Charming, but single

You may or may not be aware of a certain Ukrainian Web site that was ripping off content from several bloggers (Velvet in Dupont , The Countdown of V, I Am Therefore I Date to name a few) in the form of our RSS feeds. I’m not linking to the site, but you can read about this little international blogging incident as it has been covered by ASAP, the Associated Press wire focused more on younger readers.

The Ukrainian site has changed its tactics, now only posting the beginning of our posts and linking back to our blogs. Originally it was reposting all of our entries, listing us as its contributors, posting a Creative Commons license on all pages and plastering the place with Google ads. We complained in comments which have since been deleted. (They say they were deleted for our “bad” language, but there’s a comment up there with cursing in it that did get through, so they basically are just being jerks.) Oh! And the person who runs the site? Definitely NOT a woman, despite what the site would have you believe. And he’s refused to e-mail me back, even though I’ve sent numerous comments, e-mails and complaints.

But what are you going to do? Short of suing this Ukrainian guy, I’ve kind of run out of options. Now everything is moderated (except the function that allows their readers to rate MY work) and I can’t even comment on my own work. I am not happy, but things are better than they were. Effectively, this site was making money off of my journal, my hopes and fears, my moments of glory and fleeting flashes of brilliance and the lower times, when people fall short of my expectations.

I don’t have ads here for a reason. I toyed with it a few months ago, but I see this as my little place where I quietly weave my life’s story (or a portion of it), with input from my readers. I’m just not ready to see a text ad for caller ID every time I write about a boy not calling. Not now. Not yet.

This isn’t my first bout with plagiarism and I’m sure it won’t be my last. They say this sort of thing is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery, but I feel less flattered and more frustrated each time it happens. After awhile you start to wonder if it is worth it.

For now, it is.

It seems like my whole life has been spent waiting – to “grow up” and become an adult, to move out of my parents’ house, to get a good job, to be offered more money. Waiting to hear if you got the apartment you like. Waiting for him to call, for your coffee to be ready, for the light to turn green. To find out if Dad the Mechanic can squeeze a few more months out of your car so you can wait to buy a new one. Waiting for the Big Game and then waiting for your team to win.

Waiting for another job offer that you didn’t even think you wanted until you had to wait for it. Waiting for that perfect first kiss with someone special at the end of a perfect date like you’ve been waiting for all of your life. For that great bag to go on sale and for Clinique Bonus Time. Waiting to take a vacation and for flip-flop season. Waiting for his hand to move down your hip. For his hug to turn into an embrace. For your heart to stop beating so hard that you think it will come through your chest.

Waiting for the storm to blow over.

Waiting for those hour-long gym sessions to pay off. Waiting for the day when you don’t feel guilty eating a slice of pizza with double cheese and pineapple and washing it down with ice cream.

I am in a holding pattern of constantly waiting for the next big thing: the job that would be a career booster, the man that will be a core shaker, the perfection that is supposed to make me feel whole, as if I don’t sort of feel whole now. (Waiting for the day that I don’t approach the feeling of wholeness on my own without trepidation and worry that I am missing out on something. Like I shouldn’t accept the flawed me as complete, even when the flawed me is more content and fulfilled than ever. Or as if I admit that I really feel okay in my own skin now, I am somehow closing myself off to new learning and new people and new rounds of the Waiting Game. Will I live to wait another day?)

This is what happens when I have to wait. I go crazy. I get in my head and psych myself out and my heart starts pounding and I question everything I am doing and have ever done. I am neurotic when I am waiting. I am neurotic me times 100.

In these moments, the only thing that seems stable about my life is the constant anticipation.

I may be the only person who does this, but when I’m in mixed company and I have no interest in the men there, I totally chat up their female friends. We giggle and dish and – dare I say – flirt!

I caught myself doing it on Friday night. I knew I wasn’t even remotely interested in any of the three guys at my table and so I spent a bit of the night talking with one of the other women there. We bonded over an Elton John song and hit all of the important topics:

• Being a closet American Idol fan at age 26
• Falling off of the treadmill at the gym
• Her pretty sparkly earrings
• How green just didn’t work with my outfit that night
• Subtly slutty “going out” shirts versus overtly slutty tops

Two rounds an a few Apple Pucker shots later (it was St. Paddy’s Day after all!) we were old friends, bonded over a shared love of bling and an inability to resist the almost obscene sex look of one Constantine Maroulis.

Saturday I did some day parading with a pal before we got fancy pimento cheese sandwiches for lunch and shoe shopped at our favorite boutique. (I didn’t buy any this time. But oh was I tempted.)

