to date me, that she saw me as only a friend. But she liked the attention. One time I told this girl Aiden, who was a broker at a station that I had just been moved to, the whole Yasmine story, and how I was trying to leave Yasmine alone for good because the neverending chase was taking its toll, but that she was coming after me now that I was trying to ignore her. Aiden didn't want to believe that anyone was coming after me for any reason, and I wouldn't have believed it either. Then I went on a 15-minute morning break, and apparently Yasmine was coming to see me but arrived just when I left for my break and stayed there the whole time waiting for me to return just to chat with me for a few minutes. When she left, Aiden just looked at me with wide eyes and said, "She's been here since you left." I said, "I told you so."
There was one time that we went out socially, but I wouldn't call it a date. It was more like a security guard accompanying the rock star on her trip to the ballpark. Yasmine came up with Saturday tickets to a Cubs-Sox game at Wrigley Field back in 2000, and while she was a Sox fan from childhood, she rarely went to games, and was scared to attend this particular one alone because of the charged-up atmosphere of the rivalry. So after admittedly calling every other friend she knew and being turned down because they all had plans, she called 411 and got my phone number (I had given her pieces of paper with my number on them about 748 times before, but because she really didn't give a fuck, she had lost them all) and asked me to come with. I said yes even though my ankle was sore because I had rolled it, but this was Yasmine and I wasn't about to miss a chance to go out with Yasmine. Hobbling the entire way, I met her at a corner about two blocks from my house, where we hugged, then we took a bus from there to Wrigley, which was about eight blocks from my house. It was a great day, the Sox won (yay!), and I spent the whole game with my arm around Yasmine, enjoying the afternoon and praying that there would be more to come after the game. Of course, there wasn't. I asked her to lunch after, and she said she had to get back home to help her mother with something, so we got on the train and rode about five minutes to my stop. She stayed on and went back home. The worst part? After all the chatting and bonding during the game, I thought we were close enough for me to lean in for a hug or a kiss on the cheek when I got off the train. I got absolutely nothing but air.
Basically, she wouldn't admit it, but Yasmine had no intention of ever dating me but couldn't tell me so because no one had pursued her like I had and she loved the feeling of being wanted. And I wasn't bright enough to admit to myself that we would never get together. I loved her. I had convinced myself that she had every attribute that I wanted in a woman, ignoring the attribute of being frigid and icy that no man would want in a woman because that keeps anything from ever developing. I was so head over heels for her that I wouldn't listen to anyone who told me that she was trouble.
I might still have been rubbing her shoulders and hugging her and kissing her on the cheek and believing that there was a future with her if not for her being let go by the firm that she was working for a couple of years ago. Around that same time she had gently chastised me for kissing her on the cheek while she was on her cell phone with her "boyfriend." So I had been leaving her alone, again, which never lasted long. She had e-mailed me after that incident telling me that she was thinking about marrying whoever this person was, and my calm, mature, supportive response was to tell her he would never love her like I did. She didn't respond well to that. Shortly after that, she was laid off. Since we weren't talking, I didn't know until I happened to notice after many weeks that I hadn't seen her on the trading floor lately and asked around. I had been wondering how she was doing and what would have happened had she ever given me a shot at her. Would I have ever decided to try internet dating, and would I have ever met the women that have hurt me so much in the last year that I had to spend a week in a psych ward last summer? Would I have avoided all the torture I've gone through, or would it have been an extension of the torture that I went through pursuing her?
Well, to my total shock, Yasmine waved at me several weeks ago as I stood in line at the bookstore across the street from my college. She looked the same, plus about 30 to 40 pounds, understandable since she had an infant daughter, her "Mini-Me" as she described her. She still had dry, cracked lips that I yearned to moisturize with my mouth. She still made something inside me heat up with desire when she spoke in that shy, indirect way. She still had big cheeks that expanded when she smiled. She still seemed like she couldn't hurt a fly. But she hurt me, over and over again, whether she knew it or not. And as a result, that love I had for her is no longer there, even though my lust for her still is. She still told me that we will get together for dinner or coffee sometime. She still accepted my phone number from me. The only difference is, this time she gave me her number back. Before, I would have killed to receive that back from her, just because it would have showed that she had some intention of returning the consideration I always gave her.
Now? Her number's in the garbage. If she ever calls me, fine. If we ever go out for coffee sometime, fine. But I know that we'll never be an item. And I know that if I could have showed her my love and how deep it ran for her, she would have appreciated it forever. But after all these many years, that window of opportunity is closed. And it's her loss.
The first time I ever saw Yasmine was in the summer of 1995, after I moved to a busier part of the trading floor. I had been in this busier part for a few days when I started to notice a Latina woman who seemingly never smiled but still looked beautiful to me. She wore a green and white traders jacket and spent most of her day going up and down the ten steps to enter and exit this monstrous traders pit called the index. After watching from afar, I realized that she was not a trader, but rather an assistant to one of the traders inside the index. I don't know what we were talking about the first time I spoke to her, but I distinctly remember being so magnetically attracted to her that I kept scooting towards her in my chair as we spoke and she kept backing up on her feet, until eventually I had her cornered, as if I was about to pounce on her. And I didn't even realize I was doing this.
She wasn't one of those angry, non-smiling people, which I have been accused of being many times. Rather, she seemed to be very shy, which is one of my weaknesses. I can't get enough of a shy, humble woman, I guess partially because it makes me feel like she would be more receptive to the presence in her life of a good man and partially because my mom was shy and reserved. Whatever the case may be, I could not take my eyes off her. She never wore makeup, another weakness of mine, and she carried herself in a way that made it seem like she was just working as hard as she could and couldn't be bothered with anything that would get in her way. But that contrasted with her manner of speaking to me once I got up the balls to talk to her. Then she turned into that shy, introverted girl, never making direct eye contact with me for more than a second in all the many conversations we had. I could tell there was something in her past that made her wary of anyone's advances. She didn't seem to have many friends, male or female, and the few men that spoke to her would warn me not to charge too hard after her because she didn't seem to be interested in that kind of thing at all.
Never one to listen to others, I pursued Yasmine as hard as I could. Now, I'm introverted myself, so it's not like I was making improper advances or telling her how great I could sex her in bed, but I asked her out many, many times, while I was still with my high school girlfriend, while I was dating a different co-worker who knew how I felt about Yasmine, through every other crush I had on anyone in or outside of work, for about seven years. We never went out. That's a lot of rejection to take to keep going after the same woman, you may say. That's the thing. She NEVER rejected me. She would accept whatever date proposal I had, a movie, Chinese dinner, whatever I came up with, she said yes. Then when the day of the date came, she would nervously smile and apologize and tell me that something came up and she wouldn't be able to join me. Did she not know what she was doing to me? Did she not know that a big piece of my heart belonged to her, just because of the way she treated me, always acting like it was the happiest part of her day when she would see me, and that I was aching to give her all of me?
