FLASHBACK: Super Secret Women Rituals

In my opinion, Evelyn is making a mistake, but she never listens to me. Remember when we partied with the 15 Irish Boys and she hooked up with that guy after getting lost while totally bombed on rum, tequila and beer? Well, she revealed the next day that she met the guy that night although they had been texting for a week after connecting over the dating website. After having sex in some random person’s back yard while he ‘helped’ her look for her friends, he told her “I’m not really looking for anything serious.” So most of us are thinking that he’s kind of a jerk, right? It gets worse. She was a virgin and she told him so beforehand. Now he seems like an uber jerk, huh? That’s what I’m calling him, UberJerk. Now she’s decided that going from 0 (she hasn’t dated since her abusive ex boyfriend 2 years ago) to 200 in a few days would be appropriate – she decided to be friends with benefits with this guy.

At first I raised my eyebrows but told her to do what made her happy. I applaud any woman who decides to be in charge of her sexuality. She seemed to have everything sorted out – she’s moving to the Midwest in a few weeks and just wants to have some fun with a guy who’s great in bed. Bravo Evelyn! But then she started saying things that had my hackles raised.

If you are a man, prepare to be a little frightened.

Sometimes…ok, some women…no, still not how I want to phrase this. Ummm…when a woman likes a man there are times when she…maybe…a little…pictures the children they might have in theory. Usually she only admits this to her closest friends, but your besties will always speculate along with you. Every woman I know does it. What makes some guys wary about this information is that this isn’t I’ve-been-dating-him-five-months-I-wonder-what-our-kids-will-look-like, this can be as early as the first date, depending on how well you hit it off.

One time I told that fact to The Wiz (after he told me of his major crush on Elle and I knew nothing was going to happen between us) and he told me that guys imagine a woman’s O face when they’re interested. I guess it’s just a difference in priorities in the sexes. Or maybe women don’t picture that because some men have scary or really ridiculous O faces and babies are cute. Whatever.

Regardless, if a woman is solely interested in hooking up with a guy, she should not care what their potential children look like. She should only care about preventing said potential children. So I was chatting with Evelyn about Jarhead while she cooked us dinner.

“He’s a creeper, why the hell did you date him?”

“I cared about him.” I said, rearranging some word magnets on her fridge to make a sweet limerick about dirty sex.

“He was fucking thirteen years older than you!”

“Age is just a number.” I said in a sing-song voice, finally satisfied with my poem.

“Oh my god. Did you picture your future kids?” She said it with a tad too much disgust if you ask me.

“Duh. And no, they weren’t going to be cute. I don’t think we had complimentary looks.” I turned to her, “What difference does it make, we’ve been broken up for over a year.”

“What about Twitch?”

“Hmmm,” I said, thinking back, “Not really. That probably should have been my first indication that I wasn’t interested.”

“No shit. Well, what about HOTTT?”

“Oh hell yes I did. Are you joking? Our kids would have been so adorable.”

“Tiny little soulless ginger kids?” Oh, did I never mention that HOTTT is a ginger? He is. Usually I’m not attracted to that, but I made an exception because the rest of him was…hottt. I usually like brunettes with soft brown eyes. Brown eyes seem so soulful.

“I’m pretty sure my dominant genes would have beaten his ginger recessives into submission.” I jumped up on the kitchen counter and started munching on a piece of broccoli. Why are Evelyn and I always in the kitchen?

“In order to survive, gingers have to be dominant, right? Darwin and all of that.”

“No way, or there would be more natural redheads. I thought random gingers popped up in families and that just screams “recessive”.”

“Screw it, let’s Google it.” I was right, it’s recessive. My mom and I don’t really look alike, she’s fairly pale with blonde straight hair and was always rail thin with virtually no curves until she had kids. I have light tan colored skin and I’m curvy (I had flared hips by the time I was 13 and right now my chest is literally four sizes bigger than hers) with curly dark brown hair.

Aside from our height (Granny, mom and I are the exact same height – 5’3″) and our eyes, we don’t look much alike. Our eyes are shaped exactly the same way and hers are blue with a small ring of light green around the pupil. Mine are brown with a small ring of light green around the pupil as well, although my brown is so dark you can’t see the green unless you gaze into my eyes in the light. Fact: I’ve had ONE boyfriend notice that, the others usually ended up looking further south most of the time. In conclusion, no ginger kids.

