Regression

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

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

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

The Saga Of Shelley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting Dumped Is Becoming A Habit For Me

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

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

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

Just Flew Home, Boy Are My Arms Tired

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

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

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

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

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

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

One More Personal Education Tidbit

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

The Good Ol Days

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

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

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

Taking The New Me For A Test Drive

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

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

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

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

A New Outlook On Life

The old outlook didn't work for the first 30 years of my life, so I am attempting from this point forward to enjoy myself more, do what I want to do, quit offering my heart and soul to women and begging them to love me, and do everything from now on with a sense of personal pride and purpose. We'll see how long this lasts, but the recent events of my dating life have made me realize that unless I commit myself to someone mentally and spiritually, a) she cannot hurt me with her actions, which are hers alone and cannot result in rage and disappointment from me because it's her life and I don't own her, and b) I am free to do what I want, whether that's be alone and doing something that I enjoy or pursuing companionship with someone else. And since I have been committing myself mentally and spiritually to women who either did not commit themselves to me or were lying, I clearly see that I have to stop doing that. I'm sure I've said this in many different ways verbally and on this blog, but this is it. I looked at myself in the mirror and spoke out loud to myself for an hour last Saturday before I left my apartment to spend Christmas with my family. I had never done that before. But after spending two hours with a friend earlier that day pouring out my emotions and feelings about my situation, I finally arrived at the point where I am sick and tired of pouring out my emotions and feelings to innocent bystanders. Basically all of my heartbreak in my life stems from my emptiness from not being loved and my desire to make someone love me. And it just has not worked out for me doing things my way. So, I'm doing things a different way. I will do what I feel is best for Dre from now on, and if that doesn't work for someone else, that's too bad. I spent the last 2 years doing what the woman or women in my life wanted me to do, hoping that they would see my sacrifices as a sign that they have to sacrifice and give all of themselves to me, and they simply were not ready or willing to do that. And that's fine. I am in control of my destiny. My great love may be a female executive ten years from now at whatever company I wind up working for once I earn my degree. But if not, oh well. I cannot keep missing out on happiness and enjoying life just because no one loves me. And I cannot keep committing myself to women before they commit to me. I've bitched and moaned about the women in my past not being fair to me. But by giving my love to them for no reason than I wanted to take their love to make myself feel better, I've been being unfair to myself, and of course to those women by expecting them to faint with joy when I treat them well.

I received some more perspective today. My football buddy, the guy who duels me in a $500 wager every season, didn't have his picks ready for me when I called him last Saturday, and he called me today to explain why--he was dealing with something just a tad more important. Last Thursday, on my birthday, December 22, he lost his youngest son to a rapid-spreading disease. So the little one never even had a chance to waste years of his life wallowing in self-pity. Just like with the football coach whose teenager killed himself apparently the morning of my birthday, it's like God placed these tragedies on the day that I turned 30 in order to give me a compass to follow...to allow me to take the last 30 years and the way I handled them and separate them from the way that I have to live from this point forward. Life means too much to bury myself in sadness for the way it has turned out so far, not to mention how it could have turned out worse. "Your birthday was December 22?" he said when I told him. "Boy, I'll never forget that day." I can't even imagine.

I have been cleaning my apartment all day, and I have a lot more to go. I read on the instructions of the video game "The Sims" that the player must keep his Sim's place clean, because a messy apartment is a sign of someone who doesn't care much about himself. And I read that months ago, before "Shelley" made a date to come here and hasn't been back since because the apartment is disgusting. But I'm sure not doing this for Shelley; I'm doing this because I'm wallowing in this mess of newspaper and plastic bags, and I don't like it. And soon, I will get up and prepare to go downtown and work a 3-day temp assignment in which I will be standing up and scanning documents for a law firm all night on 3rd shift from 11P-7A. I was offered this gig over a 2-day weekend a few weeks ago, and I turned it down because I thought it was beneath me. But I now see that no one is going to come along and offer me work, no one give a fuck that I will drain my bank account paying rent this month, and that I have to do what's best for Dre because no one else will, and taking this job is best for Dre because that's $200 in cash in my hand next Tuesday that I wouldn't have if I sat here and kept looking for specific data entry jobs that don't appear to have too many requirements or responsibilities. And that's the next step, to apply for jobs that I believe I can do regardless of the prerequisites. I've been so fucking afraid of being rejected that I have passed up applying for many jobs that I've never done because I assumed that my lack of education and experience in the field would result in me not getting the job. DUH--I won't get the job anyway if I don't apply for it. But if I do, I might get it. Such a simple equation. And yes, that applies to dating as well. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't approach women and ask them out because I look around at all of the eligible guys out there and I wonder why anyone would decide to date me. And I figured out why--because I'm strong, handsome, intelligent, and moving forward in life, and I have a nice smile. I discovered the smile while talking to myself in the mirror last Saturday. I still have to work on displaying it because I'm so used to not smiling, but at least I realized that I'm not ugly and unworthy of dating a good woman. So it's like I have a mental checklist now of how to handle myself around women. As Kool Moe Dee would say, "May not always work, but what the hell." I just have to remember that I'm allowed to show interest in a woman, I'm allowed to ask her out if we talk and I like what I hear, and I'm allowed to repeat the process if I come across another woman who interests me. What I am not allowed to do is serve up my heart, my baggage, and my soul on a platter for a woman to have to burden. It's not her life to straighten out. It's mine.