Oh, she knew, alright. I told her so to her face. I wrote her poems and cut the paper out in a heart shape and presented them to her. I bought her a bell--yes, a little ceramic bell--for Christmas one year, because that's exactly what she asked for. I bought her flowers on Valentine's Day after Valentine's Day. I devoted so much of my energy to her that I wasn't pursuing any other potential dates for most of the seven years that I knew her. Her responses to these gifts were the same: a kiss on the cheek, a big hug, expressions of gratitude, repeated assurances that she thought of me as a great friend and that we would one day be able to go out together, no excuses. But as for romance? Well, Yasmine kept telling me that she did not have any desire for that. She was divorced before she ever met me, and she used that as a crutch to tell me that she didn't want her heart scarred any more than it already had been. This only made me want her more, of course. She seemed to be saying that I had a shot with her once she got over her heartbreak; she had so many opportunities to tell me straight up that she didn't want to date me, that she saw me as only a friend. But she liked the attention. One time I told this girl Aiden, who was a broker at a station that I had just been moved to, the whole Yasmine story, and how I was trying to leave Yasmine alone for good because the neverending chase was taking its toll, but that she was coming after me now that I was trying to ignore her. Aiden didn't want to believe that anyone was coming after me for any reason, and I wouldn't have believed it either. Then I went on a 15-minute morning break, and apparently Yasmine was coming to see me but arrived just when I left for my break and stayed there the whole time waiting for me to return just to chat with me for a few minutes. When she left, Aiden just looked at me with wide eyes and said, "She's been here since you left." I said, "I told you so."
There was one time that we went out socially, but I wouldn't call it a date. It was more like a security guard accompanying the rock star on her trip to the ballpark. Yasmine came up with Saturday tickets to a Cubs-Sox game at Wrigley Field back in 2000, and while she was a Sox fan from childhood, she rarely went to games, and was scared to attend this particular one alone because of the charged-up atmosphere of the rivalry. So after admittedly calling every other friend she knew and being turned down because they all had plans, she called 411 and got my phone number (I had given her pieces of paper with my number on them about 748 times before, but because she really didn't give a fuck, she had lost them all) and asked me to come with. I said yes even though my ankle was sore because I had rolled it, but this was Yasmine and I wasn't about to miss a chance to go out with Yasmine. Hobbling the entire way, I met her at a corner about two blocks from my house, where we hugged, then we took a bus from there to Wrigley, which was about eight blocks from my house. It was a great day, the Sox won (yay!), and I spent the whole game with my arm around Yasmine, enjoying the afternoon and praying that there would be more to come after the game. Of course, there wasn't. I asked her to lunch after, and she said she had to get back home to help her mother with something, so we got on the train and rode about five minutes to my stop. She stayed on and went back home. The worst part? After all the chatting and bonding during the game, I thought we were close enough for me to lean in for a hug or a kiss on the cheek when I got off the train. I got absolutely nothing but air.
Basically, she wouldn't admit it, but Yasmine had no intention of ever dating me but couldn't tell me so because no one had pursued her like I had and she loved the feeling of being wanted. And I wasn't bright enough to admit to myself that we would never get together. I loved her. I had convinced myself that she had every attribute that I wanted in a woman, ignoring the attribute of being frigid and icy that no man would want in a woman because that keeps anything from ever developing. I was so head over heels for her that I wouldn't listen to anyone who told me that she was trouble.
I might still have been rubbing her shoulders and hugging her and kissing her on the cheek and believing that there was a future with her if not for her being let go by the firm that she was working for a couple of years ago. Around that same time she had gently chastised me for kissing her on the cheek while she was on her cell phone with her "boyfriend." So I had been leaving her alone, again, which never lasted long. She had e-mailed me after that incident telling me that she was thinking about marrying whoever this person was, and my calm, mature, supportive response was to tell her he would never love her like I did. She didn't respond well to that. Shortly after that, she was laid off. Since we weren't talking, I didn't know until I happened to notice after many weeks that I hadn't seen her on the trading floor lately and asked around. I had been wondering how she was doing and what would have happened had she ever given me a shot at her. Would I have ever decided to try internet dating, and would I have ever met the women that have hurt me so much in the last year that I had to spend a week in a psych ward last summer? Would I have avoided all the torture I've gone through, or would it have been an extension of the torture that I went through pursuing her?
Well, to my total shock, Yasmine waved at me several weeks ago as I stood in line at the bookstore across the street from my college. She looked the same, plus about 30 to 40 pounds, understandable since she had an infant daughter, her "Mini-Me" as she described her. She still had dry, cracked lips that I yearned to moisturize with my mouth. She still made something inside me heat up with desire when she spoke in that shy, indirect way. She still had big cheeks that expanded when she smiled. She still seemed like she couldn't hurt a fly. But she hurt me, over and over again, whether she knew it or not. And as a result, that love I had for her is no longer there, even though my lust for her still is. She still told me that we will get together for dinner or coffee sometime. She still accepted my phone number from me. The only difference is, this time she gave me her number back. Before, I would have killed to receive that back from her, just because it would have showed that she had some intention of returning the consideration I always gave her.
Now? Her number's in the garbage. If she ever calls me, fine. If we ever go out for coffee sometime, fine. But I know that we'll never be an item. And I know that if I could have showed her my love and how deep it ran for her, she would have appreciated it forever. But after all these many years, that window of opportunity is closed. And it's her loss.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Valentine's Day Thoughts
I won't even pretend to wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day. I'm usually all alone on this holiday celebrating the ability of everyone else in the whole fucking world to find a mate, and today was no exception. Sure, I sent a card to "Torrie" and received a virtual card from her (but only after I told her I was mailing her a card), but I didn't get to spend the day with her or anyone else. My bed as usual will be empty tonight. Selfish? Goddamn right. If I don't feel for me, who the fuck will?
I did kiss a woman on the cheek, a woman whom I fell in love with years ago when we both worked at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. This woman, "Yasmine," happens to be taking classes at the same school I am, and I saw her a couple of weeks ago when I was buying books across the street from the school. I almost fainted. I had not seen her in three years, and I did not expect to ever see her again. This was not a romantic rekindling of a prior affair, however. My love for Yasmine was always gently rebuked and never returned, the proverbial banging my head against a wall. She was too nice to tell me that she wasn't interested in me, but the truth is, she wasn't interested in me. Five years of chasing her should have told me that, but again, I was in love. In a way I never have felt as strongly about a woman as I did about Yasmine, and it was just so ironic that after five years of giving her roses and cigars and cards on Valentine's Day and getting nothing in return that I finally let go of her in my heart so that I could make room for the women that would use and abuse me over the last couple of years, and now that I've been mentally beaten down, here she is, on Valentine's Day, back in my life, if only for a four-minute conversation about nothing. But at least I no longer think that I'm going to convince her to give me a chance. I know damn well that nothing will ever happen between us, and I've accepted that. I'll have the entire pathetic Yasmine story in my next post.
