After the Party

I know. I know! I told you I'd tell you about the night I kind of got dumped and never did. The truth is, there's not very much to tell. The day before Thanksgiving I sent La Dispute Guy a sort of dramatic, extremely long message pretty much telling him everything that was wrong with us--or more specifically, him--and at the end of his very patient, very thorough response, he said he thought it would be best if we made a conscious decision to stop doing whatever it is we were doing. There's been debate among people who have read the messages whether he ended things or I did since I sent the initial message, but it doesn't matter because either way the result is the same: he's my noyfriend no more.

To say I didn't take it well would be a gross understatement. I moped; I wallowed; I went on and on about it to everyone I know; I, um, for reasons that make no sense at all, even to me, stalked all of his ex-wife's social media which did nothing but make me feel worse than ever because, omg, the woman is perfect. She's smart and gorgeous, a good person and a good mom; she's a writer (she even published a fucking book); she runs. I'll tell you what she is, people who read my blog: she's a better version of me. No wonder LDG didn't love me. If I were him, I'd probably never love anybody else ever again. I know my limitations, and let me tell you, I am no competition for that. It was silly of me to even try.

But, Silly, well, that's my middle name. So is Tenacious... and Obtuse...and Doesn't Know When to Stop (my full name is extremely long).

I'm finally coming to my senses, though, finally making my way to the other side, and shock of all shocks, lying on the other side, waiting for me to finish my journey is something I totally didn't foresee:

somebody wants me to be his girlfriend.

You're shocked, right? Like completely blown the fuck away, all, How did that even happen? and Where did this guy even come from? I completely understand because I, too, was pretty fucking shocked, and while I don't know if I feel comfortable telling you who he is just yet--okay, I do know, and I don't--it's somebody you've heard of, one of the guys I dated post divorce, one of the few who I didn't lose interest in at all. We stayed friends, and well, I guess he finally came to his senses and realized how awesome I am--as most people eventually do--because last week he extended a "formal proposal" for me to be his girlfriend.

And, yeah. I'm pretty scared.

Like I told him, I haven't been anybody's significant other in over four years. For more than four years, I've done whatever I want with whomever I want without giving my actions a second thought, and I'm not just talking stuff that has to do with sex. I haven't had to check in with anyone when I'm out, tell someone where I'm going, make up excuses for staying out late; I could plan road trips across the country and not have to run it by anyone, fly out on a whim. I could live absolutely, completely, utterly for me.

Being someone's girlfriend? I don't know if I remember how--for example, this post? Probably a faux pas--but suddenly it seems plausible that I'm--we're all--going to find out.  

Happy Holiday, You Bastard! 2018

It's time once again for my annual what-I'm-thankful-for-on-Thanksgiving post--or in the case of last year's post, what I'm not thankful for--and I have to tell you, this is going to be hard, and when I say hard, I mean it's going to be nearly impossible to write. Things haven't exactly been going swimmingly for me lately which is something I could have probably worked with because, let's face it, when does my life consistently swim?, but if we factor into the equation that equals my life that I kind of got dumped at 1:30 in the morning last night, well, nothing is looking very good (I say kind of for reasons I could explain, but break up talk definitely doesn't belong in a what-I'm-thankful-for post, so maybe look out for that another day?). Still, I'm enmeshed in my routines and so this post will persevere.

(And then for my next trick, watch as I get blood from a stone)

Things That I'm Thankful For, 2018

1. Friends. I have some really shitty friends, but I have some amazing ones, too. Between my friend Mike driving down from Lake Worth to look at cars with me for Griffin, Brian offering his blacksmith and welding services to make me a new gate, Danielle flying in from Oregon to take care of me when I had surgery, Curt calling to check up on me all the time, and Katie (who's technically my cousin, but I have a lot of cousins I'd never call friends) hearing about my relationship with La Dispute Guy so much, she's practically in it with us--or was--this has to be number one.

2. My hair. It was super short for so long--since 2008!--and then so unhealthy from being repeatedly bleached, I forgot what my natural grown out hair looks like, and I have to say, it's fucking amazing.
It's this silky, shiny, super soft mass of wild, untamed big loopy curls and perfect banana curls, and I really have to say, I kind of feel like nobody has hair prettier than mine. I totally lucked out when the hair gene was encoded in my DNA.

3. Kelen Capener, @kelenkeller38, bassist for The Story So Far, who I've fallen in love with on Twitter. There's little better than a boy who's cute, funny, and smart, but a boy who's cute, funny, and smart and happens to be in one of the best pop punk bands of all time and plays my favorite instrument, too? How does he even exist?

4. Finally having the nerve to go through with getting a tummy tuck. I swelled horribly both times I was pregnant, the first time gaining almost 80 pounds in 35 weeks--thank God Griffin was premature--and 70 the second time around; as a result, my stomach, while not fat, had loose skin and was a mushy mess. I wanted a tummy tuck for so long and last year finally had the nerve to get it, and I have to say, despite the pain of recovery and immense amount of money I spent, I have zero regrets.

5. Eggs, oatmeal, and avocados, which make up for about 75% of what I eat which now that I think about it brings me to

6. Chocolate Covered Katie, the vegan blogger who turned me onto oatmeal (and vegan pancakes, of course) at some point in the last five or six years and also brings me to

7. Sriracha which has to be in a category all its own. Jesus Christ, I love Sriracha so fucking much.

8. All the sunscreen I've worn since I was seventeen along with my almost total avoidance of the sun. As I get older and older, I'm really starting to see the reward.

9. Being able to poop and pee. Okay, this one's tmi and maybe kind of gross, but after my surgery, I, um, couldn't go. Constipation is a side effect of general anesthesia plus I got a numbing shot directly in my stomach that lasts for three days plus I have some stupid disease called Gilbert's syndrome that makes side effects affect me more than they affect most people, and, well, I ended up in the hospital last Christmas and then the next day had one of the worst, most miserable days of my entire life during which I lay on my bathroom floor having to pee into a stockpot (just--don't ask), and I will never again take for granted the ability to be able to poop and pee for my entire life.

10. Finally having restraint. Okay, so I used to periodically check my ex-husband's Twitter, not because I cared at all about his life because believe me, I didn't and don't, but because despite our being divorced for years, it was almost completely about me, and I'd want to see what he'd write. A few months ago--two or three? Four or Five? Honestly, I have no concept of time, so I have no idea--he wrote something that bothered me so much, I took a screenshot and sent it to all my friends and we all sat and marveled about how he could be so depraved and such a horrible human being although it was really no surprise to any of us, and one person's response about his being a narcissist desperate for attention made me think, what the fuck am I doing? Why am I falling prey to his sick, twisted attempts to make me feel bad, and since that day, I never looked at his Twitter again, and I'm much happier for it. Whoever said what other people think about me is none of my business was not remotely wrong.

11. Netflix. I've needed distraction lately, and watching TV shows is a really good means of distraction. Years ago I used LOST to get over the worst pain of the end of one of my go rounds with C; last night I had a Friends Thanksgiving episode marathon to keep my mind off of LDG.

12. Spotify. Maybe I've talked about this before, but I have to say: Music is so instrumental to my happiness--or not happiness as it so happens--that the music I need when I need it is something I'll forever appreciate.

13. Finally taking the initiative to fix the back room in my house (there are a lot of finally's on this list. I'm sensing a theme). I have this back room in my house that has been falling apart. It's needed a new door, spackling, paint for so long, and I've done nothing but complain. Well, one day I was like, this room is a fucking mess, so I got a new door, I spackled the walls, I painted it, and I lamented starting the project and kveteched every step of the way, but I now have a super cute room that I love to be in, so yay for finally getting things done.

14. Alcohol. I don't want to sound like a lush, but sometimes getting drunk is great.

15. This one comes as a shock even--maybe especially--to me, but I'm thankful for my mom. I'm always going on and on about how Griffin gets his natural writing ability from me, and I recently realized that my ability didn't just spring from nothing. While my mom isn't a writer by any means, she is a storyteller, and I'd be remiss if I didn't realize I owe her for my voice.

16. Being cute.

17. PL. He designs and does almost all of my tattoos and has made my legs works of art.

18. The I in INFP changing to E. Okay, so I know personality tests aren't the most valid thing in life, but I've taken the Myers Briggs test multiple times and always got the same result: INFP. A few days ago I retook it, and the I, which stands for introvert, became an E, which stands for extrovert, and I'm not at all surprised. I don't know what's happened, but over the last couple years, I could feel the change. I've gone from being super shy to the point of shaking over certain things to being able to do a ton of formerly uncharacteristic stuff.

19. Magic. Even though it doesn't feel like it right now, I have to admit, it's everywhere I look.

20. Lavender syrup.

21. Spicy tequila.

22. Griffin's playlists, right now especially "A History Of." It's gotten me out of quite a few slumps.

23. Getting to take trips to all the places I need to run. This summer I crossed Wisconsin and Ohio off my list, this fall I ran in Minnesota and North Dakota, and next summer I plan to run New England. I take for granted that I get to travel so much, but I know there are a lot of people who can't.