30 Years Of Futility

God was trying to send me a message this morning. I fell asleep last night with my stereo on the all-sports station, so the very first thing I heard when I woke up this morning was that the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts was leaving his team to go to Florida because his 18-year-old son was found dead in a Tampa suburb. In other words, no matter how bad I feel about my plot in life, at least I still have life.

I was going to write a long essay about all of the things I've learned in 30 years of futility, but the recent events have shown me that the one lesson that I need to learn before anything else is to learn to love myself so that I'm not looking for love in all the wrong places. And I have yet to learn that lesson. I fear that my life will continue to stall until I learn that lesson, but it's not easy, learning to love yourself after hating yourself for years and years. I'm having trouble even liking myself. So I'll just smile and thank those who send me best wishes, and I'll go out tonight with "Shelley" and try to enjoy myself and forget about the fact that absolutely nothing in my life is working out the way I want. But I'll try to have fun. After all, I only turn 30 once.

The Following Disclaimer Should Not Be News

It shouldn't be a news item or a surprise to anyone why I have a blog, but apparently I have to break it down for those who are not aware...

SOMETIMES I AM FUCKING PSYCHO. Hello? Have I not already disclosed in this blog that I spent a week in a psych ward last year? Isn't nearly all of my posts discussing some woman that I'm seeing or hope to see or used to see? It must be easy for all of you "normal" people out there in Anonymousland to jump on me about the shit that I do, because it makes you feel good to rip me a new one, and because none of you have EVER done some dirt in your lives. But it's not like I set out to hurt people; just the opposite, every time a woman gives me the time of day, I want to make her my queen and the center of my universe, which hasn't turned out so well because it never gets reciprocated back to me. All of my experiences in my entire life come together to make up who I am, and those experiences dictate the way I act and the reactions I have to various situations in my life. Suffice to say, I don't deal with rejection very well.

So I started this blog last year in order to document all of the things that I do, and that are done to me, so that there is a clear record out there for anyone who wants to take a shot at analyzing why I am the way I am and why I do the things I do, because Lord knows I've been trying on my own and with the help of some professionals to figure it out, and I just can't do it. Again, it's easy for some of you to jump up and yell out, "Because you a dog!," and hi-five all the other chicks around you like you're auditioning for Springer. But it's not that simple, and if you think it is, then you're simpleminded and you don't want me to get to the bottom of my actions, you just want me to keep being a dog so you can lump me in that category and keep complaining about why men are pigs.

As far as people reading this blog that I wouldn't want to read it, I hereby declare, as if it wasn't clear enough by the fact that this is a public blog, that I don't give a shit who reads it. For God's sake, I put the link to this blog on both my Yahoo and my MSN profiles! I don't have other profiles that I use to get booty calls or sneak around, meaning that someday "Shelley," the woman I'm currently dating, will read it and dump me too. Anyone that meets me in cyberspace knows me by my Yahoo or MSN handle, and can therefore look for themselves at my profile, and my blog. And they can decide for themselves whether they want to take a chance on a guy who wants and needs to be loved by one monogamous woman (something that has yet to happen to me since I started dating again two years ago). And "Torrie" is not the only woman that I've dated that I sent a link to the blog. Despite what it seems like, I am all about openness and honesty. Absolutely anybody can read about the things I do. And I'm still waiting for someone to read about me--all of me, not just the juicy parts--and come up with some insight on how I can stop being paranoid and psycho when I feel hurt or rejected or abandoned, and how I can stop giving money and love to people who only want to use me, and how I can love myself so that I don't keep looking for every random woman to love me.

Anyone at all? Didn't think so.

Why I Will Always Be Alone

Below is an e-mail in its entirety that I just received from "Torrie."

"I absolutly can hardly believe your nerve. I am so mad at you. I have been sitting here all night trying to come up with the words to say how i feel and there just are not enough! I have two words for you and that should explain everytrhing. ..."BLOG" "TORRIE". I was cleaning out my PC, because I had a virus. And found the link you sent me around this time last year, when you wanted me to read about the Wisconsin chick. I cannot believe i fell for your sincerity, and your lies. So i am not even goiung to begin to tell you how pissed off and hurt I am. I think you have the basic skills to figure that out for yourself. So if you think even for a second that this weekend is going to happen. You are out of your damned mind!!!!!! You know someone commented on your blog about you and karen deserving each other, and after all of this i agree. You DO get what you DESERVE!!!! I am not going to waste another minute of my time on you, and just end this email now."

