Tag Archives: Men

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Crazy Little Freaks

There’s this girl you see on the street – she’s dressed from head-to-toe in black with a gold belt and designer shoes and bag. She pulls her blonde hair back sleekly and tightly and her eyes are hidden away from sunglasses far too large for her face. She walks with an extra kick in her step displaying a certain confidence to the world. She looks like business and watches those around her with scrutiny – even from far away, she appears to be someone I’d let lead if we shared a sidewalk.

She walks through the park swiftly and takes a seat next to a man on a bench, crossing her legs away from him and looking in the opposite direction. From M and I’s view atop the hill looking down at them sneakily under our own sunglasses that are too big for our faces, it’s obvious there is some tension between the two. They start by sharing headphones and after a while, she muscles a grin and he rests his hand on her knee. Sensing all was well, I returned to my trashy magazine and attempted to sun myself when M nudges me to pay attention again.

Now, she was standing up, her hands are up, her chin is up – she’s all up in arms about something. Although New York’s background music prevented M and I from eavesdropping, she was so upset by something he did or didn’t do that tears were now destroying her precisely-applied makeup. He, however, wasn’t budging. He sat firmly without moving, the iPod still in his hand, the headphones flirting with the pavement. A family with a child on a bike pass them by and she looks off into the distance, arms crossed and her body heaving as if she was sobbing.

Though she probably started to walk away from him and the conversation, she stopped, meaning she wanted the chase. He obliged and came over to console her, wrapping his arms around her and kissing the side of her head. For a moment it looks like they reconnect, but then she pushes him away and the rampage starts again, signifying the fight is not dissolved. She goes to rush off in a hurry, even grabbing her Louie and marching away – but this time he doesn’t go after her. He sits down on the bench, placing his hands on his head and sighing deeply. She comes over and smacks him to look up at her and when he refuses to continue the argument, she spits on him.

Yes, literally spit on the man.

At this point M and I are leaving the park to head back to our respective apartments, so I have no idea how this ended or what he did in response to her loogie. But as we departed, we chatted about how the girl was acting crazy. She was obviously upset about something – and maybe he did something profoundly shitty – but is it ever appropriate to spit on someone? Especially your significant other?

During our discussion, it occurred to both of us that all women are crazy little freaks from time-to-time.  I’ve had my own share of emotional outbursts, shoving a boyfriend up against a wall in anger, throwing a four-inch stiletto at another’s face, and breaking a bottle of expensive cologne in haste. I’ve refused to go to bed frustrated, though if I would have it would have saved both of us some tears and regrettable words. I’ve shown myself in an ugly light in front of friends and family, strangers and people I probably should have tried harder to impress.

But that’s the thing about emotions is that everyone, no matter how mature or together, no matter how many breakups or makeups we’ve endured, lets them get the best of them at times. And it’s not just women – men just happen to show their crazy little freak differently. Some guys take flight and some stay to fight, some are violent and some remove themselves from the situation, turning off their phone and disappearing for a few days to clear their head.

Yet the double standard persists, when a guy does this, he’s being a guy; when a girl has an emotional outburst, she’s labeled a crazy bitch. Even if the majority of time, she’s rather level-headed and collected. Is it that men can’t handle it when we have a hard time handling something or do they not want to take responsibility for provoking us? Or do we tap into our insecurities and our own trust issues, only letting those back-burner demons out to play when everything seems to start boiling?

I don’t know – but the key to being a cray little freak is to learn to forgive yourself. If a guy loves and cares about you, if he’s worth that energy, emotional stress, and commitment, then he will forgive you too. These things happen, we all lose our cool when something or someone gets the best of us, and while spitting isn’t encouraged, getting out that frustration is. And if you worry about the guy hitting the road, don’t stress. If he goes, he goes. Rest assured there is still someone out there who will handle your crazy little freak with care because he knows deep down, even in his super-duper cool facade, a crazy little freak lives in him, too.

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Girls Can Be Girls

As I write this blog in my steamy living room, my NYC best friend M is hugging a bag of ice. No, I’m not exaggerating – she’s literally curled up on the couch, one arm over some $1.99 cubes left over from my Bubble-Q from many weeks ago. We just spent the day phone-less and one-kitten-richer, laying out in the overcast and logging miles at the gym. We picnicked with chicken salad and burnt turkey sandwiches, Vitamin water and orange juice while reading trashy magazines and witnessing a breakup in the park, complete with the girl spitting on her boyfriend out of spite.

We traveled from one of our apartments to the other and though they are only about 10 blocks apart, when there are hills and 90-degree weather, it feels like miles. We walked her kitty around on a leash in bikinis, decided to skip the showering ritual for the day, and settled in for a night in to save money, cooking tacos and choosing Criminal Minds over Sex & the City, perhaps showing our maturity or just that we’ve seen Carrie & pals way too many times to matter anymore.

