Charming, but single

I updated my blogroll. I tried to catch the people who e-mailed me (She was a Water Sign), people who often are in my top 20 referred sites (Snob in the City), people who I really thought I had blogrolled long ago (New York Moments) and people I read, but who don’t link to me (yet?) (Cityflirting).

Please do not be offended if I missed you. Comment and I will add you. If you don’t want to be on the blogroll, let me know. (Also, since this is kind of a nothing post, go read the one below, which contains actual content.)

Thanks!

When I am ambiguous about how I feel about someone it seems like I look for an “answer” to the dilemma or a moment to clarify things or something — anything — to push me over the edge either way.

Friday night with the Relief Worker, on our fifth date, that moment came.

We were talking before a movie and he was complaining about the city where I live. He is from a small town, living here temporarily to help in the aftermath of the storms and he hates this place. I know it isn’t his style (it is too big), and I don’t expect him to pretend it’s his favorite place in the world. At the same time, I do expect someone who has been taking me out to not badmouth my home (and hometown) all evening. (I may complain about this place, but it is my home. It may be hypocritical, but I don’t want someone who isn’t from here badmouthing it so much.)

We hadn’t even kissed! It was a bit early to be so negative about anything, let alone the place where I live.

He was grumbling about traffic and it being crowded and everyone being in a bad mood. He said people here weren’t nice.

I protested, saying that traffic was obviously worse since we’ve taken in so many evacuees. There are just more people and longer commutes and longer lines and it being post-Katrina makes the city bit different, I argued gently.

And then, as my mom would put it, the bloom fell off of the rose.

“I am so tired of hearing about Katrina!” He exclaimed with a lot of emotion. “All of these Katrina people just want to bilk to government out of as much money as they can and do nothing for the rest of their lives.”

He was very serious and very angry.*

I protested, less gently this time. I pointed out that he was making a broad generalization about a lot of people that may apply to some, but not to all. He relented a little bit, but I could tell it was mostly to appease me.

At that moment, he should have just taken me home, because I was so completely over it all. Collectively, members of my family lost four homes in the storm. Friends lost their jobs, had their possessions whittled down to a number of boxes you could count on one hand. (And I consider everyone I know from the area to be very fortunate and very lucky.)

I’m not sure what the Relief Worker was thinking, but he apparently wasn’t thinking about how I’d feel about continual bashing of my hometown, my state, my community, my family and my friends. From that point on, everything he said just annoyed me. Little things that I might have ignored just made my blood boil, and as we passed this poster for “Brokeback Mountain” and he declared it “ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING,” I just wanted to give him $7.50 for my movie ticket and call a friend for a ride home.

I was tired of bending over backward to respect his opinions and beliefs when he had such little disregard for my own.

He took me back to my car after the movie and sort of followed me to the door, but I turned, smiled and said goodnight.

So no kiss. But it’s really ok. Maybe I misinterpreted his advances, but flirting and paying to take me out made it seemed like he was interested.

I guess it’s just too bad that I’m not anymore.

*I don’t want to get into an argument about the government’s role in providing social services. In every situation, there are people who take advantage of government help. However, to say or insinuate that the vast majority of people want to live in a FEMA trailer and exist off of emergency food stamps and less than $200 a week in unemployment is a bit of a stretch. But I’ll get off of my soapbox now.

It has been a year since I started writing this blog, which started out as a “Journal in Dates and Drinks” and became “A Dateless Journal of Drinking.” Now, I’m just “Datelessly Drinking.”

I’ve had more than 21,000 visitors, which is respectable for a small blog about how I like to get manicures and wear high heels. It’s about 21,000 more than I ever thought I’d get, so that’s got to count for something. This blog has more than 130 posts, which is low compared to some of the more prolific bloggers out there, but fine for me, I think. I’ve had (about) 950 comments in a year.

I’ve learned a lot about myself. I overreact. I hold onto the past. I am cynical when I should be hopeful and optimistic and trusting when I should be guarded. But I’m working on balancing it all out. And I’m glad someone’s along for the ride.

To mark this momentous occasion, I present a year of snippets from this blog. (How typical of a blogger to quote herself, right? Sigh.) Things I liked, things people responded well to, things that are just kind of funny or posts I just wanted to quote. Enjoy:

How it all started: Everyone around me is obsessed with pairing up. To be blunt, there’s a lot of pressure out there to jump on the marriage train and get your ticket punched, for better or for worse. (I’m supposed to, at this point in the narrative, assert that I am in no way husband hunting. And I’m not.) I am, however, a bit fixated on relationships and dating and the stigmas attached to both the single and the committed.

On labeling a relationship: “Seeing” is one of the many euphemisms us chicks use because we must label things, even when it’s probably too early to do so. “Seeing” means you’ve been on at least one formal date and informally spent time with a guy. “Dating” means you’ve been on several dates, but aren’t yet using a possessive term, such as — gasp! — “boyfriend.” This causes much unneeded confusion and stress.