I did not sleep all weekend, and I think it was because I knew Valentine's Day was coming, and at this time last year I was in that great cosmopolitan town of Mukwonago, WI, giving jewelry and poems and flowers to "Karen" and watching her respond not with glee or gratification but with the statement "Oh no, please, no more gifts!" Wow, honey, I'm glad you appreciate all I'm doing for you. I was talking to a friend about my lack of rest concerning this anxiety, and she responded, "I can tell you still love her." I've thought a lot about that, not just recently, but last year when all the drama happened. I've come to the conclusion that I never loved Karen. I am not feeling anxious because I was in love with Karen. I'm feeling anxious because I was in love with the concept of Karen. The concept was that she was a nice, sweet, quiet, demure, intelligent white woman who accepted my advances, thought I was attractive, and wanted me to be a part of her life. I should have known that was too good to be true. But that was my mindset at this time last year. As I laid down to sleep with Karen in her bed in Mukwonago, WI, on Valentine's Day night, I was thinking to myself, I'm moving up here soon to start a new life with Karen, one that will result in marriage and children in the future. And I couldn't have been happier, even if I wasn't really attracted to her, even if she was lousy in bed, even with the gaps in logic that made me suspect her before I ever found out what kind of pond scum she was. She was my dream personified, and I thought that my personal life was finally settled.
That's why I can't sleep. A year ago, everything was perfect on Planet Dre. Then the 10.0 quake tore up my world. Maybe five years from now I won't feel so bad when this time of year rolls around. Right now, I feel like someone ripped up my stomach from the inside. Happy Valentine's Day indeed.
I did kiss a woman on the cheek, a woman whom I fell in love with years ago when we both worked at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. This woman, "Yasmine," happens to be taking classes at the same school I am, and I saw her a couple of weeks ago when I was buying books across the street from the school. I almost fainted. I had not seen her in three years, and I did not expect to ever see her again. This was not a romantic rekindling of a prior affair, however. My love for Yasmine was always gently rebuked and never returned, the proverbial banging my head against a wall. She was too nice to tell me that she wasn't interested in me, but the truth is, she wasn't interested in me. Five years of chasing her should have told me that, but again, I was in love. In a way I never have felt as strongly about a woman as I did about Yasmine, and it was just so ironic that after five years of giving her roses and cigars and cards on Valentine's Day and getting nothing in return that I finally let go of her in my heart so that I could make room for the women that would use and abuse me over the last couple of years, and now that I've been mentally beaten down, here she is, on Valentine's Day, back in my life, if only for a four-minute conversation about nothing. But at least I no longer think that I'm going to convince her to give me a chance. I know damn well that nothing will ever happen between us, and I've accepted that. I'll have the entire pathetic Yasmine story in my next post.
I did not sleep all weekend, and I think it was because I knew Valentine's Day was coming, and at this time last year I was in that great cosmopolitan town of Mukwonago, WI, giving jewelry and poems and flowers to "Karen" and watching her respond not with glee or gratification but with the statement "Oh no, please, no more gifts!" Wow, honey, I'm glad you appreciate all I'm doing for you. I was talking to a friend about my lack of rest concerning this anxiety, and she responded, "I can tell you still love her." I've thought a lot about that, not just recently, but last year when all the drama happened. I've come to the conclusion that I never loved Karen. I am not feeling anxious because I was in love with Karen. I'm feeling anxious because I was in love with the concept of Karen. The concept was that she was a nice, sweet, quiet, demure, intelligent white woman who accepted my advances, thought I was attractive, and wanted me to be a part of her life. I should have known that was too good to be true. But that was my mindset at this time last year. As I laid down to sleep with Karen in her bed in Mukwonago, WI, on Valentine's Day night, I was thinking to myself, I'm moving up here soon to start a new life with Karen, one that will result in marriage and children in the future. And I couldn't have been happier, even if I wasn't really attracted to her, even if she was lousy in bed, even with the gaps in logic that made me suspect her before I ever found out what kind of pond scum she was. She was my dream personified, and I thought that my personal life was finally settled.
That's why I can't sleep. A year ago, everything was perfect on Planet Dre. Then the 10.0 quake tore up my world. Maybe five years from now I won't feel so bad when this time of year rolls around. Right now, I feel like someone ripped up my stomach from the inside. Happy Valentine's Day indeed.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Serving A Purpose
I wanted to serve some kind of purpose this weekend in Minnesota. I wanted to go visit "Torrie" and actually have a reason to be there besides just being there for her. Whether it was a shoulder to cry on, a hand to hold, or just someone to talk to, I wanted to spend those two days there with her doing something to make her feel better.
Making love served the purpose.
We spent Friday evening in my hotel room together, and that was more time with Torrie than I thought I was going to have. She was shaky, driving somewhat erratically and babbling at times, but it was understandable. There was other drama going on besides her stepsister Jody dying: The father of Jody's children was in town and wanted immediate custody of the kids. Those same kids wouldn't have a final visitation with their mother because her current husband for some unknown reason had her remains cremated without anyone in her family having a say over this. And to top it all off, Torrie's ex-husband, who she had not seen since 1997, paid an unexpected visit as well. So I think that I came to town at the perfect time, so that Torrie would have somewhere to go to escape the situation. In my uneducated opinion, the sex and togetherness that we had was a great stress release for her. She even said at one point afterwards, "You don't know how bad I needed that." The funeral was Saturday at three o'clock, and the hours before were spent intensely. She came back around seven, to my surprise. She was supposed to join her family on a 45-minute trip to a prison to see a brother who was unable to attend the funeral. But since it would only be a five-minute visit due to the rules of the prison, and because it had already been a long day and longer week, Torrie skipped that meeting. Instead, we ate dinner and went to bed. Sunday morning was spent physically draining every drop out of the remaining time we had together, as my flight back was at 1:50P. I felt very good about things when I left. I felt that I had done the right thing and supported Torrie in a time of need, and I felt that she appreciated my efforts.
I don't know when the next time will be that I will see Torrie, but I do know that we have become very close, and that our first night togther on New Year's appears to be a springboard to a long companionship, as unlikely as that would have seemed. I care very much for her, and I think that I have a special place in her heart, as well as on her body. I've never been complemented so much in bed before. She makes me feel very wanted, and she knows how much I want her, so we'll see how things go. But everything looks great so far.
I have started my semester from hell--four classes, all at night, after attending school last semester for the first time since high school ten years ago. What the hell was I thinking? I wrote down all the dates for papers and tests from all four classes, and now my datebook is littered with nothing but little notes about this research paper due and that test taking place on that date, with the hotel information for Kentucky Derby weekend May 7 thrown in. I'll be very busy, so if I ignore anyone or don't contact anyone, don't worry, I haven't become an underground hermit that shuns the rest of the world.
I'll let Michael Jackson keep that spot in society to himself.
Making love served the purpose.