24. Writing a poem last week for the first time in probably over a year.

25. My propensity to be vulnerable. A lot of people see vulnerability as a weakness, but I wouldn't want to be any other way. I let people know when I love them or when I care and exactly how I feel. Do I get hurt a lot? I absolutely do. Would I rather get hurt than miss an opportunity or not tell someone something important before it's too late? I absolutely would.

26. Social media. It's annoying sometimes and can be a terrible waste of time, but it's actually helped me reconnect with and make a lot of good friends.

27. Laughter.

28. Kissing.

29. Sex.

30. La Dispute Guy. He's been on my mind every second of this list, but I purposely saved him for last. Yes, he kind of dumped me last night, and yes, he's made me horrifically, want-to-never-get-out-of-bed-or-do-anything-ever-again sad, but over the past four months, he's made me really happy, too. He also taught me a lot. He taught me that I'm capable of loving unconditionally with no expectation of getting anything in return and that I truly can put another person's happiness before mine. He also taught me that despite thinking I know what I'm looking for and what's important to me--in short, having a list--people are so much more than lists and none of that stuff counts. He made me realize I've been shallow my entire life and thought things were important that weren't and that when you love somebody, everything about him or her is beautiful even if before you were in love those things weren't. Because of La Dispute Guy, I realize I could love a person I never thought I could love.

And that is that.

The first thing I have to tell you is this list took about three hours, and that's three continuous hours, three continuous hours of not moving from this table, staring into space, looking around the room, struggling to find good things in my life, to write. Second, I have to tell you that every word of it is true. Even if they were hard to come up with, I really am thankful for all of these things. The third and final thing I have to say is that writing this list actually put me in a better mood. Yes, things are looking pretty bleak right now, but buried in that bleakness--way down far in that deep, dark bleak reality that is my life--there's actually good. And with that acknowledgment, I'll leave you to your Thanksgiving, and for I don't know how many years in a row, I'll wish you the same thing I wish for me, and that's a life of love and peace.

So Long, Aphasia

So here's the thing. When I fall in love with someone, even if it's just a tiny little bit, I can't give up. I could tell you stories--boy, could I tell you stories--but I won't. We'll just suffice it to say that if I put half the effort into my writing that I put into loving the people that I love, I wouldn't be sitting in a kitchen in Davie blogging for you right this second (my lack of motivation says you're welcome).

And with that being said--or not said to a degree--La Dispute Guy is back.

I know what I wrote in my last post. I became LDG's on-the-way-to-Miami girl; I was an inconsequential plaything he could entertain himself with when it was convenient; our relationship--or nelationship, if I can coin a term--was a be-sad-that-I-was-having-a-relationship-via-Snapchat type of thing, and well, in regard to those things, all I have to say is yes. Fine. True. It's all true. But at the same time, I also have to say it's not.

People are complicated, and not everything is exactly what it seems.

But to explain that statement, I'd have to explain him, and that's not my place.
So instead I'll explain me and tell you how I got where I am.

The day after LDG and I stopped talking for good--or, if you want to get technical, nine days--I was reflexively swiping through Tinder like I do when I'm bored when I saw this guy Nico who I was talking to last year for almost four weeks in June and July until a combination of things made me tell him I wanted to end whatever it is we had. I've seen him several times over the past year or so and always swiped left, but this time, feeling bad about LDG, I swiped right, and of course, we matched (I say of course not to be conceited but because there'd be no story if we hadn't). He messaged me right away telling me what a surprise it was and from that second didn't leave me alone, and when I say he didn't leave me alone, I'm talking he was attentive with a capital A: in maybe the most romantic gesture anyone has ever made for me, two days after we matched, he left his job that a quick Mapquest check now tells me is 8.8 miles away just to kiss me and then went immediately back to work. I should have swooned.

I did not, in fact, swoon.

What I did was lament that he wasn't LDG, and what I did a couple days later when his messages became the stuff of serious couples was tell him I just stopped seeing someone and we were moving too fast, and what I did almost every time he messaged me after that was want to cry, and if anything was obvious to me from my experience with Nico, it was that La Dispute Guy belongs in my life and any other boy, far from being a distraction, is a mere juxtaposition highlighting all that La Dispute Guy is.

And so La Dispute Guy and I are embroiled in a nelationship via Snapchat once again. The difference is that this time around, I want nothing from him that he isn't ready to give. I just want him in my life and am happy that he is.  

So We Escape to Our Mistakes

So I "broke up" with La Dispute Guy today--well, as much as someone could break up with someone who's not her boyfriend--a noyfriend*, so to speak--and I have to warn you this post is about to get super moody super fast. I'm totally about to feel sorry for myself, once again being way too open in a public space.

*Noyfriend: Not boyfriend; a term for a boy who spends time with a girl, treats her like his girlfriend, says girlfriend/boyfriend things to her, has sex with her, but denies being in a "relationship." I've had two of these: C, in 2009 and 2015, and La Dispute Guy until about 9:30 a.m. today

La Dispute Guy wanted to be casual--I knew that from the start--but I have to say, despite this declaration, it's not something I really grasped, mostly my fault, yes, a responsibility I'll accept, but his fault a little bit, too, for never really acting as if he and I were a casual thing. I hate to admit this because I feel so stupid, but I kinda sorta, just a tiny little bit, let myself start to fall in love. 

And that's why it had to end.

I know I was always vague with the details, but La Dispute Guy lives in Sebastian, which is about 120 miles away, and I'm pretty sure I didn't mention this, but despite my rule about not dating guys with kids, he has four of them--yes, I said four as in one, two, three, four children--that live in Miami, and well, what I became in our relationship is an on-the-way-to-Miami girl, which in some situations would be absolutely fine but seeing as how I was starting to fall in love with him, it became not at all okay. It became a be-sad-that-I-was-having-a-relationship-via-Snapchat type of thing (um...hello...pardon me...the current drunk me, in this proofread, has to interject here to say that we have a 77-day streak that's about to end and I'm getting really panicky and semi freaking out), and an omnipresent feeling of mopiness started settling in. Still, I didn't want to end it, and I wasn't going to. I was going to tough it out until he came to the realization that he was in love with me back because despite the bad parts, there were good parts, too--like the constant stream of snap banter we had all day most days and the fact that we have almost identical IQs and, well, the sex that was so amazing I don't even understand how it could have been so good--and I didn't want them to end.

But this morning when I asked him if we'd get to see each other when he came down later this week for his son's birthday and he responded that he thought he'd be able to swing it but he'd know better when he got the child sharing schedule, I was just like, no.

This cannot be.

I think if he'd said anything else, used any other diction, any other phrase in the world, I wouldn't have ended things, I would have waited it out, but, like, he thought he could swing it? Like I'm just this, I don't know, inconsequential plaything--inconsequential being the pivotal word since plaything? Actually good--he can entertain himself with when it's convenient? That is the opposite of okay. Like I told him, I don't want to be a convenience to anyone, least of all someone I'm kinda sorta, even if just a tiny little bit, starting to fall in love with. 

And so whatever La Dispute Guy and I were, it has come to an end.

And so I am absolutely miserable.

And so the feeling sorry for myself will now commence.

The Feeling Sorry for Myself

I just do not understand what's wrong with me. I can't understand what it is about me that makes it so difficult for people to love (I've also, in the time between the first section of this post and now, gotten myself drunk). 

There's this guy I talk to on Snapchat who says La Dispute Guy is stupid to throw me away (and I have to admit, I don't disagree), and Brian, when I asked him why I'm unlovable, said I'm very lovable and in a verbatim text that I'll transcribe for you here, said,  You're not some average piece of tail for average dicks to woo. You have depth; you speak your mind. You split the difference between wild, impish spirt, and responsible, pretty serious soul. Men with their shit together and their hearts ready for all that ain't exactly a dime a dozen. You're a rare breed and you need a saucy, rare stallion to match which is all fine and dandy but doesn't change the fact that I'm alone (or, I might add, that a year ago July Brian also threw me away) and if this past four years has been any indication, always will be.

I don't regret leaving my ex-husband for a second, but I have to admit I didn't think things would be this hard. I didn't think every time I started to care about a guy, he'd disappear--yes, I realize that this time I made him, but I had good reason--or that the only people who would love me--because, yes, if I'm honest, people have loved me--would be people I couldn't love back. I didn't fully comprehend life would be this lonely: I didn't think about having a really bad day or getting myself embroiled in a stressful situation and having nobody make me feel better by lying with me in bed and telling me things would be all right; I didn't think that I'd spend a great deal of my free time either lying on my kitchen counter listening to music that makes me want to cry or dancing around the house by myself; I didn't think about constant outings, whether they be to a coffeehouse, to a restaurant, or like right now, even to a bar, on my own; I didn't foresee the lonely act of climbing grocery store shelves. I don't know what I thought, what I foresaw, but it certainly wasn't guys trying to sleep with me left and right, and it wasn't any of this.

