Charming, but single

Note: I will not pretend that this is as eloquent or full of sense as I’d hoped.

I have heard, once, twice, maybe a thousand times, in discussion of relations between men and women that we (the women) want you (the men) to read our minds. And it drives you crazy.

And you’re correct; sometimes we do want you to read our minds. And you’re not mind readers, or at least most of those of you I’ve met aren’t. But can you really blame us for wanting you to pick on some of the subtleties of our actions or the nuances of what we say?

Yes, straightforward communication is always best. Few people could argue with that. But I think there’s something to be said for a man who picks up on my cues and hints. Who knows when I’m upset, who understands why, who wants to fix it. Maybe women rely too much on intuition at times. Or maybe, at times, men don’t pay it enough mind. It is infinitely reassuring to be understood.

If you stand us up, even for good reason, for example. Maybe you got slammed at work or maybe you fell asleep or maybe you simply just forgot. None of these things makes you a bad person. But reacting as if nothing is wrong or as if we are irrationally upset when you offer meek assurances that it won’t happen again doesn’t soothe our hurt or disappointment.

You see, we don’t just listen to your words. We look at context and body language and intent and read between the lines, even when nothing is there. Even in my most successful moments, when I am most confident, I want to feel wanted. And if you’re not giving me those feelings, I’m looking for a reason why, because I always believe that there is one.

Yes, I may say I’m over it. Maybe I’m saying that for myself because I want to be over it. Maybe I’m saying it for you because I want you to believe it. What man wants a bumbling ball of emotion? (Or if he did, would admit to it?) I want to be someone you want – and you can call that weak if you want, but I think it is mostly just reality talking. (And I don’t think women feel this exclusively.) And I do want you to want me as a strong, independent woman with my own life. But sometimes, when my pride keeps me hiding behind that “strong” façade, I want you to look at me and realize that there is something unsaid in my eyes or my words or my movements. And, dear God, I just want you to respond without me having to ask you to – save me from begging for your attention or affection. Don’t make me ask. (All of the time at least.)

Speaking from my experience, emotions aren’t formulated only through words. They’re found in actions and inaction. In tone and demeanor. And text messaging and technology confuse things – who hasn’t received an e-mail and mistook the author’s mood by their words? When left without context clues, we oftentimes assume the worst.

There is a classic moment in “The Breakup” when Jennifer Anniston’s character yells at Vince Vaughn’s that she “want[s] him to want to do the dishes.” And maybe that sounds insane – as Vince Vaughn says, “Who wants to do dishes?” But the sentiment is clear – she needs actions and proof that he’s fully invested in their relationship, from the exciting parts to the mundane.

In my newly embraced spirit of semi openness, I am not ashamed to admit that I wouldn’t turn down a man who was a part time mind reader. Who heard what I was saying and listened to what I could mean. And not in the “I’m saying no, but mean yes” way. But in the “Yes, I am still annoyed with you and perhaps there is something you can do about” way. In the “I’ll humor you because I believe you are worth it” way. In the “I’ll let you save some face this time because you’ll return the favor next time way.”

A continuation of this post.

Plans are fun to make. But when you get the news that the time is quickly nearing and plans will come to fruition, I don’t think that your first reaction should be your stomach rumbling. Never a good sign.

So I’m going the honesty route with some confidants to gauge their reactions and hopefully snap myself back into reality.

“I’m thinking of revisiting a person from my past,” I told Best Friend Ever.

“Why would you do that when he wasn’t good enough the first time around?” she asked.

“Because, it’ll be fun. Just casual.”

“This is a truly bad idea,” she said.

“No, it isn’t. No feelings. Just a fun way to pass the time.”

“This is a trend with you.”

“A trend?”

“You say you’re never going to get hurt and you say you’re not going care and you do get hurt because you do care.”

I told her that I didn’t think it was necessarily a trend and she reiterated that it was a truly terrible idea to revisit the past, if only for a fleeting moment of enjoyment. And I began to list all of the positives in a kind of whiny voice – why wasn’t she giving me permission to make this mistake? Friends are so frustrating sometimes, I was thinking.

