Move In

My wrist says OUTLAW POWER. Last night I drank two gin and tonics after a margarita and danced on a pole. I know he loves me. I never have to worry about that, and yet...a move like this, so quickly, after only three months -- WHAT IF I feel like I'm making myself so vulnerable, opening myself up to pain and I've had that. I'm no a real orphan, starving or anything like that, but I've had a life.

Do I trust this man not to hurt me? It says so much, how he treats his exes...he's sweet and wonderful and NICE, and everyone knows it. What if he leaves me? It's been eight months since Ethan and twenty-five since my dad, and this is a choice for me to make. He's in this. He makes bad jokes, but he loves me, crazy and all. I have to decide if I trust him enough to make this situation, this absurd set of circumstances, official. I know I love him because it would hurt so badly if he were gone. Although, is that how one defines love? He makes me happy, and I don't get tired of him. I can't imagine I ever would, but I fear that he will me. It's absurd. I want this. Through all three months I've screamed my fear and rushed headlong and sometimes tripped on my own laces and he's always caught me. He's there. He loves me. I don't have anything to fear. Just fall. He'll catch me.

Laundry Day

Am I really into this guy? He makes me nervous, sure, but he doesn't inspire Wannajumpimitis. He's admitted that he's awful at quote-talking-to-girls-endquote. I guess in the back of my mind I wonder if he won't be terrible in bed, or whatever this thing that I can't name or place, will fade as I get to know him better. I could live without him, I guess, although the excitement of the next date has held me in its thrall so far. Am I just using him? It's been a week and I'm worried about fucking things up with him. But I guess I've had such a messy summer that I'm living like I've got nothing to lose -- and I guess we'll see what comes of that. Hot Rod is magnificent, but he's a stranger. I really need to spend some time getting to know him -- and maybe that's the difference between Hot Rod and the other guys I've slept with (although he's not really a member of that group yet): I knew all of them (except Turkic, but we'd been talking daily for a week prior). So maybe my hesitance is natural, and familiarity-based.

Sure we've talked on the phone for now twelve hours, plus eight in each others' presence, but that's admittedly not much. I'd like to kiss him some more, to trace his chest hair and find out his least-favorite body party, so that I can compliment it to death. I want to get him drunk and kiss him everywhere except the mouth. I'd like to play the naughty schoolgirl to his beleaguered teacher. To teach him to dance. I'd like, at some point further down the road, to admit the ten people I've kissed, and the stories behind them.  To talk about the time I maybe cheated on a guy, and my worst break-ups. And how it all happened the summer before I asked him out. I'd like to get his history, collapse in a sweaty mass beside him, and race him to the shower. I want, and I don't know why, but but I really hope he wants too.

Jeez. Is it just that he's a guy, or that he's Hot Rod? Is it more than his goofily white grin and glasses? I feel like  I'm not allowed to talk about sex, that I'll chase him off somehow or make it all about sex even before  we've gotten there -- God I hope I don't fuck this one up, too.

Post-First-Date

I don't know why I find him so adorable. I find him attractive, sexy intelligent, passionate..because he is those things. He's certainly adorable as well, but that seems like something that has much more to do with me. He's not great at making plans and sticking to them, but he's very good  at indicating his interest, if he's kissed thoroughly beforehand. And, y'know, I think I can make that happen.

I wonder how I should feel about his suggestion that I sleep with him after the first date, and knowing each other less than a week. I mean, that's something I've done, obviously, but he has no way of knowing that! I guess I'm trying not to judge without more information. It does seem a little odd for a guy who didn't even kiss me until I made a move, though.

Back to Me

Been listening to my "Beautiful Women" playlist. Yeah, alright, so I'm kindof nuts about themed playlists. A few:

Could've Been Me
Years Later
She's With Someone Else
She Amazes Him
Still Not Over Him
Angry Ex-Girlfriend
Driving Songs
Ich hasse euch! [I hate you all!]
Time to Cry Now
Southern Life's the BestKind
Mah Woman Won't Come Home
Boo Wop

Anyway, this is one that's on repeat at the mo.

She loves her momma's lemonade
Hates the sounds that goodbyes make
She prays one day she'll find someone to need her
She swears that there's no difference between the lies and compliments
It's all the same if everybody leaves her

 Emphasis mine.

She's giving boys what they want
Tries to act so nonchalant
Afraid to see that she's lost her direction
She never stays the same for long
Assuming that she'll get it wrong
Perfect only in her imperfection

Yeah, a lot of that. A fucking lot of that. It's stupid that I keep asking men what they want, desperately hoping the answer's me (as it often is, when I'm straddling him in bed) when I don't know myself. Then again, I'm twenty, and I've got plenty of time. Plenty of time to sleep with two guys at once, to live in a studio apartment and drink Jack Daniel's from the bottle.

If I Die

1. Cremated, not buried. 
2. Memorial service, though, of some sort. I think that'd be nice.
3. Invite everybody who knows me - most of the Stouties, and the roommates, and Soprana & Pink, obvs, since they're my best friends. All of my coworkers, and Arch & his family, if they want, but you can leave out men who've just slept with me but don't really know me. 
4. Lots of food - lots and lots of good food. And liquor, and loud music. Ya'll had better dance. Make a cardboard cutout of me and dance with it. Draw a mustache on me, and laugh. 
5. Get on with your lives, and do good.

