Caught Off Guard

This blog is written with great anticipation and a bit of anxiety. I've already written several drafts of this entry over the last few weeks and have finally decided that I had to post something regarding my feelings as of late. Alright, enough with the forewarning. You're going to be saying, "Oh, is that it?" once you read it, I know you will.

I've been seeing someone.

There. I wrote it. Now the entire world knows. Anyway, this person reads this blog and I was nervous about posting anything because this blog is a reflection of my feelings and I was afraid he'd know too much about me after reading it.

Just how valuable is mystery anyway? In the dating gameshows, what would score the most points: Mystery or Transparency? Well mystery has never worked for me in the past, if I'm trying to be mysterious with a boyfriend I end up walking around disheartened and complaining about how he doesn't know me. Go fig? Another reason pretending to be mysterious doesn't work for me is because I talk way too much to do it very well. My life is an open book and once you get me started I'll read you a whole chapter out of it. So, at least for me, trying to appear coy is moot.

The funny thing is, I didn't even know this person was interested in me to begin with. A movie and dinner, dancing and ice cream, evenings full of stimulating conversation, we were developing a great friendship... or more? I wasn't exactly sure so I sought my sister's opinion.

"Alright, Nikki, so I'm seeing this guy... at least I think so. I'm not exactly sure. You tell me if we're just friends, ok?"

"Okay," I could hear Nicole entering older-and-wiser-sister mode.

"So we hang out pretty often-"

"Doing what?" she asked.

"Like we went to a movie then for a walk and dinner, we went for ice-cream and then dancing, he came over for tea... I dunno, we just hang out. He's really smart, I feel like we could talk about anything..."

"Alright. Has he kissed you or made any moves?" The obvious question.

"Well... no."

"And you've been hanging out for, what, three weeks? A month?"

"Yeah," it wasn't looking good.

"Just friends, Porsch. It's no different from what you have with your guy-friends."

Alright then. But I had already started writing journal entries examining my feelings toward him and I had even mentioned his name to one of my best friends at home. I was developing feelings, which may sound simple but has been anything but since my last relationship, which I recently vowed to myself to stop discussing. For a little while, I would meet someone who sparked an interest and then, for the smallest reason (like his shoe was untied or his laugh was weird), I would lose all traces of emotion for that person. There would be no curiosity, no "I wanna get to know you better", nothing.

Because I was convinced he and I were just friends, I poured out all of my feelings and regrets regarding my ex-boyfriends and, er... fiancés, (yeah, plural. I'm starting a ring collection), he told me about his dating history, we shared stories of our childhoods, we exchanged opinions on controversial topics, we spoke so freely I began wishing he'd start to pursue me as something more.

Then, as he was saying goodnight after a wonderful evening of dinner and dialogue, he gently cupped my face between his hands, leaned in, and kissed me. I would have been shocked if it weren't for the strangely familiar feeling that we'd been kissing since we'd met. It felt so comfortable to kiss his gorgeous mouth that I almost didn't realise he'd kissed me at all. It seemed perfectly natural that the person with whom I'd shared so many thoughts and stories should share breath as well, that those same mouths engaged in conversation should press against one another as a sealing of a sentence or end of a paragraph. We continued to kiss, learning the sensations of each other's lips and tongues, it was... well, it was fantastic.

Goodness, my face just grew hot while typing that last sentence. Is this too much? Is he going to read this and say, "Woah there, Porsch! I didn't know you were feeling me like that!" Well then so be it. I'm not deleting a single line. Blogging takes courage, damnit, and I've got plenty to spare. Alright, let's get back to it.

After he left, I began to wonder why I hadn't noticed his interest in me from our first date. Hello! A movie and then dinner, ice cream and then dancing, the thoughtful text messages throughout the week, am I blind? Then I realised with some dismay that I am not accustomed to romance. The respect, the patience, the attentive and thoughtfulness that I (along with every other woman) desire was almost lost on me because a girl can't recognise something she's never seen before. The way he laces his fingers between mine and kisses the back of my hand, the way he asks me things I thought only mattered to me like "how was work today?" or "what did you have for dinner?" and the way he waited to get to know me before kissing me; I'm really impressed.

So... yeah, now you know how I feel. So much for mystery, eh?

trying to get over

My ability to hold a grudge needs a Guiness world record award, and if I wasn't so ashamed of it, I'd nominate myself. My ex and I have been broken up since May and I still can't seem to get past all the crap I went through for the sake of the damned relationship. I'm bitter and I'm twenty-three, isn't that a bit young?

I feel like I'm suffering from a mental disorder. At any given moment, I silently rehash all of the details that make up the catastrophe of my last relationship. I think about how dumb I was for taking him back after he accused me of cheating and threw all of my belongings out on the apartment staircase. I think about the $1500 I loaned him to go on a surfing excursion only to find that he'd met someone else while on that "all expenses paid" vacation and I very nearly burn with fury.