I watched basketball in the afternoon to early evening. Cursed CBS for flipping from game to game and almost sending me into an epileptic fit trying to figure out what game I was watching and who to cheer for and what city they were in and what team was what color. I want to watch a game and I want to watch the entire thing, not 5 minutes of this game and then 45 seconds of another and then 20 minutes of a third. Are we, as a people, really so ADD that we can’t watch an ENTIRE basketball game?

Hmmph.

Met Southern Belle and SB’s Boyfriend out that evening, spilt a glass of $8 wine on SB’s jeans and almost broke a wine glass in the process. Not cool. At all.

Met B and six of his guy friends at another bar. Danced around like a moron in my three-inch heels, flirting with all of the boys. It is fun to flirt with boys when you know it is all in jest. Two of the guys were married, one was in a serious relationship and three are pals. Then there’s B. Whatever.

One of the newly-married guys slipped his ring off to let B see if wearing a ring would get him a different kind of attention in the bar. It didn’t seem to.

B’s roomie repeatedly tried to balance his drink in my cleavage. It was cold and uncomfortable, to say the least.

I was play flirting with one of the Married Men who made a joke about taking me home.

“I couldn’t sleep with you! You are married!” I exclaimed.

“Married men cheat all of the time. Come on,” he joked.

“No, that would make you an asshole,” I said.

I paused. “And in that case, I could totally go for it, because I apparently exclusively sleep with assholes.”

We devolved into laughter.

“Well, I only sleep with bitches,” he said.

“F-ck you!” I yelled, waving my hand playfully in his face.

He laughed. “Let’s go!”

It was a pretty rambunctiously fun all around. B announced an after party at his place, so I left and waited for a good 15 minutes at his house (literally seconds from the bar) and when the crew of boys never showed up, I slipped “Don’t Bother” by Shakira into the CD player and returned chez moi. I toasted a whole-wheat waffle and snacked on it while I watched the opening scenes of a random episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.”

At 2:45 a.m. B texted to find out where I was.

I sent back, “In bed.”

Note from S: The first “There are songs about all of them” is here.

Today, I was doing a quick count of some of our marketing materials. I was alone in the storeroom, so I flipped on the radio while I took some notes.

The last person there had the radio on a country station and I hummed along to the background music.

Pens. Check.

Mugs. Check.

And then a simple guitar strum over the radio stopped me dead in my tracks.

“You always had an eye for things that glittered / but I was far from being made of gold.”

I stood still and let the song wash over me. “Just To See You Smile” by Tim McGraw. Damn B and his country music. The cheesy country music that I now love.

I stopped my work and thought back, escaping for three minutes into a world of heavy hearts, sleepless nights and fighting back the kind of tears that sting when you keep them in your eyes.

We were at a little hole in the wall with a country-heavy jukebox one night a few years ago. B and I picked over songs – letting him lead because I was solely out of my element. We’d played George Strait (B’s favorite) and probably some Johnny Cash.

“Tim McGraw.” I read off the track list.

We settled on “Just To See You Smile,” a sad little song about setting free the ones you love.

“When all is said and done / I’d never count the cost / It’s worth all that’s lost / Just to see you smile.”

As we hit the climax of the song, when Tim’s let his love go away because that’s what she wants, I’m feeling raw and exposed. Heartbreaking for anyone who’s ever loved someone and had to let it go. Because when you care about someone, you sometimes know that you’re not what he wants. And all of the unrequited love in the world isn’t going to change his mind. (Or yours.) You’d just as soon bang your head against a brick wall, because you can’t force someone to love you.

Not that you realize this at the time. Because if you did, you actually WOULD beat your head against a brick wall. No, you delude yourself into thinking that if you let him go, even only in your mind, he’ll come back. “Someone has to be the bigger person,” you tell yourself, justifying your choice through silent tears. And as soon as you have dealt with the emotion, you forget it. (This is the only explanation, because if you actually remembered how it feels to want to vomit up your soul because you are so heartbroken, would you ever love again?)

“When you said time was all you really needed / I walked away and let you have your space / Cuz leavin’ didn’t hurt me near as badly / As the tears I saw rollin’ down your face”

I was sort of lost in this song. B was singing along in this low twang he has – boy can do a good country tune. He made me a country convert those months, during the time when I wanted him so badly that I learned to like the things he did.

“And yesterday I knew just what you wanted / When you came walkin’ up to me with him / So I told you that I was happy for you / And given the chance I’d lie again”

B pointed out that this song pissed him off. I questioned his reasoning.

“If I were this guy, I wouldn’t smile and lie,” he said. “I wouldn’t lie and say I was happy that she found someone else.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“No, I’d be pissed and I’d say so.”

“No, you wouldn’t!” I argued. “You wouldn’t say that to someone you cared about! You’d be gracious.”