I had arranged a trip to Minnesota for this weekend to see Torrie again. I missed her. I realized that after I put my trust in women who didn't like me and only wanted to use me, I had ran off the one woman who never asked me for money, never tried to use me for anything, and I always enjoyed myself with her, and after everything else is factored in, the major reason anyone should spend time with anyone is because it is an enjoyable experience. The funny part is, the blog is public, and as she pointed out, I had sent her a link to it long ago, so I wasn't trying to hide anything. The plain truth is right there: This summer, after professing my love to Torrie and not receiving it back, I decided that other avenues would be better for me to pursue. And because I had no good reason to dump her, I decided to give her a cold shoulder until she got sick of it and dumped me. That's the story. There's an ugly aside to it--that I chose to pursue "Laurie" because I wanted to date a slim, blonde woman as a change of pace--but if I wasn't attracted to Torrie, I never would have agreed to come back up there to see her again. It was never about Torrie's attractiveness. She is very attractive, the most attractive woman I've ever dated in fact. I just flew off the handle once I gave her my love and didn't get it back, and I decided that I might have better luck going after this thin blonde telling me that she felt strongly for me. But that didn't work out, because Laurie and I still have never met, and even if we had, I don't know if I would have had nearly as much fun as I did seeing Torrie.

So after this summer, and after my adventures in dating recently, I contacted Torrie just as a friend, and we talked about how much we missed each other, and soon it was like I never stopped thinking about her, which, really, I haven't. She's all I've been thinking about this week, as I prepared to fly to Minneapolis Friday. I couldn't believe that I stopped seeing someone I cared about and liked being around simply because she wouldn't tell me she loved me the 3rd time she ever met me and because she wasn't slim. I was going to tell her all of that this weekend. I wasn't going to push things too fast and tell her I loved her again or anything like that, just that I really missed her and I wanted to see her again. But unless she has a major change of heart, that won't happen.

And now I'm sitting here wondering, what has happened to me? The thing is, I always grew up thinking that I would never cheat on any girlfriend I had, and let's face it, I was dumping Torrie because I wanted to cheat on her with Laurie. That would have been the 3rd time I cheated, after hooking up with "Sarah" while seeing Karen, and then spending a night with The Co-Worker Who Shall Remain Unnamed while seeing Sarah. I have absolutely no rationalizations for cheating that would make sense. With Karen, the sex was bad, but the solution to that is to talk about it with her, not to get better sex elsewhere. With Sarah, the sex wasn't bad, but she was fooling around with her regulars back home in Springfield, and my self-esteem was so low at the time, I felt that I had to take advantage of being with a slut because I couldn't get anything else. But the solution to that is to not screw anyone until I get my shit together mentally, not to just screw anything to make myself feel better. And with Torrie, the sex wasn't bad and I felt as good about myself as I had in a long time. I'm getting straight As in the college classes I'm taking, I can see a future for myself, I'm starting to stand up and be a man for the first time in my life. But it was so weird. When I told her I loved her and got nothing back, it was like all the old feelings started flooding back. I'm not good enough. No one understands me or gives a fuck about me. I will always be alone, which I should get tattooed on me somwhere as much as I say it. Laurie was an outlet for my frustration, but the point is, I shouldn't have been so frustrated. Yes, no one likes to spill their guts or put their cards on the table and get no response. But there's no excuse for me feeling like Torrie was abandoning me. I'm so afraid of being abandoned that when I feel the slightest chance of it happening, I either cling on helplessly (like when Torrie dumped me the first time in March) or I wander away looking to be consoled somewhere else. And that's why I will always be alone--because I still don't understand that no one can forget about everything else to make me feel loved, and when the moment comes where she has to hesitate before she gives me her love or has to tend to something else in her life, I start feeling abandoned. So I guess I'm not standing up and being a man like I thought I was. A man deals with the people in his life straight up, as they are, and accepts things as they are. I keep running around like a chicken with its head cut off, desperately searching for someone to love me. But if I loved myself, I wouldn't have to put that pressure on everyone else.