So back to the story. Obviously, this is a conversation Evelyn and I have had about men before. Because that’s what women do. I figured she would bring up one of the guys she dated recently and what their kids would look like. Instead, she chose UberJerk.

“UberJerk has dark black hair and blue eyes, he’s really cute. I bet our kids would be adorable.” Note: I’ve seen a pic of UberJerk and he is not cute. Especially not when he is the type that takes advantage of my best friend while she’s drunk.

“Ummm. What?”

“Well, his mouth is kind of wide, but I think it balances his face.”

“No, I mean…why are we comparing his features for potential kids?”

“We assessed HOTTT’s and you aren’t seeing him anymore.”

“Right, but I liked HOTTT. You told me you aren’t interested emotionally in this guy.”

“I’m not.” I looked at her closely. Ah ha! She dropped her eyes away from mine. Damn. Falling for your friends with benefits? Very bad. I questioned her further and she revealed some bad signs of infatuation.

“So after we had sex, I gave him a back massage and-”

“What!?”

“Back massage? It’s where you use your hands to release the tension in someone’s back.”

“I know what it is. Why did he have tension in his back? You were doing all of the work. More importantly – why did you give him a massage?”

“Because I wanted to?”

“That’s just so…girlfriend-y. That’s like cuddling.” At Evelyn’s silence and shifting gaze I felt my eyes widen. “You guys cuddle? How much?”

“I’m guessing the usual amount.”

“Um no. Everyone is different.”

“How much do you cuddle?”

“I’m not really…I mean. Fine, I’m a dude, OK? I like to roll over, spoon and go to sleep. I’m tired and I usually have to get up in the morning. Pretentious Author was fine with that, but Jarhead wanted to have an hour long cuddling session each time. Where you kiss occasionally and talk about stuff. I’m OK with cuddling, I just want it noted that I like to take advantage of opportunities where I can overcome my insomnia. So, how much do you guys cuddle?”

“Holy crap, you call spooning while you sleep cuddling?”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“I guess a bit. We like to hold each other and I like to give him massages or stroke his chest. He has a really nice chest. So maybe an hour or more?” Well, as long as UberJerk is OK with that, I guess it’s fine.

“Wow, UberJerk must like to cuddle.”

“Well…” Evelyn turned back to the chicken and started poking at it. I waited for her to continue. “Sometimes he does.”

“And sometimes he doesn’t?”

“Not that he’s not willing, just…he says he thinks I’m naive and will get hurt.” I opened my mouth but Evelyn cut me off. “I told him I’m moving in three weeks and I’m not naive.”

“Just because you’re moving doesn’t mean you’re exempt from feelings.”

“Just because I’m sleeping with him doesn’t mean I’ll automatically grow feelings for him.”

“If you’re sure, then fine. I would just hate to see you check out his Facebook when you come home in December and find that he has a girlfriend and you get upset.”

“I know that’s a possibility.”

“Are you going to hook up with him in December if you’re both single?”

“Probably.” I started pulling out utensils while Evelyn served us dinner.

“So you’re going to randomly text this guy when you get home in four months and hope he’s single?”

“Of course not! We’ll talk when I’m in the Midwest.” I felt myself freeze. What? I turned back to face Evelyn.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m sure we’ll talk pretty often over Facebook messages or texts.”

“How often?”

“Daily? Every few days? I don’t know.”

“I thought this was just a 3-week hookup. That sounds more like a relationship.”

“No, not at all.” At my direct gave she grew defensive. “Just because we’ll talk doesn’t mean I’m going to fall for him or something.”

“Let’s think about this logically, shall we?” I started ticking points off using my fingers, “He was your first, you sleep with him on a regular basis, you see him every day, you talk about him constantly, you bought him stuff, you get upset when he doesn’t text you back right away, you expect to continue communicating with him while you’re 1,600 miles away even though he’s ‘just a hookup friend’. YOU LIKE HIM.”

After a short argument about it, we both let it go. I’m convinced she likes him. This probably won’t turn out well for her.