On the single population: The problem with the casualness of today’s dating rituals is that you never know where “hanging out” ends and “dating” begins, which only compounds the problem of the shrinking pool of men in my demographic (educated, mid 20s to early 30s, has some sort of career goal) who are available to date. Since “dating” is such a casual and broad spectrum of activity, it’s easy for people to splash through the pool quickly, leaving a school of confused swimmers in his or her wake. So when you and your girlfriends and the women you work with and your friends’ roommates are all splashing in the same waters, you’re often left in the shallow end with the guys with whom no one, um, wanted to synchronized swim.

On jinxing yourself: Single Girl’s Law #1 –

You will never get lucky on nights when you shave your legs. Seriously, I’ve road-tested this one. It is law about 98 percent of the time. Now, when you have stubble for a few days or haven’t done bikini line maintenance, every guy you ever thought was cute will try to take you home. Guys who snubbed you for weeks and months will come out of the woodwork, buy you drinks and try to come home with you. This, of course, happens because shaving your legs is an admission to yourself that you think you MIGHT get lucky, and we all know that a watched pot never boils.

On the downside of assigning songs to men: Heartbreak comes in bits and pieces in different moments all throughout your life. But sometimes, for about three minutes, it comes all at once.

On Cosmo: Also, in this day of independent single women, why are we obsessed with these silly lists of how to move your hips while positioning your hands, while arching your back to the correct angle with the right kind of hair and artfully applied eyeliner? Seriously, not that you shouldn’t work at these things, but my experience has been that men are less picky than Cosmo’s lists would have you believe. Showing up is much more than half the battle to most men, who are just excited to get to see a naked lady. I’m sure guys like Cosmo’s cute little tricks, but I’m also sure that you can not read Cosmo and still have a satisfied man around the house.

On “Repeat Offenders” and one night stands: There was also this idea a hooking up with a guy because you’d hooked up before. Being with him again wouldn’t add to your Magic Number, so you didn’t mind. An old roomie of mine coined the term, “Repeat Offender” for these men. It’s a convenience and saving face kind of thing. Convenient because you know he’s willing, saving face because you won’t add to the number and also won’t end up with a one-night stand on your record. (Some women have a HUGE issue with one-night stands. I look at it like this — if you hook up with someone and regret having casual sex with them because you’re worried about your reputation, does sleeping with them again just to make it not a one-night stand make your reputation any better? I think not.)

That time I flashed my office: I plopped down in the passenger side of my car, completely dejected, wondering how it is that I managed to even survive until age 25 when I seem to lack some basic skills of a responsible person. I wonder if things like mooning my office building are as cute in real life as they are in cheesy romantic comedy.

Pretentious sentence structure doesn’t cover your flaws: Also, who says, “The language was such that”? I’m a wannabe writer and I don’t talk like that. I have friends who are lawyers who don’t talk like that. Stodgy British writers from centuries ago called, they want their sentence construction back.

On Cockblocking: If you are on the receiving end of a sanctioned CB, you probably have screwed over someone — the girl in question, a friend of ours, us, half of the female business majors — and must be stopped. After all, YOU don’t have to sit and listen to MY friend cry and yell and complain about how badly you treated her. You just get to hook-up with her. I have to pick up the pieces later, after she realizes that you don’t want to get back with her, are hooking up with half of the world and/or are bragging about bedding her to everyone south of the Canadian border. (I probably also have to drive to your crappy apartment to retrieve said friend at 5:00 in the morning because you’re passed out drunk and she realizes that she needs to make a quick exit. There are so many other things I’d rather be doing at 5:00 in the morning, most notably sleeping off the amazing hangover I probably am about to have.)

On my first high school Homecoming date: I didn’t care that he was barely my height. I didn’t care that we had nothing in common and very little to talk about. I didn’t even try to play it cool. I just said yes immediately and after the song I told pretty much everyone in the whole damn world that I had a date to Homecoming. I wasn’t going to have to change schools after all, which was a plus.

On fixing my own car: Look, I don’t feel like a bad person or a wimpy woman because I don’t know how to put a new battery in my car. There comes a time when you have to say that some things are not things that you can do, and changing a battery in a car is one of the things I cannot do. (I also can’t waterski, but you don’t hear anyone trying to teach me how to do THAT over the phone.)

An exchange with my Best Friend Ever:

S: I’m great! You’d tell me if you were getting married, right?

BFE: You’re drunk, aren’t you?

The Night I Cried in the Bar: And one tear rolled down my cheek and he touched my face with this really pained look on his face that I imagine is what a person looks like at the exact second that they realize that they really have actually broken someone’s heart into a million pieces and they have to live with that knowledge for the rest of their lives.

On how my bra ended up in the kitchen: “I’m not one to keep my undergarments with the fruits and veggies, so I tried to piece the night before’s events together in my pounding head while I chugged four glasses of water. I gave up trying to solve the mystery of the bra buffet and went back to bed.”