We spent Friday evening in my hotel room together, and that was more time with Torrie than I thought I was going to have. She was shaky, driving somewhat erratically and babbling at times, but it was understandable. There was other drama going on besides her stepsister Jody dying: The father of Jody's children was in town and wanted immediate custody of the kids. Those same kids wouldn't have a final visitation with their mother because her current husband for some unknown reason had her remains cremated without anyone in her family having a say over this. And to top it all off, Torrie's ex-husband, who she had not seen since 1997, paid an unexpected visit as well. So I think that I came to town at the perfect time, so that Torrie would have somewhere to go to escape the situation. In my uneducated opinion, the sex and togetherness that we had was a great stress release for her. She even said at one point afterwards, "You don't know how bad I needed that." The funeral was Saturday at three o'clock, and the hours before were spent intensely. She came back around seven, to my surprise. She was supposed to join her family on a 45-minute trip to a prison to see a brother who was unable to attend the funeral. But since it would only be a five-minute visit due to the rules of the prison, and because it had already been a long day and longer week, Torrie skipped that meeting. Instead, we ate dinner and went to bed. Sunday morning was spent physically draining every drop out of the remaining time we had together, as my flight back was at 1:50P. I felt very good about things when I left. I felt that I had done the right thing and supported Torrie in a time of need, and I felt that she appreciated my efforts.
I don't know when the next time will be that I will see Torrie, but I do know that we have become very close, and that our first night togther on New Year's appears to be a springboard to a long companionship, as unlikely as that would have seemed. I care very much for her, and I think that I have a special place in her heart, as well as on her body. I've never been complemented so much in bed before. She makes me feel very wanted, and she knows how much I want her, so we'll see how things go. But everything looks great so far.
I have started my semester from hell--four classes, all at night, after attending school last semester for the first time since high school ten years ago. What the hell was I thinking? I wrote down all the dates for papers and tests from all four classes, and now my datebook is littered with nothing but little notes about this research paper due and that test taking place on that date, with the hotel information for Kentucky Derby weekend May 7 thrown in. I'll be very busy, so if I ignore anyone or don't contact anyone, don't worry, I haven't become an underground hermit that shuns the rest of the world.
I'll let Michael Jackson keep that spot in society to himself.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
R.I.P.
That was quick. It's not even the end of January, and already my intention to make this year the year that I controlled everything and did things my way has been destroyed.
"Torrie" had told me about her sister when I met her. She said that despite being only about 280 lbs, she decided to get the stomach-stapling surgery mainly because her husband thought that she was too fat. She said that she was in the hospital due to complications from the surgery, but that she was coming out of it. Then over a week ago she went into cardiac arrest. Torrie reported that she was recovering from that very well, and doctors said that she would be out of the woods soon if she continued to progress.
This past Monday night, Torrie's sister went into cardiac arrest a second time. This time she succumbed.
Literally minutes before Torrie found out Monday night, we were online together hammering out details and arranging my second visit to Minneapolis this coming weekend. Everything is in place if I still make the trip--the airfare, the hotel, the times that I arrive and depart. Torrie has all that information in her posession. We had it all figured out.
It is all so meaningless right now.
The decision to still make the trip is all on me. I asked Torrie how she felt about me coming up there. She said that if I still wanted to visit, it was fine. I may not have decided to even consider coming if not for something small Torrie said through her tears. She said that she still wanted to see me. That means a lot to me, that she would want to convey that through such a tough time. It would still be an awkward situation, considering that she can't possibly spend that much time with me this weekend (especially considering arrangements are this weekend as well), and any time she does spend is time I am taking away from her grieving with her family. She really should be with her family at this time, not worrying about some guy she's only met once. But I am leaning towards going because I want to be there for Torrie in this time of need. I feel that if I back out now, I would send a message that I only want to be around her when I can get some tail, and as selfish as I have been vowing to be from now on, that is not true at all. I enjoyed every second with Torrie New Year's weekend, not just the time in bed. So I think that if I fly up there only to hug her for a few minutes as I arrive and again as I leave, at least I was able to comfort her for a little while. She possibly may want to spend more time with me, just as an escape from the circumstances. And that would make me feel so good, to be there for her to focus on something else for a spell. Basically, I feel that there is no right or wrong decision I can make. The very first thing I did was put it on Torrie whether she still wanted me there, and if she didn't, I would have easily respected her wishes. But I haven't received any indication from her that she doesn't want me to come. So I probably will.
I won't even comment on what Torrie's sister's husband must be thinking right about now. Okay, maybe I will. I just can't imagine deciding to walk down the aisle with someone and decide later on that there is something about that person that is so offensive to you that you would want them to surgically change it. If it was that bad, why did you marry her? And if her weight wasn't that bad but got out of control over the years, again, why did you marry her if your opinion of her could go so low because of a few extra pounds? To be honest, I shouldn't be speaking on this, because I don't know either person and I probably don't know anything close to the whole story. But if the details I have are correct, I'm disgusted for him, I'm angry as a man who wouldn't think of altering the appearance of a woman I claim to love for better or for worse, I'm stunned trying to imagine what Torrie must be going through, losing a sibling because of this, and I feel a little sorry for the guy because if he has a heart at all he's going through absolute hell in his mind right now and always will.
In other more personal news, my job interview Monday went about as bad as humanly possible because the place was five blocks away from the bus stop and I had to stomp through inches upon inches of snow in dress pants and shoes (and those of you in Chicago know about the snow we got last weekend), and as a result I was a physical and basically emotional mess when I finally arrived ten minutes late. I was told by the man interviewing me that he would call me that evening if he wanted me to come back for a second day. I'm still waiting for the call. A learning experience, I guess.
Next week begins the semester from hell, where the man who waited ten years to go back to school for fear of failure takes on four classes at once. All together now: What the hell was I thinking?!? I know it will be a lot of hard work, and that was why I planned to go to Minneapolis this weekend, because I didn't know when the next time would be when I would have the chance. My timing stinks. But it doesn't matter now. There are way more important things to think about right now.
My next post will be after my trip to Minneapolis.
"Torrie" had told me about her sister when I met her. She said that despite being only about 280 lbs, she decided to get the stomach-stapling surgery mainly because her husband thought that she was too fat. She said that she was in the hospital due to complications from the surgery, but that she was coming out of it. Then over a week ago she went into cardiac arrest. Torrie reported that she was recovering from that very well, and doctors said that she would be out of the woods soon if she continued to progress.
This past Monday night, Torrie's sister went into cardiac arrest a second time. This time she succumbed.
Literally minutes before Torrie found out Monday night, we were online together hammering out details and arranging my second visit to Minneapolis this coming weekend. Everything is in place if I still make the trip--the airfare, the hotel, the times that I arrive and depart. Torrie has all that information in her posession. We had it all figured out.
It is all so meaningless right now.
