it is what it is...

he's your typical "good-on-paper" guy.

we dated earlier this year. for one reason and another (and another...), it did not work out. and now we're friends.

we see each other fairly often. we engaged in some flirtatious behavior* at a mutual friend's birthday party last month. (*albeit after a few cheap beers.) we talk occasionally and we've both agreed to leave the door open on "us." we both agree that while right now might not be the right time, perhaps a right time will come someday.

my mom adores him. my sister wonders why we aren't together. and i know why we aren't.

but yesterday- he did a very nice favor for me, even though it was a weird request on my part. went completely out of his way to do it and then stopped and chatted for awhile at my place after.

and when he left- i smiled. i really enjoy his company and his friendship. and i'm really happy i'm letting myself let this friendship grow. no pressure, no deadlines, no manic thoughts of babies or weddings... it just is what it is.

and so i'll just continue what i'm doing. dating the guy i'm dating (more on that later), attending mr. good-on-paper's thanksgiving party this coming weekend and enjoying life... without manic thoughts of babies or weddings.

it's a nice way to live.

the match diaries- entry #1.

yes, i bit the bullet, jumped off the cliff, whatever euphemism you want to use. i joined that one dating site.

three days, 58 "winks," 8 emails and 3 real possibilities later, here i am. here i go? i have yet to set a date, but thought i should start this little "diary" as a way to chronicle my "adventures in match dating."

the first three days have been interesting, to say the least. i've had to wade through a lot of profiles (neither "hoping4luv2000" or "uandigoodthing" got a wink back from me), but i have found three men that i am in the process of emailing with. i figure i'll take it slow, get to know them a little bit online before biting the next bullet and meeting in person.

however, before any match dates happen, another date is taking place wednesday night, with someone i've met in real live person. if it turns out to be something, i'll tell more; if not, i'll just let this one fade into oblivion with all the rest.

here's to happy dating...

melodramatic musings.

yet another disappointing breakup under my belt and i'm right where i've been a thousand times before- just me, my cat and a whole lot of thoughts.

i had a conversation with my mother the other day about this most recent breakup. she was disappointed as i'd painted a picture of this one being a "nice guy," which, for her, is the only trait a man need possess to be with me.

and he is a nice guy. there are some things about him (more than this blog lets on) that don't quite work with my personality, but no one would ever deny he's one of the nice guys.

and i've dated nice guys. i've dated not-so-nice guys. i've dated in-between guys and i've even dated four gay guys.

however, just as i told my mother- i'm 26. i don't want to settle for a "nice guy" that isn't it for me if i'm meant to find MY guy at 29. or 32. or 45.

still. optimism ever-present, the process never fails to be a little disheartening.

The Red Flags.

we've been dating for about two months now. it's high time some red flags were thrown in this cyncial girl's face.

he called me tiger the other night. not tiger as in "you sexy siren," but tiger as in, "way to go on that home run, tiger!" my friend phil thought it was "cute...but he clearly doesn't want to have sex with you."

last night, he left me a voicemail. and called me "cracker jack." just when i thought it couldn't get any worse than "tiger."* friend josh said, "that is a weird one, actually. but, again, if a guy called me that i'd think it was really fucking cute. but you're a girl, and girls don't like to be called weird things."

i'm nitpicking. i know. he's got a lot of wonderful qualities to him, but the bigredflag is that he's so very inexperienced, which results in waning chemistry for me. (which is ironic, considering he's a chemist...)

don't get me wrong, i'm not letting him go just yet. and i wouldn't consider letting him go for just a couple of dorky little terms of endearment. these are just precursors to slightly bigger issues of inexperience... which i'll plead the fifth on, thank you very much.