“I would say that, S,” he paused. “I wouldn’t just wimp out and pretend to be happy for someone who hurt me.”

“Then you’ve never actually been in love, dear.”

Friday night was a going away celebration for The Producer. Also, Best Friend Ever was in town. (I hadn’t seen her in more than a year and though I’ll blog about that later, it was refreshing to see her.) The Producer got a kickass job in another city and I’m actually kind of sad about it, because we’d gone out a few times recently. I’m gonna miss her for sure.

So, I’m at our regular bar, BFE comes to meet us. I’m chatting with people I know and generally having a good time when I notice one of the Producer’s Coworkers who I have only met on one other occasion. I wonder to myself if The Engineer is with them and shake it off.

I’m standing to the side of the group with BFE and I casually (and softly) mention it to her.

“I’m nervous because Coworker is here and she introduced me to The Engineer,” I said. “It is awkward.”

“Is he here?” She scanned the room, even though she’s never met the boy.

“I don’t think so,” I say in a hushed whisper. “This is just the st—“

I paused as something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye.

“BFE, I need a cigarette. Now.”

“He’s here, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Which one.”

“Untucked button down, slightly spiked hair, pint in hand.”

She lights a cigarette for me and casually looks over.

“He is kind of cute, S!”

“BFE, can we not?”

She smiles.

“He needs to iron his shirt.”

At this moment I want to hug her and cry because I’m so happy she is there. Her slight bitchiness to me, knowing that the only salve for my bruised ego at this moment is to hear about his flaws and my relative perfection. This is why I love BFE. She will never judge me or think I am making a big deal out of nothing. She just loves me.

“Maybe he doesn’t recognize you.”

“BFE, I appreciate that, but you know he does.”

“I know.”

“And all he has to do is come over and say hello and make conversation for a few minutes. I don’t expect him to profess love or marry me.”

“Right.”

“I mean, we met at a bar and made out up against my car. This was never going to be a big thing. I was never going to say, ‘And then Grandpa paid out his tab and tried to see how easy Grandma was’ to my grandkids one day.”

We laugh.

The Engineer and I glance at each other, never making eye contact. I was feeling slightly sexy when I left my apartment that night, but at this moment, I feel unattractive. Like a pariah.

“It isn’t him,” I say. “It is the situation. I am so over all of this.”

“Go say something to him. I would go say something to him.”

“BFE, I swear, if you say anything to him, I will never ever speak to you ever again.”

“Well, I don’t believe that.”

“Ok, well. I will be mad. For a little while.”

We laugh again.

She keeps egging me on to go talk to him. I will not. The ball is clearly in his court, since I gave him my number. And I am not about to rush over to a boy who couldn’t be bothered to make a phone call. I may have found “He’s Just Not That Into You” to be patronizing to women, but I agree with the point that if he doesn’t call, he’s not into you. I have been the desperate woman before. But no way. Not at this moment.

The group shrinks in size as we inch toward closing time. It is me, BFE, the Producer and her roommate, Coworker and her fiancée and The Engineer. And we are standing in a circle talking, with The Engineer across from me. When I speak, he may answer or glance at me awkwardly. He knows who I am. He will not look me in the eye when he speaks. He knows he is an asshole for not acknowledging my presence in such a small crowd, which is made of people that I know.

I go to the bathroom, run my fingers through my hair and have a moment alone. I feel very raw and exposed. I don’t remember when it became socially acceptable to treat people like this. I wonder if he thinks I’m one of those girls who is going to freak out and scream at him because he didn’t call. I bet he’s worried I’m going to toss a drink in his face, I think.

I stop and consider that prospect. I look at my fresh glass of wine.

I have always wanted to throw a drink in a guy’s face and storm out of a bar while people cheer me on. Having a drink thrown in his face is kind of like the Single Male Douchebag’s scarlet letter.

I look at my fresh glass of wine again.

Though this guy is a clear candidate for being drenched in Sauvignon Blanc, he’s not worth the $6.50 I’d waste if I did give him a wine shower. He is insignificant and is in no way worth me making a scene.

I join the group, finish my wine, pay my tab and hug the Producer goodbye. I sit in my car for a second, flip through the tracks on the CD until I find one for my mindset.

“We’re one in the same / Baptized by tears /Washed in the blame.”

I pull out my cell phone and flip through the address book. And like I always do, I find my default guy for this situation. I smile and call B. He answers.

“I’m coming over,” I say.

“I’m in New Orleans.”

“Oh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I hate men.”

He just laughs. I turn up the music and have a moment as I let my car carry me home.

“You can let your heart go / But I will hunt you down / Your love is all I want to win / Don’t break my heart again.”