When it rains

It pours. The drought has endeth and now I'm caught up in a veritable torrent of... the mens.

Let me try and sum up my love life for you in a nutshell: the nutshell currently runneth over. And that's not a good thing. Boy 1: I want him to be my boyfriend but he won't. Boy 2: Really hot but I'm afraid he might be gay. Boy 3: Super fun but don't know that I could ever take him seriously. Boy 4: Recently shed himself of troublemaker friends and wants to hang out.

I try and keep my references to the men in my life relatively vague, especially in the case that I have feelings or still care about him. I don't want my vulnerabilities exposed to everyone on the internet, I guess, but I'm also afraid that the guy I write about may see it. That would suck.

Secretly, though, (not so secret now, huh) I wish he knew all of the things I'm too chicken shit to say to him. I wish he knew that I'd gladly swear off of dating and embrace quiet nights. I wish he could trust me. Follow through...

The allure of the bad boy

Nobody makes me cream my panties quite as quickly as the bad boy. You all know one. He wears dark sunglasses and a sexy five'o'clock shadow and is often spotted with a motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm and a cigarette dangling from his lips, oozing sex appeal. Very reminiscent of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. He drinks Jack and he shoots pool and pretty girls in miniskirts are always fawning all over him. It's because he is a brooding, mysterious bad boy. You probably don't know very much about him. In fact, he's probably very difficult to get to know because he is a man of few words. Verbal communication's just not his thing. You ask him questions about where he's from, what his family is like, and what he enjoys doing in his spare time, aside from shooting pool and riding his motorcycle off into the sunset. He's your modern-day cowboy. But you're hard-pressed for answers. He answers tersely. He leaves you wanting more; this is without question the most crucial component to the bad boy allure: the constant tease of fulfillment. So when he nonchalantly mentions that he and his parents don't really get along that well, you are excited. Not because he doesn't get along with his parents, that'd be screwed up, but because he shared this precious little morsel of intimate information with you. And then you wonder why he doesn't really get along with his parents that well, but you have to wait until he's ready to share that with you. And he always gets to decide when. As the morsels slowly accumulate, you start to put the bigger picture of his personality together, and it's like you've been let in on this huge secret that no one else is privy to, and you feel special. Actually, it can go one of two ways. It's at this point that the allure either becomes solidified or begins to evaporate. Some things are better left to the imagination.

But why is he so magnetic? Why can't you stay away from him even though you know that (a) you have to have the patience of a monk because that's about how long it'll take for him to let you in, (b) your parents and close friends will disapprove (though they'll probably all secretly agree that he's super-hot), (c) he'll probably break your heart in spite of your best attempts to break him in, and (c) you can't change him?

You want to save him. You want to save him from his delicious badness (and occassionally you might even want a taste of it), from his chaotic life of booze, bikes, and billiards. He intrigues you, draws you in, and then you want to protect this tough bad boy who's really not all that tough deep down inside, and only you would know, because you've seen that deep down inside. Follow through...

Wanted: the quiet life

I was lying in bed chatting with Natalia online and watching the USC/ Texas game in my underwear when Megan comes barging into my room smelling strongly of liquor and cigarettes, demanding that I get dressed and accompany her back to the bar. She'd been at Q's since 3, tailgating before the game started at 5, but I really didn't feel like getting up and putting clothes on to go watch the game in a crowded bar full of drunk football fans. Not that I have anything against drunk football fans; I'm just tired and I want to lay in bed in my underwear and eat peanut butter straight from the jar. Is that so wrong?

Megan left disappointed. I refused to get up even after excruciating naked tickle torture (I feel so violated) and a couple of very painful smacks on the butt. So I returned to my conversation with Natalia and it went something like this:

Me: I don't want to go out. I just want to stay at home and have someone to play Scrabble with.
Natalia: I couldn't get my fitted sheets on my bed by myself and I really wanted a boyfriend there to help me.
Me: I totally know how you feel.

Yes, yes, yes... women need to be independent and needn't feel incomplete in the absence of male companionship. I know. But geeeeez. Sometimes I can't reach the top shelf and sometimes I want to spend a quiet night in bed reading a book or playing a rousing (haha... a-rousing... I'm so cool) game of Scrabble or cuddle with something other than my pillow when I watch sappy DVDs. I firmly believe that it's important for a woman in a relationship to have her own life separate from that of her boyfriend's, like having a group of friends who are not his friends, like having her own place/ space, and having some occupation whether it's a job or school or hobby that doesn't include him. I'm all about the together time, but I feel like there's got to be some girls' nights and boys' nights.

(Aside: this is a really really good game. I've been trying to type while watching, so it's taken me like an hour to get this far in the entry. Evenly matched, well played by both sides. And Vince Young was aMAZing. Much like his buttocks.)

I've been watching a lot of Sex and the City lately. It's the season where Carrie has the short hair and Miranda first has her baby. Carrie's all cynical and sad and is losing faith in love. There are these publishing ladies that want to compile some of her columns into a book and they ask her what the overall tone of the book would be: is there hope or should we all hang ourselves now? And the answer at the end of the episode was that tribute should be paid to the eternal optimists, our Charlottes. The ones who believe in love no matter what, even when that faith is tested time and time again. To some extent, there's a little bit of Charlotte in all of us, I think. No matter how jaded I think I've become; no matter how jaded my friends and I become, even as we throw our hands up in frustration and worry that we'll die alone and be discovered three days later after our cats have eaten our faces off, still, hope lives on. Follow through...