Throwback Thursday – All the Little Things

As we moved closer and closer toward graduation, La Actress and I grew more and more tired of living together. Every little annoyance grew to massive portions. She never did her dishes, especially cleaning out her rice maker, which drove me insane. She complained about me leaving the window in the bathroom open. We were ridiculous and overly sensitive, sniping at each other in frustration.

I felt pretty justified in my griping – she never finished unpacking from when we moved in two years before, she still had boxes sitting in the corner of the living room next to our coat closet which meant that that closet was completely inaccessible.

One evening I let her know that I probably wasn’t coming home that night. I had a late study group and then I’d heard about a party near our place, but I didn’t want her to worry if I didn’t end up walking home late at night, alone and probably drunk. Surprisingly, I ran into Firefighter at the party. We hadn’t really talked for the past few months but we ended up having a great time. He walked me home in the early hours of the morning.

I slowly ambled to our room, tired and ready to crash. I opened the door and walked automatically to my bed, carefully crawling under the covers. Except these covers were different textures and they appeared to be small pieces of cloth, not one large blanket. More pieces fell off of the bed, so I cursed and dragged myself up. La Actress woke up at that moment and gasped, I guess she hadn’t expected to find me standing by my bed at 5am. I saw a shadow move and she said, “I have a gun!”

“Ummm,” I said, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. “I can see that’s your cell phone.” I said, slurring a bit. She looked down, and clearly visible was her screen glowing lightly.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, relief in her voice. She turned on the light. Once it was on I could see that my bed was entirely covered in clothing.

“Whaaaaa…?” I said, trying to focus on what the hell had happened. Slowly it came to me. La Actress was a messy person and normally I wouldn’t judge her because I am too. Usually, she would do laundry and then leave her clothing spread haphazardly across her bed which took up most of her space. Since she thought I wasn’t coming home, she had thrown all of those clothes across my bed and I had climbed under them in my stupor and haste. I used to have a picture of this on my phone, which I snapped quickly and clumsily but it was lost when my phone died. My entire full sized bed was covered in clothing.

I waited for her to get up and move her clothes; I didn’t want to start moving things in my state but instead she just sat on her bed laughing nervously and repeating how afraid she’d been when she woke up. In retrospect, I think she might have been embarrassed to have left her stuff on my bed. At the time, I was agitated and wanted her to just move everything already so I could crash. We were saved when my bladder decided to make itself known. While I tottered off to the bathroom, she hastily got up and cleaned off my bed. By the time I came back the light was back out and my bed was finally free. We were tired of living with each other by then; it had been three long years but graduation was right around the corner.

 

Passion or Cold Hard Cash?

I’ve mentioned before my love of non-profits. When I was in college I was on the Board of Directors for one that changed my life and I thought for a while that non-profit work is what I want to do as a career. However, non-profits generally pay significantly less than for-profit organizations in similar job capacities since the majority of the money and assets do (and should!) go toward the community/group/focus of the non-profit. I simply can’t accept a lower wage even if it means I’ll feel more fulfilled in my job. Instead I volunteer in my spare time.

For a while I questioned what I really want to do. After all, if I segue into non-profit work I’ll be establishing my base pay for the next few years. Hometown is relatively expensive (it is located in California after all) and lower pay will make a drastic difference in my life. I was jumping back and forth on what I should do and then something occurred to me – maybe doing what you love as a career isn’t as important as making money doing something you enjoy but don’t necessary adore doing and saving your passion for your spare time.

My generation was told that you should do what you love and have a career that fills our little hearts with happiness, that we shouldn’t sell our souls just for money. What our parents didn’t address was when the career you want doesn’t let you make enough money to justify the education it requires or even just to support yourself. If you want to be a specialist in Ancient Pottery Painting Techniques, I’m sure it’s exciting and in some cases can be useful…but it’s also very specialized and I don’t think there’s much demand for it. Look at Evelyn!

I know my last post about her career said she wanted to open a bakery, but since starting her major classes she’s decided to get her Masters and PhD in Classics and make a career studying women in Ancient Civilizations. While that’s really interesting, I don’t see a huge demand for it. Maybe she could give some interviews on the history channel and she could become a professor, but overall I don’t think there’s going to be job growth in that particular area.