The decision to still make the trip is all on me. I asked Torrie how she felt about me coming up there. She said that if I still wanted to visit, it was fine. I may not have decided to even consider coming if not for something small Torrie said through her tears. She said that she still wanted to see me. That means a lot to me, that she would want to convey that through such a tough time. It would still be an awkward situation, considering that she can't possibly spend that much time with me this weekend (especially considering arrangements are this weekend as well), and any time she does spend is time I am taking away from her grieving with her family. She really should be with her family at this time, not worrying about some guy she's only met once. But I am leaning towards going because I want to be there for Torrie in this time of need. I feel that if I back out now, I would send a message that I only want to be around her when I can get some tail, and as selfish as I have been vowing to be from now on, that is not true at all. I enjoyed every second with Torrie New Year's weekend, not just the time in bed. So I think that if I fly up there only to hug her for a few minutes as I arrive and again as I leave, at least I was able to comfort her for a little while. She possibly may want to spend more time with me, just as an escape from the circumstances. And that would make me feel so good, to be there for her to focus on something else for a spell. Basically, I feel that there is no right or wrong decision I can make. The very first thing I did was put it on Torrie whether she still wanted me there, and if she didn't, I would have easily respected her wishes. But I haven't received any indication from her that she doesn't want me to come. So I probably will.
I won't even comment on what Torrie's sister's husband must be thinking right about now. Okay, maybe I will. I just can't imagine deciding to walk down the aisle with someone and decide later on that there is something about that person that is so offensive to you that you would want them to surgically change it. If it was that bad, why did you marry her? And if her weight wasn't that bad but got out of control over the years, again, why did you marry her if your opinion of her could go so low because of a few extra pounds? To be honest, I shouldn't be speaking on this, because I don't know either person and I probably don't know anything close to the whole story. But if the details I have are correct, I'm disgusted for him, I'm angry as a man who wouldn't think of altering the appearance of a woman I claim to love for better or for worse, I'm stunned trying to imagine what Torrie must be going through, losing a sibling because of this, and I feel a little sorry for the guy because if he has a heart at all he's going through absolute hell in his mind right now and always will.
In other more personal news, my job interview Monday went about as bad as humanly possible because the place was five blocks away from the bus stop and I had to stomp through inches upon inches of snow in dress pants and shoes (and those of you in Chicago know about the snow we got last weekend), and as a result I was a physical and basically emotional mess when I finally arrived ten minutes late. I was told by the man interviewing me that he would call me that evening if he wanted me to come back for a second day. I'm still waiting for the call. A learning experience, I guess.
Next week begins the semester from hell, where the man who waited ten years to go back to school for fear of failure takes on four classes at once. All together now: What the hell was I thinking?!? I know it will be a lot of hard work, and that was why I planned to go to Minneapolis this weekend, because I didn't know when the next time would be when I would have the chance. My timing stinks. But it doesn't matter now. There are way more important things to think about right now.
My next post will be after my trip to Minneapolis.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Poker Face
Well, unemployment has allowed me to play a lot of poker, online and live, for play and for money. And apparently I need a lot more practice before I amount to anything. It's getting to the point where it's rare for me to win more than a couple of hands in a tournament. That sucks. My problem seems to be aggressive play, both using it and defending it. I am not nearly aggressive enough when I have good hands, so when I do make a big bet people know that I must have something because I usually don't bet much at all, and they fold, leaving me with winning hands very small in chip size. Then, when I have a decent hand, I have to decide whether to play against someone making a huge bet, and the vast majority of the time I fold. It's a long learning experience I will have to go through to become good enough to someday participate in the World Series of Poker, and it looks like it will be an expensive series of lessons. But it's my dream right now, and I want to pursue it. Poker is a hell of a game, and I want a piece of the action.
Wouldn't mind winning that $10 million prize at the World Series of Poker either. $10 million for winning a card game? Only in America.
I have an interview with some outfit this coming Monday out in Hillside, so wish me luck with that. I'm sure you can tell how thrilled I am with that. Honestly, you can tell when you're going for an actual opportunity and when you're going to put your resume in the big green file cabinet and nothing more, and that's my feeling about this. But as you can read in my previous posts, I have been wrong about so so many things.
Just watched the PBS documentary "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson." Johnson was the first black world heavyweight boxing champion back at the beginning of the 20th century. Words can't describe how eerie it was to see a story about a big, bald, broad-shouldered, smiling black man with dimples who had a serious taste for white women...and wound up being jailed for it. The laws of the time made it illegal to transport women across state lines for "immoral purposes," but that was meant to discourage prostitution, not stop a black man from traveling with a white companion. But because they couldn't find a "great white hope" that could beat Johnson, they cut him down in that manner. I knew that it was not always safe to drive around with the white women I have dated like I was. I didn't know just how unsafe it used to be. Jack Johnson resembled me in many ways, and to see his story left an impression on me, mostly that I shouldn't take criticism of my dating choices from anyone, because he had to go through tons more shit to spend time with whom he wanted to spend time. I actually have it good. I haven't been harassed or accosted once while out with my dates. And for that, I have never been more grateful.
Speaking of being out with a white woman, "Adrienne" this past Sunday became the first woman I have ever hosted in my apartment who didn't wind up with her clothes on my bedroom floor. Adrienne is someone I started talking to around the same time I was trying to get together with "Jane," so on a smaller scale she has now experienced the heartbreak that is my life. At least she wasn't around for the other events of my 2004. But Adrienne knows everything, she knew that I switched New Year's plans after Jane canceled to go meet "Torrie" (she didn't approve of my juke move from one stranger to another but ultimately she said she was happy that I wasn't alone), she has met my friends, and she knows that I wind up in bed with the women that I spend time with. But she's not that kind of girl, and I respect that. We watched movies and cuddled on the couch, but I didn't put my hand anywhere that it shouldn't have been, I didn't put my lips anywhere at all, and a good time was had by all. So we appear to be on the road to being really close friends. Didn't know I was capable of just being friends with a woman. Am I maturing? Am I a wimp? Am I attempting to be faithful to Torrie even though I haven't seen her (except on her webcam...wow, is she a sex bomb!) since New Year's? Stay tuned for the next episode of "As Planet Dre Twists and Turns."
(That was horrible, I know...)
Wouldn't mind winning that $10 million prize at the World Series of Poker either. $10 million for winning a card game? Only in America.
I have an interview with some outfit this coming Monday out in Hillside, so wish me luck with that. I'm sure you can tell how thrilled I am with that. Honestly, you can tell when you're going for an actual opportunity and when you're going to put your resume in the big green file cabinet and nothing more, and that's my feeling about this. But as you can read in my previous posts, I have been wrong about so so many things.
Just watched the PBS documentary "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson." Johnson was the first black world heavyweight boxing champion back at the beginning of the 20th century. Words can't describe how eerie it was to see a story about a big, bald, broad-shouldered, smiling black man with dimples who had a serious taste for white women...and wound up being jailed for it. The laws of the time made it illegal to transport women across state lines for "immoral purposes," but that was meant to discourage prostitution, not stop a black man from traveling with a white companion. But because they couldn't find a "great white hope" that could beat Johnson, they cut him down in that manner. I knew that it was not always safe to drive around with the white women I have dated like I was. I didn't know just how unsafe it used to be. Jack Johnson resembled me in many ways, and to see his story left an impression on me, mostly that I shouldn't take criticism of my dating choices from anyone, because he had to go through tons more shit to spend time with whom he wanted to spend time. I actually have it good. I haven't been harassed or accosted once while out with my dates. And for that, I have never been more grateful.