You k now how they say the best things come when you’re not looking for them? How love will find you when you don’t want it or the dream job throws you a line when you thought they ignored your bait? Or how those couples who try and try to get pregnant and can’t, suddenly, one day, see the line appear on a $10 test?

I think friendships are like that too – the best ones come when you least expect them. And if you’re lucky, you settle right into happily-ever-girlfriend, sharing stories and chatting about hopeful futures while bitching about things in a language that only women can understand. Being the type of crazy and ridiculous that we’d never show to our boyfriends or acquaintances, families or even our one-day husbands.

Because these types of friendships are rare, where girls can be girls and that’s okay. In fact, where it is encouraged and celebrated.

M and I were in the same major in college, in different sororities, and in separate social circles. We knew of one another and had a class together (though neither of us can figure out which one), and though we never were friends in real life, Facebook kept us connected for four or so years. And so, when she reached out to me about her big move with Milo her kitten (and my god-kitty), I was more than willing to help her find her footing in New York. It felt like a scene out of Pay it Forward, me handing over the keys to my first apartment to someone in the communications field from North Carolina who happened to be a bubbly brunette with blue eyes, too. I was transitioning from one stage of my life to the other and so was she, and if I could assist along the way, I would without hesitation.

What I didn’t anticipate was how much she’d help me.

And not just about finding the right career path or how to uncover the hidden happy hour gems of Manhattan – but she became the missing piece of my the puzzle of my adult life. She’s the best friend, the girl who I can be a girl with and not think twice. We’re enough alike to relate but different enough to compliment one another, and we remind each other to let loose while also taking a healthy dose of reality from time to time.

We all put a lot energy as we put into attempting to figure out men, analyze our relationships until we’re out of breath and annoyed with the sound of our own voices – but what we forget to concentrate on is how valuable our friendships are. Without women to stand to be our side, to tell us when we’re out of line and we’re on target, to be there with puppies, tequila and cupcakes when things go wrong – we’d be far more lost than if we happen to part from yet another man who didn’t deserve us.

Instead, let’s be worthy of healthy friendships. Let’s be the best friend we can be instead of figuring out how to match our boyfriend’s schedule with ours. Let’s make the women in our lives priorities and let’s be the lady who keeps that old saying true, “Girls rule and boys drool.”  (I mean, isn’t that still accurate?)

Because, yeah we may marry a boy one day, but if we don’t have someone to be a girl with, to complain about our husbands and talk about sagging breasts and the memories of when we had nothing to do all day but browse around the Upper West Side with empty pocket books and youthful spirits – then that marriage will never last anyway.

Men may capture our last names if we allow, but as for me and what I consider soulmates, I think I believe in destiny more because of the friendships I have, not the men I sleep with, love, and obsess about. Those men may leave, but my girls, my soulmates, will smack me silly all the way through that relationship and the many more to follow.

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The Things That Never Happen

Long before teens and tweens become obsessed with vampires – I was deathly afraid of them. Having broken the rules and watched an episode of Tales from the Crypt with my friend who was allowed to watch it, I became terrified. There were nocturnal creatures who preyed on my neck and if they took a bite, I’d be doomed to be a scary blood-sucker like them?

I’m sorry Edward Cullen, but that’s just not sexy to me.

Not being able to hide my fright in the middle of the night, my parents soon realized I had been spooked by something and grounded me for going against their recommendations for proper viewing. But my own fear was punishment enough – I hung garlic on my bedpost, tucked the sheets around my neck (as if cotton would protect me from fangs?), and begged for a clap-on-clap-off light until my parents obliged so I could clothes my eyes and not have to open them again, just in case there was something scary standing above me.

After a week of sleepless nights and crying fits, I asked my mom for the 100th time how she knew that Dracula wasn’t coming to get me in my ballerina-inspired pink bedroom off a gravel road in a two-story countryhouse in North Carolina. Frustrated with me but not showing it, she said, “The things you worry about the most never happen.”

My troubles have changed as I’ve grown: would I make the tennis team, would I pass the SAT, would I have a high school sweetheart, would I pick the right college, would I be heartbroken if Mr. Whatever broke up with me, would I ever find love again, would I be able to graduate early, would I fail in New York, would I become a good editor, would I survive in the notoriously difficult NYC dating field, would I…?