If she can’t find a job or she never gets tenure and keeps jumping from college to college, how will she repay her student loans? That’s four years for a BA, around 2 for her Masters then a few for her PhD, added to that the years she spent at city college trying to transfer…that’s going to be a huge sum to repay. In a field that I’m willing to bet doesn’t pay that well. When I pointed out her prospects she said that doing what she loved was important to her and she would ‘make it work’. I’m guessing all of those English Majors in the Occupy Wall street movement were doing what they loved too and thought they could make it work. Sometimes life just doesn’t go the way you plan or the way you want it to.

As cold blooded as it seems, I want to encourage my children to have a career where they are guaranteed a future and an income, and they can save their passion for their spare time. It’s great if you can do both, if you are an amazing debater and end up being a famous litigation attorney more power to you; just that most people aren’t going to have a passion that easily translates into a secure, high paying job. I’m not saying do a job you hate, just that maybe your career doesn’t have to fully fulfil you, maybe everyone can’t have their dream be their career. Maybe that’s just life.

Should people pursue their passion over a more realistic goal or am I being a dream killing scrooge?

You Suck

Dear Coworker that heated up their smelly fish dish in the microwave near my cubicle,

The odor of your catfish has permeated the entire building. Why couldn’t you use the microwave in the closed kitchen so that we could attempt to contain the smell?

I hate you.

Filled with thoughts of your impending death,
Zoogie2

Amazon’s True Love

I know I’m a skeptic, a realist and possibly a pessimist, but in this instance I think I’m being perfectly reasonable and Amazon is not. You see, she’s planning her whole life around a man she met two months ago, to the point where she’s going to move out of state to be with him. Too fast? I think so.

Since she was in her early 20′s Amazon has told me she won’t ever complete her dream – to have children – because she can’t find a good man. By 23 she had adopted a kitten since it would “be the closest thing to having a child that she would be allowed to experience”. Yeah, kind of young to make sweeping statements like that. A few short months later she was foisting the cat off on her parents because she was going to move to Hawaii to be with her cheating ex. They broke up (again)…because he cheated on her.

Since the ex left her life, she’s been single and has become extremely religious. She’s said multiple times that she’s “given up” on finding a man and that motherhood must not be what god wants for her. I still think she’s jumping to this conclusion a bit early in life. I understand her frustration: Hometown is an awful place to try to date. Imagine trying to kiss a guy who you’ve known since preschool. You watched the kid eat his boogers on the playground. It’s not sexy or mysterious. I haven’t dated anyone from Hometown since high school for good reason!

Two months ago Amazon went on vacation to a nearby state to visit some family. While at church she met a man and they went on two group dates. Since then, she has declared that they are soul mates. She is moving to be with him at the end of the year in six months (sorry, she moved up the move date after I’d written the post!) and plans on getting married within the next two years. Let me reiterate:

-two group dates

-two months

-soul mates

One of these things is not like the others…

While Amazon is 29, this man is almost 40, has two kids from a previous marriage and she barely knows him. Her family in that state barely know him. They don’t plan on even kissing until their wedding day. He’s clearly not a virgin (2 kids!). I think if you’re going to buy the chicken you should make sure it lays eggs first…and hopefully lasts longer than 56 seconds if you know what I mean…

I care about Studly a lot, but I’ve only been seeing him six months and that’s almost nothing in the grand scheme of things. I want time – lots and lots of time to get to know him better and to find out if we’re truly compatible. Marriage isn’t just a religious thing or a way to show your feelings; it’s a legal binding of two people and undoing that binding sucks. I know I’m cautious, but I think more time is better than less; more knowledge is better than less; what can it hurt to take your time when dating? Either you discover some things about them that change your mind or you give yourself the ability to savor what you have.

The fact that they started saying they love each other after less than a month worries me, because I don’t think you can feel love that quickly. I haven’t said it to Studly yet. You just can’t truly know someone that quickly, especially given the distance and only being able to talk through text or Skype.

Am I wrong? Can you find your soul mate and know they are the right one right away?

