23 minutes

It was 4:25 pm, and I had some time to kill before my flight to Minneapolis. I decided to venture to the airport bar and have a drink. As I walked into the dim bar, I espied an empty stool between a couple of men. I sat down, ordered a Jack and Diet Coke and perused the ten televisions in front of me displaying different shows. The most interesting program appeared to be "Tombraider" with Angelina Jolie and her digitally enhanced boobs.

As I sipped my drink, the guy on my left said, "Wonder what movie that is. I can't figure it out."

"I think it's 'Tombraider,' " I nodded. "Angelina Jolie plus gun holster."

"Oh yeah," he said.

I wasn't feeling particularly chatty so I didn't follow up. After a minute or two, he said "So where you off to?"

"Oh I'm going to Minneapolis. Visiting an old buddy of mine. What about you?"

"Cedar Rapids, Iowa."

"Ah, I see."

We then began chatting about the Midwest, the cities. I told him what I did for a living and surprisingly he continued to talk to me. He was an MRI engineer or something or another and he was just getting back from a seminar he spoke at. As we chatted, I noticed that he was actually not bad-looking. He had light brown hair with a tiny bit of gray. Clean cut. I guessed his age to be about 35-36-ish. And perhaps it was his friendly demeanor or the Jack but I found him to be quite pleasant-looking.

As we chatted about the Midwest, the conversation turned to the East Coast. He did not seem to like it.

"People in the Midwest are friendly, polite. But out East, they just say what's on their mind. Whether it's rude or not," he remarked.

"True true," I said. "People in the Midwest are definitely more laid back. New York's a bit more neurotic."

"Yeah, they're all just too abrasive," he continued. "I have a friend from Philly. She's just unbearable. It's that East Coast thing. They are too much."

I laughed and nodded. "Yes, they can be a bit much. So where did you grow up?"

"A tiny town outside of Cedar Rapids." He told me the name of the town, but it escapes me at this moment.

"Cool," I nodded.

"What about you?"

I smirked and said, "If you had to guess, where would you guess?"

"I would say...California?"

"Oh really?" I asked, genuinely amused, given that, first, it wasn't the first time someone had guessed I was from Cali, and second, I find it flattering that someone would think I'm Californian. "How so?" I asked.

"I don't know. The way you speak. The way you carry yourself. Your attitude. It's hard to explain." He paused. "You just seems very California."

I laughed again. I was glad to know that my laid back demeanor so successfully concealed my bustling neuroses.

"So...where are you from?" he asked.

I took a sip and smiled. "East Coast."

I wasn't sure if I could discern his smile falter just a bit but I was greatly amused. Plus I was drinking on an empty stomach. Then I suddenly remembered I had a flight to catch. "Hmm, what time is it?" I asked. I looked at my watch and dangit, while the numberless face of my watch is very pretty, it's sometimes hard to read when you're slightly buzzed in a dim airport bar.

"Why, when's your flight?"

"4:50."

"My watch says 4:48," he said, looking up from his digital watch.

"Woah. Looks like I gotta run," I said, pulling out my wallet. As I fished out a ten dollar bill, I smiled at the Iowan and said, "Hey it was really nice talking to you."

"It was nice talking to you too," he smiled.

"Bye!" I said as I scurried down the airport lobby.

As I jogged to my gate, I wondered if the Iowan thought I was running away because he had dissed the East Coast before learning I was from there. I genuinely found it amusing and flattering that I seemed very West Coast. Like everyone outside of California, I have delusions of how cool and "laid back" California and its inhabitants are.

Anyway. I wasn't offended at all. And if he had asked, I would have given him my business card. And if he lived in my town, I would have met up with him for coffee or something. Seemed like a pleasant guy. I never even got his name. But oh well. I had a flight to catch. Places to go. People to see.

