Why The Fuck Is Love So Complicated???

I am very lonely, and I've made several choices lately that reflect it. I'm not going to whine and cry about how unfair life is like I usually do though. I'm supposed to be a man, so I'll take the results of my actions and move on. I will say that for someone being mature and not sulking over things, I sure still feel like a big loser.

"Laurie" has been very hard to find since she canceled on me a couple of weeks ago. She said that she had major money problems and was basically bouncing between staying at her niece's house and hotels until she could find a place to live. I sent her another $50 and told her that I would be there for her. She told me that the weekend of Sep. 24, last weekend, would be ideal for me to visit because her niece would be out of town and we could use her house and boat on the lake. But every single time I tried to call her at work, she wouldn't speak for more than twenty seconds before hanging up and promising to call me that evening using the free minutes on her niece's cell phone because her phone is still cut off. (When I call Laurie's cell phone, I get the following message: "At the subscriber's request, this phone does not receive incoming calls." That's the exact same message I got when Cassandra had her phone cut off for a week because she lost it, so Laurie's phone may not be off after all, she just may not be taking calls.) But she never called me. Not at night, not on the weekends, not at all. She doesn't leave me e-mail or IMs either, although almost every day she checks in to the MSN site where we met. It's like I'm a dick on layaway, waiting to be used when she's damn good and ready.

So hell is where I've been mentally all month, wondering just what Laurie is doing up there in Detroit that she can't keep in contact with someone who has loaned her $250 but she can leave little cute messages to everyone and their mother at the MSN group. I patiently tried to wait on her, but my patience isn't as strong as I had hoped. I put a personal ad on craigslist.com the first Sunday of the NFL season a couple of weeks ago. The ad wasn't for a date or a fuckbuddy, but for someone to do what I wished I was doing with Laurie that day: Watching football while making out. It was a very specific ad, so I knew that if anyone responded, it would be an aroused female football fan, and someone finally responded two days later. "Crystal" wondered if I was for real, a guy that preferred cuddling on the couch to smoky bars while watching football, and I'm thinking, what guy wouldn't prefer that?? She lived several blocks from me, and she was chunky and white, so combined with her love of football, she was exactly what I was looking for. So my curiosity was piqued and my expectations high for the coming weekend, as well as for the Thursday night that we agreed on for a first meeting.

Predictably, she canceled. She postponed our date 45 minutes while she got ready, then she called back and told me that a friend was having domestic issues with her man and that she didn't want to abandon her in her time of need. I think she came to her senses and realized that normal men don't put out an ad to make out with a total stranger, even if watching football is the premise the man uses, and that normal women don't agree to meet those kinds of men. She left an e-mail apologizing and asking me to get in touch with her so that we could reschedule, but I haven't called her since that night. I think we're both waiting for the other to make the next move so that we don't feel like the more desperate of the two, but the fact that I put out that ad and the fact that she responded to it pretty much blows mutual respect out of the water, in my honest opinion. So we'll probably never speak again, each taking pride in not having to stoop that low for a date. I still have her phone number saved in my cell phone, but I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd dial it. Drunk dialing is not an option for me, since I never get drunk.

That leaves me still out on an island where I can't see Laurie and I have to wait for her to decide to contact the island and let me know that she still wants me in her life since I can't contact her. One problem is that I had heard from her so infrequently that I made the decision to put that personal ad out there not as a piece on the side in addition to her, but as a way of looking for a piece period. I really don't see how I could be "cheating" on Laurie since there has been no agreement of exclusive dating, simply a request by her a while ago to inform her if I do get with someone. So that's what I did. I called Laurie at work the day of my date with Crystal, and I calmly told her that I was (or so I thought) hanging out with a chick that night and watching football with her that weekend. Her response: Sort of a laughing, nervous accusation that I was fooling around behind her back. My response: Sort of a nervous, laughing denial that I had anything but honorable intentions. She actually apologized the next day through IM for thinking that I was going to get some, before she found out from me that Crystal and I didn't meet and that I didn't get any. But I'm still very, very confused. If Laurie and I are an exclusive item, she sure acts funny for someone that's supposed to be my girlfriend. I never hear from her. I can't come see her anytime I want. I was prepared to go last weekend, and I told her this as early as last Monday, but she told me that instead of the weekend that her niece's house and boat would be available to us, she would rather me come up this coming weekend because she had a chance to work overtime last weekend. If this weekend comes, and a) she gives me another excuse why I can't come, or b) I don't hear from her at all, that's about the end of my patience. For good. Crystal or any other backup plan be damned. Enough is enough.

As for the rest of my life...the job still sucks, although I'm no longer seated next to the woman with B.O., but now we are tallying our output upon orders from the vice-president every day despite a worldwide acknowledgement that the system we use slows down drastically or completely crashes every time the full number of computers is in use...the classes are going ok, I just turned in a paper for social science and breezed through a quiz for lit today...I won the Central Division for the second year in a row in the franchise mode of MVP Baseball for PlayStation2 (but I play the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs), and my Madden team started 3-0...a woman from Connecticut I've never met but I've had phone sex with a couple of times keeps calling me and telling me how much she'd like to meet me (not gonna happen)..."Torrie" told me that she needed to change things for some unknown reason, so she's now blonde...and I've at least taken advantage of not having anyone to make out and watch football with by working overtime hours the last two Saturdays. I'd like to, you know, hang out with someone who cares for me like a normal human instead of going to a place I hate immensely, but that's not an option. They relaxed a lot of their silly little rules because it's the weekend, however, so I was able to work with headphones on, and it made things much more enjoyable because I was able to do what I am very, very comfortable with doing: Isolate myself from everyone else in this cruel world and be all by myself. I'm way too used to it, but I seem to be powerless to change it.