 

Throwback Thursday – The New Guy

Where Tiberon had been a bad boy and man of action – drinking, partying and riding his motorcycle – JJ was a gentle soul who read La Actress poetry and loved to go see plays. I found JJ and La Actress and odd couple, if only because of how much he loved to read and absorb new cultures while La Actress had read one book voluntarily (not assigned through class) in the three years we lived together. Every non-textbook in our bookshelf was mine. But JJ adored her and wooed her.

One thing that made it difficult for me was the fact that JJ was less accepting about me being around. When Tiberon was with La Actress, I could wander around our place or relax and I knew he didn’t care if I was there. He’d actively make me a part of the conversation and would invite me to join them occasionally when they went out to parties. JJ would glance at me uncomfortably until I left the room and seemed to find my presence (in my own home) annoying. Luckily, I spent most of my time with Boss, Smokey and Elle so I wasn’t around much anyway. We just didn’t warm up to each other very well and I began to feel irritated when I got home and saw him sitting on the couch. He would glance up and sigh, like I was interrupting something even when they were just sitting around watching TV. I wasn’t happy to hear this response from him when it was my apartment with La Actress, not his. Especially once he started sleeping over every night. Every single night. Without a break.

One tradition that Boss, Elle, Smokey and I had was Tuesday Night Love (get your minds out of the gutter!). Every Tuesday night we would meet up at my place (since Elle and Boss lived with their parents and Smokey had three roommates and one TV) and we would watch Big Love. I didn’t have Showtime, I would buy the DVD when it came out and we would savor the drama, eating food that Elle brought from work and sipping wine. Usually, La Actress had her night class so we would rarely see her unless it was cancelled. One week, we were watching a particularly dramatic episode in Season 3, eating pasta and clutching our wine when JJ and La Actress walked in. I’m not sure why they looked so put out – this ritual was the same time and day every week and it wasn’t like we lingered. After our hour episode we would walk (…well, drunkenly stumble) a few blocks to Smokey’s house where we would spend the next few hours.

That day, La Actress and JJ sat down at the kitchen table only a few feet from the couch and began to loudly whisper. Since I’d started drinking before my friends showed up, I was caught up in the drama between Nicki and Bill and didn’t give a damn what JJ and La Actress were talking about. Elle, who was sober at that point, was treated to a very intimate conversation about what JJ and La Actress planned on doing once we left. Even drunk Zoogie2 began to feel uncomfortable once their whispers grew louder. Especially when they started debating what position to have sex in. Well, TMI guys.

We blew out of the apartment as quickly as possible and on the walk to Smokey’s we started talking about how rude that had been and how much we disliked JJ. Things only became more and more strained between me and La Actress.

Raises and Raises

Seems like just last year I was crowing about getting my first raise as a professional working woman…oh wait that was just last year. Well, now I got another one, a 4% raise which I’m extremely happy about. It turns out a lot of my coworkers were really shitty at the Company Conference I didn’t get to go to, so their performance reviews suffered which meant they weren’t eligible for a raise which meant…more money for me! Yay to bad coworkers!

I skipped home, happy about this news. Only to open my mailbox and see that I’ve gotten a rent increase.

Mother

Fucker

I can afford it now that I have my raise, but it pisses me off that they haven’t made any improvements to my building but they raised the rent on me. I just got a windfall which could have helped my saving goals but now I have to spend it on my apartment.

I’ll still be happy that I got the raise, but I wish I got to keep it all.

Freudian Slip

I don’t want to waste my 200th(!!) post just talking about the fact that I made it to a number that ends in two zeros. But Yay! 200! I shall reward you all with this story about Poww’s dirty little secret:

Poww and I were walking to the water cooler and discussing an upcoming work social event. TweedleSweet had announced that she would be showing the movie Office Space in a large meeting room after work. Once a month or so TweedleSweet tries to find a day to show movies – we’ve viewed Inception, French Kiss, Bride of Frankenstein and The Killers so far. I was trying to convince Poww to attend, but he didn’t want to.

“Why would you want to stay at work late?” Poww asked with a sneer.

“It’s a social bonding thing!” I exclaimed incredulously. It’s not like we’re actually working or something.

“I’m not into bondage.” He said casually.

“Wow. TMI!” I gasped. He stared at me for a minute and then burst out laughing. Really, shouldn’t that be between him and his dominatrix?