To Each Their Own

I hate closing on Thursday nights, mostly because of the difficulty in arranging a ride home at midnight when the doors close. I hadn't spoken to the ex in probably a little over a month, which I really had no problem with. The relatively quiet beginning to summer suddenly saw a spike in memorable evenings in July and, well, new job and all, things were looking a bit nicer these days.

But when the ex first chirped up last week with one of the usual, familiar rehearsed texts about missing me and then another came in Tuesday or Wednesday, I took the opportunity to respond by asking if she would like to give me a ride home on Thursday night.

Would she?! ... Could she?!

The ride back to my house involved much of me catching her up to speed: my quitting the chain restaurant, my starting at a country club closer to home and my recent trip to Atlanta—a subject that I quickly grew uncomfortable with, seeing how:

• a) she expressed disappointment that I "went without her"
• b) I never really intended to bring her in the first place when we were dating (I talked of a "summer road trip" with the boys)
• c) and certainly looking back now on how things did turn out, the idea that I would even remotely reconsider changing them or regret anything (READ: NO)
  

Luckily, that topic died down before any real sordid details could be withdrawn from me and when we did arrive at my house, it only seemed natural that she would come inside.

When first looking at my room—a place she obviously hadn't seen in more than a month—she marveled at how clean it was. And indeed, my bedroom is admittedly pretty pristine compared to when we were dating. Actually, I'd be willing to say that right now after countless hours of organizing and general cleaning, the place looks the cleanest it's been since I moved in.

I thought maybe that alone would be an indication that things were truly different now, but I mistakenly assumed this would go much smoother.

Fast-forward to the morning when the ex catches a glimpse of something else that's changed. I remember at one time here on BMC where I was going to start a glossary for my nicknames I had for exes of mine. But I ultimately scrapped the idea, mentioning somewhere in there how I wanted to begin referring to any future girlfriend as the "groundskeeper," seeing as one of the more fascinating and telling things about ladies is their requests concerning body hair maintenance. (The only thing that comes to mind is this.)

And I guess the ex didn't like what the most recent possible replacement groundskeeper had asked for. Or she was pissed that there was another groundskeeper at all. And then she proceeded to spend the entire morning trying to make me feel bad about it.

I reminded her that we broke up some three months ago now. The phrase I uttered more often than any other this morning had to be, "I think you're just telling me what I want to hear."

I got to saying that a lot since most of what she believes is an appeal to my emotions comes across rather as rehearsed and repetitious.

If you were to take her at her word, then my ex has had some incredibly bad luck—and we're talking about a lot of phone calls she never got, text messages she never received and just about every other sort of totally random explanation for one letdown after another in our relationship.

Or if you have a slightly more cynical nature and have some pretty good reason to believe that you're not getting the whole story in a lot of these cases, then my ex is pretty clearly a pathological liar.

To this day, I've been told that the first text message I "shouldn't have seen" was just a joke and that the other one, I guess, didn't really exist. Or something like that. (She never bothered with an explanation, insisting instead that she never sent anything like that ... since meeting me.)

It might sound kind of silly, I guess, to still be holding the rather damning contents of a couple text messages against your former lover, but when it appears you're not the only one who's being talked dirty to, what feelings of exclusiveness in a relationship are you supposed to still pretend you feel? I could only conclude I couldn't.

And so that's why I bailed on the second-longest relationship of my life—which just goes to show you how meaningless the lengths of relationships are too. (I'm almost always the dumpee rather than the dumper, so it's kind of odd that both of my longest relationships were the only two [real relationships] I can recall that ended when I pulled the plug.)

I couldn't ever see myself realistically trusting this woman again, and I mean really believing her like I know I ought to be and like I know I have in much happier relationships in the past. I know something like that is probably out there, so it's stupid to convincing myself that I should settle for less.

But just as I get overly self-righteous about how wronged I was, there's the ugly truth about a wee little bit of responsibility that I have to accept: I was wrong for going into her phone to find those text messages.