I kept his passport till I got back every red cent that he owed me and I try my best to never see him (although he works exactly 30 paces from my job), so it seems that everything should be cut off and this person should never enter my mind.
While rearranging my furniture last night, I realised I was missing two pieces of luggage. I remembered that even while I was kicking him out I was being unneccesarily generous and loaned him a couple of suitcases to carry some of his belongings.

I sent him an email asking if he had them (which I knew he did). He wrote back saying he had the luggage and that I could pick them up from his job at the restaurant tomorrow.

My first feeling upon reading his reply was dread. I was almost resigned to forget the suitcases and just buy a new set before leaving Australia. The suitcases, however, were a thoughtful Christmas present from my Mama and she'd be upset to discover I'd lost them to an ex boyfriend. Alright then. I'll go pick them up. I suddenly wished I had a really sexy new boyfriend (or just guy I knew who could pose as my really sexy new boyfriend) to accompany me. He could hold my hand and we'd laugh while telling my ex that we needed my suitcases because we were leaving next week for a month-long shopping spree in Dubai.

And my ex would stand there, slack-faced and covered in flour and pizza dough.

While typing this, I am actually considering hanging around the city tomorrow and finding a really sexy guy to drag along and fulfil this fantasy, not so much the "Dubai shopping spree" part as the "standing in front of my ex, looking like one-half of the sexiest couple alive" part. I wouldn't even have to know the sexy guy's name, I just need him to stand there looking hot. Why is The Gap Band's Early in the Morning playing in my head?

With or without a sexy guy on my arm, I will be looking completely and utterly fabulous tomorrow. I don't have any idea of what I'm going to wear but the outfit will be of the "damn, Baby!" persuasion. Part of me, however, wants to not even care. Part of me wants to show up in jeans and a hoodie with my hair pulled back, looking like I just stepped out of Fresno, California. I mean, shouldn't I be over the whole "look at me and wish you still had this" thing? I'm a grown-up, didn't I just say so in my last blog entry? But there is no way in hell or high heaven that I'll walk into that restaurant looking like I don't care enough, especially when the truth is, I do care. To be honest, the yearning for him to realise how absolutely beautiful and "too-good-for-him" I am will only be satisfied when he admits he made a mistake and apologises. I think that might really be all I want from him.

This is a bit random but did you ever watch Ricki Lake or Jenny Jones? Well, Jenny and Ricki would always have "Look at me now!" shows where people would anonymously drag other people that they haven't seen in years on to the show just so they could gloat about their weight loss or their sex change. Check the clip:


That whole episode would annoy me. It would always piss me off when the people brought on that show would act like they didn't care or like the person who brought them on the show didn't change for the better, especially when that person is only looking for an acknowledgment for their hard work. Then it would make me mad because the person who was saying "look at me now!" needed to get over it. I mean, yeah the dude bullied you in high school and said mean things about your mama, but you're thirty-five now, Sugar. Move on, already. Is that kind of what I'm doing by going out of my way to look fabulous tomorrow? Am I doing a "look at me now!"? I think I need to take my own advice and move on, already.

This blog's content is directly linked to this MySpace blog entry.

Like a Grown-Up

The ages between twelve and seventeen are what I endearingly call "the ugly years" and mine seemed to last forever. Plagued with acne, braces, glasses, an incorrigibly shiny forehead and a flat chest (I was a late bloomer but packed my undershirt with 2-ply to compensate), the goal of my existence was to pretend that I didn't care. Everything in my "ugly years" was striving toward non-chalance.

It was exactly two years ago that I looked in a mirror and had a revelation of sorts. I was putting the finishing touches on my makeup and preparing for church that Sunday morn when I stepped back from the mirror to examine myself in full. Just then, something (perhaps the expression on my face or the outfit I was wearing) made me gasp and feel spurred to tell my reflection, "I am a grown up." If the world were separated into "Adults" and "Children", I would be on the "Adults" side. I'm not the lanky, greasy-faced twelve to seventeen-year-old anymore; I have breasts (their size does not denounce their presence), a figure, and functional ovaries. I realised that my reasoning had also matured. I'd learned the art of compromise and knowing when to lead and when to follow, I was not any younger than my age said I was.

I grabbed my cell phone and called my mom in California.

"Mom! I just looked in the mirror and I'm really grown up. I look old," I told her.

She laughed, "Miss P., you can't look all that old."

"No, Mom, I seriously look older. I dunno what it is. It's weird. I'm a twenty-something and I look like it," I assured her.

She laughed more. Honestly, I don't know how she deals with me. She is lovely.