While I’m not a negative person, it’s become a common reaction when I’m worrying to think of the worse case scenario. When I’m upset about my career or wonder if I’m on the right path, I automatically picture myself having to pack my bags and return to my home state, defeated and unsuccessful, hanging my head low while avoiding all of my old friends and sinking into a rocky depression. When I’m worried about love, I picture a messy breakup with Mr. P that involves screaming and hurt feelings, the end of a friendship and the foundation of trust and fidelity shattered into pieces that won’t fit back together. When I stress about how I look, I imagine myself gaining five pounds with each bite of cheesecake, my clothes not fitting and feeling like an ugly ducking that’ll never bloom into a sophisticated city swan that gracefully cascades down the streets of Manhattan.

But when I start seeing with a tunnel-vision of devastation instead of one with realistic consequences, I remind myself that the things I worry about the most never happen. Sure, I could take a few wrong turns on the way to the dream job and the dream may change. I could be silly to give Mr. P another chance and it could all blow up in my pretty little face, as so many have warned me. I could decide to let myself go, curse the gym and gain 50 pounds.

All of these things could happen and maybe they will, but it won’t be in the absolutely awful way I imagine them happening. None of these things would be the death of me – I would be hurt, I’d be a little lost, I’d have to take a step back and reevaluate, but I’d be okay. I would stand up again, I’d figure out a new path, I’d find a new love (or be happy on my own), and I’d build up my confidence again.

I may not have been able to survive if vampires were real and they attacked me when I was a kid, but as an adult, I can handle just about anything that life throws me.  And I can spend my time worrying about these things that’ll never happen to me, or I can live my life. I can dwell in fear or I can be the brave person I know I am. I can waste time conjuring up all of the ways things can go wrong, or I can be thankful for all the ways it is already right.

Daily Gratitude: Today, I’m thankful for my lovely friends who always put everything perspective. 

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One Night Stand-less

I’ve never had a one night stand.

While not all of my sexual encounters have been in the context of a relationship, I’ve known each of the guys far longer than the evening and at least trusted them somewhat. Yes, I’ve embraced a few friends-with-benefits-strings-loosely-attached relationships and I’ve stayed over at a guy’s place the same night I met him. But those sleepovers were PG-13 at best – I always kept my boundaries and my walls strong and tall, protecting all parts of myself – body and soul – from harm.

For a while I was overly concerned with what I would say to my future husband when he asked about my sexual resume or inquired about a number that remains private, unlike most things on this blog. I wanted to be proud of what I told him and I wanted him to view me as someone who thought before she leaped into the beds of strangers or spread her legs for Manhattan. I wanted to feel honorable and somewhat pure, though I passed up the virginity card nearly ten years ago.

But then that stopped mattering to me so much. Instead, I became more interested in what I felt like. If I wanted to makeout with the tall drink of water in the corner of an Irish pub, then I’d do it. If I wanted to have sex with someone I met on the first night, I’d do it. This is my body, these are my morals and my choices, and if I can stand confidently behind them, then what did it matter what my husband thought? He wasn’t around for those evenings because it wasn’t time for me to meet him, so that part of my past didn’t include him. As long as I was sexually safe and emotionally smart, then I could be what I wanted to be and well, do who I wanted to do.

And by the time I finally reached a point where I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could have that steamy one night stand I fantasized about, I met and started dating Mr. Possibility, and a few months later we implemented exclusivity, deleting the option of a fling from my New York itinerary.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m very happy with Mr. P and I’m not lacking anything I think I’d find in a one night stand, but it is something I’ve always wondered about. As a 20-something, it almost feels like a rite of passage before we reach 30, where suddenly worries about fertility and wedding rings become priority over the “Oh my god, I’m three days late, but he didn’t finish inside of me, does that mean I could be pregnant??? Should I buy a pregnancy test?” text messages we send our friends now.

I have more than enough time before I turn the big 3-0, but I wonder if I have it in me to actually execute the infamous one night stand. Almost all of my friends have done it, some more than others, some just because they wanted to try it, and some because they really dig it. A few of my friends are rather empowered by it – claiming their sexuality as their own and sleeping with whoever they damn well please, and best of all, demanding an orgasm out of it. These women are so sexually liberated that it makes me blush and envy the way they view sex. I mean, they can actually sleep with someone without trusting the guy, without knowing his last name, where that scar on the left of his knee came from,  if he has brothers or sisters, if he likes chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, or if he has any intentions of a relationship or is this just sex?

Maybe that’s what has always held me back – the idea of just sex.

My girlfriends who dig the one night stands like them because they’re not messy like relationships. They don’t come with rules and commitment. They don’t require compromise or a phone call the next day or a birthday present. They don’t grow, they begin and end with spontaneity. They don’t need care and concern to function, they don’t need reassurance or someone calling you beautiful. They just take two willing participants who at that moment, in that apartment or that bathroom or during that vacation – who want to just have sex.