It wasn't "breaking up" with a guy that wasn't even my boyfriend--my noyfriend--who I'm way better  "on paper" than, who has four kids and an ex-wife that even though he hasn't said it, I know he still loves, who--while we're on the subject of on paper--I have to say that despite my being way better on paper than and his going against the "rules" of what I want, is seriously like the best, most decent guy I think ever I've met, with these eyes, these dark, dark brown Honduran, Guatemalan eyes that I could stare at for the rest of my life and these lips that I can't even explain and this voice that when he sends me voice snaps gives me actual chills and makes my stomach do this little flippy thing and this ability to say things that make my stomach lurch and get this deep-down-in-my-guts visceral feeling; on paper, I have to say because of all of these things, doesn't mean one goddamn motherfucking thing which is why I have no choice but to acknowledge that as emotionally unavailable as La Dispute Guy has always professed to be, as hurt as La Dispute Guys says he's been, if La Dispute Guy loved me, La Dispute guy would love me, and all of those things on his mental sheet of paper would cease.

But I'm rambling, and I digress; I need to get back on track. I need to tell you again that my post-divorce life isn't what I thought and that today while I was lying on my counter listening to Deadly Nightshade for One, a playlist I made a little over a month ago when La Dispute Guy cancelled his trip to Miami because his kids were sick, when Rivers Cuomo told me everything would be all right in the end, for pretty much the first time in my life, I realized that most likely wasn't the truth. 

Anyone Else but Him

The good news is that La Dispute Guy doesn't read my blog, so I don't have to worry about what I write.

The bad news is that La Dispute Guy doesn't read my blog, so I don't have to worry about write.

                                                                          

                                                  ***

Many times throughout my life I've come across a quote by Johnny Depp about love in which he says that if you fall in love with a second person when you're in love with a first that you should always choose the second person because if you loved the first person, you never would have fallen in love with the second. Having leaned heavily towards polyamory most of my life, I always took issue with that quote. When talking about why he was wrong, I'd use myself as an example and refer to the words of North Star that I latched onto when she talked to me about her open relationship exactly ten years ago: 

There's no limit to love

There's no limit to love, North Star said, and it made perfect sense. Just because you love one person, it doesn't mean you love another person less. Think about people who have more than one child. Do they stop loving the first one when the second comes along? Or the third? Not love the second because they already love the first? Clearly not. There's room in our hearts to love all kinds of people in all kinds of ways, so logically why does this not apply to the romantic relationships in our lives?

At least that's what I always said.

I said it, if not in those words, when at 19 years old I convinced my ex-Glenn that he should let me kiss his then drummer Keith.

I said it again, although still not with the mantra I'd eventually cling to, at 29 when I had such a big crush on Jean I thought that if I didn't kiss him I would die.

I practically screamed it at 34 and again at 35 and then at 36 and 37 and 38 when I loved C more than any other person I'd ever loved in my life.

But now? At almost 44? I'm kind of thinking Johnny Depp may actually have been right. 

Because here's the thing.

I think I'm not really polyamorous. I think I just wasn't ever really in love. 

I'm not saying I didn't love my ex-Glenn ever because that would be a lie, but in love?

Yeah. Not so much.

Another thing I'm not saying is that I love La Dispute Guy because not only is it way, way, way too soon for a statement like that but, well, I'll actually maybe save this info for another post, but I am saying that the thought of being with anyone else right now is the opposite of what I want; that the thought of kissing someone else right now is totally gross; that the thought of someone else touching me is just eww. I can say with absolute total conviction that the only person I currently want on me or in me or anywhere near me is La Dispute Guy and never in my life was there a time I could have said that about my ex-Glenn, not even at our start (because clearly the argument could be that this is a beginning, of course La Dispute Guy's lips and tongue and hands and eyes and voice are the only thing I ever think about but I know that's not it because not only was that not the case with my ex-Glenn but it also wasn't the case with A in March or with BTJ in May and a little bit of June. The right person is just...right). 

Was there a time when I didn't think about other people all the time, wasn't actively in the throes of one of my crushes, wasn't diabolically trying to convince my ex-Glenn that being with other people would be good for our relationship? Sure, especially near our totally-abrupt-came-out-of-completely-nowhere demise, but even then if C were to have come knocking on my door, I don't think I would have had it in me to say no, and that's whether the question was Do you want to get in my car and fuck?; Will you run away with me so we can live passionately and madly forever, eschewing societal ideals, caring about nothing but sex and love and us?; or Even though I know G and K are practically adults and you're dead set against having more kids, will you have a little partially Japanese baby with me that we'll call Kiko if she's a girl and work on names if it's a boy? (I didn't think about this in the past. Not once.) 

I don't know. Maybe this newfound monogamishness--okay, I'm in a different place, but I'm not a different person--is a sign of growth and maturity more than it's indicative of my relationship with my ex-Glenn, but I think that's wrong. I think for the vast majority of my life I was just lonely and sad and unfulfilled in so many ways that I was always falling in love with different boys--it just so happens, my ex-husband wasn't one. 

I Do What Boys Like

Have you seen that predictive text epitaph meme? If you haven't, here it is.

Well, being the lover of predictive text that I am, a few days ago when a friend of mine posted it, I was like, Ooh! That looks fun! and although I didn't post the results, I did figure my epitaph out.

Here lies Kelly McIntyre. She was really nice to him.

Here lies Kelly McIntyre. She was really nice to him.

Here lies Kelly McIntyre. She was really nice to him[!]

All I have to say is, does my phone really know me that well?

I know this is supposed to be funny and stuff, but that epitaph really does sum up my entire life.

Take tonight, for example.

In the long tradition of my baking things for boys that I like/covet/love, I just finished baking not one, but two desserts for La Dispute Guy who I'm going to see tomorrow for the first time in almost a month (it's a crazily long time, I know, but he lives over a hundred miles away, don't forget, and the last time he was in town, I was in North Dakota), two because I want him to try something with pumpkin, which he says he doesn't like, because I feel like he just hasn't had the right pumpkin thing, but just in case he really doesn't like pumpkin dessert, I made him another one, and, oh my god, could I be any more into this guy who wants to be casual and I never even see? I'm obviously insane.

And off topic. Let me go back.

You know what? Let's forget the epitaph for a minute and go back to that long tradition. Let's take a quick look at my past.

When I was 24 and married for a year, I made my ex-Glenn those chocolate-mousse filled chocolate bags that led to my being in hysterics and my mom and Erin eating mousse out of the garbage can. I also used to want to make him his favorite food, chicken parmesan, on special occasions, but he refused to let me cook it--because apparently I made it too wet. Fucking weirdo eats cereal without milk and doesn't like sauce. I promise the problem wasn't my cooking--and until about ten years into our marriage when he blindsided me with the admission that he hated the way I made eggs, I happily used to make him those. (You know, there was so much wrong with my marriage that I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure his not wanting me to cook anything for him ever contributed in some way to its demise).

I've baked for C twice, cookies from scratch nearly ten years ago when he got some really bad news and vegan brownies during The Summer of C when he complained that because he was lactose intolerant, he'd pretty much given up on dessert. I also once made my specialty, spaghetti and meatballs, for him and his friends (I've done this for stupid Louie who never wrote me back as well).

I even made brownies for one of Griffin's guitarists, who I used to really, really want.

Baking and cooking, of course, aren't the only way I've been nice to boys, and no, I'm not talking about that (I told you about that time I took that cute boy to buy heroin because I couldn't say no to him. Think things like that). I've just always had a horrible weakness for boys my entire life, and when I'm really into one, there's pretty much nothing I won't do, which sort of makes sense, but even if I'm not really into one, even if I just think a boy is cute, I do things for him too, I just can't say no even when I know I should and that, readers, is why I can't stop thinking about that predictive text.

Do I think that predictive textitaph was sort of supernatural and really had insight? Of course not. Okay, probably not. I mean, it's not very likely. But I do feel like, whether it's been my being nice to a boy, my coveting a boy, my talking about a boy, or my thinking about a boy, boys have been my entire life.

I remember when I was 23 telling Erin I wanted to write a memoir called Rocks in My Shoe with each chapter being about a different boy and her telling me that as a feminist she had a problem with my telling my life through the lens of my relationships with boys.

As a feminist, I know she's right.

I just like cute boys too much to care. 

If the Streets Don't Kill Him, I Will

*Name has not been changed to protect the innocent because there isn't one

About four weeks ago when Keifer asked me if his friend Jordan* could stay at our house, I said yes right away. Although I didn't know the details, I did know that someone who was a good enough friend of Keifer's for me to know some details about his life--he was a SoundCloud rapper, he'd been looking for a job for months and couldn't find one, he owed someone I know very well $50 for taking a class for him in order to graduate--needed help.

In the few days between Kei's asking and Jordan's showing up, I found out that Jordan got kicked out of his house after graduation for reasons Keifer didn't know but that a stepdad was involved and that he had lived with at least two friends' families since. Red flags maybe should have gone up or at least appeared--for instance, I might have wondered why this kid's parents kicked him out, why he kept having to leave everybody's house, or why he couldn't find a job--but they didn't. Lover of strays that I am, I just wanted to help.

Jordan "moved in" on August 26. I was out somewhere, I don't remember where, but I do remember that when I went to put my clothes in the washing machine it was absolutely stuffed to the brim with clothes of his, so many clothes that I had to run them through the dryer twice, and yes, I'm the one who had to run them through the dryer because the boys had gone out. When they came back, I introduced myself and told Jordan I had dried his clothes, he thanked me, I told him he could stay in Griffin's room, Keifer said he'd show him where it was, and they went upstairs.