Achieving normality

So GD and I had it out. It was a typical tiff. I started out interrogative and yippy, demanding to know why he was being MIA, to know why he screened all my calls and returned zero of them, to just tell me if he's mad at me, and to dump me if he wants to dump me. Clearly, not my best leg plan.

Instead of arguing back, he got annoyed and non-responsive, and eventually informed me that he was frankly turned off by my previous misconduct, was busy, and wasn't even sure what he "owed" me given that we never defined the relationship. (Was that my cue to jump in and define the relationship? I didn't.)

At this point, we were both irate and annoyed. And then, I felt the weight of all the emotions from the past few weeks--the anger, the guilt, the confusion--just buckle under their weight.

"It's just that," I said quietly, "you ignoring me these past few weeks--" and I realized with horror that my voice was starting to shake "--I was hurt. That's all." I felt my face flush, and damn it, the more a girl tells herself not to cry, the stronger the tears press against the back her lids. I frigging hate that.

I suddenly looked away from him and feigned fascination with my hands folded in my lap, because as we all know, a person can't tell if a girl is crying if she looks down and away. Well, I made the unfortunate mistake of blinking, which of course sent the tears down my face.

I closed my eyes and felt his hand reach for mine. "Sorry," I said, wiping my face. I felt so stupid and so embarrassed. Why am I such a GIRL? I thought to myself.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. Okay people, seriously, I was not trying to cry to elicit sympathy and guilt him into apologizing. I frigging hate crying. I hate feeling vulnerable. I hate looking vulnerable.

Anyway, we talked a bit more. And it feels like we're back to normal. Okay not completely normal. But semi-normal. It should all go back to normal. Provided nothing out of the ordinary occurs.

Right?

Right.

Last night, approximately 11:45 pm, I was sitting in the backseat of the Naysayer's car. The Naysayer and his girlfriend were in the front, and I was chatting happily in the back, when I received a text message. I flip open my phone and check it. And I see that IT'S NON EMAILER.

Non Emailer who never contacted me.

Non Emailer who I revolted with my reeking desperation.

Non Emailer who clearly did not like me.

The text said, "Hey, what are you up to?" After hyperventilating for a few minutes, the Naysayer and his gf asked me who it was.

"Non Emailer," I breathed.

"Don't respond," the Naysayer said.

"What?" I said as I stealthily texted "Where you at?"

"Don't respond," the Naysayer repeated.

"Booty text," his gf said.

"Really?" I asked as I clicked the "Send" button.

"Woops, I already replied," I said.

"WHY," the Naysayer said. "WHY DID YOU DO THAT."

"What?" I feigned as I flipped open my phone again.

Non Emailer replied. "I'm at a bar. What about you?"

"It's 11:45 pm, Friday night," the gf said, "clearly, a booty text."

"OKOKOK," I said. Ultimately, I never responded to Non Emailer's text. One, because of GD. And two, because there was no point. I just couldn't help but laugh that Non Emailer had chosen this moment, this day, this time, to contact me. I mean, two months ago, I would've been all over it. But now it just felt...wrong.

Life's funny like that. Isn't it.

Ok now I'm fine. Really I am.

I think I am done. Done worrying about GD, that is. I can't control what or whom he does. I can only control my response. So I am deciding to just stop. Because really, that's how the human mind works. You tell it to stop fretting. And voila, it stops. You see, people, we have more control over our minds than we give ourselves credit for.

Okay even I can't tell if I'm being sarcastic or serious. Anyway, I really do think I'm done. I'm kind of glad I took to heart some of the advice my boss had given me last year and the recent iteration from Yellow Lawyer about not depending/focusing on guys too much and focusing on things I enjoy. So as I reflected upon my upcoming schedule this week, I began to feel a bit perked up and less anxious about GD:

Monday night (tonight): Dinner with a gal pal.
Tuesday night: Baseball outing with a group of folks including two other gal pals.
Wednesday night: Dinner with yet another gal pal. (Okay this is tentative.)
Thursday night: Benefit dinner for non-profit organization
Friday night: Flying out to Minneapolis to visit the Naysayer and part-ay it up all of Memorial Day weekend.