How Love Always Turns Out For Me

One Thing I Don't Have To Worry About

I Got Those Bottom-Of-The-Well Blues

End Of The CEDA Era

So much for my temp job going through January, which is what my agency, Smart Resources, told me when I was hired. The big boss, Casey Jones, had been making a big deal lately about people who consistently posted 75 files or less for a day's work on their retarded little tally sheets (yes, they started making everyone keep track of how many files they did in a day), going so far as to call a meeting almost every day last week only for those under the magic number the day before. You got it--20 to 30 minutes of no work for those not producing enough work so that Casey can tell us that we need to start producing more work. Is that not the most idiotic thing you've ever heard? Not only that, but I honestly don't think that these people had the collective intelligence to realize that some people were fudging their numbers and writing insane tallies on their sheets, and I would still be there if only I were dishonest. I will say this once and then I will stop whining--I am a perfectionist, I am a hardheaded son of a bitch, and I basically ignored all warning that Casey gave us in those retarded meetings that the low-tally people would be the first to be cut because to race through the files would mean that I would risk missing a detail and making a mistake, and I was not making any mistakes based on this moron's opinion that my work wasn't fast enough. This same guy bitched and moaned in previous rants about how important accuracy was, because if we make a mistake then that will prevent a file from being processed, then that family has to wait to get that mistake ironed out, and meanwhile they have no heat, so our jobs are very important, etc, etc...but in the last couple of weeks, all we heard about was the "rabbits" nailing 150 or more files a day, and why couldn't we be more like them? I bit my tongue so hard it nearly tore off. I held my professionalism and defeated the urge to tell him: "Because it's their fucking mistakes that I'm cleaning up the next day, and it takes time to remedy major-league fuck-ups like they make on a daily basis, you imbecile!" My counts were not way below his quota of 75. Gina, the main supervisor of the data entry department, always rolled her eyes when she tapped me on the shoulder to come to the meetings because my counts were always in the 65 to 70 range, and considering that I didn't run away from files with eight or nine people in it and put them back in the box like a lot of people did, and that I denied files with Social Security cards that were obvoiusly fake and wrote up denial sheets for every one of them and didn't ignore problems with a file and process it anyway like a lot of people did, you would think a rational person would excuse my count being low by a couple of files. Of course, I was dealing with Casey Jones, and nothing about him says "rational person," which is why I never mentioned any of this to him. Someone else tried to tell him that her count was low because her particular computer wasn't working right, and his response was, "No excuses." WTF?!? So yeah, it was a no-win situation. All that said, I will quit whining about it now because I realize that the bottom line is this: Not everyone was falsifying their numbers, not everyone looked at difficult files and put them back for someone else to do, and I knew what the daily quota was and I routinely failed to make it. Period.

It was a weird day yesterday. We didn't have overtime over the weekend because we had done our jobs so well that we didn't have extra files, so we all kinda knew the end was near. Then in the afternoon, the guy from Smart Resources who always brings the weekly checks for the Smart workers who are not part of direct deposit, as I am, gave a check to a woman, then pulled her aside and told her, and only her, that she was done at the end of the day. He then spoke to Gina privately for about 20 minutes and left. Meanwhile, the woman was in tears because the way he did it, it sure seemed like he was singling her out. But when Gina spoke to me later, she said that she heard that there was a list of people being let go by Casey, and that I was on the list, but I figured if I was going to be thrown out, either Casey or the guy from Smart would have told me something at the same time as the woman earlier was told. I told Gina that I'd be back the next day because no one had told me anything, but she hugged me goodbye just in case, so I think she knew. The funny part is that Smart had indeed called my cell phone while I was at work to tell me that my "assignment has ended," but I didn't know that I had a call until after I left work because sometimes my cell phone's vibrator doesn't work. I would have had to awkwardly endure the pain and embarrassment of working my last two hours knowing that I had been fired, just like that woman did. I have no idea why the guy from Smart told her separately that she was gone, except that she and I had become friends and I don't remember her ever taking out a cell phone, so perhaps she doesn't have a cell phone and face-to-face was the only way to tell her. In any event, I walked to school and checked my voice mail and found out the bad news, and I've been home all day just resting and trying to stay warm.

The immediate future is a complete question mark. I've already talked to Smart about a new "assignment," but the only gig they have right now is 3rd-shift and pays less. "Shelley" thinks that I should take it, but every outing we have is paid for by me, so of course she wants her meal ticket to find employment again ASAP. I really, really can't see myself doing retail, so the obvious solution, some cashier job in this holiday season, is out. Unemployment benefits are not an option because I would have had to be employed for six months to be eligible again. Cassandra assures me that she will have some money for me next week. But this may be the final event to push me towards moving out of this shitty apartment, like, now. My savings account is now under $1,000 for the first time in quite a while, so I only have a couple of months of living here with zero income, whether the people who owe me money come through or not. And I've been bitching about the rent and the $50 cable and the $50 DSL so long that I was speaking to "Ronnie" when I started bitching about it, and you know it had to be a long time ago if I was speaking to Ronnie. Plus, I'm dating now, and this place ain't no place to be hosting dates. So I'm leaning towards getting out of here by February, employment or no employment. Whatever happens, I am not going to ever forget my time at CEDA. What a perfect impetus to push me through school and urge me to keep going and make education a priority. Cause if I don't, I face a future of jobs in which my diligence and perfectionist nature cause me to be fired perpetually because I didn't produce enough mistake-filled, hurried work to satisfy the assholes in charge.

The One-Month Countdown

It's a little scary that in a month and a day, I will be 30 years old. At the same time, it's not so bad. "Torrie" told me that she freaked a little when she passed the milestone, then looked back and wondered, "What the fuck was I freaking about??" In other words, life goes on. I didn't know if I was going to be blessed with turning 30 when I was a kid because so much had already happened to me. At the same time, I can see the other side, that not much at all has happened yet. I haven't achieved a college education and all that hopefully comes with that. I haven't gotten married or had kids. Hell, I may not yet have met the person I am meant for.

Or maybe I have.