*i called him back and was maybe just a little short with him. (a combination, of tiredness and the cracker jack factor.) five minutes after we hung up, his facebook status read that he is "showing his soon to be married good buddy the pearls of happiness that reside with bachelorhood, not the wife's chains, in SIN CITY where the fun, sun, drinks and ladies never end." a dig at me, perhaps? hmph. have fun in vegas, my friend.

a week in mobile pictures, vol. II

twins game, stellar view, a few beers and a cute guy by my side= a VERY sunday funday.

where i landed myself after a severe sore throat and lots of hits on webmd.com.

mom's 50th birthday dinner at trattoria da vinci. fabulous food and company and lots of great prom-dress watching. (is it just me getting old or are prom dresses getting sluttier and sluttier?)

scary movie night at home. my roommate's mother calls and THIS is the frame she decides to pause the movie on so she can talk. i'm utterly shocked i didn't have nightmares about IT.

here we go again....

he's so unexpected.

a couple of weeks ago, i found us actually flirting with each other as we made dinner for our friends. it was oscar night; my roommate and i decided on a mexican theme for the occasion. so while bob marley played in the background and she blended our margaritas, he and i stood side-by-side over the stove, smiling and laughing with one another.

he secured his place next to me during dinner and throughout the oscar broadcast. a couple of times, i felt his hand on the small of my back. we shared a few private smiles and when it was all over, i hugged him at the door and thanked him for a great evening.

what's so unexpected about this all is that i'm actually beginning to have feelings for him. for HIM, the quiet friend of my ex-whatever.

even though he's always along on outings with our mutual friends, i've never taken much notice of him.... until a friend's valentine's day party last month. my ex-whatever was there along with him... naturally, my ex-whatever had me in tears by the end of the night. he pulled me into a room to comfort me, to tell me i deserve so much better, to assure me that i'm beautiful and i need to move on from his friend, because he's not worth it... and i am.

i'm moving on, all right. i just didn't expect the possibility of moving on with HIM.

the game.

if he doesn't want to see me, then why even ask to see me? am i just some fun girl to drunk text on saturday night? is he too shy to actually follow through on plans?
 
is he just not that into me??
 
i've asked all of these questions before. with the same man nonetheless. (i had a crush on michael four years ago; we lost touch up until a few months ago. since then he's been texting and emailing regularly, and has even made a couple attempts at plans with me-- none of which he's ever followed through on.)
 
but there's a difference between my 22-year-old self asking these questions and my 26-year-old self asking them. before, i would exhaust myself trying to come up with the answers. now, i don't care what the answers are.
 
i. don't. care.
 
the game has been fun. it really has. all of the questions, the unknowns, the "i-wonder-when-he'll-call"s, the great sex followed by three weeks of no contact. wondering which card you're going to be dealt next, hoping to land the right cards and win the game. i've loved it; i've thrived off the drama of it all.
 
but i'm done with it. i want to use my get-out-of-jail-free card, i want to jump off the board, i want to stop the drama and i want to be REAL.
 
the game stops now.

three men and a week.

three men, one week.... two and a half failures.

the gorgeous bahamian artist turned out to be an unemployed 34-year-old with no electricity and a daughter somewhere out in the world. great conversation, delicious eye candy, but as far as stability and commitment? goodbye.

the 23-year-old football player with a killer body and even better kisses turned out to only want me for one thing....which is pretty much the one thing that every other 23-year-old male (and 24, 25, 26 and 27-year-old male) wants out of a woman. beautiful and fun to be around, yes, but i refuse to be yet another notch on someone's widdled down bedpost.

and the goofy grey-haired white guy turned out to be "that guy" at saturday night's party-- planting a few sloppy gross ones on me and then proceeding to get inebriated to the point of vomiting outside the car window on the way home.

(i only give this one a half a failure point, because he is gainfully employed, sans children, he voted for obama, and, let's face it-- i've been there with my head outside the car window a time or two.)

needless to say, i'm not feeling very optimistic these days.

the double standard.*

*disclaimer: i have high hopes that this phase of my life will not turn into a lifestyle.

the past few weeks have turned me into a full-blown man-hater. a constantly-ranting, never-dating-again cynical woman. seriously, i think i may be one bad date away from burning my bra and never shaving my armpits again.

why, you ask? a few experiences have left me completely burned out on the opposite sex.