I went to church that morning very conscious of my womanhood and the power it carries. Since that day I have embraced each new age in fullness. Growing old doesn't bother me and I'm actually looking forward to the phenomena of grey hair and laugh lines, maybe I'm a rare breed.

Mrs. Maya Angelou said that "if someone shows you who they are, believe them." One of my exes, let's call him Peter Pan, was obsessed with the idea of never growing old. In fact, it was his childish and whimsical nature that attracted me to him in the first place. Mr. Pan would tell me in various ways that he was still a child in need of being taken care of, the thing is he was nine years older than me. He agonised every morning over each hair left in the comb and, for a while, refused to comb his hair at all claiming that he was just "a little jungle boy" when I complained about his wild appearance. I don't know why I didn't take his juvenile antics more seriously.

My guess is that some time before I'd met him he'd had the same revelation I did. One fateful day, he looked in the mirror and saw his face and chest, his broad shoulders and thatch of underarm hair, and felt a shock similar to mine: the sense of surprise that presents itself when changes that occur gradually are finally realised. His experience, however, was different from mine in a very distinctive way. Instead of embracing this evidence of maturity, Mr. Pan rejected it, deciding that emotionally (and in some ways, mentally), he would remain a child and revel in "the ugly years" of non-chalance while his body continued to age independent of his will.

Needless to say, we broke up. Tired of the almost Oedipal structure of our relationship where I was both girlfriend and caretaker, I had to end it. At the time there seemed to be a lot of reasons behind our breakup, I remember spouting them off to my friends, my family, and myself: "Well, he's not very smart. He drinks too much. He has a toxic and addictive personality. He doesn't take things seriously and we can't have an actual conversation without me having to direct his attention away from my chest. He hasn't read a book in I-don't-know-how-long. He doesn't have any long-term, achievable goals. He throws fits when he doesn't get his way... blah blah blah..." The real cause of it is obvious to me now. Back when Mr. Pan was standing in front of that mirror, gazing at the face and body that seemed to reach its age overnight, he made a powerful, unconscious decision that would affect all of his decisions following that moment: he decided to never grow up.

There are times when I look back on certain relationships I've had and give a sigh of relief that goes something like, "Whew! I'm glad I made it through that one!" I chalk them up as experience and add the negative qualities to my "Things I Will Not Tolerate From the Opposite Sex" list, and I grow. I wonder what Mr. Pan does with his past-relationship remnants?

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I stopped those childish ways.
1 Corinthians 13:11

Dibbs

Joe was upset. After spending a few flirtatious hours with Ash, there he was making out with a mutual friend. Ash is a recently single sexpot out on the pussy prowl. Dirty? I know, but there's no nice way to put it. He's been one-half of a couple for two-and-a-half years and wants to satisfy some cravings, which is exactly why I was turned off. Happy to be free from emotional (albeit fleeting) or physical ties to Ash, I took the opportunity to observe.

There was a competition ensuing and Ash wasn't making any decisions. Everyone is employed at the same restaurant, everyone wanted sex and everyone would wake up the next morning with a hell of a headache. The only real difference between Joe and the other girl was that Joe had dibbs. She's known Ash the longest, has the most affinity with him and, while we were at the bar and he was ordering their Jaeger Bombs, confided in me that she "liked” him. That was her "calling it"; she had dibbs.

On a side note, is this entry merely making light of something very serious such as sex and relationships? Maybe. Sex is serious (it's repercussions very serious) but I argue that the One-Night-Stand has become cliché and comical. While I was on the dance floor tonight I began to think on it. I wondered what it would be like if I took someone home, some random stranger who bought me a drink and kissed my neck. I imagined us in the throes of passion interrupted by me saying, "Hey, I have to be at work tomorrow at noon so it'd be great if you left as soon as we're done here. Let's call the taxi now, they should be here in time" because the rest of the night is just sleep. There's no watching the sun rise and talking about your life and your feelings, no one cares enough. The lack of emotion explains my using such a juvenile term.

What affected Joe most was the distinctive sense of deja vu. It was only a few weeks prior to this night that this other girl had slept with a guy Joe had expressed feelings for. What? Did this girl not understand the rules? Australia is one of the only countries in the world where the scales are tipped ever so slightly as to provide a population with .01 percent more men than women. With those odds, surely this girl could find someone else to satisfy her. Clearly the answer here is to keep the personal and work lives separate, though no one abides by it. In fact, in the Test of Life, this may be the answer most missed.

So what, then? I'm not sure. I was happy to leave them all early although now I'm almost kicking myself for not staying around and taking notes for this blog. Make up your own ending, Sweetums. It's 2:58 AM and it's time to press "publish post". Goodnight!

"Hey, I just finished my blog, thanks for waiting. Did you call that taxi yet? Wait, what's your name again?"