On Hurricane Katrina: “I have all of these things to say, but whenever I sit down to write them, I’m just numb. I was sitting out on my balcony last night, digesting an awesome meal I’d cooked for myself and enjoying a glass of wine and I was struck by how lucky I am. So many people I know have no idea where their future is. People are having to make tough choices that will affect the rest of their lives — should they move temporarily or just get out of the Southeast for good? Can they physically and emotionally handle a tragedy on the same scale as Katrina again?

An unfortunately timed e-mail: But an e-mail that essentially says, “Hope you didn’t die in the storm, I’m getting married!” is a bit of a shock to the system. I’m annoyed and pissed off and the fact that I’m annoyed and pissed off just makes me MORE annoyed and pissed off.

Charming deals with her neighbors with passive-aggressive blogging: And I would have overlooked the double parking on Wednesday night, but it caused me to have to park on the other side of the building, in the “shadowy” section of the parking lot, which is the perfect hiding spot for would-be attackers and rapists. They pretty much LIVE for shadows.

Charming on Charming (One of the crowd’s favorite posts): I am an adult. I’m 25 and I drink and I wear shirts that show off my cleavage sometimes and I hobble around on three-inch heels. I sometimes smoke and I look forward to a glass of wine after a long week at work. I get manicures and so I don’t save as much money as I should and instead of drinking house wine, I’ll have a $10 martini. I stay out (and up) late. I enjoy trashy TV shows and watch silly reality TV when I should be vacuuming or mopping or Windexing something. I eat tater tots and grilled cheese or pizza and potato chips when I should be having a salad and apple slices. I play my music too loud and I dance around my apartment in my bra in the middle of the day without shutting my blinds.

Just a night out with the guys: So the dude being humped asks one of my male friends for a cigarette. And then someone says something to someone and before I know it The Humped Dude is yelling at my friends and I have no idea why.

Socrates didn’t have to date in modern times: However, each time I waste 10 minutes dedicating an earnest ear to decoding an everyday voicemail, half an hour composing the perfectly punchy flirty e-mail to a man or an afternoon forwarding a text message around so my committee of girlfriends can dissect it, I wonder if Socrates wasn’t, as Bridget Jones’s mother put it, “a bit of a sh-t.”

Charming on her 26th Birthday: Adult birthdays are kind of like losing your virginity. You look in the mirror after the first time and wonder if you look different or if anyone can tell. And you study yourself and realize that while you are a little changed on the inside, you’re still the same person you were the day before.

Thanks for reading, commenting, linking, e-mailing and joining me on this year of datelessly drinking. And here’s to the next year being better. (And, yeah, I’m going out with the Relief Worker again Friday night. Maybe it’ll be a fivepeat of him not kissing me. Sigh.)

Wow.

So, I was reading my e-mail and looking over some stuff this morning when something in the header of a message hit me.

“1/19/2006″

I pondered the date for a second, trying to remember why it was important.

And then it hit me. Today is the One Year Birthday of Charming, But Single.

Which annoys me, because I have a huge “One Year” post saved on my laptop at home. I suppose it will have to wait until after work and treadmilling at the gym and cooking and eating …

Sigh.

I don’t know what it is about elevators that makes uncomfortable silence ever so painfully and awkwardly more uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the small space and stark walls or the buttons or the fact that everyone inside the elevator has somewhere to go, someone to see, something to do.

So I’m rushing into the elevator this morning, half awake and in need of coffee or hot tea or SOMETHING to warm me up. I aimlessly press the button to my floor and the doors are closing and I lean against the wall when a foot flies in between the closing doors. I’m startled and I jump back before I realize that the foot belongs to a person. In an attempt to open the doors I press the “Call” button instead of the “Door Open” button. I correct myself and the doors do open and a very cute man with a nice smile comes in.

I apologize breathlessly, and straighten up. He smiles and says it is okay and we begin our excruciatingly silent ride to our floors. I was wishing I had opted for something other than the “Harsh, Uptight Woman” hairdo I had selected when my hair would cooperate this morning (deep part to one side, hair pulled into a tight bun low on the back of my head and bangs and flyaways pinned to the side by my ears).

I wanted to introduce myself or to flirt, but the silence was so deafening that I couldn’t break it. You could have heard a pin drop over the mechanical groans of the equipment as it pulled us through the elevator shaft. We each looked away. He stared at the ceiling and I studied the polished siding of the wall.

You see in movies and television shows where two people meet in an elevator and then make excuses to ride to the wrong floor. But it was idealistic to think that I could flirt with anyone before my morning coffee, when I’m still half asleep and have driven to work on autopilot. I often wonder if I miss opportunities to meet people because I suddenly become shy and awkward and my confidence flows out of my body. I daydreamed during the short elevator trip that he’d crossed the elevator car and introduced himself, with his nice eyes and good smile.

Ding!