1. last weekend, several sexually-charged text messages sent to me from a self-described "nice guy" about "just wanting to get to know me better," ranting about the "a**holes of the world who treat women like shi* and ruin it for those of us who want to treat a woman right." uh-huh. and i suppose by treating a woman right you mean implying how badly you want to come home with her after meeting her at the bar and talking with her for 20 minutes, immediately feeling comfortable enough to use the word "hun" in reference to her. (just to clarify, he most certainly did not come home with me.)

2. again last weekend, after running into an old bartender friend, i received several sexually-charged text messages from him. i should mention he happens to have a live-in girlfriend. (i do not appreciate being told my perfume makes someone horny when they've got a girl waiting for them at home, thank you very much.)

3. and finally-- an ex-whatever spending the two months we were "together" alternating between staying over nearly every night and calling nearly every day, to insisting he didn't want a girlfriend, to acting the jealous boyfriend part, to announcing to my roommate and i over breakfast that after two months of daily contact (emotional, mental and physical), he and i were most certainly not dating, to finally having it end when he decided i was simply too frustrating to deal with.

if any of the above instances had been initiated by a girl-- i.e. WE were the ones sending the texts, or spending two bipolar months with a man-- we'd be labeled "crazy," "psycho," or any other number of unflattering nicknames-- and we'd have to "learn from it." but a man is just simply being "himself." no consequences, no lessons, no feeling bad or guilty. just carrying on.

the double standard. it is for this reason that i will spend the foreseeable future loving my life as a man-hater.

scaling the wall.

how do you keep your past from sneaking into your present?

he and i were done so long ago, and yet he's still right in front of me, a wall i can't seem to scale.

i don't think of him every day anymore. when i do think of him, it's either to smile at a rare sweet memory, or to remind myself of how far i've come since i put him in the past.

but when the new man in my life is sitting beside me, so is he. when the new man is telling me how much he likes me, i want to believe it, but he is telling me i don't deserve it, and the new man will only hurt me in the end. he's an ever-present presence, a wall preventing me from letting myself fall.

i want to fall. i want to put the past where it belongs and be in my present. but how to get rid of the ghost?

i only wish it could be so easy as to "just let go." because that's the thing about just letting go– it takes an awful lot of work.

stopped.

do you ever have those moments that, when thinking back on them, stop you in your tracks?

last night, after a particularly meaningful, deep conversation, we were saying our goodbyes. he put his hand on my cheek, looked at me, and leaned in to kiss me goodnight.

today, just the thought of that moment is melting away the 13-page policy brief i have to read and design a press campaign for, it's melting away the argument with a friend, the desire to be outside on this beautiful fall day, the anxiety of starting a new job..... i'm stopped in my tracks.

cheeseball that i am.

update.

date #1 with the rocker tonight....
and reason #368 why i need to be letting these straight men take me out more often.

(ps i love you, josh.)

the hills: minneapolis

last night, during dinner (and before the hills), my roommate and i were discussing the latest drama in our lives. (what can i say, the hills just gets us all hot and bothered for this kind of conversation.) not surprisingly for two single girls such as ourselves, most drama in our lives revolves around men.

case and point:
on saturday night, just as i was blissfully falling asleep after a fabulous night spent uptown, the new potential in my life; a rocker covered in tattoos– edgy, but with an incredibly sweet and engaging personality; texted me. up until that point, our relationship had been completely platonic. but after numerous flirtatious texts between us, it became quite obvious we were stepping it up to the next level. we made tentative plans for sunday night and around 3am, i finally fell asleep, with a huge smile across my face.

enter sunday morning, and work at 9am. after a week spent moving and a weekend spent working early and staying out late, i was ready to crash by 4pm. i sent rocker a brief text explaining my situation (i.e. my needing to be in bed watching E! by 6pm) and asked if i could take a raincheck.

his response?