It's not like I planned these in a row. The game, the trip and the benefit dinner were set in advance. And the gal pals just happened to ask me to dinner. Somehow, knowing I'm not waiting hand and foot on GD is sort of liberating. I hate that waiting-by-the-phone feeling. Hate it! So why wait and hate? Liberate!

Anyway, I'm sure GD will continue to not-call me and send me half-ass lame emails. I was pretty irked earlier. I'd almost rather have him bite my head off than engage in this lame behavior. But I'm done. Cuz I got things to do and people to see.

I'm fine. Really I am.

A common complaint among men who date women is that a girl will say "I'm fine," when in reality, she's not. The scenario usually involves a girl getting mad at a guy. The guy, realizing the error of his ways, apologizes. The girl gives the guy a hard time. The guy again apologizes. After chastising the guy and verbally ripping him a new one, the girl relents and finally accepts the guy's apology. She says she's over it. Water under the bridge. She's not mad anymore.

"You sure everything's okay?" he asks her.

"Yes," she says, "everything is okay."

"So you're fine?" he asks.

"Yes," she says, "I'm fine."

Okay, he stupidly thinks, everything is fine.

Of course, everything is not fine. She's still pissed. While she has received her rightfully due apology, and while she knows the guy is truly apologetic, she is still pissed. This is evidenced by her subsequent behavior. Her aloof demeanor. Her snippy one-word responses. Her displeasure at the coffee ring he left on her countertop.

This infuriates guys. They hate the fact that a girl will say everything is okay when in fact, it's not. Recently I have to come to realize that girls aren't the only ones who engage in this frustrating behavior.

So I apologized to GD for my behavior from over a week ago. I apologized to him on two separate occasions. The latter of which I almost began to cry. I was and am truly contrite. And he says it's cool, that I shouldn't apologize anymore. "So everything's cool?" I asked him. "Yes," he lied, "Everything's cool."

Everything is not cool. After pissing someone off, I realize that as the transgressor, I must, in addition to apologizing, make affirmative efforts to make amends. So I took the initiative to ask him to hang out, to text him, to email him, to call him. Don't worry, I didn't do this all in one sitting. But over the past several days, I have been.

Back in the day, he would have responded to my emails/texts immediately, picked up all my calls, and if not, return my calls immediately. Now days, he hasn't. He screens my calls. He ignores 2 out of 3 of my emails/texts. For the one-third he does respond to, he sends half-hearted responses. And he probably auto-deletes my voicemails. All the guys I've conferred with confirm that while he says everything's fine, it's not, and he's still resentful.

It's frustrating. Yes, I deserve to be punished. Yes, I know I probably bruised his ego and pride a tad. Still though, it's frustrating. I think I've had more meaningful conversations with his voicemail than with him. And tonight, when he deliberately sent my phone call to his voicemail for the umpteenth time this weekend, the insecure crazy side of me wonders if he's with some other gal right now, a nicer gal, a gal who appreciates him more, to "punish" me more. After all, we never established exclusivity.

Nothing I can do about it though, right? Just take my punishment "like a man" and pretend I'm fine with it. Even though I'm not. The consensus among friends though is that if his resentful aloofness continues, then it's indicative of something larger--i.e., an inability to let things go or to forgive--and that I should probably reconsider whether or not I want to continue this.

I suppose we'll see.

Doh.

It takes a certain amount of integrity, honesty and character for a gal to admit that she erred in her characterization of recent events and to retract that characterization.

That being said, I recently spoke with GD. I called him after he texted me. I decided to play it diplomatically. Start by chit chatting. Then ask what's up. Then wail on him. So I called him up, we chit chatted for a bit when a nice little lull in the conversation arose and I asked him, "Is everything okay?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Well, you've been a little distant--"

"--why didn't you call me all weekend?" he asked.