Speaking of being out with a white woman, "Adrienne" this past Sunday became the first woman I have ever hosted in my apartment who didn't wind up with her clothes on my bedroom floor. Adrienne is someone I started talking to around the same time I was trying to get together with "Jane," so on a smaller scale she has now experienced the heartbreak that is my life. At least she wasn't around for the other events of my 2004. But Adrienne knows everything, she knew that I switched New Year's plans after Jane canceled to go meet "Torrie" (she didn't approve of my juke move from one stranger to another but ultimately she said she was happy that I wasn't alone), she has met my friends, and she knows that I wind up in bed with the women that I spend time with. But she's not that kind of girl, and I respect that. We watched movies and cuddled on the couch, but I didn't put my hand anywhere that it shouldn't have been, I didn't put my lips anywhere at all, and a good time was had by all. So we appear to be on the road to being really close friends. Didn't know I was capable of just being friends with a woman. Am I maturing? Am I a wimp? Am I attempting to be faithful to Torrie even though I haven't seen her (except on her webcam...wow, is she a sex bomb!) since New Year's? Stay tuned for the next episode of "As Planet Dre Twists and Turns."
(That was horrible, I know...)
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
End Of An Era
I still can't believe I am unemployed. It was almost ten years ago that a woman in charge of an employment agency took a look at the math scores I posted on a test she gave me and suggested I try for the price reporter position at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. The jobs I had before then were not fun and not very good. A day labor stint, a week at a cafe (ironically a block from the CBOE, but at the time I knew nothing about it), a couple of months at a Woolworth's...not good times, not good times. So I didn't honestly expect to get the CBOE job when I applied, especially after the math test I had to take for the position. Difficult? No, not at all, simple addition and subtraction of fractions. So what was the problem? I didn't finish the test in the alloted 20-minute time limit because I spent the night before with my girlfriend. Hey, it was the first night I ever spent with a woman, and I wasn't going to miss it for anything.
Despite the incomplete test, I was hired anyway. I held on to that job for my life, especially after moving out on my own a couple of years after starting there. I really needed the job then, because I wasn't about to move back with my uncle and his family. Too crowded. But my mistake was not attending school while working, and now that I have been laid off, I'm basically in the same situation that I was in when I first got the job in February 1995: An uneducated black man looking for work that won't require me to do any actual labor, because I'm so out of shape that physical work isn't an option. The only difference is, I have some work experience for my resume. Big whoop.
But it's a strange feeling, being jobless. I'm thinking in my mind what's going to happen when my rent comes around at the end of the month. I will be ok this first time, but what if I'm out of work for a significant amount of time? This was part of the bad feeling I was trying to avoid last year when I asked first "Karen," then "Sarah" if I could move in with them when I lost my job. At least if I had those plans, I could concentrate on the move and knowing that I had someone that was going to be there for me and help me find work in that town, plus I would be splitting bills and rent. Now? Well, I went to the unemployment office Monday; that went smoothly, took about an hour. I'll find out what my benefits will be through the mail. I looked on some online sites for work, but there's always something just not right about the data entry positions I'm focusing on finding. One job seemed perfect but was too far out of the city, and I don't drive, so the job has to be within public transportation limits. Another job required a degree to apply even though it sounded like something I could do with ease. Another had hours that would just barely overlap with the evening classes I'm already committed to for the next semester. Another was a desk job at a university in the city, which certainly sounded like something I could do...but it was third shift, 11P to 7A. Yikes! There's no way I could get my body used to working at 2A and not sleeping.
In other words, it ain't going good so far.
Last Friday was my last day. It was very weird knowing that a lot of people that I said goodbye to and shook hands and exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses with were folks that I would never see again. It was more significant than leaving grade school or high school because of the time frame. Ten years at this place. Some people were there when I started and are still there now. Some people I saw every single day, and now they are totally out of my life. Some people I saw every single day, and never said a word to them, yet I will miss them anyway. It's something that probably hasn't even hit me yet, what with all the uncertainty about my next step. But after a few weeks I expect the withdrawal from the routine I went through for so long to really hit me. Right now it just feels like I'm on vacation, because I didn't leave the house then either. But I'm never returning to 400 S. LaSalle, not in a week or two weeks, not ever. And it's not sad, it's not making me angry, it's just...very weird. I'm ready to win Powerball right now, so that I won't have to worry about my future anymore. Boy, what perfect timing that would be.
Oh, and I'm not bashful about begging...if anyone has a job for an uneducated black man, hit me up.
Despite the incomplete test, I was hired anyway. I held on to that job for my life, especially after moving out on my own a couple of years after starting there. I really needed the job then, because I wasn't about to move back with my uncle and his family. Too crowded. But my mistake was not attending school while working, and now that I have been laid off, I'm basically in the same situation that I was in when I first got the job in February 1995: An uneducated black man looking for work that won't require me to do any actual labor, because I'm so out of shape that physical work isn't an option. The only difference is, I have some work experience for my resume. Big whoop.
But it's a strange feeling, being jobless. I'm thinking in my mind what's going to happen when my rent comes around at the end of the month. I will be ok this first time, but what if I'm out of work for a significant amount of time? This was part of the bad feeling I was trying to avoid last year when I asked first "Karen," then "Sarah" if I could move in with them when I lost my job. At least if I had those plans, I could concentrate on the move and knowing that I had someone that was going to be there for me and help me find work in that town, plus I would be splitting bills and rent. Now? Well, I went to the unemployment office Monday; that went smoothly, took about an hour. I'll find out what my benefits will be through the mail. I looked on some online sites for work, but there's always something just not right about the data entry positions I'm focusing on finding. One job seemed perfect but was too far out of the city, and I don't drive, so the job has to be within public transportation limits. Another job required a degree to apply even though it sounded like something I could do with ease. Another had hours that would just barely overlap with the evening classes I'm already committed to for the next semester. Another was a desk job at a university in the city, which certainly sounded like something I could do...but it was third shift, 11P to 7A. Yikes! There's no way I could get my body used to working at 2A and not sleeping.
In other words, it ain't going good so far.
Last Friday was my last day. It was very weird knowing that a lot of people that I said goodbye to and shook hands and exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses with were folks that I would never see again. It was more significant than leaving grade school or high school because of the time frame. Ten years at this place. Some people were there when I started and are still there now. Some people I saw every single day, and now they are totally out of my life. Some people I saw every single day, and never said a word to them, yet I will miss them anyway. It's something that probably hasn't even hit me yet, what with all the uncertainty about my next step. But after a few weeks I expect the withdrawal from the routine I went through for so long to really hit me. Right now it just feels like I'm on vacation, because I didn't leave the house then either. But I'm never returning to 400 S. LaSalle, not in a week or two weeks, not ever. And it's not sad, it's not making me angry, it's just...very weird. I'm ready to win Powerball right now, so that I won't have to worry about my future anymore. Boy, what perfect timing that would be.
Oh, and I'm not bashful about begging...if anyone has a job for an uneducated black man, hit me up.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
"I Have The Dick, So I Make The Rules"
What a New Year's weekend.