She interrupted my incoherent rambling and said, “Aren’t there any nice guys out there that you haven’t dated before?”

“No, I am done. I am tired of propping my chest up in uncomfortable bras, I’m tired of wearing blush and worrying about my hair and smiling when I’d rather scream and having terrible fake conversations with men because I can’t find the one that I actually want to talk to because it isn’t fun out there. It is hard. And people are MEAN. And right now I’m too busy and too stressed out to get out there and find a new, worthy guy, so I’m going to hang out with an old one in hopes that this motivates me to put myself out there again.”

“Well, that sounds like a truly terrible idea,” she said.

After a long week and knowing that I would be facing another one, I opted to go out on Saturday night, rather than making the wise, responsible choice to rest. No, not me, why rest when you can lug your heavy ankle cast around while you go out for a glass of wine or two?

So I threw on a black dress, poufed my hair and was on my way. As I hobbled down the street from my parking spot, I grinned as I happened to walk past the nun who was the principal of my high school. Should I have stopped to say hello? Possibly. But what does that conversation sound like?

“Why, hello, Sister. Yes, I am heading to a bar at 11 p.m. at night where I will drink alcohol. No, I do not think my cleavage is inappropriate. God made it, right?”

I didn’t think so.

After an hour or so at the wine bar the friends I was meeting were heading to another place that I didn’t want to go. Unready to go home and with Prom Date not free to meet me for a drink, I decided to call on an old standby.

The Blackberry.

Now, I haven’t hung out with him in months and I haven’t been at the cigar bar in as long. But he is a regular there and I knew, for sure, that he would be sidled up to the bar. I sent him a text and he returned it. And so I went to meet him.

Sure, he’s driven me crazy in the past. And I generally dislike him sometimes. But there are times – usually when he’s one on one with me – where he isn’t a total jerk. And while that isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, it is a passable reason for why I met him for a drink.

Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the length of time since I last kissed a guy, maybe it was the delirium (I’d been up until 2 a.m. the night before and then up again at 6:30 a.m. and it was well after midnight by this point), but I was flirting with him. And he was flirting back. I felt good and he was there and making it very clear that he was interested in me. It felt good to be flirting and to have someone flirt back – I’ve been in a funk that’s lasted for several months and I needed some flattering. I’m not ashamed to admit that the attention felt good – really good.

And then it was near closing time and we were walking out of the bar. He paused by his car, wrapped an arm around my waist and gave me a kiss.

I pulled away. If I went home with him, I’d surely regret it. It may have been nice to be flirted with, but I deserve someone I actually like and who actually likes me back – and I’d just be another conquest for him, or at least that’s how he’d tell the story.

“You. Are a man whore,” I said.

“And?”

“And I’ve gone a whole year without dealing with your kind,” I said. “And I’m not ready to break my streak now.”

He kissed me a again, but I stepped back, smiled and waved good night, and then tried to look as confident and sexy as you can look when you’re hobbling toward your car in a little black dress and a knee high walking cast.

So, I realized that I never blogged about having my tarot cards read on New Year’s Eve, out in a famous Square of a city I love. I remembered this evening when I was rooting through my far-too-full Kathy Van Zeeland purse and pulled out a clear glass stone with a white pattern inside of it – the Tarot Card Lady gave it to me to remember my reading. I went with my girlfriends for a party and we decided to mosey on down to the Square to hang out and in the process stumbled upon the Tarot Card Lady.

Now, before people start leaving indignant comments about tarot card readings being complete bull, I will preface the retelling by saying that I did this after loads of peer pressure and with a healthy dose of skepticism. I was the last of the four of us to have a reading, mostly because my curiosity was piqued by my friends’ readings. I’ve been with friends before who had readings in this same Square – I was never willing to part with a few dollars for what I viewed as a glorified guess based on nonverbal cues.