"Shelley" hates my down-in-the-dumps attitude about things and my sedentary, solitary lifestyle because she says it reminds her of herself before she met someone who introduced her to heavy drinking as a way to loosen up. So when she's in my face every 30 seconds asking me, "Are you all right? Are you having fun? Do you want to be here??," she's just trying to get me to be a little more livelier. I do enjoy myself with her--she's very quick-witted, she's intelligent, and she's sassy, a "Sex And The City" kind of sassy, not the down-home, "Hee Haw" kind of sassy that I got from "Sarah." Shelley knew all there was to know about the bags in the Coach store on the ground floor of my temp job, and she entertained herself immensely while waiting for me to come meet her for lunch a couple of weeks ago. Then last Tuesday, after we actually argued pretty badly the previous weekend, guess who was working at the file desk when I walked in that morning? That was a surprise. I knew that she had interviewed with Smart Resources--she actually was trying to set that up before we ever met, but by mentioning me and CEDA, she was able to steer herself towards that particular place of employment--but I had not considered that she would catch on there because it would have been something out of a sitcom. "Dating her turns out to be more than Balki bargained for when she shows up at his office--on the next Perfect Strangers!" Sadly, that came to an end today. The agency called her and told her that they were cutting back on file clerks, and you know the rule in those situations--last one hired, first one fired. I'm not sure what she's going to do. She's here in Chicago from Kansas City going to design school, but she can't afford her luxury dorm room without a job. So her immediate future is looming on the horizon. I'm between classes, so I'll have to talk more about her later, but I like her. She's got a sharp tongue, and she's not afraid to put her foot in my ass, and I need that. I'm afraid that I'm not what she wants, though. She wants me to be more aggressive and more confident, you know, a real man. I'm not sure if I'm ready yet. Time will tell. But I will definitely get around to filling in the details this weekend after Thanksgiving. I've been so busy seeing her and working that I haven't had time to talk about anything. In any event, happy Thanksgiving to all, and I'll be back in a few days.

My History (6th In A Series)

This is the story of my journey to accomplishing what I like to call "My Greatest Achievement," winning the 1990 Chicagoland Spelling Bee. It shows how driven--and neurotic--I get when I am close to something that I want badly.

This all starts in 4th grade at Skinner Classical School, which at the time only went up to 6th grade. No one except 6th-graders and maybe a talented 5th-grader or two is supposed to hang around long enough to have a shot at winning the school spelling bee. But several 4th-graders, including yours truly and my friend "Jacob" and a couple others, wound up part of the last ten or so. We responded with typical 4th-grade maturity by stretching out across the front row of chairs, which were empty because we had outlasted most of the others, and pretending like we were bored to death when anyone but us was up at the mike trying to spell, and yes, this was in front of a full auditorium, and yes, our 4th-grade teacher ripped us a new one afterwards. Now, I want to say that I finished 3rd, outlasting my classmates, but I freely admit that my ego may be revising history and that I was not the last remaining "undergrad," but either way, I finished way higher than anyone imagined, and together we 4th-graders vowed to come back the next two years and TCB, since we knew we only had two more years left at Skinner. I don't even remember where I finished in 5th grade; I do know that the same uber-smart chick that won in my 4th-grade year won in my 5th-grade year. But she was a year ahead of me, meaning that for my last year at Skinner, she would be out of the way. I crammed and studied hard my 6th-grade year, and it came down to me and a classmate named Stephanie who was famous for having a fully-developed chest by, like, our 3rd-grade year. (I can still see her doing shuttle runs for gym class now. All of the guys would line up on the side as if we were watching a parade.) Anyhow, I misspelled "nicotine," adding an extra "c," and she got it right and nailed the next word to win it all. Displaying my passive-aggressiveness at an early age, I graciously shook her hand and congratulated her, then later accused her of stealing my study guide and replacing it with one that had "niccotine" in it. The way the process works is that the winner of the school contest competes against the 20 or so other schools in the district, and the winner of the district title takes on the 20 or so other district winners for the citywide title. Then the city champ competes in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, which gets a lot of pub these days, what with the ESPN telecasts and the movie "Spellbound." Well, being Stephanie's runner-up meant that if something should happen to her and she couldn't compete in the district contest, I would take her spot. Wouldn't you know, several weeks before the district contest she BREAKS HER LEG. So, combine my last year at Skinner with what I thought was my destiny to be the top speller there with the district contest that year, 1988, being held at Skinner (think conference title game at your home stadium in your senior year), and I thought Stephanie breaking her leg was a sign that I was meant to compete in the district spelling bee and have a shot at city. Nope, think again. Stephanie showed up the day of the district on crutches and destroyed my hopes and dreams. She finished second. Was I a little bitter? I complained to a complete stranger in the audience that she was taking my spot and I hoped she lost. Of course I felt like a complete dick once she did finally lose, but dammit, I wanted that spot so bad.