"i suppose. just let me know what works for you and i will see what i can do."

my gut reaction?

what the hell is with the ice? and why in the world is he acting so cold over a cancellation of tentative plans made over buzzed texts at 2am on saturday?

in other words– why the DRAMA?

which prompted my roommate to make a profound observation.

while in our society, women are made out to be the more dramatic of the sexes, it seems as though we are always dealing with dramatic men in one way or another in our lives. true, we hang out with a lot of gay men, but the majority of this drama comes from the men we are either romantically involved with, or on our way to becoming romantically involved with.

why is this? is it because straight men don't have each other to be dramatic with, therefore they take it out on their poor, unsuspecting romantic counterparts? is it because they think drama is something women are attracted to? or are they just secretly watching episodes of the hills late at night in bed?

either way, i'm not counting him out just yet (i can't help it, a man with half-sleeves and an acoustic guitar just gets to me), but he does get a few brownie points knocked off.

under the disco ball.

last week saw me bravely (and briefly) venture outside the dark, neon-lit world of the gay bar and into "straight-man-land....." a strange place i know nothing about.

a place where the men aren't constantly recounting their last sexual escapades in great detail, a place where i know more about fashion than my male counterparts, a place where men's jeans are bigger than my arm and football is discussed as a a sport, not as a fantasy. (but really, i've got to give the gays a little credit... who doesn't love buff men in tight pants wrestling each other?)

and what i found in this strange place wasn't so scary after all. in fact, after several conversations with a couple of cute, single (and most importantly, straight) men, i wondered to myself why i've spent so many nights under the disco ball dancing by myself amongst a group of men groping one another instead of me. (not that i want a man groping me on the dance floor, but you know what i mean.)

because, at the end of the day, as much as i love my beautiful gay friends, i want a man to dance with me. i want a man to take me home, to meet me at the end of the aisle, to have babies with me and grow old with me.

and preferably, not one who is a total a**hole or a big stoner. not one who sends me vulgar text messages, or one who asks me to take shots with him on our first date (on a tuesday night). definitely not one who has an affair with his (male) roommate behind my back, or confesses to me that he's "tried the bi thing."

and so it continues.... perhaps with just a little less time spent under the disco ball.

deal breakers.

the other night, before my conversation with matt went deep and philosophical, we grazed the surface of things for awhile.

new(ish)ly single, matt had gone on a first date a few nights before. a thirtysomething "glamazon" (his word, not mine) from the suburbs, they met at one of my favorite happy hour places in suburbia.

he said she was nice enough, despite downing four glasses of wine, at $16 a pop. (seriously. who does that on a first date?) but there was one thing about her that was a complete deal breaker.

i was curious; matt and i have never had the "deal breaker" conversation. i wanted to know what his was.

"are you ready for it, brooke?"
"yes matt, i'm sitting down."
"she has fake breasts."

i was not expecting that one.

perhaps it's because i'm not a man, and therefore, i don't think like a man. perhaps it's because i've never really thought of a man as capable of having deal breakers, let alone ones that include surgically enhanced breasts. i've just always figured a straight man would chase anything in a skirt, and that nothing, big or small-chested, could keep him from doing so.

then again, matt is pseudo-straight. and i do hang out with many, many gay men. so what do i really know about the straight ones?

age ain't nothin but a number.... is it?

this weekend, my low-key saturday night turned into lively conversation when a few unexpected visitors dropped by. after a considerably mild conversation about the recent happenings in the world of politics, talk turned to my friend's recent date. a first date. with a 20-year-old. (he's 27.)

reactions were mixed. the age gap is too large (one friend); it's fine (me, speaking from the experience of dating older men); "if you can get it, hit it!" (my best friend... though i think at this point the margaritas were speaking for her.)

one friend brought up the double standard of dating outside your age range; while it's seemingly fine for men, it's considered distasteful and borderline humorous for women to do the same thing. i mean, think about the nicknames that are affixed to the genders; men get nicknames like "playboy," and women are stuck with the often joked about infamous "cougar" nickname. (though, according to my friend, i'm still a "puma"... the cougar nickname will not be bestowed on me until i'm at least in my late thirties.)

fast forward to sunday night. after shopping for arts & crafts supplies (no, that is not a typo), jackie and i met up with my cousin miranda and her friend dan for a casual happy hour. i'd met dan before, when miranda brought him along to my birthday party, and though i thought he was incredibly gorgeous then (tall, dark and handsome= my type), i didn't really get to talk to him until last night. our conversation bordered on the flirtatious, until he revealed his age.