Circles

Feel like I've gone all the way around this. Sometime - no, exactly when I received a message that said, "Wanna fuck?" I realised that Finn couldn't possibly want more than what this is. Which I'm half okay with. I'm okay because I know what's wrong with him (immaturity, mostly) and as fun as he is I know I'd be settling. I'm not okay because especially in an empty town like this one becomes in summer I need to surround myself with people who care about me, not just who I care about. That's way too much energy to expend if I'm not reciprocated. So I'm back to the interwebs, carefully stroking my online dating profile back to life and am cautiously hopeful. There's a guy, J, who's 32 and seems to have interests that are tangential to mine, and he's literate and that's lovely. So older, but he's at least done something with that time, and I suppose we'll just have to see. I never would have considered pursuing someone so much older than me, but we'll find out. I guess I'm just not picky about those things. Gotta keep my options open, I guess.

Oh, and I'm attracted to tallish girls with curly dark hair and wide smiles. I'm less surprised by this than I probably should be. I don't think me and a woman would really work long-term, but I can see fevered groping in a closet, and that's something.

Rules

I'm drunk (tipsy, really, and tired) and I miss him, or at least his body next to mine, that warmth and the arm holding me, and I shouldn't want him, 'cos that's against the rules. Mutual horniness, that's what the rules are, and that's it. Some sleepovers, sure, and morning sex, and it's all lovely even if I'm a bit late to work and smell like sex, but missing him? This is hell.

I shouldn't want it, shouldn't want anybody at one-thirty in the morning except me, maybe. This feeling of attachment is dumb, and bad, and probably unhealthy. It only really works if I'm not attached -- and I don't know that this is working. Fuck. I just want him to hold me.

Personal Problems

I online shop at six in the morning because I want to feel that I'm not alone in the world.
I read advice columns a handful at a time because I'm afraid of making bad decisions.
I make bad decisions, and I tell the world, because I feel like I should be shamed.
I'm bad, I'm wrong, and I've fucked up. Rejection is the worst thing because it's a confirmation of my greatest fear - that in the end, I'll the butt of every joke. And I hate the world for being mean. And I want them to love me. And, most of all, only ever admitted at six-in-the-mornings, I want them to understand me.

I'm a writer because I can't accept that they'll never get it.

Dear Me, tomorrow:

You're focused too much on how this man makes you feel, in order to escape the tedium of your life alone. He may be afraid of a relationship, but you're afraid of being alone. You become so defensive because you worry it might be true -- that you're just in it or the warm in bed beside you. This silence frightens you because it means you might actually have to evaluate where this is or isn't going... and you're afraid it's going nowhere, and that no-one will ever love you, once they get to know you. Accept this. Figure it out, and move on. Get a life.

Illness

I am out of it. I keep popping expired nasal decongestants and hoping it will all just fade away. I am. Maybe? Am I? Am I just faking it all? Even so, does that mean I don't exist? WHO AM I? My dad died a year and a half ago, last week. It's weird. I had just turned nineteen. Twenty-odd days. Twenty-three? He sent me flowers just before my birthday, and I took them to my father's bedside. Cut off the nose to spite the face, no. Cut off the nose to stop this DEATHLY STUFFINESS? Perhaps.

On the way to poetry

Things don't echo. The moments in a life don't ripple, like they say. If I close my eyes I can't see some pattern - in-out, in-out, and one day when I wasn't around his chest failed to rise again. That's not how life works, though I can describe it that way to those who don't understand. Life just goes on. Grief is when you realise you've forgotten. The scream into nothingness, and the nothingness is waiting for you, too. I can scream and cry and take my grief and swallow it until the acid eats my gut but then...then I am the nothingness.

Thoughts In Class

Y'know, I need to figure out how I feel about this. Thee parts of a relationship: platonic, romantic, and sexual. We went to dinner and ice cream yesterday and I was very engaged in conversation the whole time, so that's the first. The last is clear - but what about 'romantic'? The emotional bit? Would I be okay with that? Because I know I like him; I get along well with him, but when does that bit come along? Will I be alright without it? Am I still in love with Arch? On the last bit, I don't think so? I spent a lot of time thinking he was the only one, and maybe that's what I was holding onto? But when I know there's something better for me out there - I feel thankful. That I didn't attach myself to him for the next eighty years...

Whatever-the-Fuck

Well, I'm officially (though not FBO, thank god) his whatever-the-fuck, and I really think I like it that way. But is he my ---? I had a frickin' strange dream where I was admitting my feelings to a panel of female judges, and I half-awoke and thought I'd said something "incriminating", such as "I'm thinking of being back with..." so I told him, "I'm really glad I'm not with asshole," which I realise now was exactly the wrong thing to say. Or at least it would have been, if I'd been on the receiving end. Anyway, so we're going to cool it off a bit, unrelated to me being an idiot, and I'm going to try to sort myself out. The thing is? I really like this guy. And yes, I made breakfast again. He really seemed to enjoy it, and was rather excited at the prospect of French Toast. I'll need to check recipes to make sure I can make it without any significant fuck-ups. Mkay. Seems clear enough. Whooooo.

By the way, he has no objection to the word "girlfriend," if I don't. And I probably don't, but maybe I don't know.