So my next two years of grade school were at Ogden Elementary, home of a gifted program called International Baccalaureate, and because I didn't do well in subjects that bored me, which at the time was anything that didn't have to do with sports, pro wrestling, or pussy, my grades were absolutely atrocious. I had no luck with women, I had my folks on my back all the time about my grades, and I was separated from the amigos that I grew up with at Skinner. So I basically had nothing going for me except my reputation as "Dr. Pervert" because of the naughty stories I wrote, and the spelling. It was a new district, new school, but I was the same driven son-of-a-gun as far as wanting that school spelling title. Well, I got more than I thought. The way that the school spelling bee was done at Ogden was in written form by the English teacher, Mrs. Smeriglio. It wasn't a big auditorium with the whole school watching, it was a classroom with about 50 kids in it, mostly 7th and 8th-graders from the gifted program with a few 6th-graders sprinkled in. Smeriglio read off fifty words, and we wrote them on a piece of paper and handed it in. So my first school title was rather anticlimactic. I was standing in line the next day and Smeriglio walked up to me and calmly said, "Congratulations Andre. You're number one." It was a perfect conquering--I got all fiddy words right, but the best anyone else could do was 49. A thin blonde named Sara Nicholson and a thin black girl named Jamila Carrington had overheard me talking shit before about how no one was going to have a chance to beat me in the spelling bee, and they gave me shit back, so I was extra proud because it was a victory for the ugly, fat kid over the rich, beautiful people. I believe Jamila got the 49, making her my alternate. Haha. But I wasn't done. Ogden brought in a specialist to actually pull me out of some classes and study for the district contest, as if my grades didn't suck enough. But it paid off. I walked into the school library at a grade school whose name escapes me, and whooped the little children who dared challenge me for the district championship. I even graciously shook hands with the chubby but hot black girl who finished second to me, kinda as a last little "Who's da man??" to Stephanie, Sara, Jamila, and anyone else I didn't like. The district contest was eventful because the principal, Mrs. Vandevier, gave this broke nigga $10, a lot of money at the time, to take a cab there instead of getting on a school bus. I was moving on up, baby. Finally I was able to get some respect from the people at Ogden; Vandevier treated me to a turkey-and-avocado sandwich at some highfalutin place and said, "Way to go, kid." But because success came so easily compared to my struggles at Skinner, I went to the city spelling bee at Tribune Tower a little starstruck and over my head. Despite that, I finished fourth and won a dictionary and thesarus set that I still have to this day.

Fast forward to next spring, my last year of eligibility to win the citywide spelling bee and compete in the National Spelling Bee, and my journal entry from early 1990.

Fri. Feb. 9--[Smeriglio] announced that Feb. 20 will be the school spelling contest, and Sara's issuing the challenge again. But she's not gonna win. She's gotta keep her cover girl image. While I'm studying, she's out buying clothes. While I'm cramming, she's on the phone. While I'm shaking hands as Arsenio's next guest, she's watching the tube wishing it was her. I told her one of my longtime secrets: It's not how much you study for it, it's how bad you want it. And this year, I want it bad.

See, I was thinking that if a little black boy from the West Side of Chicago could win the National Spelling Bee, then all sorts of fame would follow--Arsenio, maybe the Tonight Show, Nightline...so yeah, my head was a little big back then. Sara got 48 right this time for the school spelling bee. Unfortunately for her, I got 49 (I put an "e" instead of an "i" at the beginning of "ingrained," so the correct spelling has forever been ingrained into my brain). Jamila was an also-ran. To better prepare the winner for the rigors of district and city, Smeriglio made the first part oral, in that same cramped classroom, and when it came down to the final three (me, Sara, and some 6th-grade Latina) then we took the 50-word written exam for all the marbles. And I pulled it out again. Vandevier announced my win over the loudspeaker the next day, so the school support was starting to build, and with it my personal pride and confidence. The District 3 contest was two weeks later, and the night before, as a way to calm my nerves, I made a mix tape that I still have, and I also read the spelling bee words out loud onto a tape so that I could play a word, pause the tape, spell the word, start the tape, and spell another word. (I would do that before the city contest as well, which obviously means that I won the district.) At Lincoln Park High School for district, they put us in the Activity Hall, but it was only half-full with the contestants, their parents, and the judges, so where it may have been intimidating for some kids, it was no sweat for the defending district champ because I had been in a full auditorium on stage with nothing but a mike stand masking my fear, and that was just for the school title at Skinner. (In a twist, one of the district contestants, another chubby hot black girl named Dana, went to high school with me. We never hooked up, though; she was South-Side bougie.) Vandevier had suspended me two months earlier for telling a girl she had a nice ass, so it was interesting to see her slurp up to me after my win. But I understood why--I had a legit shot at being Windy City champion, and she knew that if she wanted her school represented respectfully, she was going to have to treat me with some respect.

All stops were pulled out for the Chicagoland Spelling Bee. My aunt's husband bought me an Adidas jumpsuit valued at $80, and I didn't wear it until the day of the spelling bee. I studied every night after school, even on nights when I would get home late because I was practicing for a school production of "Annie Get Your Gun." I would play my tape of all 500 words in the study guide, sometimes I'd miss 5, sometimes I'd miss 7, and every time I'd get more and more determined to conquer these words. Kids would come up to me asking when the spelling bee was and wishing me luck, kids whose parents lived in the same condo complex as Oprah, so they had no reason to ever speak to someone like me. I will never forget how I felt that morning leading up to the contest. I was arrogant, supremely confident, like Ali, "dangerous, pretty, and can't possibly be beat." From my journal:

Thu. Apr. 12--It hasn't sunk in yet. The shock of becoming Windy City spelling champion hasn't whipped me in the back of the head at the time, but it will. Alright, I'll tell you highlights. My dad picked me up about ten minutes before it started and said a prayer, which possibly helped. Then we went...[My runner-up, Renato] Diaz was shooting down words like an attack plane at its prey. But he choked on "apartheid." Now, I know that word wasn't in the list I had to study, but there was a period of one hour where two people were eliminated, so basically we used up all of the list words. Then they went to some words I had never heard of before, including one that both Diaz and I missed. I spelled "meringue" after Diaz missed [apartheid]...I was on the news all day, and I got phone calls. [Jacob] couldn't believe it, and they exploded back at the school.