The Tarot Card Lady sat at a small cloth covered table with two folding chairs-in-a-bag. She spread piles of well-worn tarot cards across the table and had me pick from stacks, laying them atop each other in a pattern, asking me questions along the way.

Of course I was most interested in my love life (or lack thereof). This was entirely to be expected. I was with a group of single women (one has a long-term boyfriend, but is unmarried).

Had I written this sooner, I might remember everything that she said. I only remember the high points, and I will give her that many of her comments were spot on. And I can only hope that her predictions ring true.

I do remember the first card she pulled because she said, right off the bat, that I was very smart. I smiled and nodded. She continued that I was very strong, but I was also extremely emotional and closed off.

I figured she was three for three on that one.

She said that my financial situation has improved (it has) and would continue to do so in the coming year. She pulled one card and said I’d built up a Wall to keep people out; that I’ve been hurt in the past and I don’t want to let men in because of this. (Pretty typical fare for a single 28-year-old, no?)

My skepticism permeated the reading. She kept returning to this Wall I’ve built up to protect myself from being emotionally harmed and said I’d need to figure out how to bring down that Wall in order to find happiness.

She said I’ll be a good mother and I, feeling a wee bit exposed having all of my girlfriends and hundreds of people milling around within earshot as she described my shut-in personality, asked cautiously, “So, I will find someone and have a family?”

The Tarot Card Lady looked me straight on in the eye, crooked her eyebrow and said, “Yes, have you not been paying attention?”

“Well, I know, it is just that everyone around me seems to be getting married. And I’m always a bridesmaid, never a bride,” I joked. Self deprecation is a familiar friend and my only life-long companion.

“Stop. Stop right there.”

“What?”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “If you keep saying that it will come true.” She continued that each time I said negative things I was building my Wall, which I needed to dismantle brick-by-painful-brick.

“You will find love. And you will have a good marriage.” she said.

And, yes this really happened, as she laid out the second deck of cards and talked about my love life, a newly married bride and groom entered the Square, walked past us with their photographer and stopped to pose for a portrait. The bride’s roses were bright crimson red – so bright I can see the exact hue in my mind right now.

“Do you see that?” she asked, excitedly motioning to the couple. “That is a very good sign. A very good sign indeed.”

I will find a man to love, she said. But it will not be easy. Because of the Wall I’ve surrounded myself with and because I compare every man to the one who hurt me and immediately find fault. Because I am scared.

And he’s scared too, she said. We will meet, I will know him immediately as my soulmate, but there will be much for us to overcome, as she said he will be emotional too. We will both have to work through our brick Walls together, and it will be hard.

“But, you are lucky,” she said. “Because you will find your soulmate and you will be together forever.”

As she finished I handed her some money and she picked a smooth stone from the table, where she’d laid out stones on many of the cards. She pressed the clear piece of glass in my hand and said it represented true love, beautiful and pure.

I dropped the stone in my purse and left her table with a smile.

Perhaps she is full of it. Maybe she read my cues and told me what I wanted to hear. Of course she picked up on my skepticism and could have judged me as closed off. Regardless, I left with a bit of hope for the future, a foolishly renewed faith in soulmates and silly ideas filling my head.

Later, I told my Mom about the tarot card reading, assuming her religious ways and conservative nature would make her mortified that I’d participated in such a thing.

She just smiled and asked, “Did she say WHEN you’d be meeting this soulmate of yours?”

Saturday evening, after seeing “Juno” with my girlfriends, I decided to pick up a few things for dinner and head in for a quiet night of watching Season Three of The Office. My ankle still hurts and I’m heading out on Thursday for a whirlwind wedding weekend, so a bit of relaxation was in order. I stopped by a new gourmet market to browse and wait for food-related inspiration.

I was rolling through the aisles aimlessly, trying to decide what to cook. And this led me to a logical place – the meat counter. You see, I’ve been working hard in my post-vegetarian months to build dinners around meat instead of adding it in at the last minute.