I hoped he'd be comfortable, especially since the following day I found out that that night in Griffin's bed was his first time sleeping in a bed in over a month. Poor thing, I thought. That's so sad.

Well.

Can you guess what I'm going to say?

Is it that the only thing sad is my judgment and fear of confrontation?

Because that's pretty fucking close.

Poor, poor Jordan, it turns out, is an ungrateful, entitled piece of crap, and I exhibit no surprise whatsoever that nobody, including his own parents, wants him in their house, and lest you think I'm about to exaggerate my tale, I'll have you know that last week Keifer's girlfriend messaged me asking if we could throw a party when he leaves and even Keifer, who was pro Jordan for much more of his stay than he should have been, also wanted him out.

To make my life simpler, and I'm in dire need of simple after this ordeal, I'm going to give a tiny bit of info and then copy and paste lots and lots (Facebook friends, you can skip those parts).

Jordan, you may remember, didn't have a job. How then, you may wonder, could he afford to eat? Where was he getting food? It's not like some dumbass schmuck came along and went grocery shopping for him, even texting her son to find out what his friend wanted to eat.

Except it actually is.

So for twenty-one days, I fed and housed this kid; I drove him to the skate park; I included him on Wednesdays when we had family dinners with my nephew Ty; I listened to him make beats loud enough to drown my music out when he was upstairs and I was down, and while we're talking about him and his music, I might also mention I had to listen to him rap/record all the time; I scrubbed the toilet and underside of the toilet seat repeatedly because never in my life have I seen someone who is so unbelievably bad at directing his penis and its stream of pee--I'm talking pee, still wet when I'd wake up in the morning or when I'd come home from school, dripping down the toilet seat in little rivulets; I swept the floor day and night, an action made necessary by his constantly twisting the tiny dreads he was cultivating and the nauseating collection of hair he left wherever he would sit; I scrubbed the stove when I woke up because he left macaroni and cheese powder and other food particles on it overnight; I cleaned the counter constantly because it was crumb city all the way; and I went further and further into the abyss of insane.

On day eight, I posted this

Okay, so Keifer's friend has been here for eight days and shows no signs of leaving. He has no job or money, so I'm buying all his food. Is it all right for me to ask him to vacuum twice a week? Like, at this point he's no longer a guest, right?

prompted by his having done nothing but go to the skate park, record music, make a mess, and sleep until at least 4:00 in the afternoon every day (later that day I got up the nerve to ask him to vacuum twice a week and wash all his dishes; he vacuumed twice and if we all held a collective breath waiting for him to wash his dishes, we'd be collectively dead).

Two days later, on September 7, I commented on a post declaring the rapper had to leave

Okay, so two nights ago--Wednesday night--he woke me up rapping and blasting music at 3:30 in the morning. 3:30 in the morning! I messaged Keifer and was like, wtf, I have to be up at 5:30, and he apologized over and over and said he told him to be quiet. I couldn't fall back to sleep until almost 5, and I wake up at 5:30. So I was pissed. I said the next day, which was yesterday, we needed to establish rules. 

Well.

He was still asleep when I took Keifer to work at 4:30 last night and still nowhere to be seen when I went to bed at 11:30. I just got home from work and was in a perfectly good mood only to find a sink with dishes and crumbs, crumbs on the floor next to the garbage can when I mopped yesterday, the Brita pitcher empty, and the sponge smelly because he didn't wring it out. 

I can't be understanding anymore.

And later that day

Okay, so get this. I just talked to Keifer. He and his gf got the rapper an interview at their job today, which was just a formality, and he didn't even show up. He said he couldn't find it even though Keifer pulled up the location and showed it to him on his phone.

And

You guys! I just found his hair in my bed.

In. My. Bed.

A couple days later, I was sitting on the counter drinking an apple ale talking to Keifer when Jordan walked into the kitchen, open the fridge, and without so much as a word, just took out and opened a beer. I seriously think I almost dropped dead. Not long after that when he was cooking himself the vegan pizza I'd just bought for Kiefer the night before, I told him to please not eat Keifer's vegan food but to eat the stuff I bought for him instead and to wipe the toilet after he peed.

Then I went out of town.

And, well...a copied and pasted list from yesterday afternoon

Okay, so I was out of town from Tuesday to last night. Before I went, I sat both boys down--really to tell Jordan, not Keifer--and went over rules. I reiterated about cleaning up after themselves, not leaving dishes in the sink, things like that. Also, the day I left, I came home between work and the airport and Jordan was making Keifer's $8 Daiya vegan pizza, and I said to him that I want him to leave the vegan stuff for Keifer since he's a vegan and so picky that he's 5'10 and weighs 118 pounds (keep in mind that I grocery shop for Jordan, getting him stuff like macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese stuff, cereal, pasta). So:

1. Erica text me (unbeknownst to Keifer) to tell me Jordan was eating all Keifer's food
2. Keifer text me to tell me Jordan didn't do one dish the whole time I was gone and that he had to keep doing his dishes
3. Keifer had this collectible Monster shot that we bought on a road trip like three years ago, and it's $50 online now since they're unavailable. Jordan drank it.
4. Keifer said the counter was covered in stuff because Jordan didn't clean up after himself once
5. When I got home last night, I saw a cockroach--a cockroach!--on the dryer. That hasn't happened in 17 years of my living in this house.
6. He ate an entire pint of Keifer's vegan ice cream in Griffin's bedroom and left the empty pint and a dirty spoon on the shelf attached to his bed
7. The upstairs toilet actually had dried pee on the top of the toilet seat and dripping pee on the underside. I had to scrub it when I got home last night at about 1 a.m.
8. I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure he was in my bed. After scrubbing the toilet, I had to change my sheets.
9. The downstairs toilet doesn't have the pee issue, but the seat is just filthy--like black, like someone really dirty sat on it. Obviously I had to scrub that, too. 
10. Keifer just told me about half an hour ago that his gf bought him Bento and Jordan ate it from the fridge
11. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but he took my good running/talking on the phone headphones from the counter (right in front of me while I was doing dishes!) and lost them
12. He's just a disgusting human and I can't have him in my house


Jordan is now gone. Keifer told him when he woke up at 9:00 last night--9:00 last night!--that I wanted him to go. Embarrassed and uncomfortable even though he wanted him gone as badly as I did, he initially said something about my not being able to afford food for both of them and the house being dirty, and for some strange reason, his detailed explanation of that was that I said something about crumbs.

Jordan's response?

[n word with an a] i been in here all day
how could there possibly be crumbs
lmao
its whatever tho

and Keifer told me that even though he told him today that it was more than just crumbs, whenever he DMed anyone, crumbs was the reason he gave for my kicking him out, and as if that's not bad enough, when that fucking piece of crap motherfucker left my house, he didn't say one word to me, he just walked out of the house like I wasn't even there.

In the 23 days that I made my house that absolute stranger's home, he said thank you once, and that's when I put his clothes in the dryer on day one--oh, and maybe when I drove him to the skate park two or three times.

I have never felt so used in my entire life.

And I'm a fucking slut. 

I Was Kinda Hoping You'd Stay

Well.

La Dispute Guy wants to keep it casual. After a lot of going back and forth about whether I should say something or not and consulting with a not obnoxiously huge, but not tiny, number of people, I decided to ask him what his intentions were with me, and keep it casual is the answer I got. Emotional wall...hurt many times...investing in things that disappear...all things that were mentioned that may as well have been me talking to him.

I have to tell you that at first that felt entirely fine. I told him before I asked that there wasn't a wrong answer, and that wasn't a trick. I honestly just wanted to know. Plus, BS--yes, the BS I was in love with last July--well, the July before the July that just passed--you know what? Since he's now my friend and no longer that other kind of  boy, let's just call him by his name. Brian he is--and I role played my asking him, and one of the scariest options was his saying he wanted to be serious and us see only each other, not because I don't like him enough for that but because after having been single for four years, the thought of having to worry about answering to someone in absolutely any way falls somewhere between mildly daunting and abysmally suffocating. While we were lying in bed, me between his legs, my head somewhere between his stomach and his chest, casual really didn't sound bad.

But then he left, and I'm thinking you probably know me well enough by now to know I got sad. Like, really sad. Like, sad enough that Keifer actually offered to get off his bunk bed and give me a hug (which for him is really saying a lot), sad enough to tell Griffin when I talked to him that I'm never dating again and that I had to go because I had to go cry and then go to bed. The next morning, which was yesterday, I woke up feeling just as bad. I changed the title of my Suspension playlist on Spotify, which I made when I started my fall for La Dispute Guy, to something along the lines of Happiness? Please. What Was I Even Thinking?, and felt mopey for most of the day.