Some other memories: That prayer that my dad and I had before the event involved acknowledging my mom for reading with me early in my life, and that was the first time I ever thought about how much she did for me before she died. I haven't forgotten since, though. My dad told me later that he saw the confidence I had at that point and that's when he knew that I was going to win. They take these mug shots of every contestant as they enter the hall at Tribune Tower, and mine has this half-smirk on it like I'm the coolest motherfucker in the world, and that's the pic that they used in the booklet that shows all 226 contestants in the National Spelling Bee. Of course, Mr. Cool had a couple of fuck-ups, and one almost cost me the title: First, while actually telling a girl that sat next to me during the contest how calm and cool I was, the gum I was chewing fell out of my mouth and onto the floor. Real smooth, Ex-Lax. Second, I was so intently playing songs by Prince in my head trying to relax during the contest that I completely forgot that my spelling coach had warned me to look out for the word "torus," because it can be pronounced like "taurus," and can therefore trip me up. I got the word, I spelled it like the bull, and when they rang the bell to signal a missed word, I stood there in shock wondering how they could say I spelled "taurus" wrong. The judges actually had to rewind the tape of how they pronounced "torus" in order to determine that they indeed had pronounced it like the bull and therefore could not penalize me for spelling a word that sounded exactly like the word they intended for me to spell. Whew. I wasn't playing Prince in my head anymore after that. I was totally locked in from that moment on. When I nailed the final word, and the judges said that it was correct, I turned and did this little reverse fist-pump thing inspired by one of my favorite pro wrestlers, Curt Hennig, while keeping the same stoic, almost bored look on my face that I've had ever since. And that was the clip that the news stations kept playing, so for a couple of months people were coming up to me saying, "You're that spelling bee guy!" and then doing the reverse fist-pump and telling me how cute they thought that was. I didn't plan it, though; it was a totally spontaneous move. My next action afterwards, to prove how un-smooth I was, was to stick my hands in the jacket pockets of my Adidas jumpsuit and stand there waiting for someone to give me a trophy or something. (There was no trophy. There was an Apple computer that they delivered to my house a couple of months later, but it stopped working before I started high school in September.)

The next week was a lot of fun. I stood in a classroom of kindergarteners and fielded words from them and spelled them correctly, much to their awe and admiration (except for some made-up word out of "Ghostbusters II" that I had never heard of). I did that for a room of 2nd and 3rd-graders as well. The manager of the Tribune sent me two front-row tickets right behind the dugout to a Cubs game. (The treatment that I got from the staff at Wrigley Field, as if I had no right to be there, is part of the reason why I hate the Cubs.) I went to see the superintendent of police, LeRoy Martin, and he took some pictures with me and my dad and gave me a jacket and hat, which my dad promptly took so that he could try to claim he was part of the police so that he could get free stuff and park anywhere he wanted. Yep, that's my dad. The American Legion presented me with a spelling bee poster and $25, and news cameras were there for that too, as was the Chicago Defender for pics. My dad dragged me into my alderman's offices looking for more praise, but he barely had time to shake my hand. Then that weekend, Saturday, April 21, I spoke at Operation PUSH next to Rev. Jesse Jackson. I still have a picture of that, and my aunt has an audio tape of the speech I gave, but it was not very long because the night before I was at my uncle's house watching old wrestling tapes and playing Nintendo and I didn't write a speech as I had intended to. I mentioned my mom, though, and when my grandmother heard it live over the radio, I'm told that she was very emotional. My church threw me a bon-voyage party the Sunday before I left for Washington and raised over $100 for me in fun money. I spoke at a teachers' appreciation function at Dunbar High School, and an Ogden teacher wrote a speech for me that was so good that I got a standing ovation. That summer I went back to Skinner unannounced and got a hero's welcome. They gave me a long computer printout congratulating me that they said they had hanging on the wall after I won. So for a while there, I was hot shit.