23. NEWLY 23. (confirm with jackie; i rather inappropriately balked at this.)

now, i've always been the girl to date older men; younger men (and men that graduated high school the same year as my baby sister nonetheless) have always seemed a little too high-maintenance for me, and i've always laughed off the idea of getting involved with one of them.

but really. he's gorgeous. and funny. laid-back, easy to be around, loves football and is a total obama supporter. so what if he's 23.... right?

whether or not this puma is going to pounce remains to be seen, but the bear hug and kiss on the cheek from dan at the end of the night has spilled over into lots of smiles today.

the modern day fairy tale?

call it a breakthrough of sorts. these words escaped my mouth last night, during a teary conversation with a friend over yet another man come and gone.

"i don't want a man to treat me like a princess or put me on a pedestel, nor do i want a man to constantly kick me to the ground. i just want one to treat me like an equal."

and so it continues.

straidar

last night, i floated through my door after my fourth date with softball spark (aka christopher). we had dinner at an adorable and delicious little nepalese restaurant settled into a corner on grand avenue. afterwards, we trekked back to his st. paul apartment (yes, i'm dating one from "the other side") and, like something out of a cheesy romantic comedy, we spent the rest of the evening listening to cat power, the rain falling outside as beautiful background noise.

as much as i might try to fight it, the more time christopher and i spend together, the more i realize just how much time i want to spend with him.

however; i digress. back to the 10:30pm waltz into my apartment. i greeted my cat and called the only friend i knew would be up to relay the details of my date to him. after we hung up, i looked at my phone and saw it: a text from an ex.

since we live across the street from each other, this ex and i have been in sporadic communication, the last of which was a couple of weeks ago, when, after a few engaging late-night conversations on my stoop, he decided it was too much for him. he couldn't handle the "floodgate of communication."

i laughed his words off and continued about my life.

then, last night, a text out of the blue. after my hot date. coincidence? i don't think so.

this is just one more example that "straight man radar" (straidar?) really does exist, subconscious as it may be. in my experience, any time i start to think that a new man could possibly mean something to me, an old one reaches out. perhaps for friendship, perhaps for something more, always seemingly fighting to be back at the forefront of my mind.

not that this ex could ever do or say anything that would make me change my mind about christopher and run back into his arms, and not that he wants me back in his arms at all ; i just find it all so incredibly amusing.

ah, the ego of the straight man.

things i learned over the weekend.

sometimes you just gotta break the rules, sneak out of work early on friday, and spend the afternoon experiencing the zoo through your favorite little toddler's eyes... it doesn't get much better.

"i want to be a big boy and ride the bumper cars!"

i'm much too old to be playing drinking games with 21-year-olds drinking cheap tequila, but i'm just the right age to sit on a rooftop drinking wine into the night with my favorite 40-year-old. (and i'll NEVER be too old for waterslides.)

suburbanites really enjoy naming their neighborhoods– i.e., the "south passages," "meadowbrook," and "wagon wheels" neighborhoods i passed all within a quarter mile of each other during my trip to south suburbia on sunday morning.

the nook really does serve a killer juicy lucy like everyone says– and it's in st. paul! (looks like i'm expanding my horizons)

first kisses are the best kisses.....

ten kinds of crazy.

this is what happens when you let yourself get completely carried away thinking about an outfit for date #2 with your big crush (aka softball spark).

with "nothing" in your closet, and no time to round up the girls for a shopping trip, you reluctantly go by yourself, take a picture of what you bought, email it around, and hope for nods of approval.

(yes, i am fully aware of my neuroses, i accept and embrace them.)

i wonder if he's doing the same thing?