"What?" I said, "Why didn't you call me?"

He didn't have a perfect explanation for it. But he had a feasible one. Now one may wonder, what is an imperfect but feasible explanation for not calling a girl for several days? If it's not a death in the family with a funeral in Patagonia, or the destruction of his cell phone and land line, or the dismemberment of all four of his limbs and subsequent 6-8 week waiting period for his prosthetic hand to come in so he can dial his phone, or a coma or death, then I assume that it's because he is dumping me. Because that is usually the case. Well it turns out there's another explanation: He was mad at me. YES I know, ignoring someone for several days isn't the most mature or diplomatic way to handle anger. But when he told me why he was mad at me, I realized I was in no position to lecture on maturity or diplomacy.

I am actually a bit ashamed to write this now but I feel like I should. Because if I have the audacity to assassinate someone else's character, I should have the balls to own up to my own b.s.

The last time I had seen him, we were among friends at a bar and I was ... drunk. Wasted, in fact. And during my wasted state, I misbehaved. Essentially, I was that girl: the drunk-ass, crazy, obnoxious girl who was all over everyone and their momma. That one you kind of feel sorry for because it's really sad. Yes, that was me. And it really bugged him and it embarrassed him, not only for me, but also in front of his friends. Not only was I all over everyone, including his friends, but I ignored him.

I didn't remember any of this because duh I was drunk. But when he refreshed my recollection, I did have a hazy recollection of being very flirty and dancing crazily. So while I had been dying to know why he never called me, once he got started, I was suddenly wishing he would stop. I wished he'd stop telling me how stupid I looked, how gross my behavior was, how unpleasant it was for him to answer questions from his friends that night and all through the next day about "that girl." I literally shielded my face while on the phone, cringing, uttering apologies in between. I felt really ashamed.

Now for the not calling me part, I told him, "Look, I really appreciate you telling me all this and being upfront. But why didn't you tell me this earlier? If you have something on your mind, tell me. I'm not psychic."

He repeated, "Why didn't you call me?"

"Well, even before that night, you seemed more distant. You were taking longer to respond and weren't picking up your calls as much. So I wanted to give you space."

"If that was the case," he said, "then I would have told you that."

"But phone call frequency is not a concrete issue you discuss -- it's just something you fall into."

Blah blah blah. I'm sure all of you care about the intricacies of our little tiff. In the end, we sort of mostly resolved it. I am not to be a drunk skank, and he should be more communicative. At least those appear to be the goals.

Oh and he brought up the clothes that I had left at his place. "Are they still there?" I asked hesitantly, "or are they smoldering somewhere in the corner or being picked through by a bum in a dumpster somewhere?"

"Yes," he replied a little too quickly.

"Fair enough." Fair enough.

As for my other concerns re: GD aside from this whole debacle, my one girlfriend says that the dynamic involved in deeper conversations and banter comes with time. "Give it a chance," she had emailed me, "and try it out for a while longer. =)"

I suppose we'll see.

The mens

Last night I had a dream I was a lesbian. Okay, not a lesbian. I was "with" a girl in that way. It felt pretty real. Yes, I know that sexual behavior in dreams rarely means that you actually want to have sex with the person you're dreaming about. I suppose all the love and comforting I've been getting from my gal pals manifests itself as sexual intimacy with a female in my dream. But still. I wonder if things would be easier if I were a lesbian. If I dated chicks. They'd be sensitive and emotionally supportive and cognizant of certain...needs.

It reminds me of the movie, "Kissing Jessica Stein," where a straight, single, slightly neurotic chick in New York gets sick of dating dumb guys and decides to answer an ad from a bisexual chick. They hit it off, fall in love, and even move in together. But in the end, Jessica realizes she is still hetero, and still likes the mens.

Man. Too bad being gay isn't a choice. Too bad I'm hopelessly attracted to just men. And no doubt, dating women is probably fraught with its own set of games and issues and drama.