A now-funny aside is that on Friday, May 11, about two weeks before the National Spelling Bee, I swung so hard at a pitch in softball (missed everything, too) that I yanked the ball of my hip against the socket and suffered a hairline fracture. Yes, after all the bitching about Stephanie at Skinner taking her spot in the district championship despite the broken leg, I was now in jeopardy of giving up my spot to injury. But I really had no intention of missing it, even though I was hobbling around school on crutches for the next week. I even went to a wrestling match two days later, and bowled a week after that. What I didn't do during all of this hoopla is study. See, I knew that winning the whole shebang was beyond my reach, since they use any word in the entire unabridged dictionary and there's no way I can study for that. And since this was my last year of eligibility, since I knew I was never going back again, I wasn't interested in creating stress for myself and ruining the trip. I didn't do a lick of studying. My coach had some sheets of words from previous national contests, but my attitude was, either I already know the words or I don't. I simply did not want to pump myself up for competing in this thing only to feel deflated when I didn't win. My folks gave me some crap for not studying, but I think they knew why, so they weren't too hard on me.

I wanted to take my uncle and aunt as my two adult chaperones to the National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, but the people in charge at Tribune Tower signed up my dad as official chaperone since he did accompany me to the Chicagoland Spelling Bee, and he still intimidated me (and beat me), so I didn't want to tell them to leave him off right in front of his face. That left only one spot, which I gave to my aunt since she was on my ass about schoolwork all the time and therefore deserved it more than my uncle. A "fan" left a new bag, deodorant, and other toiletries at the school, but I was trying to shove too much shit into it before we left for Midway Airport and I broke the zipper. Nice way to start the journey. My aunt and I were almost late for the May 27 flight, but we made it. It was my first time flying since I was 2, and they have pictures of me at the airport crying on my mother's lap as proof because I sure the heck don't remember. The return flight was the last time I had flown before "Torrie" and I lit up Minneapolis last New Year's. My dad took his ticket and exchanged it for a flight the next day because he had something to do the day of the flight, and he also left a day early, so on those two nights I had our room at the Capital Hilton all to myself. The nights that he was there, I slept in my aunt's room on her couch because there was no couch in my room, meaning I would have had to share the bed with my dad. Not happening. I did make sure to enjoy myself, going to an ice cream social even though I didn't (and still don't) know how to socialize, going to Virginia to look at some landmarks and play volleyball and eat barbecue, visiting the National Aquarium and Ft. McHenry, and doing an interview with a Tribune reporter the night before the contest began.

Then came the morning of the contest. I'm not nervous, I'm feeling good, I'm gonna just go out and perform, whatever happens happens, right? So I go to the bathroom and get ready to shower, and I look in the mirror. I've got 21 million little bumps all over my face. I have never seen anything like that on my face since that day, and I never saw anything like it before. My aunt's theory wasn't nerves but rather a possible allergic reaction to the spare pillow and/or blanket I used when I slept on the couch. But I know it was nerves. I had been so cool, so calm, so collected. But underneath, I was a wreck, and I didn't even know it. The reason I know it was nerves is because when I did get eliminated on my fifth word, "somizdot" (I put an "a" in place of the first "o," and yes, I am proud that I came that close to nailing a word I never heard of), I almost completely broke down, but how could I feel like that about a contest that I didn't study for? Unless...unless...I wanted that national title more than I wanted to admit. Arsenio, Nightline, and all that. I really don't regret not cramming for the contest because it would have drained me, and I still couldn't have won. Then again, one of the hardest words in the contest, so hard they put it in one of the last rounds, was "baccalaureate," and if you read the beginning of this post, you know why I would have gotten that one. So with some studying, who knows? I got the first 3 words right, but they were all from that original 500-word guide that was used for the Chicagoland Spelling Bee. Those first 3 rounds took so long because of the 226-person field that it took all day Wednesday to get through. So I made it to day 2 without exploding, then guessed my 4th word correctly before bowing out in the 5th. The girl who won appeared on "Today" the next morning. I couldn't stand to watch.

I wanted to make something special out of the week, like at least losing my virginity to a stranger that I would never have to see again, so Friday night after the banquet two fellow contestants and I actually went to the shop downstairs from the hotel and purchased a three-pack of rubbers. And because my dad left early, I had my room all to myself, and at one point there were us three guys and three girls from the contest in the room together. But we were nerdy 13 and 14-year-olds after all, so we all chickened out on making a move, then the loud music and dancing around caused the patrons below us to call downstairs and complain, resulting in my aunt coming to the room and clearing it out. We left the next day. There was a surprise party waiting for me when I got home. That's the last time anyone's thrown a party for me. But it was a great experience for me, my little fifteen minutes. I got a plaque and trophy at 8th-grade graduation a week later, and another standing ovation. I got a series of letters from a lady in Skokie who was very supportive and touched by my story. And I got 65th out of 226 in the National Spelling Bee. That's #6 in your program, but #1 in your hearts, for those of you who want proof. I also got a glimpse of what I'm like when I am around something that I really, really want: Calm and collected on the outside, completely ripped apart on the inside. I can't begin to imagine what I'm going to be like before I propose marriage to someone...the morning of my wedding...before the birth of my first child. It's difficult for those who don't know me to understand why I seem to clam up during any social situation involving women. But hopefully this will help explain why the more I care about something and want it, the quieter and more nervous I get. I just don't want to get close and do something stupid to fuck it up. It's easy for others to say, "Hey, loosen up, it's okay." They don't have a history of screwing everything up that they touch. And except for that city spelling title, I have absolutely screwed everything up.