My moping and sadness wasn't what it seems. It wasn't because I thought La Dispute Guy didn't like me the way I like him because I know that's not true, and it wasn't exactly because of the casual thing, at least not the way you probably think. I don't mind him seeing other people at all, and it's nice to know I can, too--even though when somebody kissed me last Saturday night, I realized there's nobody else I remotely want to kiss--but what I told Griffin and what I'm now going to tell you is if things continue the way they've been, I'm probably going to end up liking him even more. I also told him that despite that fear, I can't stop seeing him now because I said the casual thing was fine, a statement he refuted, telling me that yes, I can, or at least I can just not put in as much effort as I've been putting in, something that sounded plausible at the time. I'll just stop messaging back so much, I thought. When he's in the area, I won't always be around. I'll find a way to protect my heart.

Last night, though, like every night for the past 36 days, La Dispute Guy and I messaged; when I woke up this morning I had a message from him like I usually do; like always, we've been messaging since; and I realized that other than my perception, nothing has changed. I also realized that trepidation and reserve are not my things, and I care completely when I care. I also, for whatever reason, have a really, really hard time staying sad (a fact of life that prompted Curt to tell me I'm too happy to ever really be goth when goth meant something different back when I was seventeen). To deny those things would be to deny who I really am.

So I woke up this morning and changed the title of that playlist to Melodrama Much?, I listened to happy music, I danced around my house, and I sat down to write this blog. It's true that La Dispute Guy may make me sad in the future, but he makes me unreasonably happy now, and I refuse to let foreboding joy take that away. 

Stop Burning Bridges and Drive Off of Them

In the past three days, two people have said something to me about not having written in my blog for a long time, and believe me, it wasn't news. Almost every single day I think about how long it's been since I've written and tell myself I'm going to write, but as you know, the writing never comes. I'll make the same excuses for you that I made for them:

One, I told you during my thirty days o' blogs that I didn't want my blog to become a boy blog, and it just so happens--surprise surprise, people!--that the majority of what I want to write about is boys;

two, also as I mentioned in my thirty days o' blogs, I'm afraid I reveal the wrong things to the wrong people, those people namely being boys;

and three, anything I want to write about that isn't about boys is about people who might maybe possibly read my blog--or absolutely positively do--and that makes writing what I want not the best choice,

but, alas, here I am as a direct result of the you-haven't-updated-your-blog-in-a-really-long-time conversation I had yesterday and the urging to do so despite all of my complaints

and since I'd hate to break up the banality of my droning on and on about boys...

There's this boy--

okay, stop. Wait--

this boy I really like--

no, really, don't--

who I've been seeing for--

for the love of God, stop, Kel, stop!

The truth is, I haven't written a blog because I don't trust myself. Not one little bit.

Another truth is that I've written plenty of posts in my head and even stayed up late typing an entire one last night, but in an uncharacteristic bout of what may have been good sense inspired by conversations I had with Griffin and Keifer and a good friend named Ro, I read and reread and reread again and didn't hit the publish button.

During these separate conversations with Griffin and Keifer and Ro, what each of these people said pretty much came down to this: You know that big ball of radiation we call the sun? I find every excuse underneath it to stop liking someone. As you're all aware, I go out with a lot of guys--an overwhelming, dizzying number, to tell yet another truth--and if we don't count C because he's obviously a different kind of case, since my ex-Glenn and I split up in July of 2014, I've had real interest in maybe five--not counting La Dispute Guy, who I haven't introduced you to yet (readers, meet La Dispute Guy. He's guy number six)--and of those five, it didn't take me long to lose interest in all but one (two if we count BTJ, but remember, I barely liked him at all until he disappeared, and in news you don't know, we started talking again along with a little something more, and I was the one who disappeared that time around, and if you want to count A, I guess we're up to three, but you guys know as bad as I felt when we stopped seeing each other, I couldn't stand how much of a whiny, complainy baby he was).

According to Griffin and Keifer and Ro, finding reasons not to like someone is just my MO. After a date or two, I decide somebody is either too short or too fat or too dumb or too conservative or too quiet or too loud or too into me or not into me enough or has stupid tattoos or ridiculous hair or doesn't kiss right or doesn't have the right smell or has unappealing teeth or a disgustingly big beard and mustache that collects droplets of coffee with cream that makes me want to throw up.

La Dispute Guy is no exception to this rule. In the beginning I started to come up with some complaint--I don't remember what it was, but I'm thinking that his living over a hundred miles away could have been it--when I was talking about him to Ro, and she was like, Just stop! You always do this. You always try to find something wrong. And I actually did. I stopped looking for things that were wrong, and now that I've gotten where I am, I'm not going to discuss it for the same reason I deleted last night's blog, and that's because like the super gay butler says to the super old vampire in need of virginal blood to maintain her illusion of youth in Once Bitten, one of the funniest and most underrated movies of all time, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and finding something wrong with every person I ever meet in my life isn't the only way to self-sabotage.

As Told by Kismet

Because if one thing defines me more than anything else, it's not being on time--okay, maybe that's not completely right. Never being on time would be if one of two things defines me more than anything else--the final installment of 30 days of blogging straight is late. I'm not trying to make excuses, but I drove from Fort Lauderdale to Chattanooga, Tennessee, yesterday where I had to first room hop and then hotel hop as a result of, in one hotel,  little flying bugs, dried poop on a toilet seat, and blood-spotted sheets, and in another hotel, the actual body of a bedbug dead on the sheet and then finally settle for sleeping in my car in a rest stop starting at four in the morning. I knew I had to write a blog, but because of the aforementioned along with the crack pipe wielding man at hotel number two,  it was not my top priority. To be honest, after sleeping a total of two hours in a Tennessee rest stop last night and driving today over twelve hours straight, it's still not exactly thing to do number one, but I really want to get it done. After having written every day except one for an entire month, I couldn't not debrief.

It's been so long, and I've written so much, you probably don't remember why I started this endeavor. Just a reminder in case you don't:  The entire purpose of this was to make myself want to write. Did it work? Eh. I definitely think of writing differently now, like for instance if something happens, I make mental notes as it's going on, thinking to myself, this can go in my blog (I've always come up with blog posts almost in their entirety while I run, but this is different. These ideas come no matter what), and I also feel like I don't know what I'm going to do with myself now that I don't have to write. As good as that maybe sounds, though, it's all not. I've touched on this before, but my rigidity makes writing something of a burden due to my feeling like I have to write, and that is the absolute opposite of my intent.

So what else? What else came from this thirty-days of write? Other than the self-explorations you've already seen in my posts, which I appreciate, I didn't learn anything about myself, but I think maybe you learned about me--but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you already knew I was an impatient, boy crazy, bumbling mass of awkwardness. Even if you did, I still feel like any semblance of normalcy I may have had is entirely gone. I definitely never played any kind of pretend, but when writing sporadically, it's just much more likely that only certain things will come out. When writing every day, you pretty much get everything I've got, at least where mental health is concerned. You've seen me super up and you've seen me super down. I don't think I'm much different from other people in that regard other than, as I've previously discussed, my tendency to have no guard. You also may have learned, even though this one probably isn't new, that I don't much care who knows what where I'm concerned. However, what you probably don't know is that despite how it may seem, there is a lot that goes on in my life--like, a lot a lot--that, people who read my blog, you still don't know.

I didn't lie when I said I was an open book, it was the gods' honest truth. But what open book reveals all its secrets in chapter one? Or two? Or three? Or even four, or five, or six? Good open books wait until near, if not the actual, close.

People who read my blog, I am not even close.

And to Think That I'm Somebody's Daughter

So in less than twelve hours--I'm hoping less than 10--the kid who leaves lube all over the house, the girl he uses the lube with, and I will be embarking on a trip to Milwaukee, Chicago, and Columbus. I should probably be a lot more excited, but the prospect of being the sole driver on an over 3,000 mile trip isn't exactly the most appealing thing plus I'm having BTJ issues again, and I have to say, regarding him, I need to be done. You know what? I thought I was going to write about my trip, but I'm going to say some things about BTJ instead which really are observations about myself and not about BTJ at all.

When I first met BTJ, I wasn't sure I liked him. After the second time we hung out--really, even after the third--I just wasn't sure. I knew I liked hanging out with him, but I really didn't love doing anything else. I mean, it was nice, but it wasn't wow. Two things to make you better understand: one, my good friend said he was convenient but my kitty didn't like BTJ (this would be a much wittier statement if you knew his real name) and two, I bought a maca chocolate bar on impulse while I was in line at Lucky's with the intent of eating it before he came over because I wanted to want what he wasn't making me want (does that make any sense?).

It wasn't until BTJ didn't text me back that I started to care. When I was trying to decide whether to text him or not, that same good friend asked, How did we get here? You didn't even like him at all, and let me tell you, she wasn't wrong. Also not wrong, which you already know, is that we're not compatible in the way that we kiss, and you don't know some other things because they're super personal, but they're also amiss. So every single sign screams WRONG WAY, yet what do I do? I continue to proceed, not even with any particular caution at all.

When my ex-Glenn and I first met, we couldn't stand each other. At all. After that first night, we bumped into each other at coffeehouses once or twice, and the hate was still there. Almost a year after that first night, he came into the CD store where I worked, and when he, our friend Marnie, and their friend Ben made plans to go out that night, I invited myself along. After a few drinks, my ex-Glenn and I ended up having sex in my car (because do I ever do anything else?), and not long after, Marnie relayed something about how much he still couldn't stand me. To be honest, I could never really stand him, but hearing that he couldn't stand me and there was no way in hell we'd ever go out? Guess what became the main mission of me.