But still. I feel like I'm running out of options here!

Tying up loose ends

So I had called the Naysayer, probably five times in the last 24 hours, complaining about the guy formerly known as GD. (I guess I can still call him GD because our first date was still a great date.) After listening to me wallow in self-pity and self-doubt, he said, "Yellow Gal, you were beginnning to not like him anyway."

I paused and thought about that. Granted, there were a couple times when I mentioned to the Naysayer that GD didn't have that witty slightly sarcastic sense of humor that I love so much. And I may have mentioned that GD and I didn't seem to have that many deep, profound conversations, which I suppose is somewhat important to me. So maybe there were warning signs in the horizon that this was not going to work out.

But still. Ignore me? For several consecutive days? Especially the entire weekend, when for the past few weekends we've been spending virtually every waking second together? This is particularly surprising since he's the type of guy who, if he has a problem or has something to say, he will say it. Not be passive aggressive. Not play games. So what gives?

Part of me is tempted to call him and just say, "What is going on? Call a spade a spade. Tell me what's up." Two girlfriends are in favor of this cut-the-bullshit approach. While the Naysayer and another girlfriend are not. The last couple of times GD and I had contact, it was I initiating contact (me calling him, me texting him) and him passively (perhaps reluctantly?) responding. I had mistakenly thought that oh, we both like each other, we know we like each other, F the Rules, I can just call him.

But he's not contacting me. So I guess he's just not that into me. Now that's solved, there are a couple of sticky things: (1) his best friend and one of my best friends are siblings and live together, no less, and (2) I left some of my clothes at his place.

Do people just let it go? I really like the clothes I left there. I wonder what he's done with them. Hide them away from other girls he invites over? Burn them? Stow them with the collection of other girls' items left over fom previous non-relationships?

Anyway, for some reason, I suspect that I will hear from him sometime next week. Perhaps Monday or Tuesday. At that point, I'll just casually ask for my stuff. We'll see what happens.

Am I wrong?

If we could harness all the intellect and energy that women put into analyzing men, dissecting their psyches and interpreting every act or non-act men have engaged in, we probably could figure out the identity of JFK's assassin, Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts, the cure for cancer, whether or not there is a god, and the square footage of the Universe.

Seriously.

Sitting at my computer

So I am sitting at my computer and ask myself a question. What is a man? Is he sum of his parts? His arms, his skin, his lips, his back. Maybe a man is a bundle of mannerisms. The way he laughs, his meticulous hair combing, the way he holds his fork. Or maybe he is a collection of memories. The movie the both of you never finished watching, the song he played in his car the first time you kissed, the day you sat by the river and talked about nothing all day long.

I tell myself, a man is just a person. One person. So then I wonder, how is it possible that just one person, one man, can make a girl feel so bad about herself? Negate everything. Reduce her to nothing. He's only one person, after all.

I don't think men fully grasp the effect they have, or rather, the effect that women allow men to have on them. Does a man know that if he messes with her mind or her heart, he'll always win? Does he know how easy it is to make her feel weak and pathetic? Can he even imagine what goes through her mind when he tells her he really likes her and then ignores her for five days?

No, I don't think men know any of this. They couldn't, because if they did, it would make them cruel. And men can't be cruel.

So I am sitting at my computer and tell myself, this is not happening again. Not. Again. Because I don't want to be jaded anymore. I don't want to be unhappy. Really, who does? Don't we all deserve to have at least some hope that something good will come? Don't they say, 'good things come to those who wait'?

So I am sitting at my computer and wait. Wait for something good to come. Wait for a couple girlfriends to call me back. Wait for him to prove me wrong.

hellogoodbye

is an indie group from Cali I hadn't heard of 'til they popped up on my Yahoo! radio station. Their song Here In Your Arms reminds me of GD (available for listening on their myspace page).

Incidentally, this is my 400th post. Dang!