When explaining to that most recent possible groundskeeper about why the ex became an ex, she was more than a little put off by my admitting I acted so paranoid.

And while I want to vehemently argue that I've never done this before and her lying caused me to do this and I only did it twice—but look what I found!—I know full well that this in some way speaks volumes about my insecurity. I used to say "I'd never do that!" when girls spoke of the boyfriends they had breaking into their journals, and now here I was, basically showing the same disdain for one's privacy.

And while I cannot undo what has already been done or unsee what has already been seen, all I can do is move on and promise to never do it again.

That, and shave accordingly.

These bitches are crazy

My buddy at work, B. Doggy, made a rather strange bet, in my mind. A few weeks back, he and another friend agreed to see who could go longer without masturbating—or having an orgasm at all, I guess. I wasn't real clear on what the rules were for the bet, let alone the point. "Why would you want to do that to yourself?" I asked, citing the fact that cleaning your pipes is supposed to reduce your risk for prostate cancer.

I've been seeing the same girl for a little over eight months now, although the latter four have been far more rocky than the first four. Because she works in retail, the holidays were a nightmare for us being able to spend time with one another. That was understandable ... sort of.

I was promised that a number of things were going to change with the new year, but so far, things have gotten increasingly worse. She's been living under a somewhat bullshit "curfew" imposed by the brother she lives with for the time being—well, when she's not staying with her sister ... or other brother? If that sounds confusing, imagine how it sounds to me. Because ever since she moved out of her apartment at the end of August, I've listened to the same promise about her moving out "soon," or her being able to spend the night "soon." And after four months of this, when is it fair to finally say that I'm being strung along on a seemingly endless series of promises for a return to the days we had like this past summer when we were spending nearly every waking moment together?

And with her canceling so many of the plans we make because of work or whatever reason, my natural sense of skepticism can't help but believe I'm being bullshitted.

I'm normally a pretty good guy about adhering to the commitment of a relationship, but I can't really say I feel that she's holding her end of the bargain. My pessimism is helped none by the fact that I'm the guy coming after her nearly 10-year relationship ended. The fellow she had been dating is someone she still talks to (which is understandable) and also participates in the volleyball league at her church that again deprives me of time spent with her.

When she left early a few weeks back to go running to an open gym volleyball night after exchanging texts with her ex, I was livid. I went out the following night to one of the local bars with K, a friend that had worked with me at the chain restaurant I'm currently at. She now works at the country club I had been working at a year ago. Many of my old co-workers came out as well.

Things went fine and it was a relatively uneventful evening until K and another former co-worker, L, dropped me off at home that evening. As I was getting out of the back seat, L unfastened her seat belt and said, "I wanna' get out and kiss you!"

I thought she was kidding, and gave K the usual hug and thanks for the ride. But then L came over to me, we embraced, and indeed, she began kissing me. I didn't exactly fight her off, but with my supposed "girlfriend" firmly on my shit list after blowing me off for her ex, I was feeling pretty justified.

The following day, I dismissed the whole thing as comical. The way in which L kissed was almost entirely all tongue, and it was right in front of K, so there was hardly anything intimate about it.

I would've told my girl about it, but seeing as we see each other roughly once a week and rarely get to speak on the phone outside of text messaging, the opportunity never really presented itself. Instead, when my lady promised to come over Friday night after she finished work, she once again had to back out, saying something about the CEO of the company coming to visit in two weeks. It sounded like another bullshit excuse and when she promised to make it up to me on Sunday—a day in which she had already said she might be refereeing a youth volleyball tournament—I immediately said I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Considering L is married, I did feel a bit of personal guilt, which was made even more awkward this past Saturday evening. After getting off work, K again came by to pick me up and take me out to the same bar. We went upstairs to the dancing area of the establishment, where I stood against the wall and scoped out all the girls I would make a move on if I were really so inclined to try and make a pass at anybody. But soon enough, L approached me with her hair very wet and glistening in sweat. She danced in front of me, rubbing up against me as I stood there not really compelled to move at all by the techno thumping in the background.