So I’m looking at different cuts of meats – incidentally, I went with chicken breast and later made the world’s worst chicken. I’d meant to make a nice Parmesan crusted chicken breast, but oh did I crash and burn and end up with a lumpy mess. But, of course, I didn’t know that that this point.

What I did know at this point was that, gee golly, I was about to have an encounter of the uncomfortable kind. Because as I looked up from the applewood smoked pepper bacon, I spied a familiar face. One I’d only seen once in person but studied extensively via MySpace before coming to the conclusion that, yes, I was cuter than she is.

It was The Nurse’s Girlfriend, in all of her not me glory.

Whereas I looked put together – a rose-colored sweater with a cowl neck, wide-legged trouser jeans, flats, with my hair pulled back and simple makeup with glossy lips – she was not only wearing what I assume was an oversized men’s polo-style red plaid shirt and, horror of horrors, a SKORT.

Now, I know it is impolite to mock your ex’s current fling, especially when she was unfortunate enough to bear his spawn recently, but I really don’t care, because this isn’t actually about her right now. Girlfriend was wearing a denim skort. A pair of denim shorts with a faux skirt flap in the front. The definition of frumpy. And I should have just giggled and went about on my merry little way, happily not saddled with a child by a soulless liar. But at that moment, my New Year’s Resolution to find the blessings in my daily life fell from my mind and all I could think was, “He dumped me for someone who wears a skort.”

My maniacal fashion judgment gave way to the realization that she probably wasn’t alone. And I was right – The Nurse and Their Child were right behind her.

And, yep, I was there in my cute outfit, but hopelessly alone with a package of chicken breast and two baking potatoes. As I peered at him holding his baby and perusing the aisles, the blood drained from my face and I fumbled in my purse for my phone and called Southern Belle.

“Are you busy?”

“No, just painting my nails. What’s up?” she asked.

I told her I needed someone to distract me while I finished my shopping because I could not risk having to talk to the happy family.

And it turns out that I was going to need the distraction. Because they were everywhere – at the meat counter by the pork chops. In the deli section by the sliced cheeses and the prosciutto, comparing babies with another couple with an infant. At the seafood case by the scallops. In the produce section by the portabellas.

I was skillfully dodging him while carrying on my conversation and silently seething about how much I hated him for dumping me without bothering to give a reason and then occasionally dropping back into my life to flirt or suggest that we reunite for a night. And really hating myself the most for caring so much at this point and for letting him remain under my skin when I should have banished him like the poisonous rash that he is.

But as I went to replace a package of gnocchi on the pasta aisle, he was leading his brood down the same aisle and we ended up face-to-face. We made direct eye contact, he nodded and smiled to acknowledge me and I managed a weak smile and turned my cart around.

Later, as I walked to my car, I moped to Southern Belle.

“It isn’t him,” I said. “It is that he just dumped me for no reason, or at least if he had a reason he didn’t share it. And now he’s dating some woman who just doesn’t seem to be as fun as I am and he keeps popping up and making inappropriate comments to me and telling me how awful she is.”

“Yes, it would be easier if he were just gone.”

“Right. And, I’m sorry, she was wearing a skort.”

“Excuse me? His girlfriend was wearing a skort?” she asked.

“Yes, a skort. A denim skort. Like we wore in 1993. When we were 13.”

“Oh dear, I see why you’re upset,” Southern Belle said. “I don’t think there is any good reason to wear a denim skort out in public. Ever.”

“And this means I am officially the girl who got dumped for no reason so that her guy could go off and date a skort-wearer,” I said.

“The sad truth is, you’ll probably never know why he dumped you. And that’s crazy, but at least you’re not still with him,” Southern Belle said.

And she’s right. There isn’t always a tangible reason you can see for why a man dumps you. And that needs to be okay, because sometimes you’re the one the guy lusts after and the one who makes his heart pound.

And then other times you’re just not what he wants. And so, inexplicably, you get dumped for the girl in the denim skort.