I have a problem, I'm aware. I often only seem to care when the other person seems to not. I'm sitting here all upset and mopey about BTJ again despite the fact that practically nothing about him is right, despite the fact that after the other night while I was lying in bed not getting kissed, I was thinking, This is totally not okay and I will never do this again, words I need to apply not just to the other night, not just to BTJ, but to this pattern that has played out, that continues to play out for my entire life.

The Kid's Not All Right

There's lube all over my house.

This may not seem blog worthy, but it's annoying enough that it is to me.

I've always been super open about sex with Griffin and Keifer, it's the truth. Since forever I've tried to make sure it was completely normalized and no shame or embarrassment was attached. The only two rules I ever set for them regarding sex was that I wanted them both to wait to have it until they were 15, which they did (although I'm sure that has more to do with circumstance than rules), and then once they were having it, I didn't want them to have sex in the house while I was home. Pretty much anything other than that was left up to them, a common sense free for all, I guess, but when you leave sex discretion up to teenaged boys, can you guess what happens to the common sense?

Lube all over the house. That's what happens to common sense.

Not too long ago, I got in the shower, and there it was right next to my shampoo: a bottle of lube. I've also found lube on the futon in my back room in the not so distant past, and tonight Griffin found a bottle of it next to the couch.

Fucking lube.

I'm happy Keifer isn't weirdly sexually repressed, make no mistake, but there's definitely such a thing as too not repressed. Well, at least involving one's mom. The things I know about Kei and sex--I'm talking likes, I'm talking dislikes, I'm talking locations, I'm talking details--are things no mother needs to know, and yet, no matter how many times I say something, I still stumble upon almost empty bottles of lube, which actually as I type that right now makes me think of an argument Keifer and I got into last week when he said he can't wait to get his own apartment so he can freely have sex. Apparently, our living situation prevents him from just whipping it out and shtupping Erica whenever he wants, and that's not acceptable, which now that that's been said brings me unexpectedly to what I argued with Kei on my end.

An Overview of What I Argued with Kei on My End

So my sixteen-year-old son has the nerve to complain to me that he can't have sex in the house whenever he wants because I'm home too much, yet that motherfucker never goes anywhere other than school which of course is when I'm at work which means unlike him, I really can't have sex in my house ever, like at all (okay, since the argument that's no longer true because BTJ and I totally had sex in my house on Monday night while Keifer was downstairs, but that's the first time I've done that since I got divorced). The number of times I've had sex in my car in the last three years because Keifer is always home and I date guys who still live at their parents' house is insane, and Keifer has the nerve to complain about sex to me and tell me he can't wait to move out? And then tell me it's entirely my fault that I'm in this situation because I'm the one with kids?

Ramble. Ramble, ramble, ramble. Ramble some more. 

This post was rambling, I know, and didn't really seem to have a point--like did I want to write about Keifer's misguided comfort with sex where I'm concerned? About how maybe I don't like his "misguided" comfort with sex but being comfortable with sex is always something good? About how I might still be dating A if he ever could have come over when he had a chance? About how once when I complained to my ex-Glenn that I always have to have sex in my car because Keifer never goes to his house, he said, Here's a tip. Date an adult? About the irony that I'm the age I am with my own house but really can't have sex in it even though almost thirty years ago when I lived with my parents I had sex in my house all the time? To all these questions except the first, the answer started out as no and turned into a yes--but complete exhaustion coupled with 29 days' worth of posts has apparently made me incapable of writing with any type of focus and voila! You get a nearly incoherent mess (kind of like my entire life, but it is way too late to go into that).

Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me; Your Tongue Is Like Poison

I didn't blog last night.

Gasp.

It's awful, I'm aware, but I didn't even know. I had a super busy day, waiting to be released from scoring essays until almost 5 and then had to make an almost 300-mile drive that of course I got lost on because I'm the most incapable person in the world when it comes to directions, and I had no data, and, therefore, no gps. While going the wrong way on the expressway could have set me back only a half hour if even that because I called my guardian angel aka Griffin to look up a route for me from his laptop, it turned out to be way longer because it fortuitously brought me to Ybor City where I stopped for some vegan pho and an eiskaffe, which was one of the best coffee drinks I've ever had. I didn't even get on the road until almost 8, which means I didn't even get home until right around 11; I still had to run, and I don't think I've told you this, but BTJ and I have been talking since I sent my NC-17 text, and he was coming to my house which means I was going to be seeing him for the first time since that Sunday in the beginning of June, so blogging wasn't really on my mind.

Anyway. I'd like to talk making out.

For my entire life up until tonight sometime around 5:00, I considered French kissing to be making out. Like, to me the two things were exactly the same. I'm not sure my mind has completely changed, but I can say that I'm now aware this isn't necessarily what everyone thinks*.

*For the purpose of this post along with everything I ever say or do for the rest of my life, when I say kiss, I mean French kiss. If I mean something else, you'll know. 


I've mentioned before, people who read my blog, that I love to kiss. It's not something I ever thought I had to make clear, but when I say kiss, I mean what I've always thought of as making out, and while I'm aware not everyone loves kissing as much as me, I totally thought it was something almost everybody does. I have a friend who doesn't--saliva grosses her out--and I've always thought it was the craziest thing. Once when she said something jokingly about us getting married, I told her I could never do it because she doesn't like to kiss, and while there are a lot more reasons that marriage isn't in our cards, it's true. I could never have a happy sexual relationship with someone who doesn't like to kiss.

Which brings me to last night.

I told you BTJ came over when I got home. I also told you we kissed a lot the other times he came over, and I mean kissed kissed, like real kisses, not the pussy pop kind--for fuck's sake, he bruised my tongue. So imagine my surprise when after our first time having sex and I was all over him trying to make out, he laughed at me and said something about me searching for his tongue, prompting a conversation that led to his revealing that when he kisses, he doesn't like to use his tongue.

Dude.

But it literally said on my Bumble profile making out is one of my loves. 

Yeah, but making out doesn't have to be with tongue.

What? Yes, it does. It totally does.

I consider any kind of open mouth kissing to be making out.

What? No. If it's not French kissing, it's not making out. 

Tongues are just gross. They make me think of octopus tentacles crashing together. I can feel the bumps on a tongue. What are they called?

Taste buds?

Dude.

I feel like I've been duped.

Duped!

And maybe you think I'm being petulant and making an unnecessary big deal, but I swear I wouldn't have had sex with him if I'd known his kissing stance. There's also no way I'd have felt as into him as I did because there is no way I could ever be seriously into anyone if I knew beforehand my tongue was going to be forced to languish in the confines of my mouth when I want to make out.

Anyway.

Today I decided to look up making out. See if BTJ was wrong about what constitutes making out or if I was. You know what? It turns out we both were. According to a bunch of sites and public opinion, making out isn't just kissing, French or otherwise, but kissing plus beyond. Making out, according to the Internet, includes, in addition to kissing, some or all of the following things: petting, heavy petting (which differs from plain only petting because the former is above the waist and the latter is below it), dry humping, and really just about anything related to sex that isn't actual fucking.

Maybe BTJ and I were both wrong, but he was definitely more wrong. All the things above normally occur, I have no doubt, alongside the presence of a not-relegated-to-the-bottom-of-the-mouth, equated-to-a-mollusk fucking tongue.

Fucking duped. 

The Weight of the World Would Be Okay if It Would Pick a Shoulder to Lean On so I Could Stand Up Straight

Something I never thought I'd say: Holy Jesus, I wish that cute Korean doctor would leave me the fuck alone.

But looksie here, I'm saying it.

Since when I mentioned the Korean doctor to you once a few months ago I didn't tell you very much, let me give you the rundown super fast. We met on Tinder and started talking in February 2016, met in real life not long after, saw each other for a little over a month, text frequently and even (gasp!) talked on the phone, and then one day we were texting while he was at work in June (not being a real doctor. He was in medical school at the time), and both of us just stopped. I have no idea who text who last, I just know that he was the one who always initiated the texts and never sent me one again, and I wasn't interested enough to see what was going on.

On March 31 he messaged me out of the blue, and I swear he won't leave me alone. At first I felt like I had to be nice, so I entertained him when he made small talk, asking me about school and if I still run and telling me how much he enjoyed spending time with me when we were seeing each other. A few days in when he started getting overly flirty talking about when we used to have sex and pestering me to let him read my secret blog, I wasn't nice at all; in fact, on April 3 he said, "I'll leave you alone until we get comfortable again about being friends." I didn't respond.

He text again April 25 and was super strange and then on April 29 to apologize for the inappropriate text which was "unprofessional...and it was embarrassing." I didn't respond.

May 7 he text, just asking me how it's going. I didn't respond.

I shouldn't have responded when he text me on May 31, so in a way this is my fault, but I wasn't responding to be friends. He sent me a super long text asking for my opinion on school kid psychology for some research he was doing on school shootings. It seemed legitimate enough, so I answered back. No small talk, no okay, now we're friends, just my observations on students' mental health.