What a crazy past year.
What a crazy life.
What the fuck?!?
I still can't believe what happened this weekend. "Jane" and I had been having great conversations leading up to what was supposed to be the first of many good times spent together New Year's Eve in Lexington, KY. Before Christmas, the last time I spoke to her was Christmas Eve, and everything was going well. I wasn't able to call her over the Christmas weekend because I was spending time with my folks. But she was on my mind the whole time, and when I came back home Monday, I was getting more and more excited knowing that only five days remained until I traveled to see her.
But this is me, and this was still 2004, the worst year of my life. That Monday Jane sent me an e-mail saying that she was pulling out of the meeting, and not for some legitimate reason, like her daughter was sick, or she was sick, or her mom was sick. No, she was pulling out because she just had "a bad feeling" that something bad would happen if she came to meet me. I spent the next few days talking to Jane on the phone and begging her to see my side of things, how bad I wanted to meet her, how nothing bad was going to happen, how I had already put out for the airfare and hotel for no other reason than to come see her. No dice. She just had a bad feeling. She tried to tie her daughter into this "bad feeling" shit, saying that it would be two whole nights that her 18-month-old would be staying with her father, and she was just so worried because it would be the longest she had ever been separated from her that long. I tried to come up with all kinds of solutions. I told her that I would get another room just for them and she would never be out of her sight. I had my friend Cassandra speak to her for 15 minutes basically serving as a character witness for me. I begged her to just come meet me, out in public at the airport so that I wouldn't have the chance to do anything bad to her, not that I wanted to. I told her that she wouldn't have to go to the hotel with me, much less stay with me overnight. Just come meet me and somehow justify the money I was throwing out to come meet her. The best I could get was "I'll reconsider." But by Thursday night, she still gave no indication that she was going to make the trip.
What was I to do? This was the last thing I was expecting, and it was such a shitty end to a shitty year. This year 2004 started with me standing all alone at Buckingham Fountain in very chilly weather watching fireworks ring in the new year while couples and groups of friends huddled with each other all around me. Meanwhile I was standing there with my hands in my pockets like Michael Jackson at Disneyland. That was because my girlfriend, "Karen," was nowhere to be found, not answering my attempts to contact her. Two months later the image of my girlfriend wearing almost nothing and posing next to her female best friend for an internet swingers group would pop up on my computer and send me into a mental tailspin. My fuckbuddy "Sarah" would rescue me from that pain and invite me to give my love and trust to her, only to tell me near the end of the summer that she was rescinding her offer because she needed her space when she wasn't being beaten and dominated as a form of sexual pleasure by men she hardly knew. Autumn brought two nights of sex with a co-worker, who thought so highly of me that she talked freely about giving her boyfriend a blow job and swallowing but refused to put her mouth on me even when I asked. So just when I couldn't feel any lower about myself, here's Jane saying that I sounded like the perfect man for her and telling me how flattered she was that I would come all the way down to Kentucky to meet her and oh, how much fun and great sex we were going to have. And she knew all about the year I had and how horrible I felt about being all alone last New Year's after thinking that I was going to have someone there with me. So what, her actions were saying to me. I still don't care enough about you to consider keeping my end of the deal.
After a year of having my eager-to-please personality returned to me covered in shit, I finally decided to do something for me. Fuck everybody else, I was going to find company for New Year's Eve this year. It would hurt Jane when I told her, I knew this. But as far as I'm concerned, she had her chance. She had me spending money that I really don't have to meet her ass, only to decide way after the fact that she was uncomfortable. How fair was that to me? So I was going to do what I wanted to do, whether it was fair to Jane or not.
Enter "Torrie."
Torrie had been flirting with me on another group for a couple of weeks. She was a new member, and one of the first posts she wrote once she joined was to me, to tell me that she liked a big black man with a shaved head, that she was in Minneapolis but had visited Chicago and loved it, and that she wanted to chat sometime. Showing a maturity level that I normally wouldn't, but I really was being faithful to Jane, I told Torrie the 100% truth: that I thought she was hot, that I was flattered by her attention, and that I loved her tattoos, but that I was meeting a young lady on New Year's Eve for the first time and I was focusing on her and making sure everything worked out with her. Torrie said fine, but if she "didn't satisfy my hunger...I'll be here for ya." And I left it at that...until Jane canceled on me for no good reason. I wrote Torrie and let her know that I was now free for New Year's and that I would come see her if she was still interested, or she could come see me. She said she was interested but short on money, so coming to Chicago was not an option. Wouldn't you know that the eager-to-please me invited her to come down anyway and I would handle her financials? She declined, then warned me that there are a lot of golddiggers that would take advantage of that, so I should be more careful. And she is right. Putting out and doing all I can to accommodate a woman got me nowhere all year long.
Torrie and I first spoke to each other over the phone on Thursday, Dec. 30. I waited that long to call her because I was giving Jane every opportunity to change her mind. And I would have told Torrie if Jane gave me the green light, because Jane was first. But once I spoke to Torrie and heard the things she wanted to do with me and to me, Jane lost her opportunity. Actually, she would have lost it even if I had not made other plans because it would've been impossible for me to get the ok from her Friday, go home after work, get my bags, and make the 5:50P flight. (By the way, Jane did try to do just that, calling me Friday afternoon to inform me that she was reconsidering. I flatly told her to not worry about it, I had other plans. She hung up, stunned.) So Thursday night I canceled my United flight to Lexington, made a NWA flight reservation for 5:00P to Minneapolis, booked a room for two nights at the Hampton Inn in a nearby suburb, and hoped and wished as hard as I could that Torrie would be there when my plane touched down Friday.
She was.
She looked just like her picture, short reddish-brown hair, big full lips, and a deep voice to match her larger-than-life but still sexy features. She was 30 years old, 5'8", 220 lbs, and knew exactly what to do in the bedroom. We met after a half-hour of looking for each other once I arrived in Minneapolis. It's a big airport. And waiting outside wasn't pleasant: Temp in Chicago when I took off from Midway--about 45...temp when I landed in Minneapolis eighty minutes later--19! But the weather was the only bad thing about the weekend. The Happy New Year countdown and kiss was great, the blow job before I fell asleep was great, the sex the next morning was great, her pussy tasted great, the loud sounds we made as we came over and over may not have been so great to the other folks at the Hampton Inn that weekend, but it was great for us. In short, I have absolutely no regrets about making the trip, even though just a few days ago I was in love with a different woman. I don't usually do New Year's resolutions, but this first one was easy to keep: Stop doing things to please other people, start doing things to please myself. And despite my efforts to make Torrie squirt all weekend, don't be fooled: I didn't go up there to make her happy. I went up there to make my cock happy. In fact, I had to buy a t-shirt that I saw up there that was so perfect in describing the attitude that I must have from now on if I want to protect my heart from being broken again. And the shirt was in my size, too. It simply said: "I have the dick, so I make the rules." When I let the woman in my life make the rules, I always got screwed. From now on, I'm doing the screwing.
Not that Torrie has any complaints about that.