I let L mingle back to the dance floor with another girl before a larger gentleman made his way over towards us, grabbing L and kissing her on the dance floor.

The man was later introduced to me as L's husband.

Fantastic. The music was much too loud for me to fully catch what K and L were trying to say into my ear, so I often shrugged my shoulders and refused to go out on the dance floor. When L's husband introduced himself to me and himself asked that I dance with his wife, I found myself in an even more awkward spot. Luckily, the music stopped and the bar was closed.

At home later that night, still not having heard from my own supposed "girlfriend," L began lighting up my cell phone with texts. She apologized that her husband showed up and said how she didn't know he would be there. I said it wasn't really a big deal, since I knew she was married.

And that's when she responded with:

I kno but he agreed 2 hav an open relationship and i wanted 2 fuck u

Hmm ...

Naturally, I began to ignore the rest of the texts that came in that evening. I blamed it on me having to go to bed so I could be up early on Sunday morning (which was true). Supposedly, my "girlfriend" was planning on coming over that day.

Of course, I never heard from her before I left for work on Sunday afternoon. So I was still privately fuming by the time my phone vibrated with this message:

Sorry... About this weekend. I will call you tomorrow and let you know what's going on?

Mostly because I felt like being difficult, I responded quite simply:

Don't bother.

A few minutes later, she replied:

That's up to you. You want it done and don't want to hear what happened than that's up to you. Nice to know that you stopped loving me.

The last sentence struck me as a tad melodramatic, something said only to start a fight. So I ignored it and refused to get into it while I was at work.

Less than a half-hour later, I felt the phone vibrate again and figured the lady wanted to keep trying to instigate something. I looked at my phone:

I Love u b/c of who u r. A person who means the world to me. If i dont get this back i understand. Send this to ppl u DONT regret meeting..

The only thing was, that text had come from L.

I groaned and shook my head, debating whether to turn my phone off entirely. Of course, I didn't, and so a few hours later, when I still hadn't responded to her pitying text earlier, the lady was at it again:

It's okay... I knew you never loved me.

How rich.

I was growing increasingly certain that this little eight-month whatever-the-fuck-you-call-it was truly near its end. K came by work to pick me up so we could head out with my co-workers this time, the ones she used to work with.

I was ready to put the whole episode behind me for the night when the phone began buzzing again at the bar. I figured it was much too late for my lady to be texting me, unless I had really upset her. Of course, it wasn't my lady but L again. I kept my only reply brief, saying I was out with K at a bar in Elgin. But L kept the texts coming, finally sending me one that I couldn't quite decide was either scary or a sad attempt at humor:

Hey,don't ignore me i might go all fatal attraction ur ass! Lol! :-*

What I think L would be most upset by is that I have no intention of sleeping with her. I don't care if she's got an open marriage or not; she's still married, and that's just not my cup of tea. Besides, if my bitterness toward my on-again/off-again lady is going to result in me hopping into bed with anybody, it wasn't going to be K or L; it was going to be their friend H.

But I never got H's number. Right now, I'm actually starting to wonder how well B. Doggy's bet is treating him. Maybe a month away from this shit could do me some good.

I changed my mind

My uncle had asked when I was going to get an Obama sign for our front yard and I used the usual excuses as to why I didn't put one up. Namely, I said I didn't even know where to get one.

Naturally, my uncle drove me over to the Kane County Democrats' office near his home, I grabbed the popular Obama sign as well as one for Bill Foster, and immediately texted the girl with the news. As a McCain fan, her response was not too enthusiastic:

Whatever i guess you dont want any sex anytime soon

She pulled the signs out of the ground when she came over yesterday, but I didn't really try to prevent her either, seeing as I knew I was correct to call her bluff on the threat of withholding sex.

Besides, shortly after I watched her car pull away, I lit up a cigarette and stuck the signs back into the lawn, side by side once again.