He text me again on Tuesday night, so that was what? June 12? I was in the middle of writing a blog and not thinking about what I was doing, so I answered him back. We didn't text for super long, just long enough for him to tell me he thinks about me from time to time, start reminiscing about my "sexual energy that borders almost predatory," ask me if I have a type, and tell me not to be a stranger and we'll grab coffee when I get back. I told him I had to go.

Last night, June 16, I'm texting someone else and he texts me again. This time all the sex talk is gone. He's majorly depressed. He's lonely and he's deflated and he's empty and he's sad and he can't focus. I tell him I feel sad and lonely all the time and he just has to learn how to cope so he asks me how to cope and he asks when it gets better and he says he wants it to get better soon and he sounds like a child but he's 28 or 29. So I tell him I lie down on the counter a lot and I listen to happy music and I run and I run and I run, and I tell him I tell myself that this is the life that I chose and sometimes it's really good, and when I'm telling him I'm asking myself how or why this is happening, I'm not even nice to him, how can I be the only person he has, how can he be desperately texting a girl he barely dated two years ago who clearly wants nothing to do with him, and then I realize he really must not have anyone so I have to be nice, and I know this is the opposite of nice but the Korean doctor I have no interest in at all is a responsibility I just do not want.

All She Wanted Was a Pepsi

I passed a taco place called Taco Bus on my way to Cafe Hey, that coffeehouse from the other night, and since tacos are one of my favorite things to put in my mouth, I got so excited, I almost didn't make it to the cafe. I did, though, as you know, but I told myself I'd eat there before going home, and tonight I made it back. While I did have some really amazing poblano pepper and mushroom tacos, I'm not here to talk about food. I'm here to talk about the homeless girl I bought dinner instead. 

I was sitting outside eating my tacos when she approached. As soon as she said, Excuse me, could you, I started to say no because I expected something about money to finish that question. It didn't, though. Can you buy me something to eat? she asked. I don't need money. Just food. My instinct was still to say no, but then I thought about it. This poor girl was hungry, and it's not like I'm poor. It's also not like she was asking for money to do who knows what with. She wanted food. How could I say no to buying the girl food?

Sure, I said. I'll buy you something to eat. Let's go in.  

I picked up my mostly eaten food, put my purse over my head, and walked into Taco Bus with the girl behind me. Do you know what you want? I asked. 

Shrimp quesadilla, no vegetables, she answered right away and then added that's what she always gets when people buy her food. Apparently it happens all the time. (That's not salt, by the way. Just facts.)

Shrimp quesadilla, no vegetables, I said to the guy behind the counter and then turned to the girl. Okay, I said. Here's your receipt. I handed it to her and went back outside to finish dinner.

You think my story's over but it's ready to begin.

She sat with me. 

Her names--one of her two "government names" that belonged to her daughters who were stolen from her so she uses their names--were Athena for sure and Alisha I'm pretty sure. She seemed normal enough if not horrifically challenged in the dientes at first, and at first, I guess I mean for about one minute flat. She just kept thanking me and telling me about how she usually gets food, and, well, if I wasn't the conversationalist that I am and didn't ask her so many questions, I'd never know that she's insane. 

The first thing I found out about Athena Alisha is that she just got back to Tampa after being in Wisconsin, California, and Louisiana not because she wanted to be but because she was taken by some very bad people and luckily escaped to Louisiana where she lived for what I found to be a confusing amount of time, maybe not as confusing as the fact that when I asked her how old she was she told me her reincarnated years were 31 but then later told me the people who took her to Wisconsin killed her and there are Polaroid pictures of it and everything yet there she was--I mean, if she was murdered just not too long ago in Wisconsin, how is her reincarnation age 31?--but confusing nevertheless.

I also found out that she has a brother/husband whose name is totally escaping me right now but I'm sure it will come back, and that he saved her in Wisconsin, and he saves her here all the time, and he comes before her looking different sometimes, just like Diablo, who's one of her stepfathers, and that she and her brother/husband have a son named Elijah who sexually molested them and people want them to sacrifice him but she can't do that to her son. She does, however, let angry things come out of her mouth sometimes, violent things, and she does violent things sometimes, but only when the bad people make her. She's sliced people in half, but only because she had no choice. Oh, she also showed me the spots where she recently had an IV when she was in the hospital after the police found her with half a bitten off toe.

After ten, maybe fifteen minutes of talking to Athena Ashley, I told her it was nice meeting her and I hoped she'd stay safe, and I went on my way.

While I was sitting there hearing her story, a lot of it which I haven't relayed (like, do you know she doesn't even know where she's from? And I'm pretty sure she thinks she's God), her story that I initially got out of her because I thought it would be good research for something I might one day write, I felt so sad. This girl seemed so genuinely nice and so genuinely believed the things she believed because she was so genuinely mentally ill, it was hard to take. 

How many people? How many people out there are just like her? You know, we see these homeless people and we harumph and we grumble and we say they should get jobs, but let me tell you, people who read my blog, there is no way on the gods' green earth that this girl could have a job. She was, to put it in not nice terms, batshit insane. 

I mean, I'm not making it up when I say I think she thought she was God. Well, except actually, that in contrast to the things she said that led me to that belief, she also said, after telling me she had leukemia, diabetes, and one other thing I can't remember, and I said I was sorry, not to be sorry, that she's not afraid at all because He'll take care of her. 

You know, because he's doing such a marvelous job so far. 

(Kirby! That's the brother/husband. It just came.)

Homewrecker

I've been thinking a lot about what I want to write tonight, and when I say thinking a lot about what I want to write tonight, I don't mean trying to figure out what I want to write, I mean I had an idea of something I want to write but have been going back and forth. It's a profession of sorts, of something that in no way needs to be said, something that no good could could come of if anything were to come at all.

I decided to not write the post; I'm just going to write about why I can't write it instead.

The problem, however, is that to write this post correctly, I have to reveal too much, so I'm sorry to inform you, people who read my blog, this one isn't going to make a lot of sense.

What I planned to do was to write about the guys who have been bothering me lately, to tell you how annoying they all are, not because I'm like ooh, everybody wants me because I promise you that's not going on, but because I wanted to tell you that there are only two guys I have any interest in at all. BTJ is obviously one, and the other one is the one who I was going to talk about tonight, to tell you how it's so weird that he's even on my mind and the reason why, but I decided that's not for this blog. I want to tell you, but if I do, he'll totally know who he is; I want to tell you why I can't let you know who he is, but if I do that, he'll also probably know, so admittedly there's very little I can tell you at all.

What I can tell you, though, is this: writing this blog the way I wanted to write it would do nothing but start trouble. It would start up something--or try to start up something because in all honesty that would be the primary reason for my writing it--that doesn't need to be started--that can't practically be started, thank God (thank God? Yes! thank God...I suppose)--that could ruin people's lives.

Why, then, if making this interest known could cause so much damage, is it something I remotely want to do? Why consider it at all?

Because I'm selfish, duh. Because I want what I want. Because I fail the marshmallow test miserably. Because I'm all about my id.

But

I've already ruined enough lives. It's a business I no longer want to be in.

I Know I'm Still the Shy Guy

I suppose I need to make a concession: I'm not as shy as I think or make myself out to be.

Except that's not true.

What I am, I guess, is circumstantially shy. Does that make sense?

I told you how I'm at this AP thing and the thought of mixing and mingling and talking to people makes me sick. That wasn't a lie. Like, I feel seriously anxious just thinking about socializing with just about anybody but my roommate and her sixty-something year old friends who I'll be eating out with tomorrow night, and even they make me uneasy to be honest. Tonight, however, I walked to a coffeehouse by myself (that's not the not shy part. I go places alone all the time), wandering unknowingly into the middle of an open mic. After the guy who was on when I came in finished, a comedian came on, a comedian who, in the middle of his thing--I mean, I guess it was his thing--looked at me and said something like, You! You look like you have that sexy pansexual vibe. 

Now, if that happened to me in a roomful of AP people, I'd get jittery and red and want to cry. At the coffeehouse, though, what I did instead was respond. You mean I look like I want to have sex with everyone in this room? I asked, and I felt totally fine. When the comedian finished and sat down next to me and started a conversation? Again, fine. When the singer of the band that went on after him finished and came over to us? Still fine, so fine in fact that I started talking to him about The Front Bottoms and didn't feel sick at all. When the girl behind the counter started talking about how creepy and weird Catholicism is? So fucking fine I chimed in all on my own.

Confession time: I do stuff like this all the time. I go places and have absolutely no problem at all being the center of attention or talking to people I don't know. Sometimes I even start the conversations myself. Sometimes (gasp!) even with a cute boy.

So, like, what's the what? How come I feel totally comfortable in a coffeehouse or restaurant with one hundred percent strangers but at a work function with people I kinda sorta know--colleagues, I guess they might be called--I feel like I have a phobia of being alive? Why do I look at meet ups and writer's groups longingly online but could never ever bring myself to go? Why--

wait. I'm grasping something. A thread. A light is turning on.