What a crazy past year.
What a crazy life.
What the fuck?!?
I still can't believe what happened this weekend. "Jane" and I had been having great conversations leading up to what was supposed to be the first of many good times spent together New Year's Eve in Lexington, KY. Before Christmas, the last time I spoke to her was Christmas Eve, and everything was going well. I wasn't able to call her over the Christmas weekend because I was spending time with my folks. But she was on my mind the whole time, and when I came back home Monday, I was getting more and more excited knowing that only five days remained until I traveled to see her.
But this is me, and this was still 2004, the worst year of my life. That Monday Jane sent me an e-mail saying that she was pulling out of the meeting, and not for some legitimate reason, like her daughter was sick, or she was sick, or her mom was sick. No, she was pulling out because she just had "a bad feeling" that something bad would happen if she came to meet me. I spent the next few days talking to Jane on the phone and begging her to see my side of things, how bad I wanted to meet her, how nothing bad was going to happen, how I had already put out for the airfare and hotel for no other reason than to come see her. No dice. She just had a bad feeling. She tried to tie her daughter into this "bad feeling" shit, saying that it would be two whole nights that her 18-month-old would be staying with her father, and she was just so worried because it would be the longest she had ever been separated from her that long. I tried to come up with all kinds of solutions. I told her that I would get another room just for them and she would never be out of her sight. I had my friend Cassandra speak to her for 15 minutes basically serving as a character witness for me. I begged her to just come meet me, out in public at the airport so that I wouldn't have the chance to do anything bad to her, not that I wanted to. I told her that she wouldn't have to go to the hotel with me, much less stay with me overnight. Just come meet me and somehow justify the money I was throwing out to come meet her. The best I could get was "I'll reconsider." But by Thursday night, she still gave no indication that she was going to make the trip.
What was I to do? This was the last thing I was expecting, and it was such a shitty end to a shitty year. This year 2004 started with me standing all alone at Buckingham Fountain in very chilly weather watching fireworks ring in the new year while couples and groups of friends huddled with each other all around me. Meanwhile I was standing there with my hands in my pockets like Michael Jackson at Disneyland. That was because my girlfriend, "Karen," was nowhere to be found, not answering my attempts to contact her. Two months later the image of my girlfriend wearing almost nothing and posing next to her female best friend for an internet swingers group would pop up on my computer and send me into a mental tailspin. My fuckbuddy "Sarah" would rescue me from that pain and invite me to give my love and trust to her, only to tell me near the end of the summer that she was rescinding her offer because she needed her space when she wasn't being beaten and dominated as a form of sexual pleasure by men she hardly knew. Autumn brought two nights of sex with a co-worker, who thought so highly of me that she talked freely about giving her boyfriend a blow job and swallowing but refused to put her mouth on me even when I asked. So just when I couldn't feel any lower about myself, here's Jane saying that I sounded like the perfect man for her and telling me how flattered she was that I would come all the way down to Kentucky to meet her and oh, how much fun and great sex we were going to have. And she knew all about the year I had and how horrible I felt about being all alone last New Year's after thinking that I was going to have someone there with me. So what, her actions were saying to me. I still don't care enough about you to consider keeping my end of the deal.
After a year of having my eager-to-please personality returned to me covered in shit, I finally decided to do something for me. Fuck everybody else, I was going to find company for New Year's Eve this year. It would hurt Jane when I told her, I knew this. But as far as I'm concerned, she had her chance. She had me spending money that I really don't have to meet her ass, only to decide way after the fact that she was uncomfortable. How fair was that to me? So I was going to do what I wanted to do, whether it was fair to Jane or not.
Enter "Torrie."
Torrie had been flirting with me on another group for a couple of weeks. She was a new member, and one of the first posts she wrote once she joined was to me, to tell me that she liked a big black man with a shaved head, that she was in Minneapolis but had visited Chicago and loved it, and that she wanted to chat sometime. Showing a maturity level that I normally wouldn't, but I really was being faithful to Jane, I told Torrie the 100% truth: that I thought she was hot, that I was flattered by her attention, and that I loved her tattoos, but that I was meeting a young lady on New Year's Eve for the first time and I was focusing on her and making sure everything worked out with her. Torrie said fine, but if she "didn't satisfy my hunger...I'll be here for ya." And I left it at that...until Jane canceled on me for no good reason. I wrote Torrie and let her know that I was now free for New Year's and that I would come see her if she was still interested, or she could come see me. She said she was interested but short on money, so coming to Chicago was not an option. Wouldn't you know that the eager-to-please me invited her to come down anyway and I would handle her financials? She declined, then warned me that there are a lot of golddiggers that would take advantage of that, so I should be more careful. And she is right. Putting out and doing all I can to accommodate a woman got me nowhere all year long.
Torrie and I first spoke to each other over the phone on Thursday, Dec. 30. I waited that long to call her because I was giving Jane every opportunity to change her mind. And I would have told Torrie if Jane gave me the green light, because Jane was first. But once I spoke to Torrie and heard the things she wanted to do with me and to me, Jane lost her opportunity. Actually, she would have lost it even if I had not made other plans because it would've been impossible for me to get the ok from her Friday, go home after work, get my bags, and make the 5:50P flight. (By the way, Jane did try to do just that, calling me Friday afternoon to inform me that she was reconsidering. I flatly told her to not worry about it, I had other plans. She hung up, stunned.) So Thursday night I canceled my United flight to Lexington, made a NWA flight reservation for 5:00P to Minneapolis, booked a room for two nights at the Hampton Inn in a nearby suburb, and hoped and wished as hard as I could that Torrie would be there when my plane touched down Friday.
She was.
She looked just like her picture, short reddish-brown hair, big full lips, and a deep voice to match her larger-than-life but still sexy features. She was 30 years old, 5'8", 220 lbs, and knew exactly what to do in the bedroom. We met after a half-hour of looking for each other once I arrived in Minneapolis. It's a big airport. And waiting outside wasn't pleasant: Temp in Chicago when I took off from Midway--about 45...temp when I landed in Minneapolis eighty minutes later--19! But the weather was the only bad thing about the weekend. The Happy New Year countdown and kiss was great, the blow job before I fell asleep was great, the sex the next morning was great, her pussy tasted great, the loud sounds we made as we came over and over may not have been so great to the other folks at the Hampton Inn that weekend, but it was great for us. In short, I have absolutely no regrets about making the trip, even though just a few days ago I was in love with a different woman. I don't usually do New Year's resolutions, but this first one was easy to keep: Stop doing things to please other people, start doing things to please myself. And despite my efforts to make Torrie squirt all weekend, don't be fooled: I didn't go up there to make her happy. I went up there to make my cock happy. In fact, I had to buy a t-shirt that I saw up there that was so perfect in describing the attitude that I must have from now on if I want to protect my heart from being broken again. And the shirt was in my size, too. It simply said: "I have the dick, so I make the rules." When I let the woman in my life make the rules, I always got screwed. From now on, I'm doing the screwing.
Not that Torrie has any complaints about that.
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