But in my mind, which is probably far too relationship-oriented for this discussion to begin with – one night stands aren’t like that. When I envision my unrealistic notion of what a one night stand entails, I picture sultry kisses that can’t be stopped, conversation that is steady and fervent, and warmth radiating from my lips all the way down my body. I see a chiseled chest and my bare stomach, sweat rolling down places that are only sexy when you’re naked, and I feel the irresistibleness  of a man’s weight on top of me. I see white linen sheets with the light of a candle competing with the summer air and the undeniable smell of raw sex on me as this man calls a cab to my apartment the morning after. I hear myself saying “Stop, don’t tell me your name. It’ll ruin it,” as I blow him a kiss and give him a playful wink out the window as he watches me leave, wondering what could have been, but both of satisfied with the anonymity of it all.

I know the more realistic snapshot is a drunken couple stumbling out of Joshua Tree in Murray Hill, draped over one another as the guy with greased hair attempts to wave a ride while the girl giggles because she can’t think of anything else to do. I know they involve stumbling into things on the way to the two-bedroom shared with three roommates with jack-hammer sex that’s barely decipherable in your memories, and ultimately end with texting your friends to ask if you should get the morning after pill, even though you’re on the pill. They must involved a long hot shower, or at least I think it would for me.

I suppose I haven’t had a one night stand and denied every opportunity to change that because I want them to mean something. I want it to go down in my book as an encounter I needed to have to fulfill my appetite, not as a last minute decision I made because Mr. Tequila thought it was a good idea. But if I want a one night stand to mean something, doesn’t that go against what a one night stand is?

Isn’t a one night stand just a stand-in before you find the guy who lasts longer than a night?

Daily Gratitude: Today, I’m thankful for rain. It’s been a while, dude. 

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The Six-Month Mark

My first date with Mr. Idea lasted nearly 24-hours, only interrupted by my hostessing shift at some wannabe-ritzy restaurant in North Carolina. We met for brunch and then stayed up all night talking, watching movies, and getting to know one another. My first date with Mr. Fire was similar, lunch shifted into cooking dinner, which moved to drinks and a very passionate first kiss. Mr. Fling and Mr. Disappear were all alike – I was smitten and convinced within seconds of chatting away.

After each of these dates, I excitedly called my mom, spilling the details and reading off his resume to convince her of this guy’s potential. She listened while repeating, “that’s great” and “how sweet” when the conversation permitted her to speak. And at the end of each monologue while I was still consumed with the splendor of a date-gone-well, I would ask: “So mom, what do you think?”

Cautious of giving me advice because she knows how strongly I take her opinion to heart, her answer has always been the same: “He sounds great and I’m glad you’re happy, but remember, you won’t see someone’s true colors for six months.”

Oh, mothers. Don’t you hate when they’re always right?

Mr. Fire and I almost made it to six months, Mr. Idea and I broke up right around six months, and the ones that lasted longer than half a year, probably shouldn’t have. Because of this, I’ve always feared the six-month mark in a relationship – it feels like the make-it or break-it point where the relationship will either continue healthily or fall to pieces.

And here Mr. Possibility and I are, flirting with the half-year mark, though we’ve known each other almost as long as I’ve been writing this blog. Our relationship has had its fair share of ups and downs and it’s required both of us to compromise to meet each other’s needs. We’ve traveled distances by car and by plane, lived together for a few weeks in between leases, and weathered the storms of the past while hoping for a future. We’ve had to spend time apart to learn how to miss one another, we’ve had to fight to learn how to accept our flaws, and we’ve had to grow as people so we could grow as a couple. While our story is probably more tangled and complicated than most relationships, I think what makes us connect is stronger than what’s connected me to men I’ve loved before.

Because with Mr. P, it was the first time I took things really slow.

I didn’t call my mom after our first date because I wasn’t sure if I was interested in him. I didn’t swoon over him, even though I fell in front of him on that silly bus. Partly because my focus was on myself because of this blog and partly because I just was exhausted of looking for love, when we crossed paths, I didn’t picture what tomorrow could be. Instead, for the very first time, I enjoyed getting to know him without placing any pressure on anything. Neither of us had any expectations and so when things worked out, when things progressed, when we became an item instead of just dating, we were happily surprised.

So maybe the six-month indication of success or failure doesn’t apply to this relationship. Maybe it does – I’m not sure. But for me, I didn’t need to hang around for half-a-year to figure out what Mr. P’s true colors were because I saw them way before I became his girlfriend, way before we kissed for the first time. I fell for his friendship, not for my own romantic ideas of a future that’s yet to be determined.

For now,he and I, and us, is still a possibility.

Daily Gratitude: Today, I’m thankful for a stellar Sunday morning with French toast, bacon, coffee, and orange juice.