These events, the ones that strike fear in my heart, are organized. That's it. That's the thread. The things I'm afraid of, the places where I can't even comfortably think about being, are somehow, in some way, organized. I mean, it makes sense. My table leader was two people ahead of me in line at Publix tonight, and to be completely honest, I have an itty bitty crush on her, but I called her name nevertheless and felt more than less fine walking back to the hotel with her one on one. If I was at one of the organized College Board events, though, I don't think I'd have been able to say a word. I think...I think what it is, is...expectation.

I think that when I'm at one of these things (well, not when--if--because I almost never go) I feel like I have to play some sort of role. Scratch that. I don't feel like I have to play a role, I do. We all do. We all have different personas for the different areas of our lives, and my fulfill-an-expectation-of-anything-orchestrated-in-any-way persona seems to not work, which I guess when I think about it isn't that bad because while I might not comfortable playing pretend at least I'm comfortable playing myself.

When You Close Your Eyes

It's shocking, I know, but I had dinner with someone tonight. Less shocking, it was an actual friend of mine who happens to live in Tampa, not someone from the reading. While we were on our way back to the hotel, I was telling her about something I had forgotten about not in an actual forgetting about way but more in the not actively thinking about way, but still it's there way, and now that I remember it in the actual remember something way, I'm going to tell you.

When I was in high school I had one serious boyfriend: Louie, who I went out with from sophomore to senior year. Like most high school boyfriend/girlfriends (I think), we were completely in love, basically inseparable, pretty volatile, and completely insane. After a very long break up process that started in November when Louie called me another girl's name in bed and endured through my forgiving him; us getting back together; my soon after finding out he was cheating on me again, this time with a girl named Cricket who was new to our school; Louie, Cricket, and I for some crazy reason all roasting hot dogs together behind Fairway elementary one particularly surreal night; and some questionable actions with plastic vegetables once in Louie's sister's bunkbed, we finally went our separate ways some time around February or March when I was seventeen. After our final hurrah, I only saw him twice--once when I was with my new boyfriend James and his friends and we went to Denny's and because my life is my life, you know how every Denny's has at least one table with a leaf that can be two tables when it's down but is in one rounded booth? Well, James and his friends and I were seated there in the very same booth as Louie and Cricket, and once about a year later when Glenn and I were at a the same restaurant as he was, and I when I got out of the bathroom, he was at the door waiting to talk to me.

Over the years I've thought about him a lot, less in the more recent ones than in my twenties and the beginning of my thirties, and when Facebook became a thing, of course I looked him up. For years he wasn't there, but one day--October 10, 2014--he was. Well, I thought he was, but there was no picture and he's not the only one with his name, so I sent him a message with one word: Louie? and I never got a response. About six months ago--February 7 to be exact--I decided to look him up again and, lo and behold, there he was, picture and all, the same account I'd sent that message to almost four years before. Now, you know how shy I am, people who read my blog, or at least at this point you should, and when doing uncomfortable things like this involving boys, I'm a character-in-a-movie mess. If it had been any other boy I'd been into in the past, I probably couldn't have done it, but this was Louie for fuck's sake, the person who I'd been so super close to for so long, who I didn't feel intimidated by at all--I mean, by God, it's Louie--so I wrote to him again just basically saying it had been a really long time and it'd be great to catch up.

You know how when you're not friends with someone on Facebook the message goes into a kind of purgatory sometimes that isn't always seen or at least that's how it used to be? Well, that's where my message went. I checked a few times and he hadn't seen it but then one day when I checked, his little profile picture was next to it indicating he had. And he didn't write me back.

Yes, that's right. This motherfucker didn't write me back. Like, we went out for two years and went through some crazy, crazy shit, he's the one who cheated on me, the last time we had any communication--you know, after the time he ambushed me outside a restaurant bathroom--was him calling me, and he didn't write me back? After almost 25 years and a universe of time between anything bad that happened between us, he didn't write me back? I get friend requests from people I went to high school with that I've never even heard of and the guy I averaged having sex with about three times a day for two years didn't write me back?

And he's friends with Cricket?

I'm outraged. Outraged, I tell you! Like, I want to write to him again and be like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you seriously not going to answer me back? But I suppose that might be a little insane, maybe just slightly more than linking this blog to his profile, but then again, maybe not.

And I'm So Scared of Dying Alone That I'll Kill Myself Right Here Right Now

What I don't understand is how people just make friends. I'm here at the AP reading for the third time, having gone in 2015 and 2016, taking 2017 off, and now being here again. I come because it's good money and I like getting away from home, but in all honesty, I can't stand it at all. The work part is fine, but the nights...

All the people here either know each other from coming for years or are super friendly like my first roommate who had a crowd of her very own like the night after she got here. That first time wasn't so bad since we got along really well and did stuff together (and I totally mean that in more ways than one) plus my oldest friend Danielle drove over to Kansas City from St. Louis and stayed for a few nights, but last time and this time...talk about the pits. Everyone hangs out, going down to social hour and having drinks and eating food, like there are swarms of people milling about, while I sit in my room or wander the city alone looking for solo things to do.

(Full disclosure: My roommate is a super nice woman who I've roomed with before and she invited me down for drinks tonight and a guy (a really cute one!) who I met during lunch today, who told me to flag him down if I saw him again, was standing outside of my hotel today when I was coming in, and he said hi to me (by name. Who remembers somebody's name?), and I know if I wanted to stop and talk to him I totally could have had something to do, but just the thought of stopping and talking to someone I don't know makes me feel slightly sick.)

It's not that I don't want friends; I just don't know how to make them (see full disclosure above). You guys already know how awkward I am, and I'm also super shy. Well, initially I am. When I first started working at Miramar High seventeen years ago, I used to sit by myself for lunch in planning. One of the teachers in my department, Patty, kept inviting me to sit on the other side of the desks with everyone else, and too uncomfortable to say yes, I kept saying no and eating alone until one day she brought everyone to me. She brought her food and whatever coworkers were there at the time, I don't remember who--Anne? Emily?--every day until it just became the norm, and we became super good friends and are still friends today. If it had been left up to me, I have no doubt at all that we probably never would have been anything more than neighbors in the 150 corridor, not because I didn't want to be her friend but because I have an almost crippling fear of approaching people I don't know which pretty much means that unless some people at one of the readings takes an interest in me the way that Patty did, every June from now until who knows when, I'll be spending a week almost entirely alone which is probably good practice for the rest of my life now that I think about it so maybe I should just be grateful for the drill.

Last Year I Was a Train Wreck, Now I'm Just a Mess? (Nope. Still a Train Wreck)

I was texting with this guy yesterday who I met a couple years ago once and have text back and forth with very off and on ever since. I don't remember exactly what I said, but he text back, I wish I could see inside your brain, which was really funny because I had been thinking all day yesterday, maybe not in those words, that pretty much everybody can.

One of the things I wrote in yesterday's post when offering up texts that BTJ could have sent me when I asked if he wanted any pancakes was something about reading my blog and knowing I'm insane. I wrote that in jest, but is it not true? I mean, I have no idea if he read it or not, but the address used to be on my Instagram, so he could have. I do know for sure that you all read my blog, hundreds of you, and that I'm not much for pretend. If I think it, you know. If I did it, I tell. People who read my blog, after reading my nightly posts on top of my regular posts, do you really feel like you don't see inside my head? I feel like a science or psychology or sociology experiment, a fly wriggling on the wall, completely unguarded and open, a train wreck or car crash that's such a mess, people can't help but stare.

After I wrote that yesterday and was thinking about the spectacle that is my life, I thought about it in the context of relationships. Not even romantically speaking, my openness has always been an issue--my mom and I didn't talk for months and months over an essay I published that she stumbled across online and my dad didn't talk to me for more than a year over it; my ex-Glenn and I definitely had words about things I would write (I guess that's sort of in a romantic context, but after being married to someone for so many years, it seems more familial than romantic); Griffin told me he always has to worry about what I'm going to write in my blog; Keifer told me I have a real problem keeping private things private; and none of them are wrong.

So now let's look at my blogging--not just my openness and willingness to put anything and everything out there, but the craziness and anxiety and awkwardness and neurosis it exposes--through a relationship lens. Who in their right mind would want a relationship with this? I mean, I would--I find all of these things fascinating and endearing and who the fuck wants an uncomplicated, garden-variety significant other?--but I'm not in my right mind! (I will say, though, at least with me there's no surprise. Plenty of people are way crazier than I am, they just act like they're not.) And so I ask myself: Is the writing worth it? If it hurts my relationships, romantic and not, should I just stop?

The majority of you, I'm sure, are like, Kel, fucking duh, but I don't know that I can want to. Like, this is my thing. Just like some people have to make music and some people have to paint and some people have to draw, I have to write, and, yes, I have to write about me, and, yes, I have to write these totally uncomfortable, awkward, obnoxious things (we're an obnoxious people, we Weinstein descendants.  My mom used to chase people down the street with a ketchup-covered maxi pad pretending it was blood). I think if a condition of my being in a "happy" relationship is that I have to keep all this me inside, I wouldn't be happy at all. I'm not saying I'm happy now, but at least nobody who's supposed to be making me happy is holding me back.

Except, maybe--
myself.